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Some jobs are highly focused on a few very specific skills and tasks, with little question about what those workers do on a day-to-day basis: actuaries will spend their time surrounded strictly by numbers and models; neurosurgeons can focus all their mental energy on the functioning of the brain; and mortgage brokers navigate the link between homebuyers and the funds they need.
Marketing, however, encompasses a wide spectrum of tasks that can seem especially overwhelming when you are in a new position. Even job listings for seemingly specialized marketing jobs in large companies, such as senior copywriter, ask for applicants to be prepared and experienced in everything from social media and video storyboards to press releases, proposals, website management, graphics and voice-over work.
If your new marketing job is in a small or medium-sized company, you will be expected to have your hand in every type of communication that is produced and released, in addition to being a top-notch researcher who can identify relevant keyword opportunities and analyze the results of your marketing efforts to determine ROI.
Start your new marketing job on the right foot with the advice in Your First 100 Days: Succeeding in Your New Marketing Job. Download it here.
So where do you start? Good question.
Here’s a look at what you should strive to accomplish in your first month, in order to be ready to dive into the rest of your tasks: New Marketing Job? Six Things to Master in Your First Month.
Once you’ve comfortably accomplished those get-settled tasks, the time has come to show your inbound marketing muscles, because that is what you were hired to do, right?
This checklist is a good place to start in setting goals for bringing your inbound expertise to your new marketing job to make an impact and a good impression. Try to complete these projects by the end of your first 100 days on the job.
Inbound Projects for The First 100 Days in Your New Marketing Job
1. Generate a list of relevant keywords.
Before you start changing your website or creating content, have your targeted keywords identified. It’s easier (and your content will be more interesting and easy to read) if you work in the keywords as you go, rather than trying to sandwich them into content you’ve already created.
2. Create a landing page and thank you page for one of your existing offers.
If your company already has a demo, trial or a free quote available, or a case study for prospects to download, creating a landing page and a thank you page for it. Or redesign an existing landing page to make it more inbound friendly.
3. Set up a blog (if your company doesn’t already have one).
Your company blog is the foundation of your inbound marketing efforts. It provides keyword opportunities to boost your website’s SEO, establishes your company as a leader in the industry with a background of knowledge, and is an entry point for prospective customers to be introduced to your company and convert into leads through calls-to-action included in the blog.
4. Design and create two calls-to-action.
Every inbound marketer should be able to design and create their own calls-to-action without relying on designers. CTA’s can be created in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or by using templates like those offered by HubSpot.
The CTAs you should create: one for the existing offer for which you created a new landing page and thank you page; and one encouraging website visitors to subscribe to your blog.
5. Brainstorm a backlog of 10-20 blog post topics.
What topics will your prospects find interesting? Use your keyword list from above to develop working titles for your posts and begin to fill in a blog calendar. Make sure topics are specific, informative and useful—not just a list of “Our Great Products and Services.”
6. Publish 4-5 new blog posts by the end of your second month.
To be effective in generating organic website traffic and leads, blogging needs to be frequent and consistent. Take that list of topics and start writing. If you need a little help getting started, trying using one of these 5 blog writing templates as a foundation.
7. Scrub and segment your email lists.
Inbound marketing means you provide information to people who are asking for information. Inbound marketing doesn’t buy email lists and blast the same content to everyone regardless of whether they asked for it or not.
Segment lists into buyer personas, then you can send targeted emails with more relevant information and offers to each group.
8. Send a re-engagement campaign.
With your newly-cleaned email lists and new blog content to promote, it’s time to remind the people on your email list that you exist and tell them about the new content you have available now and that will be coming up.
You will want to encourage email recipients to opt-in for future emails with a blog subscription and remove from your list any email addresses with deliverability issues.
9. Set up and optimize your social media accounts.
Why wait until now for social media? Because social media only works when you have content, CTAs and landing pages to promote and share that can convert those followers into leads.
In utilizing social media, determine which sites your buyer personas are using, optimize your profiles on each network, and begin the process of growing your following organically by posting relevant content, both your own and links from other sources.
10. Publish six more new blog posts by the end of day 100.
Those first four to five blog posts are just the beginning. As you publish more content, start tracking how many inbound links your blog posts are getting, how many readers click on the CTAs that are part of your posts, and how many convert on those offers. If you are using HubSpot as your inbound marketing software, all of these reports are built in.
11. Create one new offer conversion path.
This means creating the entire package: an offer (ebook, white paper, checklist, template, case study, product demo … whatever), the landing page for the offer, a thank you page, and the call-to-action that will bring prospects from your blog, email or social media post to the landing page.
As you create the offer, remember to follow the four basic criteria for quality content:
12. Now promote that offer
You can promote it in a number of ways. Blog about it (or about a related topic) and include a variety of CTAs linking to the landing page. These could be in-text CTAs (simple highlighted words hyperlinked to the landing page), contextual CTAs that spell out “Download here!” or a CTA button located in the banner, sidebar or footer of your blog page.
Promote the offer with an email to the contacts in your segmented lists who would find it interesting. And post about it on your social media networks.
Find even more places to promote it: 11 Places You Should Be Using CTAs.
That’s how you get started. Of course, this checklist doesn’t spell out all of the details for accomplishing each task. You’ll find more details and lots of helpful links in Your First 100 Days: Succeeding in Your New Marketing Job.
As for all those other tasks and skills outlined in the marketing job listing, you’ll see more about how they all fit together when you take the next step of developing a complete companywide content strategy. And scroll through our other blog posts to find more on how PR & marketing can work together, proving the ROI of your marketing efforts, and much more.
