Mastering Inbound Marketing: Your Complete Guide to Building a Results-Driven Inbound Strategy

Introduction

The world of marketing is continually changing. Marketing is no longer just about advertising to a broad audience and hoping the message resonates. Today, it’s about targeting your content, messaging, and strategy to the right audience at the right time.

Does your business need more website traffic, leads for your sales team, or customers to drive growth? Most people will answer YES! to this question. Companies worldwide are continually looking at how effective their marketing programs are and how they resonate with their audience. Does your marketing program really drive qualified prospects for your sales team to grow your customers and revenue? The marketing team is generally responsible for this critical task. However, today there is a functional and organizational disconnect when it comes to marketing. Many companies still rely on traditional methods of advertising, print mail, billboards, and outbound sales in the hope of driving growth. Or even worse, some companies don’t even have a marketing strategy and rely exclusively on outbound sales, which is inconsistent and unpredictable.

Today, prospects are purchasing in entirely different ways than they were even ten years ago. Your prospects are now conducting research online, reading articles, watching videos, talking with friends and colleagues for recommendations, and much more. Did you know that 81% of shoppers research a product or service online before making a purchase decision? These individuals, who are researching online, are entirely unknown to your organization before making that initial connection with your sales team. If you are not marketing your business online and engaging those ‘product researchers’ before the sales process, you are missing out on this tremendous opportunity to educate those prospects and move them through the sales funnel. If this sounds familiar, it’s time for you to consider the following critical questions when developing or redefining your marketing strategy:

•Are you currently driving enough website visitors and qualified leads every month to your sales team to achieve your company’s revenue goal?

•Do you leverage the most effective technology platforms to implement your digital and inbound marketing strategy?

•Are you using the inbound marketing methodology for your sales and customer service experience to achieve maximum efficiency at every stage of the buyer’s journey?

•Does your business consistently look at your analytics and make real-time updates to maximize or modify your marketing and sales campaigns?

This book will provide you with the tactics and approaches that I’ve used to develop and implement marketing programs for both small businesses and global, enterprise organizations. Throughout the book, I will be referencing a specific company and how they have successfully implemented, maintained, and improved their inbound marketing strategy over the last five years. For context, they are a human capital and organizational development advisory firm. With over 35 years of experience, they are a leader in their space and work with mid-size to enterprise clients worldwide. This organization uses inbound marketing to manage their digital presence, branding, sales, and customer relationship management. When I reference this company as an example, that section will be italicized.

This book focuses on every aspect of the inbound marketing methodology including the revenue generation trifecta of marketing, sales, and the customer experience. We will cover all facets of how to most efficiently and effectively develop, implement, and maintain your inbound marketing strategy. In addition, we will explore how you can leverage and integrate these tactics with your traditional marketing activities. Remember that I am not here to tell you to replace your other marketing channels completely, but I will give you the tools you need to add inbound and digital amplification to all aspects of the buyer’s journey. Finally, we will focus on how you can build your team and develop the operational processes to most efficiently manage your marketing and sales programs.

Consider this book your complete guide to the entire inbound marketing methodology. I look forward to having you join me on this journey of exploring how you can maximize your inbound marketing strategy to drive growth for your organization.

CHAPTER ONE

What Is the Inbound Marketing Methodology?

The concept of inbound marketing is about creating valuable and memorable experiences with your brand and your business that have a positive impact on prospects and customers who choose to engage with you. The inbound marketing methodology starts with attracting prospects and customers to your digital channels, including your website, social media pages, emails, texts (SMS), videos, podcasts, and more. This approach of attracting individuals encourages people to interact with your company because you provide them with valuable and trust-worthy content that educates and inspires. Inbound marketing is a way to help companies do business in a more meaningful and helpful way so companies are no longer selling to prospects, but are educating them on the path to a purchase decision. By doing this, companies see tremendous growth in their brand loyalty, revenue, and customer happiness.

As defined by HubSpot, the technology leader in inbound marketing, the inbound marketing methodology is comprised of three stages: Attract, Engage, and Delight. Businesses around the globe are implementing inbound marketing as a primary strategy to build trust, credibility, and momentum with prospects and customers by adding significant value at every stage of the buyer’s journey. There are many different ways that a prospect can engage with a brand. Inbound marketing enables companies to be more present with their prospects and customers during the various stages of the buyer’s journey to stay at the forefront of the purchasing decision. 81% of shoppers conduct research online before purchasing or engaging with a sales team. Inbound marketing helps your organization get in front of these qualified prospects at the right time in their research process.

Start by thinking about how you make a purchasing decision for your company. You likely do not immediately call a sales rep and ask them to give you a 30-minute pitch about their product. In fact, you will probably not engage with a salesperson until you have narrowed down your search to 2 – 3 products or services that you are evaluating. Whether it is a product or service you are evaluating personally or for your organization, you always have a research and evaluation phase. This phase includes the following steps:

1Ask peers or friends for their recommendations, and do a Google search to find companies that best solve your challenge. This information will give you a shortlist of companies to start your search.

2Visit company websites and look for more information online. You will probably read the blog or FAQ section of their website, which should answer some common questions you are searching for as part of your evaluation process.

3Book a call with a sales representative to learn more. Before connecting with sales, the evaluation process ensures that you, the buyer, only spend time with the companies that have the most relevance to the challenge you are looking to solve.

Practical Application

Have you ever been in charge of evaluating software for your organization to purchase? Think of a purchase such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Most business-to-business (B2B) organizations and many business-to-consumer (B2C) companies need a CRM to manage their sales process. There are many stages to the purchasing process that individuals go through as they evaluate tools and make recommendations. Here is the process the professional services firm went through when evaluating tools for their CRM solution.

1First, they identified a need. For most companies evaluating a CRM, they determined that managing their sales interactions and pipeline management through excel spreadsheets was no longer sufficient. It was wasting time and resources.

2Next, the professional services team researched CRM platforms. They asked colleagues and peers for recommendations and then did their own research. In addition, they worked with their third-party marketing partner to provide advice. During their research process, they found large and small CRM platforms that had pros and cons. They looked at websites, blogs, and third-party review sites for a complete picture of what each platform offered. They also reviewed case studies and watched short videos from the companies to get in-depth insight into the CRM products available without yet having to connect with someone at the company.

3Finally, once they found 2 – 3 platforms with most of the tools they were searching for, they booked a time to speak with a sales representative. Sales is still part of the process, but just further along in the buyer’s journey once the prospect narrowed down their search. They spoke with the sales rep, who also provided references to speak with, and sent more tailored content to aid in their purchasing decision.

4From there, the professional services firm purchased a new CRM solution. They selected a platform that could grow with their needs but wasn’t a tool that was so overwhelming that their team would not use it.

It seems like a lengthy process, but today, this is how people buy. Depending on the product or service, this initial research and evaluation process could be short or long. Today, there are many