When most people hear “inbound methodology,” they often think about inbound marketing. This is for good reason – the term inbound was first introduced in the context of marketing by Brian Halligan, CEO and co-founder of HubSpot, back in 2005.
And since 2009, inbound marketing has been our bread and butter at Bluleadz. We made the switch to inbound and never looked back. And now, we’re looking forward.
The inbound methodology is future proof because it is built around how people actually make purchasing decisions. As the leading voice in inbound, HubSpot has always lead the way in showing how technology in business actually delivers a more human, helpful, and holistic experience to customers.
They've evolved every aspect of their software, providing hubs for marketing, sales, and service teams. They bring the inbound methodology to each part of a business as a reaction to human behavior. Their products support how people are buying today and how they will continue buying tomorrow.
Let's take a look at what tomorrow looks like for business and see how the inbound methodology fits in:
It’s one of the most common issues we see with our clients. We help jump-start their marketing, creating strategies that include content creation, analysis, social media management, lead nurturing, and more.
Using our tactics and marketing services, the client starts earning more traffic and generating relevant leads. But this is where things start to falter.
The client's sales team might neglect following up with leads. Or they follow up using outdated sales techniques and ultimately fall short of closing.
In 2018, this issue reached its peak, mainly because the lines between marketing and sales have been blurred for so long. Now, smarketing went from a nice-to-have to a business necessity.
Another necessity in today's buyer-centric world is implementing the inbound methodology in all facets of business – marketing, sales, and service. This is achieved through the flywheel framework.
The flywheel calls for alignment throughout the entire organization, bringing together marketing, sales, and service. When all these moving parts come together, organizations can drive growth that is sustainable.
Here's a breakdown of how marketing, sales, and services come together and how our agency plays a role in every flywheel stage:
As you can see, marketing plays the vital role of earning attention from the audience.
Our team works closely with clients to teach inbound marketing and build and execute strategies to produce and hand leads over to sales.
With the right processes in place, sales is ready to contact leads, build meaningful relationships with high quality leads, and close deals.
The BZ team educates clients and their sales team on all things inbound sales to build effective processes to drive results.
The service team continues to satisfy and delight customers, find ways to upsell, and streamline customer support processes.
With our clients, we help them build an inbound service process that retains customers and even turns them into brand advocates for the client.
As marketing, sales, and service align and work together, companies build what the future of business is calling for – an inbound organization.
As a marketing agency, we were strictly focused on lead generation. But as you can see from the old model – the funnel – our impact on our client’s business was severely limited.
It left the client to fend for themselves with closing deals.
We know our clients deserve more, which is why we have completely revamped our purpose. Now, our new purpose statement is focused on aligning efforts in every aspect of our client's business:
Transform the way companies market, sell, and service their customers.
In other words, we are helping companies build and manage their flywheel. This is a natural evolution of how agencies should be working with clients. The traditional marketing agency is merging with other traditional services like sales consultants.
Our team is learning new skills sets and building new processes for marketing, sales, and service. Our involvement at every phase of the flywheel will help clients bring their business into the world of inbound.
There are plenty of more opportunities when you look at the whole picture.
Most companies still think lead generation is enough, but it’s not when their sales teams fall short and when their service team isn’t keeping their customers happy.
As we build our team around marketing, sales, and service, we are able to become more agile in our focus, and we can better deploy resources as needed, depending on each client’s business. We are continually growing our team and using BZ Labs, our testing ground, to try new initiatives and test all things inbound.
We are preparing to make the world more inbound. We're excited for you to join us on this journey.