The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Powerful B2B Inbound Marketing Strategies, Plus its Benefits & 9 Top Tricks

Why outbound marketing alone isn’t enough

You may also have read about outbound marketing, and perhaps you’re wondering what the difference is between that and inbound marketing. 

In a nutshell, outbound marketing involves actively distributing messaging, such as messaging sent out via seminars, telemarketing, and trade shows,  to prospective customers and clients.

There’s a number of reasons why businesses have weighed up inbound vs. outbound marketing and either turned away from outbound marketing or sought to complement it with a greater focus on inbound marketing. 

In particular, it’s expensive and offers a considerably lower ROI than inbound marketing. There are also indications that outbound marketing is becoming less effective.

The objective of outbound marketing, in essence, is to generate leads by diffusing campaigns as widely as possible. But this is quite an imprecise way of doing things, and the proportion of leads generated by doing this is likely to be relatively low. 

Plus, people are bombarded with so much marketing material these days that many have simply learned how to tune it out, whether through using things like spam filtering or simply by ignoring it.

Taking all this into account, it’s clear that B2B marketers need to develop methods that allow them to target specific niches. 

ROI is likely to be significantly higher if you’re reaching people who are likely to be interested in what your business has to offer, and you’ve got a better chance of nurturing qualified leads.

Understanding the modern B2B buying process

In order to turn a lead into a customer, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the B2B buying process. This is constantly in flux, changing as the needs of businesses evolve. 

Once you’re equipped with a solid grasp of the B2B buying journey, you’ll understand their thinking much better, and you’ll be able to position your own products accordingly.

One thing that’s clear is that the hard sell no longer delivers the goods. Indeed, a pushy approach to sales can be counter-productive, alienating prospective customers and leading them to take their custom elsewhere. 

So, let’s take a closer look at the modern B2B buying process and its respective stages.

Awareness

The first stage in the B2B buying process is the awareness stage; this stage is when the buyer is aware that they have a problem or a need and is looking for ways to address it. 

At this stage of the process, they’re likely to be looking for resources and information that will help them get to the bottom of the issue and let them discover  potential solutions.

In other words, at the awareness stage, buyers are looking at the challenge before them and weighing up whether it’s worth investing in a product or service that will help them solve their problem. They’ll also be working out whether or not to prioritize the matter.

Consideration

The next stage in the B2B buying process is the consideration stage. By this point, the buyer will have zeroed in on the problem that they have and will have a decent idea of what kind of solution they’re looking for. 

So, at this stage, they’ll be researching the various options available and looking for the one that’s best suited to their needs and budget.

By the time a buyer has reached the consideration stage, they’ll be looking for resources to help them decide which product or service can help them, without blowing a hole in their finances.

Decision

By the time the buyer reaches the decision stage,they will have decided on which approach to take to resolve their problem. All they need to do now is run through the relevant options available to them and settle on the best one—making a final purchasing decision.

Many buyers will note the pros and cons of the various vendors and solutions on the market. They’ll be looking for content that assists them in making the final decision about which solution is best for their needs.

B2B inbound marketing tactics

By understanding the various stages of the B2B buying journey, you should be in a much stronger position to deliver the kind of content that will help prospective customers solve any issues they might have. 

You should develop content that’s tailored to each stage of that journey, thereby giving buyers a gentle nudge along the sales funnel.

There are 4 key stages of HubSpot’s inbound marketing strategy for B2B businesses, which align loosely with the buying journey. 

These stages are  

• Attract
• Convert
• Close
• Delight. 

Let’s look at them a bit more closely.

Attract

The “attract” stage involves creating content that will draw visitors to your site and answer key questions. Blogging remains one effective way of doing this, particularly when coupled with SEO targeting for higher SEO rankings.

Convert

At the “convert” stage, you should be looking to capture leads’ contact information. You will, however, have to offer them something for their trouble—so think white papers, webinars, ebooks, case studies, and so on. 

Close

The next stage is the “close” stage, and it requires content that’s in line with the final stages of the buying journey. The content should have personalized messages to foster the blossoming relationship with the prospective customer.

Delight

The “delight” stage comes after the first purchase and involves the continued nurturing of strong customer relationships. Keep existing customers in the loop with regular content, such as blog posts and social media discussions. Send them regular email digests that keep them up to speed, but be careful not to bombard them.

How do you start a B2B inbound marketing strategy organically?

In this section, we’ll look at how you might kick-start an organic B2B inbound marketing strategy. The important point to remember here is that inbound marketing doesn’t require you to splash the cash. 

You don’t need to splurge money on PPC and Google AdWords or organize real-life events.. Instead, you should use interesting, relevant content as it’s worth its weight in gold.

Set B2B inbound marketing goals

First and foremost, your B2B inbound marketing strategy needs to set clear and attainable goals. These goals need to be realistic. There’s no need to shoot for the moon. Set goals that are measurable and based on a thorough evaluation of your existing position. 

Your goals should also be specific, providing you with clear metrics to aim for and measure your success by. The more concrete your goals are, the likelier your ultimate success will be.

Tap into your target audience

A detailed understanding of your target audience is also indispensable to inbound marketing. You must have a good idea of what your audience is looking for at each stage of the buying journey.  It’s also important to know what your audience will respond positively to. 

There are various ways in which you can deepen your knowledge of your target audience. So, let’s take a look at just a few of the ways in which you can get to know your audience better.

Design an ideal client profile

Many businesses design client profiles and buyer personas to help them understand existing and prospective customers that bit better. We’ll talk about buyer personas shortly, but let’s take a quick look at  ideal client profiles first. 

When designing an ideal client profile, you should begin by asking yourself what sort of B2B firms you’d like to target. What are they likely to be looking for? 

Creating an ideal customer profile can be a very useful exercise in deepening your own understanding, so they play a vital role in a B2B inbound marketing strategy.

Develop your buyer persona

Likewise, developing a hypothetical buyer persona can also be helpful. Who’s going to make the final decision about whether or not to purchase your products or services? 

The people who make the decision about whether to buy or not can be separated into two categories: decision-makers and doers. 

Decision-makers are people who are more concerned with overall strategy, while doers are the people who tend to be responsible for the day-to-day use of a particular product.

Craft buyer personas for both of these categories and think about what their typical characteristics and pain points are, as well as what they might be looking for and why they might need it.

Lead generation

Lead generation is a fundamental part of B2B marketing. Another thing that’s also clear is that lead generation is the cornerstone of success when it comes to B2B marketing. To put it briefly, lead generation is the process of converting prospects into customers. 

Efficient and effective lead generation can not only boost your sales team’s morale and drive sustained revenue growth, but it can also provide your sales cycle with a timely boost.

Driving lead generation, however, requires B2B marketers to take a look at the bigger picture and examine the most fundamental elements of their inbound marketing strategies. 

Conduct account-level research 

You should also carry out thorough research at the account level. Look at what’s happening with your customer accounts. It’s important to review areas such as company news, industry reports, social media posts, and content audits. Doing this should help you craft messaging that’s better tailored to your customers’ specific needs.

Conduct buyer research

It’s also worth carrying out buyer research to help you get a clearer idea of what buyers are looking for at every step of the buying journey. It’s important to be aware of buyer expectations and how these have changed. 

In particular, buyers want to be left to do their own research and  take control of the process.

Create captivating content

This might seem like an obvious point, but it’s one that’s really worth emphasizing. Your content must be authoritative and engaging. There’s a lot of content out there, and it’s no good just regurgitating the same things that everyone else has created. You must find ways of making your content unique and stand out from the herd.

Repurpose content for maximum distribution

That said, if you’re creating great content, you also need to exploit it fully. One way of doing this and putting your content before a wider audience is to repurpose it.

There are numerous ways in which you could do this. For example, you could use a blog post as the basis of a podcast discussion or turn testimonials into shareable social media content.

Deliver consistent output to build credibility

To resonate with customers and give them a reason to keep engaging with your business, your output needs to be consistent. It should be consistent both in terms of quality and the volume that you put out.It’s vital that your content is consistently good, insightful, and authoritative. Otherwise, customers will simply switch off.

Build genuine relationships through content

As we’ve highlighted throughout this guide, putting out content is a great way of fostering lasting, long-term relationships with customers. This kind of enduring loyalty is an increasingly rare thing in business, but it can be the difference between success and failure. So, you should always remember this when creating your content, and keep in mind that the objective is to retain loyal customers for as long as possible

Build on your brand reputation

B2B buyers are looking for reassurance that a particular brand is trustworthy and genuine. Your content, therefore, is an important way of building up your brand reputation and providing buyers with the reassurance they’re looking for. 

Use your content to demonstrate your expertise, as well as the talent and authority you have within your team.

Deliver consistent output to build credibility

To resonate with customers and give them a reason to keep engaging with your business, your output needs to be consistent. Consistent, that is, in more ways than one: not only in terms of the volume of content you put out, but also with regard to its quality. Content must be consistently good, insightful and authoritative, or else customers will switch off.

Build genuine relationships through content

As we’ve highlighted throughout this guide, putting out content is a great way of fostering lasting, long-term relationships with customers. This kind of enduring loyalty is an increasingly rare thing in business, but it can be the difference between success and failure. You should always view your content in this light, and with this objective in mind.

Build on your brand reputation

B2B buyers are looking for reassurance that a particular brand is trustworthy and genuine. Your content, therefore, is an important way of building up your brand reputation and providing buyers with the reassurance they’re looking for. Use your content to play up your expertise and demonstrate the talent and authority you have within your team.

Maximize the entire customer lifecycle

Content should be created with the customer lifecycle in mind, from initial contact to long-term, loyal buyers. Your content should be relevant to buyers across as many different stages of the lifecycle as possible, including new and old clients, promising prospects, and lost customers.

Analyze the entire marketing funnel

It’s one thing adopting an inbound marketing strategy but quite another to deduce whether or not it actually works. You must take a solid data-driven approach when analyzing the success of your marketing strategy. 

This means you need to invest in the right tools, from marketing automation systems to content-tracking software. These tools will provide you with detailed insights and information to help you analyze results.

Highlight process and fundamentals

Finally, you must avoid neglecting the process itself. Make sure workflows are consistent and transparent and that there’s an appropriate balance between the rate at which you churn out content and your quality control (project management tools are very useful here). 

Also, don’t forget to notify partners or clients when they’re featured in a piece of content and mention that they might want to share it on their own channels.

9 tips and tricks to support your B2B inbound marketing strategy

Now that we’ve covered the key bases of an inbound marketing strategy, we need to look at how you might go about implementing that strategy successfully. Here are 9 of the best tips and tricks to help you along the way.

1. Blogs

Blogs are the cornerstone of any inbound marketing strategy, and they’re crucial for driving traffic to your site. Your posts must be well-structured, well-written, and insightful. It’s also important to post them regularly.  

Ideally, you should aim to have at least one new blog post on your website per week. But be patient. It usually takes between 12 and 18 months for blog posts to bear fruit and drive exponential traffic growth.

2. Video content

Video content has grown rapidly and so it, too, occupies a central place in an inbound marketing strategy. This content can take many forms, from product demos and video blogs to customer testimonials. 

But make sure that you get the presentation right, as audiences can be unforgiving. It’s paramount that your videos look professional.

3. Email marketing

Email marketing remains essential to a robust inbound marketing strategy. Regular email updates are very good for keeping existing customers engaged, and it updates them about your recent content. Nurturing individual contact lists also enables you to send targeted content to particular niches of your customer base.

4. Marketing automation

More and more businesses are making use of marketing automation. This has many advantages. In particular, it helps to save sales teams unnecessary time and effort, which helps them concentrate on warmer prospects who’ve already been cultivated with the help of content. This content, in turn, is more precisely targeted and, therefore, delivers better results.

5. Lead-nurturing workflows

Marketing automation with digital marketing tools can also enable businesses to automate and scale their lead-nurturing workflows so content is promoted according to the buying journey. 

So, for instance, a buyer who visits your pricing page can be added to a workflow and then provided with relevant content to encourage them along the various stages of the buyer funnel.

6. SEO

We mustn’t forget SEO and search engine marketing. This, too, remains a key pillar of inbound marketing. 

Thorough keyword research can help you understand what users are looking for, allowing you to target them with well-tailored content. 

Without good keyword research, it’s much more difficult to understand what sort of content would be of interest, making it more complicated to reach leads.

7. Voice of the customer programs

A voice of the customer (VOC) program can help you learn about your existing customers and attract new ones. Customer testimonials are, of course, a tried-and-tested method of securing new business. 

Through a VOC program, you can solicit compelling testimonials and ask your customers—whether by contacting them individually or by inviting them to fill in surveys—pertinent questions about their experience.

8. Content promotion

Creating great content is all well and good, but you also have to know how to promote it. Before you start promoting and distributing your content, make sure you know your audience intimately. 

Look into what types of content they’re engaging with and sharing. It’s also important to find out where they’re finding that content. 

Also, as important as SEO strategy is,  don’t rely on potential leads to find your content on Google. Promote it on social media, and think about what type of content works on different social sites. What works on Twitter might not work so well on LinkedIn, for instance.

9. Advanced content creation

Advanced content typically refers to content that delves deeper into specific topics than blog posts, for example. This content can take numerous forms, including whitepapers, case studies, how-to guides, and ebooks. 

Advanced content is valuable not only for generating new leads but also for nudging existing leads further along the sales funnel. 

You should aim to produce around one piece of advanced content every month. This is a very useful way of demonstrating your business’s expertise and the talent at its disposal, underlining its credentials to potential customers.