When many people think of marketing, they think of outbound marketing - email blasts, digital display, search advertisements, PR and Media... and the list goes on. These activities are traditionally attention-getting marketing, the kind of thing that screams for the target customer to notice and click through.
Although outbound marketing has its place, B2B sales increasingly rely on inbound marketing -that is to say, making the customer come to you. Here’s how it works.
Inbound marketing starts with content
Customers do a lot of research before making any purchase. Almost 90% of B2C customers research products before making a purchase, behaviour which necessarily translates to the B2B arena. Meanwhile, B2B customers spend 15% of the buying cycle comparing information on different brands. No one does research by watching advertisements - decision makers prefer to read and watch neutral, unbiased, and information-rich material.
Know your target customer and where they look for answers
If you’re reading this as a services provider, the economic buyer for your product is most likely in the C-suite or at the director level. These people are busy and will most likely hang up on cold calls and delete unsolicited emails. They’re much more likely to be swayed by a thoughtful blog post or a detailed and valuable white paper that they read on their own time.
To the extent that you can advertise to this audience, it must be done subtly. They might read one of your pieces if it shows up as sponsored content in a blog they read. You could get a newsletter signup if your article appears in their organic search results or unprompted in their social media feeds. At this point when they are a little warm, and not before, you’re might be safe in reaching out to schedule a meeting.
Generating ROI from Inbound Marketing
Calculating the ROI of your inbound marketing can be challenging. Costs associated with developing detailed and relevant long-form content regularly be higher than creating some banner ads and setting them live.
To calculate the ROI of your inbound marketing efforts, start with understanding your sales and marketing costs – including salaries within the team, what you’re spending on content development, imagery, graphic design or web development. Then, use this number against the number of new customer or deals signed during the campaign period. If you’re using an intelligent MarTech tool like HubSpot, you’re able to group all your campaign assets into on dashboard and link new deals to your campaign, too, removing all the hard work when it comes to reporting the success of your campaign.
The right person at the right time
Triggerfish specialises in creating inbound marketing content and ensuring that it gets to the right set of eyes. With a mix of skills across strategy, content development, SEO, advertising, campaign pitching, management and execution, we can help you create a buyer’s journey that resonates with your target audience. Find out how we have helped Microsoft Partners with their co-funded inbound marketing campaigns.