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Blog Inbound Marketing: The definitive guide for B2B companies

Inbound Marketing: The definitive guide for B2B companies

Discover the benefits of Inbound marketing for your organization

If you've never heard of Inbound Marketing or if you've heard of it and are considering using it in Digital Marketing strategies for your company. This guide is for you..

Here you will find everything you need to know about Inbound Marketing.

This guide aims to help you plan and execute your company's Inbound Marketing. Here you will find:

  • What is Inbound Marketing
  • Important Points about Inbound Marketing
  • Leading down the funnel…
  • Inbound Marketing Funnel
  • Inbound Marketing Funnel Stages
  • Inbound Sales or Outbound Sales, which is the best for your company?
  • What is the purpose of Inbound Marketing?
  • What are the benefits of Inbound Marketing?
  • Materials you can create for your Inbound Marketing campaign
  • the information age

What is Inbound Marketing

Many entrepreneurs or Marketing decision makers look for a Marketing agency when they need to leverage a product in the digital world. Among other services that can drive good results, an agency can deliver the Inbould Marketing.

Better known as Attraction Marketing, its main objective is to attract new “leads”. (If you still don't know what lead means, click here)

In Inbound Marketing, the company does not look for potential customers; they are attracted by content relevant to them or their business and look for the company.

For this, the company produces content that is useful for the public. Consequently, the customer becomes more mature to buy your product or service. In this way, Inbound Marketing is not seen as advertising. It doesn't elicit a feeling of intrusion in the consumer, but rather a feeling of having found something they were looking for.

Important Points about Inbound Marketing

  • Using communication as a two-way process
  • The customer comes to the company
  • Offer content relevant to him
  • The Market sees value in your service
  • The sale occurs by generating interest in the product/service

Leading down the funnel…

The main objective of Inbound Marketing is to create content strategies that lead our consumer to the funnel bottom, that is, until the stage of closing the deal. Then we need to nourish our base of leads or customers to maintain a lasting relationship and delight them by creating materials and content that can help them even more.

Inbound Marketing Funnel

inbound marketing funnel

The sales funnel, or marketing funnel, is a strategic consumption model that illustrates the theoretical path that the customer must follow before making the purchase of a product or service. As in the traditional funnel, the sales funnel starts off wide and decreases until it reaches real consumers. Understanding how each phase of the funnel works is essential to develop strategies that guide your contact through the sales path and is essential for the effectiveness of the Inbound Marketing.

Learn how to produce content for each stage of the funnel by reading the texts:

 The top of the funnel is the stage where people have their first contact with your brand. This stage is one of attraction for a sales possibility.

It would not be wrong to say that this moment is one of awareness, this is where you should arouse the interest of the future customer. 

The funnel medium is the moment of conversion, it is a much narrower part than the top of the funnel. But it is not yet the time of effective sale, the customer needs to be more prepared and for that, more in-depth content will be needed. 

This is the final stage of sales path, it is logical to conclude that it is at this stage that your lead is ready to make the purchase, therefore, closer to becoming a customer. 

Inbound Marketing Funnel Stages

To navigate well through all the stages of Inbound Marketing, that is, through the sales funnel, you need to know your persona well. The text Tools to identify your persona, will help you in this process!

Another factor is knowing your customer's consumption journey, read the text From 4 As to 5 As, How do people buy?

You will learn the importance of:

  1. Map the consumer's path to purchase
  2. Understand the customer's contact points with the brand along the way and intervene when necessary.
  3. Focus efforts by intensifying communication, strengthening the presence on the channel and improving the interface with the customer.
  4. Introduce strong differentiation.
  5. Leverage the power of connectivity and brand advocacy by the customer.
  6. Convert customers into faithful lawyers.

 Basically, the customer's consumption journey is outlined as follows:

  • Assimilation: they are passively exposed to a long list of brands, past experiences, marketing and advocacy by other consumers.
  • Attraction: are attracted by a short list of brands. Memorable and differentiated brands are more likely to stay on that list longer and even occupy the top of it. 
  • Argument: they actively research the brands they were attracted to. They ask for opinions from their contact network, compare prices, test products. Today, the challenge has been made even more complex by the integration of the digital and physical world. If the argument is small, it means that the attraction was not done well.
  • Action: Convinced by the complaint, consumers will take action. In addition to involving customers, brands need to make sure that their experience is totally positive and memorable, solving any problems and complaints. 
  • Apology: After a while, customers can develop a feeling of strong brand loyalty, reflected in retention, repurchase, and ultimately, brand defense before their contact network.

See now the phases of Inbound Marketing

To attract

As the name “attraction marketing” implies, this is the first step in the inbound process. The method seeks to attract intelligently, quickly and at a lower cost, instead of spending time (and money) without properly segmenting.

There was a time when marketing to the general public was profitable, but today the market requires different strategies. Consumers are increasingly connected to each other via social networks, however, among thousands they want to feel unique. 

  All companies, regardless of their size, need to be concerned with creating a market segmentation, thus directing their efforts more objectively to the right audience, increasing the chances of return on investment and ensuring the survival of your brand. 

Understand better by reading the text: Marketing segmentation, why do it?

Discover the best channels to attract consumers:

  • Blog: Educates customers and engages the public, creating relationships and engagement. The blog is one of the starting points to put your marketing strategy Content Marketing In practice. It is with the posts published on this channel that you will attract visitors, generate traffic and, if you carry out the actions correctly, generate Leads that will later become customers.

Download our e-book to have access to 31 types of content to produce on your blog.

  • SEO: Increases page exposure, making it a source of information for customers. With the democratization of internet use, resulting from the popularization of smartphones, the number of customers who search on the websites before closing the deal. Companies surrendered and began to use the network to leverage sales, thus increasing the number of sites. O SEO it has become essential and strategic for companies to remain competitive.  Click here to know more!
  • Sponsored links: brings a segmented audience, accelerating the achievement of qualified traffic
  • Social channels: attracts the public through segmentations, interactions and shares.

If you have doubts about which digital channel to choose to invest in, watch this video:

Converter

Once your website is able to attract visitors looking for your products or relevant information, it's time to convert these visitors into leads, offering them touchpoints so that they can be tracked and contacted more actively.

For this purpose, it is important that there are CTAs (call to action) always well displayed on the pages, always offering the visitor an option to become a lead.

Relate

A very common mistake on the part of companies is to focus on conversion, but not work on the relationship, when the idea of ​​Inbound Marketing is to mature the lead precisely at this stage.  

In the relationship, we identify the moment of each lead and move forward together through the stages of the buying journey. This relationship must happen through nourishment with content or information that can educate, mature and convince the lead to opt for your product or service. This way, your stage in the sales funnel will be changed and a qualified lead will be delivered to the commercial area.

 Means you should use to improve your relationship with your lead:

  • E-mail marketing: Which helps to establish frequent and targeted communication with the lead.
  • Newsletter: Keeps the lead regularly informed and updated on its content.
  • Marketing automation: creates nurturing flows that identify the phase, schedule triggers and assign activities according to lead behavior.

Sell

It is extremely important that the sales process is aligned with Marketing, and that salespeople make assertive contact, at the right time, and that the relationship established with the lead continues after conversion.

Inbound Sales or Outbound Sales, which is the best for your company?

With the advancement of the internet and the media and increasingly interactive devices, the consumer no longer accepts being interrupted. He is in control of what he is seeing. It's easy to skip interruptions in your schedules, creating some resistance with brands that insist on approaching it this way.

From this, we can highlight the following differences between the Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing

  • Outbound Sales is a prospecting model where salespeople are completely responsible for the sale, that is, they must start the conversation and, using sales techniques, discover the customers' pains and desires. 
  • Inbound Sales is a bias of the Inbound marketing methodology that proposes a different dynamic from the traditional one. It does not go to the customer, on the contrary, it attracts him through social networks and other strategies for marketing in digital . Salespeople take an approach only when the prospect shows a certain interest.

We are in a period of constant changes and innovations, so it is necessary to think about a new way of doing business. When it comes to marketing, in many moments and sectors outbound marketing or “old marketing” does not meet all needs, it is at that moment that inbound marketing enters the field.

Download the eBook ” An introduction to Inbound Marketing ”To learn more about the practice of Inbound marketing.

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What is the purpose of Inbound Marketing?

Better known as Attraction Marketing, its main objective is to attract new “leads”(if you still don't know what lead means, click here.)

Traditionally, to win new customers we go to a certain "person" or "company" and offer what we sell.

On the other hand, the attraction marketing, do the opposite. First, we seek to add value to our person, a typification of our ideal client. Throughout the purchase, we provide consumers with content that can help solve day-to-day business issues. (if you sell to B2B companies.)

 From the development of our relationship person with the content of our Inbound Marketing strategy, our future client engages with it and with the available materials of the strategy of digital marketing industry.

What are the benefits of Inbound Marketing?

An Inbound Marketing project creates a much bigger lead attraction machine. What makes them possible consumers of your services and products, resulting in sales. It is worth pointing out that the cost of acquiring a new customer through Inbound Marketing is much lower than the conventional one.

Digital marketing integration:

When we talk about Digital Marketing, several terms come to mind: SEO, Social ads, Google Ads, E-mail Marketing, among others, are some of the many components of digital marketing, but which, if used in isolation, may have poor results. of the expected.

But in times where integrated communication is mandatory for those who need to reach a consumer in constant motion, Inbound Marketing creates a link between all these components, using all actions as part of a larger plan and increasing the chances of the brand to communicate with the right person, effectively.

Customer awareness:

Inbound Marketing can bring two significant gains to any business. In addition to lead generation, it also produces a more mature lead, with more knowledge of the topic surrounding your product or service, therefore, more aware of their pains or needs, and able to make the right decisions about what to buy.

It is important that in this process the lead becomes more mature not only to buy, but also to deal with the solution you offer, guaranteeing that this buyer will use the full potential of your product, or will be the right person to lead the next steps in the company. contracting a service.

Lower lead cost:

With the integration of several tools and channels, inbound marketing directs the right message, to the right customer, at the right time. With focused efforts, it is possible to:

  • Guarantee a lower CPC (cost per click)
  • Increase the conversion of each channel
  • Decrease your company's CAC (customer acquisition cost).

Accurate ROI calculation:

Companies are increasingly judicious with their marketing investments, optimizing their budget and measuring the return on every penny invested, and this is possible in all stages of inbound marketing.

From attraction and conversion, to relationship and sale, it is possible to monitor and measure various metrics, such as the cost of acquiring traffic or a lead to the conversion of each tool or step, making inbound a complete strategy, and with measurable return.

 Materials you can create for your Inbound Marketing campaign

Ebook Production

E-books are one of the ways to deliver quality material to your audience. You can link to articles on your blog or even to product pages. So, while learning, the reader gets to know the products you sell.

Webinar Streaming

Another Inbound Marketing strategy is broadcasting a webinar. Webinar is nothing more than a type of web conference, in which usually only one person appears speaking in the video, while the others watch. In this model, interaction between participants is limited to chat only. You can use the webinar to publicize a new product for your e-commerce, to give a free class on a subject that is related to your audience's interest, or other things like that.

YouTube channel

Another powerful way to impact people is through videos. Nowadays it is very simple to create a YouTube channel and produce content for your audience. And don't think you need a studio, super-powered camcorder or editing team to get started. You can start filming with your own mobile device!

In the text The importance of Video Content Creation for your company, in addition to sharing tips, we point out that many people don't have the time or patience to read a text, but would watch a video. The greater circulation of videos is due to the popularization of smartphones, let's face it, it is much easier to watch a video than to read a large text on the small screens.

In summary, as they use two senses (sight and hearing), videos convey the message in a more understandable way. In this way, it will be easier to generate trust and the acquisition of the marketed product. 

the information age

 In short, we live in the information age and the power is in the hands of the consumer.
Therefore, the customer searches through different channels to find more information about a particular product. This information must be found on your website, using Inbound Marketing strategies to attract new customers to your company is essential in the digital world.

So think about person and looking at the individual characteristics of your current customers will help you find ways to create relevant content to help them.

Regards and see you next post.

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