Inbound Marketing is all about converting a passive visitor to your site into an active lead.

You can easily achieve this goal with our cool jInbound component, even if you have no marketing experience whatsoever.

In this blog post, you will learn how to convert a passive viewer of a jInbound landing page into a lead and the lead - into a goal completed lead.

This will enable you to trace who actually responded to your marketing offer. You then will be able to effectively nurture or further market your new or goal completed leads.

What and how you would market differs. It all depends on the niche your website is in. There are some fundamental principles, however. "Givers gain" is one of them.

In this tutorial, you will be giving away a free downloadable PDF e-book in return for the visitor name and email address.

Your jInbound marketing campaign goal is to convert a visitor into a lead via a jInbound landing page.

It may not sound like a sale, but nonetheless, it is a transaction. You give away a valuable content to the visitor.

They in return give you their name and email address. The visitor gets into your marketing funnel and becomes your inbound marketing lead.

Once this magic happened, you will be able to easily track and manage the lead in your jInbound control panel.

You will be able to easily nurture them in it with automatic series of email letters to convert them into something else.

jInbound basically right away becomes your mini-CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.

Or you can consider jInbound to become your customer funnel optimization system. 

Let's get started to see how it works.

For the purpose of this tutorial, you need to install the latest versions of Joomla, jInbound, and OSDownloads Free.

Note: Ideally, you will create a Call to Action (CTA), directing traffic to your landing page. Such CTA could be from outside of your site, maybe from your X / Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn networks. Or it could be a Joomla module, prominently placed on your site. To keep this tutorial simple, I purposely omitted this step.

Step #1. Create a Downloadable PDF File in OSDownloads Free

In this step, you will create a downloadable file in our OSDownloads Free component.

You will be offering this file for a free download in exchange for the visitor's name and email address.

• In your Joomla control panel, go to Components > OSDownloads Free > Files.

You will be taken to the OSDownloads Free: Files screen:

• Click New.

You will see the OSDownloads Free: New File page.

Create a new file with the following settings:

• Name: your preferred name. For the purpose of this tutorial, I entered Joomla 3 Explained
• Alias: your preferred alias. I used the joomla-3-explained-file 
• Click the Choose file button
• Select a file from your hard drive 
• Click Save & Close.

Great! You now have a file to market for download via a jInbound landing page in return for the landing page visitor's name and email address. 

Next, you will create an inbound marketing campaign dedicated to marketing this free file.

The goal of this campaign will be to convert its landing page visitors to leads and the leads - into goal completed leads.

Step #2. Create a jInbound Marketing Campaign

• Go to Components > jInbound Pro > Campaign Manager:

• Click New

You will be taken to jInbound's Campaign Manager - Add New Campaign screen.

Create a new inbound campaign with the following settings:

• Campaign Name: Joomla 3 Explained
• Goal Completion Parameters: 
  • enter /index.php/joomla-3-explained-menu-alias/download, if you didn't set the Use URL Rewriting parameter to Yes in your Joomla Global Configuration > SEO Settings
  • or else, enter /joomla-3-explained-menu-alias/download, if you did set the Use URL Rewriting parameter to Yes in your Joomla Global Configuration > SEO Settings
• Click Save & Close

Excellent! You now have the free downloadable "Joomla 3 Explained" PDF file with valuable content to offer and the inbound campaign to market it.

Next, you will create a landing page to encourage your visitor to download this free "Joomla 3 Explained" PDF e-book. 

Step #3. Create a jInbound Landing Page for the Campaign

The landing page you are about to create is the very core of your marketing campaign. It is actually a form.

Your visitor arrives at this landing page, fills in the form it displays, clicks Submit button, gets directed to the file download page and downloads the file.

Once they did, your jInbound component considers your marketing goal as completed.

It changes this lead Status from the New Lead to Goal Completed and reflects it in its statistical reports.

• Go to Components > jInbound > Landing Pages. 

You will be taken to the Landing Pages Manager administrative page.

• Click New.

Create a new landing page with the following settings:

• Name: enter Joomla 3 Explained
• Published: set to Published
• Layout: leave the default Detailed
• Main text: for the purpose of this tutorial enter any text you wish. In a real situation, you would want to add some text explaining the benefits of the downloadable file
• Sidebar Text: enter your text. Most likely you would want to enter here some bullet points, briefly and to the point strengthening the benefits of the downloadable "Joomla 3 Explained" PDF e-book
• Tab Content > parameter Heading: enter Download Bestselling Joomla 3 Explained Free E-book
• Tab Content > parameter Sub-Heading: leave empty
• Tab Content > parameter Social Media Buttons: leave the default No
• Tab Forms > parameter Form: set to Simple
• Tab Forms > parameter Attach to Campaign: select Joomla 3 Explained
• Tab Forms > parameter Submit Button Text: leave the field empty. By default, jInbound will use the value Submit
• Tab Forms > parameter Notification of Forms Submissions: leave default value Yes
• Tab Forms > parameter Send Notifications To: leave empty if you are happy to receive form submission notifications at your site administrator email address, the one you entered in Joomla's Global Configuration > Server > Mail Settings
• Tab Forms > parameter After Filling Out Form, Send To Page: select Menu Item
• Tab Forms > parameter Menu Item: select the Joomla 3 Explained menu item you created a few minutes ago
• Click Save & Close

You will see your newly created landing page listed:

Great! You now have a downloadable file, and an inbound marketing campaign to convert visitors downloading the file into leads.

You now also have a landing page where the conversion will actually take place. 

Next, you need to make sure your visitors can see this landing page. You will achieve this by creating its menu item.

Step #4. Create a Menu Item to Show Your Landing Page

• Go to Menus > <Your Menu> > Add New Menu Item
• Create a menu item by the jInbound > Landing Page type.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I created one for my Top Menu and called it Download Joomla 3 Explained:

Well done. You are now all set. It's a good time to see your marketing campaign at work.

Step #5. Run a Test Download

• In your site front end, go to the landing page
• Fill in the form with some dummy data
• Submit it

You will be taken to the Joomla 3 Explained download page. At this point, your fictitious visitor has become your lead. 

Your jInbound now will list this lead on the Lead Manager page. This lead status will be the New Lead.

• Click the Download button and download the file. 

Excellent! Your fictitious visitor has filled the form and downloaded the file.

At his point, this visitor's status in jInboun changed from the New Lead to Goal Compleated.

Now you can start tracking them.

Step #6. Track Your Inbound Marketing Conversions and Goal Completions

Once your fictitious visitor filled the form on the landing page, as far as this particular visitor is concerned, your jInbound considers them a new lead. They are now in your marketing funnel.

Once this fictitious visitor made the next step and downloaded the file via the landing page, as far as this particular visitor is concerned, your jInbound considers this marketing campaign goal for them completed. 

You will see confirmations of this visitor becoming a lead, and the lead becoming a goal completed lead throughout your jInbound interface in the following places:

• The Dashboard page
• The Landing Pages Manager page
• The Lead Manager page
• The Reports page

For example, you will be able to track this in the jInbound dashboard's Monthly Reporting Snapshot:

Track leads conversions and goal completions per landing page via the Landing Pages Manager:

You can also track if you have a new lead or a goal completed lead via the Lead Manager:

You also will be able to track conversions and goal completions going to jInbound's Reports:

What's Next?

Subscribe to jInbound Pro now and instantly add Inbound Marketing - the most effective online marketing strategy - feature to your Joomla website.