There is much fragmentation and specialization in the technology industry. Marketers have had to work their way through the clutter, and this has led to many companies just dumping more and more marketing dollars at marketing agencies.

Often this creates a situation where the focus is on the wrong things. “Did you review your marketing strategy?” is the question that most marketers face and often just roll their eyes and move on.

Here are 5 essential elements of a sound Inbound Marketing strategy:

Define the intent

Inbound Marketing is not for everyone. Every marketing strategy has to start with defining a stated intent. This could be a preference for an increasing percentage of sales coming from online channels. Another could be to maintain or grow online ROI. Regardless, it’s imperative to know this. Too often, a company could get away with just bypassing marketing and, to my mind, that’s a mistake. Sometimes you’re missing opportunities.

Focus marketing expenditures on the right customers

Leveraging smart data analysis, marketers can create a series of detailed segmentations that help marketers prioritize their spend on the correct audience. Many marketers focus on nurturing customers that are likely to convert. This is particularly true if the customer is at a turning point in the customer lifecycle. These customers are more likely to spend than more established customers in their own initial purchase or annual renewal cycle.

Focus on achieving ROI

If, by virtue of investing marketing dollars in SEO or SEM, you are unable to increase your ROI from this channel, do something about it. You may not see the benefit today, but, as you examine your long-term efforts, you’ll understand that continued increases will add value to your company.

Go beyond the one-size-fits-all customer segmentation

Use other tools to segment customers into targeted categories. For example, web experience segmentation has become a lot more sophisticated. For those unfamiliar, user experience is the product experience a website offers in terms of UI (user interface), UX (user experience design), and video. Customer intent can also be quantified with a number of tools, such as intent/intent words, intent/intent click-through rates and intent/intent second-clicks.

It’s important to drill down to understand your prospects

Once you know your desired ROI, look beyond your targets. Eighty-five percent of marketers have a single target audience within their customer segmentation. Inbound marketers often have a strategy that is driven by an internal formula. Google marketers use Google AdWords for source data. Facebook marketers use Facebook Audience Manager.

Unfortunately, campaigns can become fatigued in the first few months because they may only target the “inbound” customer. It’s also not ideal to just focus on creating a funnel. The whole process can become overwhelming in a hurry.

So, take a step back and ask yourself how to balance out your different targeting and audience segmentation profiles to maximize your ROI. Eighty-five percent of marketers do not have a single customer segment. If you’re one of them, that’s a sure sign that Inbound Marketing needs to be your focus.