the inbound research checklist v2

The Inbound ResearchChecklist

Exactly what data do you need to set up arevenue-focused marketing campaign?

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Note

This checklist is great if you're looking to create a fully fledged marketing campaignfrom the start, but works just as well if your campaign is already in progress andyou're looking for areas to improve.

If not everything in the list makes sense, don't worry :)

There's something here for everyone. Whether you're interested in SEO, socialoutreach or how to discover more about your target audience, you'll find what you'relooking for in one of the chapters that follow.

If you have any questions, you may schedule a free chat with me personally and wecan talk more.

targetbound.compage 2 | note

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1. Assessing your business

Before getting started, a few things should be made clear about your business.

Assess your business model, your objectives and the resources you have available. Inorder to estimate how difficult it will be to compete in your market, you need tounderstand how you stand against your competition online. For that, start bygathering the following information:

Your website authority (Moz/ Majestic)

On-Page optimization grade

Social authority

Brand mentions

Link metrics

- Feel free to check the boxes that contain info you already have.

targetbound.compage 4 | assessing your business

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Campaign objectives

2. Defining Your Client's Journey

The Client Journey refers to the process your clients/ customers follow from the timethey first learn about you to the time their interaction with your business is finished.

Pro Tip: This is something that can get complicated fast. Try creating a simple mapat first and expand upon that as your business demands it. The basic steps of a clientjourney are as follows:

targetbound.compage 5 | defining your client's journey

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It's important to make sure that you are giving your prospects the right information, inthe right order, every step of the way.

3. SEO/ Keyword Research

Performing keyword research helps with more than just SEO. After finding the bestkeywords to optimize our pages for, we can also use those keywords to find andstudy our competition, find the most popular content in our niche and begin toestimate what it will take to outperform our competitors.

targetbound.compage 6 | seo/ keyword research

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Broad keywords

Long-Tail (most relevant, highly specific) keywords

First page competitors

First page ranking difficulty

Basic competitor assessment

4. Social Research

targetbound.compage 7 | social research

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Determine most popular content types in your niche

Share stats over the past 6 months/ 1 year

Channel popularity by niche (Facebook, Twitter etc)

Timing stats (most active days, hours etc)

Most popular social authorities by niche

Optimal content metrics

Social research is how we identify what people like most by analyzing the most populartypes of content, what receives the most shares, what types of posts work best, whatthe optimal post length is in our niche and so on.

Pro Tip: While in this step, it's also a good idea to start building a list of influencers youcan reach out to in the future when you're ready to start promoting something.

5. Competition Research

targetbound.compage 8 | competition research

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Identify top competitors by topic (SEO/ Content/ Social)

Site/ page authority stats (Majestic/ Moz)

Competitor demographic info

Basic link metrics & traffic sources

Estimated traffic stats

Now that we know enough about what we should be targeting, we need to find our topcompetitors and compare our standings in order to determine the best ways tocompete.

6. Audience demographic

targetbound.compage 9 | competition research

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Client/ Customer personas

Gender, age & social status groups

Education & career groups

Interests & income groups

Language and location

Device usage & preferences

Our target audience is who we cater to. The better we understand them, the more wecan optimize our efforts to address their expectations and preferences. This is key to agood inbound strategy, so it's important to be as specific as possible.

Note: Try to avoid guessing this information as much as possible and gather everythingyou can from research.

7. Sales Funnel & KPIs

targetbound.compage 10 | sales funnel & kpi's

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Create an ideal sales funnel

Outline the tactics & resources needed for each layer in the funnel

Establish KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for each layer in the funnel

Based on our research, we can define a sales funnel that really suits our goals. Salesfunnels can be found in many different forms online, but for this step, it's best to makeone based around our own resources, goals and research.

Let's talk

If you have any questions or want your research done by mepersonally, schedule your free consultation now. Simply choose your favorite slot from the list: calendly.com/targetbound/firstsession

(or)

Contact me by...

email: [email protected]

linkedin: linkedin.com/in/catalinmodorcea

twitter: @CataM8

website: targetbound.com

https://calendly.com/targetbound/firstsession/

the inbound research checklist v2

Marketing