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The inbound marketing process

Author's avatar By Danyl Bosomworth 10 Sep, 2012
Essential Essential topic

An infographic showing how to plan and manage inbound marketing

I'm a big fan of the inbound marketing model, sometimes incorrectly referred to by the narrower marketing activities of content marketing or social media marketing. Inbound incorporates both content and social media marketing and more.

Although there is a lot of advice available on best practice on inbound marketing activities, there isn't so much on how to manage it, so I liked this infographic from a US agency. I think it's a pretty good stab at the describing the end-to-end process.

It's a different take on the inbound marketing process to our inbound marketing funnel we published in February. It does miss a number of key activities (namely the importance of creative, a 'big idea' and outreach) by the nature of simplifying process for an infographic, yet crucially communicates the importance of leads and sales (step 4 to 6). Something that is regularly missed by other commentators - thinking about what you do with that traffic when you attract it is arguably more important that getting it in the first place.

I've included our inbound marketing funnel process based around PRACE for comparison:

Author's avatar

By Danyl Bosomworth

Dan helped to co-found Smart Insights in 2010 and acted as Marketing Director until leaving in November 2014 to focus on his other role as Managing Director of First 10 Digital. His experience spans brand development and digital marketing, with roles both agency and client side for nearly 20 years. Creative, passionate and focussed, his goal is on commercial success whilst increasing brand equity through effective integration and remembering that marketing is about real people. Dan's interests and recent experience span digital strategy, social media, and eCRM. You can learn more about Dan's background here Linked In.

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