Inbound Marketing is the “Cinderella” of B2B marketing. On the one hand it is not understood, it is not valued and it is not applied and measured correctly; on the other hand it is the “must-do” marketing for B2B if you need to make it BIG!

Many confuse it with just inbound lead generation but it is more… or with automated marketing campaigns, it is definitely not it.

So what is Inbound Marketing then? To describe it, think of everything that you need to do to get the prospects to be interested in you before you get to go after them.

• Create programs that drive active prospect participation and enrolment.
• Understand your B2B buyer persona and build tactics to approach it.
• Monitor your brand and increase your B2B brand exposure.
• Have an active market presence.
• Identify, follow and participate in all relevant B2B social media platforms.
• Drive traffic to your website monitor and analyze traffic that gets in.
• Develop effective strategies for media outreach.
• Generate opportunities for press and analyst interviews, moderate advisory groups, and find speaking opportunities.
• Build interest for your solutions with your target audience.
• Run regular market analysis and benchmarks to know your market, competition and keep an eye on what’s going on.

This translates into traffic to your website, enrolments and subscriptions, better communications with your market and a positive general impact on your business development activities.

On the long run, inbound marketing is much more effective than outbound for B2B.  The price of an inbound generated lead is 3 times or even less expensive than the price of an outbound generated lead. The problem  is that SMBs in particular don’t allow themselves the time to build-up to it, they don’t constantly optimize and improve on these tactics and they abandon it just before it could take off.

My advice is that you should test different tactics, experiment and always improve. On a tight budget or limited resources you can always outsource this role.  You might be surprised with the economies you can perform by outsourcing this role and how many things you could do with a very good return. Check out the table here to see the numbers on B2B Inbound Marketing Employed vs Outsourced and how you can save about 60% on your inbound marketing projects.

Can your company perform all the research, analysis, strategy, planning and management, advertising, public relations, direct marketing, internal communications, Web marketing, media buying and printing activities required by the marketing strategy in house, with reasonable costs and visible results? Does your company even have a marketing strategy developed by a professional?

I know that the marketing jargon can be a little bit confusing for professionals outside the marketing field, that is why we have put together a white paper explaining in detail why outsourcing the marketing department is a much better option than keeping operations in house: http://www.nnc-services.com/white-papers.html . I would really appreciate your professional opinion on this topic!