Marketing professionals and agency people like to-do lists. They just have so many things on their plate. But what they like even more is ticking off items on that to-do list.

As the workload increases, though, that to-dos list usually starts to get shorter, but the actual to-dos are of a bigger scope, which is not very helpful because the point of the to-do list is to break things down into small parts and tackle each one by one. When the task is too big and you don't break it down into subtasks, you tend to forget things or you don't know where to start nor can you tell your people what to do. 

What marketing and agency pros need in these cases is a checklist that they can use every time ‒ for various campaigns or clients. Think like a to-do template that enables them to turn these ad-hoc to-do lists into a process.  

Here's where today's post is going to help. It offers a simple checklist of 69 to-dos to help you optimise your marketing and communications activities throughout the entire inbound marketing methodology.Before we jump into the tips, let's just take a quick step back and recap the inbound marketing methodology. 

This is how we define inbound marketing at HubSpot: 

"Instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be."

The whole methodology centres around creating marketing people love and content that they want to consume at the time they determine and based on their needs at that moment. That's why the methodology is broken into four stages ‒ attract, convert, close and delight ‒ and for each of the stages specific tools come into play in order to accomplish that action. 

69 Actionable Tips to Optimise All Your Inbound Marketing Activities

So my checklist for you today consists of best practices and actionable tips for each of those tools within the stages of the inbound marketing methodology. You can use it anytime you start a campaign or whenever you want to optimise one of the stages or tools for yourself or your clients. 

ATTRACTING STRANGERS INTO VISITORS

Best Practices for Blogging:

• Pick a topic and a title based on buyer persona pain points and challenges.
• Format your post using whitespace, subheads, bullet points, lists and images.
• Optimise your post for one long-tail keyword and include internal and external links.
• Include CTAs in your post or blog sidebar to increase lead generation. 
• Promote your blog posts by linking internally and including social media sharing buttons.
• Create a newsletter to promote your new posts to your subscribers. 
• Analyse the performance of your blog posts based on views, topic popularity, clicks to CTAs.

Best Practices for Keywords and SEO:

• Do keyword research around your buyer personas.
• Create content around the keywords with the best ranking opportunities.
• Optimise your content around one primary keyword (on-page SEO) and for mobile.
• Earn links to your content by building relationships with industry leaders.

Best Practices for Social Media Publishing:

• Set SMART goals.
• Meet your audience where they are based on your buyer persona habits.
• Optimise your company’s profile to communicate your brand and values. 
• Create a remarkable social media content plan that adds value.
• Create a social media style guide and publish on a consistent basis. 
• Share relevant and helpful industry content customised for each platform.
• Get visual.
• Tie efforts back to ROI with reach, engagement, leads. 

CONVERTING VISITORS INTO LEADS

Best Practices for Calls-To-Action:

• Make it action-oriented and super clear what people should do.
• Include keywords consistent with your offer and landing page to meet expectations.
• Make it attention-grabbing so that it stands out and people want to click on it. 
• Use strong and appropriate on-page placement (sidebar, above the fold, end of blog post).
• Make small changes (e.g. colour) to test for improvement and analyse the results. 

Best Practices for Landing Pages & Forms:

• Write a clear, concise and action-oriented headline.
• Explain the offer and its value clearly and quickly (think What's In It For Me).
• Remove the navigation menu and links to reduce distractions. 
• Choose a form length that mirrors the value of the offer. 
• Pick form fields that gather the information both marketing and sales need. 
• Put visual emphasis with a relevant image, video or animation. 
• Use numbers, bullets and bolding in the copy to make it easier for the reader.
• Add social and email sharing icons to encourage people to spread the word. 

Best Practices for Thank You Pages:

• Deliver the promised content offer or set expectations.
• Display the site's navigation menu and footer again to let people click around. 
• Provide additional content like links to relevant blog posts. 
• Move new leads further into the buyer’s journey with a secondary CTA. 
• Include social and email sharing options that lead to the landing page. 

CLOSING LEADS INTO CUSTOMERS

Best Practices for Email:

• Define clear, SMART goals for your emails.
• Segment your contacts database based on buyer persona and their stage in the buyer's journey.
• Get even more granular with segmentation around company, role or behavioural attributes.
• Send the right email with the right content at the right time based on buyer's journey stage.
• Personalise your emails. 
• Nurture your leads into customers by sending relevant, more value-adding content. 
• Optimise your emails for mobile. 
• Test and analyse metrics like delivery, open, click-through, unsubscribe rates.

Best Practices for Managing Contacts & CRM:

• Make sure your contact database (CRM) is always up-to-date.
• Build custom contact properties to create robust contact profiles and gather what sales need.
• Tell a story with each contact profile to enable sales to have the right conversations. 
• Manage lifecycle stages to ensure accurate closed-loop reporting.

Best Practices for Workflows:

• Determine a clear, concise goal for your lead nurturing workflow. 
• Identify which contacts should be included based on the goal of your workflow. 
• Select the appropriate content, number of emails and delays between emails. 
• Identify contacts that need to be excluded from the workflow. 
• Test your workflow before turning it live to ensure everything functions correctly. 

DELIGHTING CUSTOMERS INTO PROMOTERS

Best Practices for Surveys:

• Determine the goal of your survey.
• Identify the contacts who should participate in the survey.
• Define the timeframe for your survey.
• Design questions that help you reach the goal of your survey.
• Identify suitable survey software and distribution channels.  
• Promote your survey on social, via email, through your blog. 
• Share the findings of your survey with a new content offer on a designated landing page. 

Best Practices for Smart Content:

• Create a good user experience based on buyer personas and/or stages of the buyer's journey. 
• Promote new offers with smart content for those who haven't seen it yet. 
• Personalise different elements of your blog, emails, landing pages, website pages. 
• Guide your visitors to becoming customers with smart content elements. 

Best Practices for Social Media Monitoring:

• Monitor the right terms and hashtags based on your keywords research.
• Create monitoring lists of subscribers, leads, customers and industry leaders to follow.
• Listen to what others are saying and only engage in conversations where you can add value.
• Personalise your responses to not sound like a spamming robot and make people feel special. 

Are there any other best practices you can recommend?  

You want to learn even more about the inbound marketing methodology and how to use it for your business? Then become an expert with the Inbound Marketing Certification! It's FREE and it's an awesome learning experience!