Inbound marketing is gaining a heightened status as B2B brands seek better ways to court customers. But why the increased attraction and growing hype now? Alex Blyth investigates.
When Kate O’Brien took on the role of marketing director at B2B telco Daisy Group in November 2011 she discovered a company where the primary marketing activities were still direct mail and e-shots to a database. But in just over a year, she has transformed the company’s marketing operations, introducing a sophisticated inbound marketing operation and generating remarkable results.
She explains, “We wanted to make it easier for customers to interact and do business with us, while also driving cost efficiencies. This would make existing customers more loyal and help us deliver much warmer leads to our salespeople.”
The first step was to transform the website from a brochure site into one customers and prospects would visit frequently. The company improved content on the online portal ‘MyAccount’, where customers manage their Daisy accounts. It now receives 20,000 customers every month. The next step was to deploy targeted offers and messaging to that regular, engaged audience.
Social media and search were also important. “Twitter has provided an ideal platform to air news, advice, blogs, offers, and ultimately to drive new customers to the Daisy website,” says O’Brien. “From pretty much a standing start six months ago, we now have more than 7000 people a month visiting our site from Google searches.”
The end result is a 58 per cent increase in total enquiries through to the website since April 2011. It is remarkable progress in a short space of time and testament to the potential of what some call content marketing, others call permission marketing, and what a growing number are calling inbound marketing. Whatever it might be known as, it is an idea that is making more and more B2B marketers sit up and take notice.
Inbound marketing lowdown
So, what precisely is inbound marketing? The term was coined in 2005 by Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot, and has since then rapidly gained traction in the US.
Diana Urban, head of international marketing at HubSpot, offers this definition, “Inbound marketing reaches potential customers where they are already searching for information – search engines, social media and blogs.”
She continues, “According to research by iMedia Connection, 93 per cent of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process and 37 per cent post questions on social networking sites when looking for suggestions. So by taking the inbound approach – optimising your website for search engines and engaging with potential customers in social media – you could more effectively drive revenue.”
As well as making use of blogs, search and social, inbound marketing also builds on the idea that traditional marketing techniques are fast losing effectiveness.
Ian Miller, search director at integrated digital marketing agency Crafted, says, “According to advocates of inbound marketing, people are becoming blind to interruptions such as advertising and email blasts. They argue the best way to reach engaged and interested leads is by creating relevant content and online assets e.g. blogs, infographics, videos or industry commentary.”
For marketers who have spent year-after-year building mailpacks, crafting ads and firing off e-shots, it is an appealing notion. Rather than going out and hammering down all those doors, you produce some intelligent copy or striking video content, sit back and wait for the prospects to come to you.
It is of course rarely that easy, but nonetheless many B2B marketers believe inbound marketing is the future. Alana Griffiths, senior marketing strategist at Mason Zimbler, says, “The simple fact is, generating and converting an inbound lead costs far less than an outbound lead, and what is more, those leads have done some background research so there is a smoother hand-off from marketing to sales and the overall sales cycle tends to be shorter.”
The time has come
It should be noted that inbound marketing is not a new idea. Good B2B marketers have, for years, been producing content relevant to their prospects and delivering high quality, warm leads to their colleagues in sales. Yet, while it may not be new, inbound marketing is certainly an idea whose time has arrived.
For years the greatest obstacle in the path of the B2B marketer who wanted to produce engaging content was a lack of time. To produce a steady stream of insightful whitepapers, compelling case studies, professional videos, and so on, and then to distribute them through social media and build the search campaign around them was a major undertaking. Many marketers began with the best of intentions, but soon ran out of steam and reverted to the tried-and-tested technique of firing off emails.
However, the emergence in the past six or seven years of marketing automation providers such as Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua and Silverpop, has changed all that. Steve Oakman, director at Concentric Marketing, one of just four gold Hubspot partners in the UK, says, “Hubspot gives me all the tools I need to create inbound campaigns very quickly for my B2B clients, as well as a dashboard where I can see – at a glance – how each is performing and what I need to change to produce the results they want. I could reinvent the wheel for each of my campaigns, but why would I?”
Some argue marketing automation providers such as Marketo, Eloqua and Silverpop are still too focused on outbound email campaigns, but Ellen Valentine, product evangelist at Silverpop disagrees. “Marketing automation is a platform that enables a wide variety of digital marketing tasks,” she says. “Automation, along with landing pages and web forms, helps marketers respond to inbound leads automatically, thereby dramatically increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the marketing department.”
Content and mindset
Yet while the technology may be the vital enabler making inbound a possibility, its effectiveness still relies on quality content. This is even more the case following the recent changes Google made to its algorithms. Tink Taylor, MD of DotMailer, says, “Google has revolutionised the world of SEO with its Panda and Penguin updates, to stop companies overloading the web with inbound links. This has forced marketers to produce higher quality content.”
Alex Cheeseman, head of brands and agencies UK at Outbrain UK, recommends engaging specialists to help. “We’ve moved away from the notion that content is created purely for SEO crawler purposes and it’s now widely accepted that content needs to be made for humans and not machines,” he says. “Your content needs to be relevant, timely and able to add value. In practical terms this means using editors and journalists to create it.”
For many marketers, it is too great a shift in mindset. “It can be hard to move beyond the old approach of producing marketing messages about the brand or the new Super Deluxe 3000 product,” says Miller. “Marketers need to start thinking about adding value to the visitor. Not all are ready, or able, to make the leap.”
A final issue for marketers wavering on the cusp of their first foray into inbound is a lack of measurability. “People are used to digital and online channels being infinitely measurable,” continues Miller. “They can put a cost per lead against a Google AdWords campaign but with inbound the equation is much more complicated. You need to factor in time and manpower costs, and be aware that even though it is digital, inbound marketing is often about brand awareness rather than direct sales.”
Bridging the chasm
The growing army of inbound advocates refuse to be deterred by these obstacles. “The future of marketing is inbound,” proclaims Bob Dearsley, chief executive of The B2B Marketing Laboratory.
He adds, “Marketers will move away from disruptive and ineffective outbound techniques, such as advertising or telemarketing, towards inbound techniques that give control back to the prospect and position the brand as a trusted educator.”
Yet there are limitations. It may not be suitable for every category of B2B. For example, despite all the hype about online peer networks, it seems far-fetched to suppose that a businessperson looking for legal, marketing, property and other professional advice would turn to Google or Twitter before picking up the phone to an old colleague or contact.
Equally, inbound tactics seem insufficient to launch an entirely new category or to keep a major brand at the forefront of buyers’ minds. If no one has heard of a concept they will never search for it or share it. So, these strategies will surely continue to require investment in disruptive outbound techniques.
None of which is to say there will not be a place for inbound marketing. It is a quantum shift in the thinking of B2B marketers that rather than just dreaming up some clever creative and negotiating a good deal on distribution, we can start to engage prospects and help move them down the sales funnel. What we are describing here is a bridging of the great gulf that has historically separated marketing and sales, and which has been the downfall of so many B2B campaigns.
As Steve Ellis, CEO of digital marketing agency Metia, concludes, “Many B2B marketers carry horror stories of incoming leads generated but never acted upon. And most marketing departments weren’t configured, designed or trained for direct dialogue with prospects or customers. If discussion of inbound serves a useful purpose it is to cast light into the dark chasm that still exists between the marketing and sales functions in many businesses.”
Inbound PR: A new direction
PR is undergoing a shift from outbound techniques
“Three years ago we were a normal PR agency pushing stuff out, and I suddenly asked myself why we were still doing it,” recalls Richard Strange, MD of Strange PR. “It struck me that the world had changed but that we hadn’t.”
He continues, “No buyer now sits there waiting to read the ads in a trade mag. They go online and search. The challenge has become to produce the content they find when they search and to ensure it is useful, relevant and interesting.”
On reaching this conclusion, Strange now delivers inbound marketing campaigns for brands such as Concurrent Engineering, IRISYS and Prosyn.
He believes inbound is useful to every type of B2B company. “Which part you use depends on your sector,” he says. “Tech companies find blogs are useful for explaining products and concepts. Ecommerce companies can use Twitter to smooth out sales growth, by for example, releasing offers during quiet times.
“We need to transform the way we think about marketing,” he concludes. “We need to stop talking about product features and start focusing on benefits to customers. No buyer searches product features; they search their problems. Most marketers are aware of this, but they’re not sure how to get started. It’s time they did.”
