This is the first post in our Inbound Marketing 101 series intended to help B2B marketers boost brand visibility and generate better leads for their sales teams to convert into customers.
When it comes to marketing, we hear a lot of the same questions (and give a lot of the same answers):
Q: Why aren’t people visiting our company’s website?
A: Because they can’t find it.
Q: Are we getting the right leads?
A: Probably not.
Q: How do we convert leads into customers?
A: Highly targeted content.
Q: Does it really have to be this difficult?
A: No. Are you familiar with inbound marketing?
End scene.
Long gone are the days of relying solely on outbound marketing as the only source of your company’s lead generation efforts. A one-size-fits-all marketing message that interrupts your prospects just doesn’t cut it anymore. Enter inbound marketing.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing refers to marketing tactics that focus on pulling relevant prospects towards your company and its products or services.
This includes blogging, content creation, search engine optimization (SEO) and pretty much any other permission-based digital marketing method.
In contrast to traditional outbound marketing, inbound marketing earns the attention of your target buyers, makes your company easier to find online and produces compelling content that converts your visitors into leads.
While more and more companies are making the shift toward an inbound marketing approach, it’s important to recognize that inbound marketing doesn’t replace outbound marketing.
The most effective marketing campaigns combine elements of both.
What are the benefits of inbound marketing?
You don’t annoy your potential customers.
By utilizing inbound marketing activities, you aren’t interrupting people’s lives by promoting your business. Prospects and target buyers find you instead of the other way around.
How? Maybe they see a retweet of your social post, find you on (page one!) of Google’s search results or discover your blog.
No matter how they find you, your company is engaging with your target buyers in their preferred communication medium.
In order to be effective, however, you must focus on your buyers’ primary pain points, anticipate their issues and produce purposeful content that answers their questions.
You save money.
Inbound marketing doesn’t promise immediate results. It requires effective planning and execution. It also takes time.
While it may take your company longer to see the results of inbound marketing activities, they cost less than relying solely on outbound marketing tactics.
According to the State of Inbound, two times as many marketers say inbound marketing delivers below average cost per lead than outbound marketing. Demand Metric also found that inbound marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing but costs 62% less.
You can prove more value.
Best-in-class inbound marketers consistently review the data collected for inbound marketing activities and develop insights around which tactics are effective and which can be improved upon.
This allows your company to optimize your overall marketing strategy and collect insight into how well your marketing campaigns convert visitors and leads, how specific campaigns are performing compared with one another and how effectively your campaigns are driving revenue and delivering a return-on-investment.
Why should you get “in” with inbound marketing?
Today’s companies are realizing that outbound marketing tactics alone aren’t enough to generate leads and provide measureable ROI for marketing campaigns.
In order to drive the best results, inbound and outbound marketing tactics need to be integrated with one another.
Inbound marketing tactics enable your company to attract more visitors to your website, convert visitors into leads and nurture leads into customers.
An inbound marketing approach doesn’t aim at bombarding your target buyers with information, but rather at solving their issues with useful resources that point them in the right direction: straight to your company.
Other posts in the Inbound Marketing 101 series:
- Persona Based Marketing: Get In Character So You Can Sell More Stuff
- B2B Inbound Marketing Strategy: 5 Steps To Get Started
- The B2B Buyer Journey Should Fuel Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
- 4 B2B Marketing Tactics to Attract More Visitors to Your Website
- How to Generate More Leads From Your Website
- B2B Lead Nurturing: Build Relationships With Future Clients