why?What do you know about marketing? Specifically, inbound marketing? In a world where trends are ever-changing and people expect instant gratification, it can feel nearly impossible to stand out from the crowd. What is everyone else doing? Is it working? And if everyone else is doing it too, why should you try to be so cookie cutter?
The beauty of inbound marketing is that you can still jump on this popular trend, while still retaining your individuality as a business. It takes a lot of patience, trial, and error, but once you start attracting your ideal audience, you can rinse and repeat. But what is it, exactly? And how does it help shorten the B2B sales cycle?
Inbound marketing is the type of advertising that lets people know what you do in a non-disruptive way. It’s the complete opposite of the inconvenient, irrelevant messages you constantly get via YouTube ads, TV commercials, and during your pre-recorded episodes of This Is Us.
With inbound marketing, people come to you. And not just any person; but individuals who are seeking specifically what you have to offer. So while you need to have a strategy to appear listed on search engine results pages (SERPs) and to get them to click on your link, it’s infinitely more effective than trying to get the attention of someone who doesn’t need your services.
Inbound marketing involves strategically creating content that your target audience would find useful. Think about every time you do a Google search. What do you typically find? This can be videos, product pages, blogs, tutorials, webinars. No matter what it is, the content shows up when you look for it. Therefore, the vast majority of times, you end up reading something that’s relevant specifically to you.
This is why inbound marketing is so effective. While readers do scroll through links and narrow down what they want to read, they are coming to you. When they click on your links, they already know you may have something they want.
There are many differences between B2C and B2B besides what’s being sold. Within a marketing context, B2B businesses have several additional factors to keep in mind, including that in B2B:
As opposed to B2C marketing, where interactions are purely transactional, B2B involves guiding prospects through several stages — thoroughly educating them on factors they may not have considered before, answering a lot of detailed questions, and possibly offering demos or free trials. So you have to go in knowing you’ll need a lot of patience and waiting; as this is all part of the process.
The reason why the sales cycle can take so long is precisely because the purchase involves a larger investment. Therefore, prospects need enough time to conduct research, compare what else is on the market, then narrow down their choices and getting buy-in from either other board members or whoever are the decision makers in their company.
Since the process is longer and it requires a lot of reading, comparing, and considering, the best strategy is to slowly but surely start to build up a relationship with prospects. This is done through lead nurturing, which involves remaining in regular contact with prospects. Ways to do this involves drip campaigns and/or getting them to subscribe to your newsletter or blog.
One way to get as many email addresses from your target audience as possible is to offer enticing lead magnets. This way, you’re providing them with valuable information and securing your spot (and the forefront of their mind) in their inbox.
Now that you have a general idea of what inbound marketing entails, let’s take a closer look at specific advantages B2B companies can experience from these type of marketing efforts:
As previously mentioned, when you do SEO correctly, people are going to find you. And think about it. How likely are you to read an unsolicited marketing email from a company you have never heard of? Now, compare that to how likely you are to read a blog titled How To Do Inbound Marketing for My B2B Business that pops up into search results when you are specifically looking for that information?
Since they are seeking you, that connection happens naturally. Nothing is forced, or disruptive, or annoying. Let people be happy to see your content, instead of skipping your ads.
People don’t know what they don’t know; and you’re in your industry because you know what you’re doing. Inbound marketing provides you with ample opportunities to establish that knowledge in a way that’s useful to the reader. For example, if you sell project management software, you can start a blog that discusses a myriad of topics related to your product, such as: Common Project Management Challenges, How To Make the Best Project Management Hires, Tips To Train Your Project Management Team, Project Management Best Practices, Project Management Trends for 2022, etc.
This showcases your expertise, provides them with immediate solutions to short-term pain points, and you don’t come across like a pushy salesperson.
It follows that when you get to use your expertise to educate prospects, they start seeing you as someone who knows the industry — with challenges and solutions — very well. They may even start specifically entering your business name into search engines when seeking additional information. The more prolific your content, the more people come to rely on you for information within that industry, especially if you develop a backlinks strategy and other websites start using your content as their source of information.
When you’re seen as an industry expert, no one will dare confuse you with an internet troll or charlatan who’s just pushing to make sales. They’ll know you’re legit. Why? Because you have blogs, eBooks, white papers, case studies, and everything else that builds up your credibility.
Do keep in mind that it’s crucial to remain true to your company’s values and to always be authentic with your messaging. This will inherently increase trust, as people see you as a dependable company that backs up what you say with what you do.
There are inbound marketing tools that enable you to customize content based on your website visitors’ circumstances. For example, smart content allows you to preset which type of content a particular user will see. This is extremely useful, since a person who has done business with you in the past doesn't need to see the same kind of content as someone who just became aware of your B2B company. You can also include personalization tokens in email marketing campaigns to include their names and other personalized content.
The beauty of inbound marketing is that with each piece of content you create, it’s a new webpage Google has to index. The more pages you create, the more likely it is that (a) people will find you, and (b) that they do so regularly. The more they see your content, the more aware they become of your brand.
You can track the performance of all of your inbound marketing efforts: website traffic, how long each visitor spends on each page, which pages they view the most, how far down each page visitors scroll down to. You can also identify which calls to action buttons result in conversions, and which remain largely ignored. This way, you can stick with what works and modify what doesn’t.
I’ve mentioned blogging and lead magnets in several instances throughout this blog, and although they are the most common forms of inbound marketing, there are other strategies you can use to attract the right audience, including:
Sales enablement is the process of equipping your sales reps with the necessary tools and resources to sell more effectively. This can include anything from product brochures, case studies, and video tutorials. This is a critical part of inbound marketing because it ensures that your sales team is prepared to sell your products or services effectively.
Also, keep in mind that in order for your team to know how to use their resources effectively, you should provide extensive and adequate training so that they are aware of frequently asked questions, common challenges, and where to find the resources they need.
Different types of audiences have different preferences about how they like to consume content. Depending on your industry and your audience’s demographics, they may enjoy watching video content over reading a lot of text. Or maybe they enjoy both, but it’s more practical to show a product’s features through a video.
In addition to market research to determine whether this is the right avenue for you, you should also do a SERP analysis. If when you type common search queries your ideal customer would enter, the results pages show mostly videos, take that as a clue and incorporate video content into your inbound marketing.
Email marketing is effective, as long as the recipients voluntarily signed up to receive direct communications from you. And there are many approaches within that realm: educational, promotional, celebratory, and a good way to make product and industry announcements. Also, just as with smart content, it’s good practice to segment your contacts based on their categories, so that everyone’s receiving emails that’s relevant to them. This increases the chances that they’ll continue opening future emails and eventually convert to a customer.
Account based marketing (ABM) is an approach to marketing in which an organization tailors its marketing efforts to specific accounts, rather than pursuing a more general audience. This focused approach is ideal when you have limited resources or have already identified accounts that are most likely to convert, rather than wasting time and money pursuing leads that will never result in a sale. This is an especially good fit for B2B organizations, which often have such long and complex sales cycles.
Growth driven design is a methodology used in inbound marketing based on collected data. It’s done by constantly testing and tweaking different aspects of your marketing efforts in order to find the most effective ways to reach and engage potential customers.
This approach is particularly well-suited for businesses that are in growth mode, as it allows them to make the most of their current resources while still striving to scale. It’s also beneficial for businesses that have limited marketing budgets, as it helps them focus their efforts on the areas that will have the biggest impact.
While each inbound marketing campaign is different, there are several common denominators you should include in all of them for the highest ROI:
The first step in doing this effectively is to first develop your buyer persona. What’s their job role? What are their pain points? Apprehensions when deciding on a purchase? Budget? Sources of information? Common questions? The more questions you answer, the better you can fine tune your message to meet their needs.
You then need to figure out each stage of their buyer’s journey. What questions would they have when they first discover they have a challenge you can solve? What would be their next steps? Which search queries are they most likely to research? Which competitors are they most likely to check out? What would be their likely interaction with your website? What kind of information can you offer them to educate them on your industry?
Next up, you should brainstorm topic ideas to write about based on each stage of the sales funnel. You can start by creating long-form blog posts or an e-Book to introduce them to your industry expertise. Don’t make it about you. Answer questions they would likely have. Provide short-term solutions for issues they are currently experiencing.
Top of the funnel content is known as ToFu, middle of the funnel is MoFu and bottom of the funnel is BoFu. It sounds a bit ridiculous, but once you get used to it, they’ll become a regular part of your vocabulary as you create your inbound marketing campaigns.
As you create content, you should also become familiar with search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. This is crucial, since it’s what increases the likelihood of being found on search engines whenever your target audience has a question. Always start by conducting keyword research to find out about their search volume and how difficult it would be to rank on search engine results pages by using each of them. Then use them in your title, headings, subheadings, URL, meta descriptions, when naming file images, and in alt text.
Every now and then, revisit old content to determine whether it can be optimized. Things to look for is whether information needs to be updated, whether you could expand on certain topics, and looking at similar content posted by competitors to ensure that yours is more well-rounded and offers a better user experience. Make sure to keep the same URL, so that any backlinks directed to your content remain functional, and that you reap the ranking benefits of content that’s already been around for a while.
Alright. Let’s take a look at several real-life examples of effective inbound marketing.
Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me? Yes, Mickey Mouse is adorable, but let’s go with HubSpot on this one. Why? Because you’re trying to learn about inbound marketing and they are world-class leaders at it. We’re also a HubSpot Elite Partner Agency, so we like to talk about them a lot.
They have everything: blogs, free courses, free strategy resources (for real!), and everything you could ever need to market your B2B business effectively.
Source: HubSpot
Let’s imagine you’re a runner (or kudos if you really are!). No matter what you type into that Google search bar, a Runner’s World article will pop up. Try it. How To Start Running. Best Races Around the World. Most Comfortable Running Shoes. How To Fuel For a Marathon. Running Training Plans. This pattern of coming across their content in most (if not all) of your running-related queries clearly establishes that they know what they’re talking about and you would be a doofus to ignore it.
Source: Runner’s World UK
Chewy is another company that knows how to attract people to their website. Just as with the running example above, type in common questions a pet parent could have, such as How to house train a puppy, Can dogs eat strawberries? How to care for senior dogs. They have guidance for everything. Also, when you visit their website, they make it so easy for you to find exactly what you need, by organizing everything neatly into easy-to-identify categories: Dog Food, Cat Toys, Bird Supplies. While this is a B2C company, it behooves you to follow their footsteps and make things as inviting and as easy as possible for your prospects.
Source: Chewy.com
And this brings our inbound marketing revenue accelerating information to a close. Now you have the roadmap you need to get this party started. And when you start seeing your metrics on track to hit your goals, remember to tell your friends who taught you all of this.