Essential Components of Successful B2B Inbound Marketing Campaigns
Inbound marketing campaigns are made to deliver opportunities and solutions to consumers with the goal of making a positive impact on both the consumers and your business.
Inbound marketing campaigns can include a variety of channels with different types of content that will attract consumers to your business (i.e. your website).
Before diving into this article about the essential components of successful B2B inbound marketing campaigns, you need to know what inbound marketing is.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a methodology used in business that attracts consumers with valuable content that is personalised for them. Unlike outbound marketing which provides needless content to its audience, inbound marketing works to form connections and helps the consumer to find what they need.
Inbound Marketing Campaigns
Inbound marketing campaigns are made to deliver opportunities and solutions to consumers with the goal of making a positive impact on both the consumers and your business.
Inbound marketing campaigns can include a variety of channels with different types of content that will attract consumers to your business (i.e. your website). The key to inbound marketing is not only attracting the consumers, but also engaging, supporting and keeping those consumers interested in your business.
A great example of this is when a new prospect arrives at your website. If the content is relevant to what they are looking for, they will continue browsing. However, what makes them stay is a representative who can chat with them via the website. That representative just made that user’s experience more personal – and provided them with an authentic expert on the product that you are selling.
By creating personalised content with the goal to address the needs of your target audience, you are attracting the consumers you want, and also building that trust and credibility that is essential for the growth of any business.
Here are some essential components of a successful inbound marketing campaign.
1. Strategies That Attract
To get your target audience, you need to have marketing strategies that attract them. Having attractive marketing strategies will get you the consumers you need while also developing your content and your business.
To reach that desired audience, the best place to start is your website. Start creating and publishing content such as social media posts, blog posts, and other content that will provide value to your audience.
You can enrich that content by adding how-to guides for the product you’re selling, how your business can help the customer, testimonials about your business and any upcoming promotions/discounts. To tie it all in, optimise this content with SEO strategies that will help your website appear organically on the first page of a search engine.
Here are some examples of tools used in marketing to attract:
- Ads
- Content strategy
- Video
- Social media
- Blogging
Here are some examples of tools used in sales to attract:
- Conversational bots
- Calling
- Prospects
- Meetings
- Email templates
2. Strategies That Engage
Once you’ve attracted your target audience, you need to engage them. The best way to do this is to have open and honest communication with them, and provide leads that will make them want to continue to have a positive relationship with your business.
Some examples of good engaging strategies are:
- Have sales representatives manage and handle your sales calls with genuine interest in the customer and their needs.
- Don’t just sell your products, sell the solution to those products.
- Ensure that every business decision made is mutually beneficial for customers and your business.
Here are some examples of tools used in marketing to engage:
- Marketing automation
- Lead flows
- Conversational bots
- Email marketing
- Lead management
Here are some examples of tools used in sales to engage:
- Sales automation
- Deals
- Email sequences
- Video
- Playbooks
3. Strategies That Delight
Once you attract your target audience with an initial marketing campaign, then engage them with the products you are selling, the next step is to continue to delight them long after they have purchased your products – this is key to establishing loyal and long term customers.
To do this, you want to ensure that your business has a team on hand ready to answer any inquiries a customer may have. Several examples of assisting customers are:
- Chatbots: these can help customers get more familiar with your products or answer any frequently asked questions that might come with using your product.
- Surveys: this is a great way to get honest feedback and review ideas for continuous improvement of the services that you provide.
- Social Media: this will help reach a larger target audience and provide a public space for feedback, questions and product or service experiences.
The goal is to delight customers and to ensure that you support them.
Here are some examples of tools used in marketing to delight:
- Marketing automation
- Smart content
- Attribution reporting
- Email marketing
- Conversations
Here are some examples of tools used in sales to delight:
- Conversation routing
- Quotes
- Sales automation
- Conversations
- Smart notifications
Using the combination of attracting, engaging and delighting your customers in your inbound marketing strategies will help provide a positive customer experience that will lead to long term relationships and a healthy trust between the client and the business.