Inbound marketing

On this page you will read everything you need to know about inbound marketing. You will learn what inbound means, what it entails, what content is important, but of course also: what it gives you. Also on this page you will find strong practical examples and tips for success!

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a marketing method where you attract customers by actively moving them forward throughout the buying process. Providing value is central to inbound marketing.

Unlike outbound marketing, you don't disturb potential customers with messages they don't want. Therefore, inbound marketing focuses on valuable content that is found by your target audience at the right time. You prove your added value to the customer instead of just calling them out.

The goal of inbound marketing is to attract potential customers as early as possible in the buying process and then create as many meaningful experiences with them as possible. This way, you build valuable relationships with leads and your organization will be on the radar in a positive way when the time comes to choose a vendor.

Inbound marketing tools support the inbound marketing method and ensure that the entire process is scalable. For example, marketing automation ensures that repetitive marketing tasks are automated.

Why inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing fits perfectly with the changing buying behavior of the modern B2B buyer. Research shows that 71% of all b2b purchases start with an online search. Added to this, only 19% of these potential customers are willing to talk to a salesperson in the early stages of their buying process.

It is therefore crucial that you are found as early as possible when a potential customer is searching and that you remain significant throughout the buying process. Inbound marketing takes care of this.

In addition, inbound marketing results are concrete and easily measurable. Using inbound software, you are able to visualize the ROI of Marketing.

Meaning inbound

Inbound goes beyond marketing. All departments in contact with customers benefit from the inbound method. This means that Sales, but also Service crawls into the skin of the customer. The whole relationship with the customer is aimed at helping them realize their goals and eliminate any problems or friction.

With inbound, you push forward your organization's experts. An expert who proactively shares knowledge and gives advice creates goodwill with the customer. This goodwill pays off in the long run.

Every buying process has pain points and moments of friction for the customer. Think of information not being available, conflicting answers to questions, or communication that does not go smoothly. The goal of inbound is to eliminate these pain points and friction. This takes a Marketing, Sales and Service department working together as one well-oiled machine.

For salespeople, it may be strange for a while not to talk directly about their product, but compare it to a doctor. He first asks what the complaints are, then he investigates and makes an analysis. Only then does he come up with a solution. This is exactly what happens in inbound marketing.

So what is outbound?

What then is outbound you may ask? The differences between inbound and outbound are in the channels and in the content. Outbound uses channels that send and usually disturb customers with what they are actually doing. Think of an ad in a magazine, a telemarketing agency calling during dinner time, or radio & TV advertising.

In outbound, the message is purely focused on sending product information. By the way, this doesn't mean that in inbound we don't highlight the product. We do, but only at the right time: when it is relevant and helps the customer move forward.

Outbound comes from the days when marketing was one-way communication. Opportunities to get a response from the customer were generally limited, so you naturally became inclined to "shout" that you had the best product.

To gain brand and product awareness, outbound is still an important area of marketing. Therefore, it certainly still has a function, but you have to use it wisely -in conjunction with inbound.

Inbound marketing tools

In inbound marketing, you use a combination of modern online marketing resources. These resources support the inbound marketing process and ensure that you are able to scale your online marketing activities.

The most important inbound marketing resources are:

1. Content marketing: Content marketing is the way to create content tailored to the buyer persona (your ideal customer) and the stages of the buyer journey (customer journey). If you compare inbound to an engine, content marketing is the fuel that keeps the engine running.
2. SEO: SEO ensures that your content is found at the times the potential customer is searching. SEO is the most important and sustainable means of long-term findability and attracting the right visitors to your website.
3. Social media: On social media, professionals share experiences with each other and you have the unique opportunity to engage in conversation with your potential customer. This fits perfectly with the inbound marketing idea.
4. Marketing automation: With marketing automation you are able to build meaningful relationships with leads and customers and also scale this. For example, you send personalized emails based on interests and interaction and help leads and customers move forward at their convenience with smart chat bots.
5. Search engine advertising: Not everyone agrees that search engine advertising fits in with inbound marketing. However, at Bright we think they do. This is because search engine ads are only visible when someone is actively searching, and they match the search query exactly. This makes the ads just as helpful as natural search results and a great inbound marketing tool!

Inbound marketing strategy

An inbound marketing strategy depends entirely on the goals you want to achieve with inbound. Are you mainly going for lead generation? Or is your goal to become a thought leader in your market? That makes quite a difference.

Therefore, start by defining your goals. Make these objectives SMART and connect KPIs to them so you are able to monitor results.

In addition, do targeted research on the target market. If you really want to help your potential customers move forward, you need to know them through and through.

We recommend using buyer persona research to map out your ideal customer and his/her buyer journey. In addition, a keyword research not only helps you with SEO and advertising on Google, but also with understanding the online needs and language of your target audience.

In your inbound strategy, it is clear to follow HubSpot's inbound marketing model. With this, you think about inbound in three key steps (goals):

• Attract (attract)
• To engage
• Enthuse (delight)

1. Attract

To start with, it is important to attract relevant visitors to your website. Without visitors you have no reach and no opportunities to generate leads. Therefore, this is step one in inbound marketing model.

Your inbound marketing strategy should support this objective. For example, an SEO plan is an important part of almost every inbound marketing strategy. In addition to SEO, you can also think about a plan for bringing in relevant visitors through Google Ads, social media and online platforms. Blogging, for example, is a great way to increase your reach and will be a fruitful part of your inbound marketing strategy in both the short and long term.

2. Engage

The next step is to engage your visitors so that their trust in your business grows. Ultimately, this should result in action: for example, downloading a white paper, starting a trial, or requesting a demo.

The goal in this phase is lead generation, but also to learn more about leads so you can help solve their problems even better.

3. Enthuse

Now comes the hardest step in the inbound marketing process. Your leads need to actually get excited about your business.

This is only possible when you feed your leads and customers with helpful information over and over again. This information should be tailored to the person as much as possible. This process is called lead nurturing. Scaling lead nurturing is made possible by marketing automation.

Strong inbound marketing example

Example 1.

For a strong inbound marketing example, we don't have to look far, because we find it at HubSpot. Not only did they invent the term inbound, but they apply inbound marketing themselves under the motto "practice what you preach.

It may seem colorful to say that because Bright Digital is a HubSpot inbound marketing agency, but this is exactly how Wouter Gijsbertsen (former Partner Bright Digital) ended up at HubSpot.

Wouter was looking for inspiration about online marketing in 2013 and stumbled upon HubSpot's blog. Despite not knowing what HubSpot was or did at the time, Wouter appreciated the knowledge he gained there.

Over time, Wouter naturally came into contact with HubSpot's products thanks to lead nurturing. At that point, he was actually already "sold," as HubSpot had provided him with solid online marketing knowledge time and time again. So an excellent example of inbound marketing!

Example 2

Although the term inbound was invented by HubSpot, the idea behind it is not new. To illustrate this, we refer to one of the oldest inbound marketing examples we can think of. The Michelin Guide from tire manufacturer Michelin.

This guide was first released in 1900 and was available for free at the time. At the time, the guide did not contain haute cuisine restaurants, just good roadside restaurants with decent prices. In addition, the guide was full of tips, for example how to change a tire.

With this, Michelin was actively helping the target group (the motorist) and thinking beyond their product. After 120 years, the Michelin guide still exists! In digital form and also still as an actual book.

A strong example of the inbound marketing method.

Inbound marketing tools

There are several tools on the market that can help you with inbound marketing. Earlier on this page, you read which online marketing resources are important for inbound.

All tools that support these resources may be considered inbound marketing tools. For example, an SEO tool, is also an inbound marketing tool.

Some examples of inbound marketing tools are:

SEO tools, such as SEMrush and Moz.

Social media tools, such as HootSuite.

Content marketing tools, such as a content calendar.

Marketing automation tools, these tools are generally part of an inbound marketing platform.

SEA tools, such as Google Ads, or Google's keyword planner.

Inbound marketing platforms

However, there are also inbound tools on the market that are so complete that we can call them marketing automation or even inbound platforms. Some key players in this market are:

• HubSpot
• Marketo
• Act-On
• Eloqua
• Pardot

Bright Digital opts 100% for HubSpot. The main reason is that for us HubSpot is the most user-friendly and complete inbound marketing software for the b2b business. In addition, the platform has excellent scalability which makes it suitable for both small and large businesses.

The fact that HubSpot is the founder of inbound marketing and itself does inbound marketing in an excellent way is a pleasant, incidental thought for us.

Inbound marketing platforms bring many functionalities together in one environment. This eliminates the need for several separate tools. The most important functionalities are:

• Marketing automation
• Blogging
• SEO
• Social media
• Lead scoring
• Content management system (CMS)
• Analytics

Marketing Automation

The origins of marketing automation lie in email marketing. While email marketing is still a core function of marketing automation, today it is much more than that.

Email marketing and lead nurturing

With marketing automation, you are able to send targeted emails to specific individuals based on their interests and interactions on your website. We call this lead nurturing, because we "feed" leads with helpful information. Lead nurturing is possible thanks to intelligent workflows that provide leads with the most relevant information based on triggers and criteria.

Notifications

You can also use marketing automation to send personalized notifications to Sales, for example, based on interactions or status changes of leads on your website.

Chat bots

Finally, intelligent chat bots are taking hold in marketing automation. These bots also automate repetitive marketing tasks, such as answering questions or referring to an FAQ article.

SEO

As you've read, good findability is crucial to the success of inbound marketing. This does not happen automatically. For this reason, good inbound marketing software has several SEO functionalities. HubSpot has several, but the most innovative is the topic cluster functionality.

Social media

On social media, you engage in conversations with potential customers. Inbound software helps you do this with social media monitoring and social media planning.

Lead scoring

Of course, you only want to transfer well-qualified leads to Sales. Lead scoring helps you with this. You are able to validate leads on the combination of fit (how well does the lead fit with you) and interaction (how active is the lead on your website).

CMS

For many organizations, usability is an important factor. And rightfully so! By no means every marketer is technically savvy, but in inbound marketing they are expected to do technical work, such as building website pages and landing pages. Therefore, for most marketers, it is a relief to work with one intuitive platform. The integration of a full CMS within an inbound marketing platform then offers a solution!

Analytics

Last but not least, inbound marketing software offers extensive analytics. Think dashboards, KPIs, charts and much more. Statistics are insightful on three axes:

• Content analytics
• Channel analytics
• Contact analytics (marketing & sales funnel).

Everything to give you the tools to continuously improve campaigns based on achieved results.

Inbound marketing services

Do you need help getting inbound marketing, inbound sales or inbound service up and running in your organization?

We help you with your inbound strategy and offer a coherent set of inbound services in the form of a concrete roadmap:

1. Create buyer personas & journey
2. Setting inbound goals
3. Building content strategy
4. Lead nurturing process design
5. Execution

You can read all about it on our expertise page.

Tips & advice

We conclude this page with some concrete tips on inbound marketing:

Tip 1: Get management on board

Inbound brings significant changes. Not only in the way of working, but also in the way of thinking. Make sure you get management on board with this.

Inbound has proven to be effective in achieving business goals, such as increasing sales and acquiring new customers. Use this evidence to get management on board and receive budget and commitment with it.

Management provides budget approval, but in addition, managers have a great influence on many people in your organization. Therefore, include them extensively in the mindset, milestones and successes and make sure they carry it out.

Tip 2: secure the knowledge within your organization

The new knowledge must be secured within the entire team, and not just Marketing. Sales fulfills a crucial role in the inbound process. In addition, the Service department also fulfills an important role to customers that should not be underestimated. Ideally, these departments work together as one entity.

Tip 3: Don't spend months planning before you start

With inbound marketing comes an Agile way of working. This means that you don't try to think everything out in detail before you start, but start as soon as the new way of working adds value. Then you continuously improve the website and campaigns based on achieved results. Practical example: publish content as soon as it is ready.

Tip 4: Create an inbound game plan

Working agile does not mean you proceed without a plan. For success, you need an inbound marketing strategy. However, make sure your inbound plan is pragmatic in design so you can get started with it right away.

Always start by defining your goals. Then evaluate where you are now. With this preparation, you will know what needs to be done to get where you want to go.

If you haven't already done the items below, continue with:

• Buyer persona research: learn the needs of your potential customers.
• Buyer journey: learn the ins & outs of the buying process.
• Content mapping: connect content to the needs in the buying process.

Tip 5: Don't skimp on inbound marketing tools.

A tool is just a means, not an end. But to achieve your goals, you need the right tools. Of course, it is possible to do inbound marketing with (almost) free tools, but this is much less efficient and effective. Several hidden costs then arise, such as a disproportionate drain on the capacity of the marketing team.

Also remember that you are conducting Marketing as well as Sales activities that are significant to the lead process. The results of these efforts should be brought together to create a single source of truth. Working with separate systems requires complicated links that must be paid for and maintained.

Good inbound marketing software will pay for itself in the long run!

Tip 6: Pay sufficient attention to conversion funnels

Only when you get to know visitors better will you be able to help them appropriately. Therefore, it is important to convert visitors into leads in order to then qualify these leads.

Make sure visitors find gated content (content behind forms) easily. For example, use eye-catching CTAs in blog articles.

Tip 7: Create an attractive landing page

By tip 6, visitors know how to find your landing pages. Now it's a matter of getting them to download. Therefore, provide an attractive landing page that briefly but powerfully tells what the lead gets and gains with it (what is in it for them). Preferably, the form is visible above the fold (no scrolling required). It also helps to visualize the content offering. Images speak louder than a thousand words.

Tip 8: Provide powerful and personalized lead nurturing

One download is far from enough. Building a meaningful relationship with the lead takes time. Surprise your leads again and again with information that moves them forward and is tailored to their interests and behavior. You make this possible with marketing automation.

Tip 9: Measure, measure, measure

Inbound marketing is not a matter of set up and forget. Perhaps the term marketing automation is a little misleading for this reason. Always keep measuring based on your goals and associated KPIs. This is how you will know if you are on the road to success. Is this not the case? Then make timely adjustments.

Tip 10: Delve into your buyer persona

Your buyer persona represents your ideal customer. To best help your client, you need to immerse yourself in his/her world. What ambitions, tasks and characteristics does this person have? And what pain points and success factors does he/she encounter during the buyer journey (customer journey)? Two forms of research will help you do this: buyer persona research and keyword research.

Tip 11: Don't stop when a lead has become a customer

When you finally convert a lead to a customer, it's not time to sit back. Your company's best ambassadors are your customers. Therefore, work with Sales and Service to get customers to advertise your business! In doing so, don't forget what you can do with inbound marketing. For example, think of user guides, FAQs and chat bots that make your customers' lives easier.