At the B2B SaaS Show I ran a workshop on creating an inbound marketing guide. I went through how to create buyer personas and how to define your sales and marketing funnel – the foundations for any inbound marketing strategy.
We create an inbound marketing guide for all our clients when we start working together because we've found that it has a big impact on both marketing and business success. Read on to learn how to create one for your own business.
Step 1: Develop your buyer personas
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. Understanding your personas is crucial not only for marketing, but also for sales, customer retention and product development.
The first step in developing your buyer personas is to work out the best way to segment your audience. Does it make sense to group them by:
- Industry?
- Direct sales and channel sales?
- Company role?
- Company size?
- A combination of the above?
Once you've decided how many buyer personas you need and what those groups are, you need to flesh out the details of each persona, such as:
- Demographics
- Job titles
- Goals and challenges
- How they find and consume information
- Communications preferences
Ask yourself how your product would help them achieve their goals and solve their challenges. Also consider the common objections each persona might have to becoming a customer and any barriers to purchasing.
You can use HubSpot's online tool to create your own buyer personas.
Step 2: Define your sales and marketing funnel
Your buyer personas tell you who your customers are and how you can help them. Your sales and marketing funnel maps out how you want your personas to move through the buyer's journey.
Defining your sales and marketing funnel is important because it:
- Defines the action(s) you want leads to take at each stage, from visitor to customer
- Guides lead nurturing tactics
- Allows you to analyse your buyer's journey and conversion paths
- Gives clarity to the handover of leads between marketing and sales
- Helps to ensure that sales are given quality leads who are ready to buy
Below is an example of a sales and marketing funnel with definitions for each lifecycle stage. Note that the stages are also mapped to the technology that covers them.
If you're struggling to define the marketing qualified lead (MQL) or sales qualified lead (SQL) stages, this means you need to create an offer for these stages. Both MQLs and SQLs are in the consideration stage of the buyer's journey, which means they are researching solutions to their problem.
An MQL offer should address this need for a solution with helpful content. It also has to be valuable enough to be gated behind a form. An ebook is a typical MQL offer.
An SQL offer should be enticing for leads that are ready to talk to sales. SQLs are still considering different solutions to their problem and want to know more about yours, perhaps through a free trial or demo.
How to use your inbound marketing guide
Now that you've created an inbound marketing guide for your business, you can use it to:
- Create an inbound marketing strategy
- Create a sales process
- Determine which customers are most valuable to your business
- Engage with customer to increase retention and referrals
- Develop new products your customer will love
Developing your buyer personas and defining your sales and marketing funnel are crucial for business success. It's worthwhile reviewing them each year – the needs, challenges and goals of your customers are always evolving and you need to stay on top of any changes to continue growing your business.
