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5 B2B Inbound Marketing Tips You Need for Better Lead Generation


5 B2B INBOUND MARKETING TIPS YOU NEED FOR BETTER LEAD GENERATION

As a B2B company, you need unique marketing strategies to be successful. Inbound marketing is often the most effective option, because it allows potential customers to let you know when they’re ready to purchase. This blog will focus on the benefits of B2B inbound marketing and offer five inbound marketing tips for B2B companies.

 

A quick B2B inbound marketing overview

If you’re not sure exactly what B2B inbound marketing is, think of it as the opposite of traditional marketing, where you proactively put your message in front of prospects (such as advertising, cold calling and direct mail). Some even call traditional strategies “interruption marketing.”

B2B inbound marketing is different in that it focuses on attracting prospects to you, through content that speaks to their needs (using blogging, email marketing, social media and other channels). When someone shows interest in your content, you know you have a warm lead for your sales team—as opposed to chasing cold leads through mass advertising or cold calling.

The following are five B2B inbound marketing tips you should consider implementing.


 

1. Build buyer personas.

One of the most important aspects of inbound marketing is creating content that speaks directly to your audience. To do this, create content targeted to specific segments of your audience, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Creating buyer personas allows you to do this more easily.

This is an entire topic in itself, but a buyer persona is essentially a semi-fictional snapshot of one of your ideal customers. There are countless templates available online to help you get started. Once you have your buyer profiles, you can create content and marketing campaigns that speak to each persona.

Download the checklist! 

 

2. Focus on keywords when blogging.

Creating content is the foundation of B2B inbound marketing, and blogging is one of the primary forms of content. However, don’t create content aimlessly. In addition to creating content that speaks to your buyer personas, you also want to write blogs that attract people to your website.

The way to do this is through keyword research—find out what people are searching for via search engines. By identifying the top keywords your buyers use, you can write blogs that boost your website rank higher and allow your site appear more often in search results, driving more traffic to your website.

 

3. Create compelling content offers.

Blogging isn’t the only type of content involved in inbound marketing. Another important piece of the puzzle is longer form content. If your long form content provides enough value, prospects will willingly share their information with you in order to download it. This is how you collect leads. Here’s a breakdown:

  1. You create content (ebooks, guides, checklists, infographics, etc.) that your potential customers value
  2. Put that content behind a form on a landing page
  3. Require people to fill out a form to download the content
  4. If people value your content, they will give you their information (email address, for example) to download it
  5. Then, you have a warm lead

 

4. Move prospects through the sales funnel.

Another important factor in B2B inbound marketing is knowing where your prospect is in the sales funnel, or buyer’s journey. If someone is just looking for an answer to a question, you don’t want to sell them on your company—they’re still at the awareness stage, an early stage. Likewise, if someone is almost ready to buy, you’ll want to share different content than if they were just hearing about you for the first time.

Do this first by creating content for different stages of the buyer’s journey, and then tracking where various prospects are throughout that journey, so you know what type of content to send each one.

The_buyers_journey_and_content.png

 

5. Test, measure and tweak.

Like any marketing initiative, B2B inbound marketing is most effective when you test various options and measure your results. There are many opportunities for A/B testing with inbound marketing, including aspects of your emails, landing pages, forms and types of content offers. Test different variants and measure results so you can continue to improve your campaigns as you progress.


Need help building a B2B inbound marketing strategy that generates quality leads? Download our Inbound Marketing Campaign Checklist, or contact Milwaukee marketing agency, Accelity Marketing.