Coming up with a coherent strategy for B2B marketing can be difficult because of all the variables involved, but one take that must be considered above all others is inbound marketing. A buzzword of the internet marketing community, inbound marketing is essentially about leading already-interested customers to your business instead of reaching out blind—and that’s exactly why it works best for B2B marketing. Inbound targets resources well and builds a system that will keep generating leads in the long term.
Still not convinced? Here are just some of the reasons why inbound marketing works particular well for B2B marketing, and why you should be considering it seriously if you run a B2B enterprise.
Inbound Marketing Builds Trust
B2B commerce is almost entirely dependent on relationships and trust, more so than traditional commercial transactions between a business and a consumer. Businesses are always looking for the best deal, but crucially their interest is often long-term and based on need-fulfilment. The nature of inbound marketing means that you are letting businesses come to you, and letting them take those first crucial steps. The ball is in their court, and by making yourself attractive via content marketing and other such inbound staples, you are building an image with which they can interact and eventually do business.
Inbound Marketing Converts Sales
Converting a sale is obviously the goal for any commercial enterprise, but it is of even more importance in B2B as businesses will often have contracts with and form relationships with their suppliers or other contacts. Converting a sale in B2B isn’t the end of the story—it’s the beginning. With that in mind, it is important to remember that inbound marketing is simply better than outbound marketing at eventually converting leads into sales. While this statistic is always positive, it has a special significance with B2B as a converted sale can lead to so much more.
Inbound Marketing Delivers Primed Customers
Inbound marketing generally has a higher ROI than outbound marketing, and that is because inbound marketing delivers primed customers and leads who are almost always guaranteed to be looking to convert a sale. Simple logic dictates that if you are a company who sells fridges, you are more likely to reach people wanting to buy fridges by focusing on people who search for ‘fridges’ on Google than on randomly placing an ad in your local newspaper. Inbound marketing works because the lead by definition is already interested in what you have to sell. For B2B marketing, that means cutting out a lot of waste and being able to focus specifically on the customers and companies who want to do business with you.
Inbound Uses Social Media To Great Effect
Social media marketing is an important subsection of inbound marketing and is especially pertinent for B2B as it allows you to use your company’s specific brand, culture or personality to your advantage. Again, B2B is all about relationships and relationships are at the heart of social media. If you can create a following for yourself across different social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+, then you are more likely to attract business. Social media tops lists for B2B marketing strategies because connecting with other businesses and showing them how your business can provide solutions to their problems is an easy and effective way to generate valuable leads.
Inbound Links to Blogging, Which Links to Sales
According to Social Media B2B, B2B companies with blogs generate 67% more leads per month than companies without blogs, which as a statistic speaks for itself. Blogging and content marketing is at the heart of any decent inbound strategy, and the benefits of said moves of prove for B2B enterprises.
Image Credit: Hubspot
