Inbound marketing enables lasting results
If you don’t have these skills in-house, producing great content takes a big budget. You might be tempted to think that after all, an AdWords campaign of a similar amount would get you such great results, much faster. It’s not false. But what will happen when you stop paying? Overnight, your beautiful results will crumble, your visits will drop. Conversely, even if it takes longer to bear fruit, an inbound marketing campaign will continue to bring you leads for months, even years, even if you stop investing in it. That’s the whole point of inbound marketing: creating quality content that will last on the web, to generate leads in the long term.
It is important to produce evergreen blog content, timeless articles that will remain interesting for years after they are written. This content that never dies should therefore not be linked to the news. However, you should not forbid yourself to bounce back on a current event. This type of article is more likely to create a buzz and be shared en masse on social networks. In contrast, news articles have an expiration date. They are useful for attracting visitors to your site at the moment, but for a long-term strategy, you should prioritize evergreen content.
Inbound marketing: a more economical solution than traditional marketing
As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, outbound marketing is expensive, with a low return on investment. It is indeed difficult to precisely measure the impact of a vast advertising campaign. In an inbound marketing strategy, the situation is different: the reporting system makes it possible to prove the return on investment of the efforts made.
Businesses that enjoy careful monitoring of their marketing budget love it. Setting up an inbound marketing campaign requires more time and energy, but allows you to generate leads at a much lower cost than in outbound marketing. According to a recent study, a lead generated with inbound marketing costs even 61% less than a lead generated through traditional marketing and sales actions.
Inbound marketing allows continuous prospecting
Don’t forget that the profile of BtoB buyers has changed. The latter make 67% of their shopping journey online. Having an inbound marketing strategy in place allows you to always be present for these profiles. In a sense, having blog posts that answer all the questions your target asks allows you to prospect 24/7. You can go on vacation with peace of mind, you can be sure that you will find a list of qualified leads when you return. Not bad is not it?
Inbound marketing to align marketing and sales teams
It is well known: marketing and sales teams often have trouble getting along… and working together in good understanding. This disagreement is due to the fact that salespeople blame the marketing team for the poor quality of the leads, while the marketer complains that the information is not coming back sufficiently to them. By adopting an inbound marketing strategy, you overcome these difficulties.
In this new world, marketing generates quality leads that it does not pass on to the salesperson until the prospect is mature. Salespeople just have to adapt their speech according to the content that will have interested the lead throughout their purchasing journey. In constant communication to identify the type of content that appeals to prospects, the sales and marketing teams are perfectly aligned, with a common goal in sight.
Inbound marketing: example
Take the example of a software publisher who has just launched its B2B solution and is seeking to promote it. His website has just been created, he has done a little bit of Google AdWords, but this way of doing things costs him dearly and is not sustainable. He seeks to address a large number of companies and classic commercial prospecting, by phone or email, quickly shows its limits.
He is an ideal candidate for inbound marketing! Once the targets are well defined, the buyer personas, the inbound marketing agency sets up an editorial strategy. At OnlineMediaTrend, this is a list of articles designed to respond to the various target issues, from the Discovery phase to the Purchase phase. Two to four articles are published each month on the company’s blog, before being shared on social networks such as LinkedIn.
These articles are also automatically integrated into the company’s newsletter, in order to share the content created with as many prospects as possible. This content strategy allows the site to rise in Google’s search results and the company’s site is gradually gaining notoriety. On the other hand, readers mature as they write articles, download customer cases or white papers until they achieve a score that means they’re ready to be contacted by salespeople. The inbound marketing strategy thus makes it possible to increase the number of leads tenfold, without having to take any commercial steps. Your prospects come directly to you and you benefit from an aura of an expert in your field.
