Inbound Marketing: Get Back to Business to Business Marketing Basics
I just spent a week at Inbound Marketing University learning more about search engine optimization, blogs, social media, email marketing, and various strategies to convert website leads. All of this was extremely interesting and time well spent. With all the buzz being generated by the social marketing gurus, one gets the impression that businesses are missing something if they are not using social media marketing tactics. I think inbound marketing will continue to develop into an important business to business marketing tool, but there is still a need for traditional outbound marketing tactics in the overall marketing mix.
A key is to get back to B2B marketing basics and clearly define goals and objectives. Conduct market research to look at customer segments and customer "persona's". Once the basic business to business buying process and how customers are gathering their information is understood, then the marketing tactics can be budgeted and implemented. In business to business marketing, trying to reach the multiple individuals who participate in the buying decision is not easy. Social media tools can be very effective, but not every prospect or business uses Facebook, Twitter or reads blogs (yet). It might make sense to add some search engine marketing, blogging and social media strategies to the traditional outbound marketing methods, depending on how your customers and prospects want to get their information.
Social marketing and networking is not free. It takes a lot of time and to do it right requires dedicated resources with skills and abilities to consistently create and skillfully write content of value for your customers. That content must be updated regularly and be interesting and relevant to the segment being targeted. And even then maybe only a few business customers may currently respond to these efforts.
B2B companies need to analyze their markets carefully and determine which marketing tactics will lead to the best returns. Maybe a balanced, integrated marketing program using Internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) for the website, blogs, and email marketing supported by traditional direct mail, trade show, public relations and advertising strategies will yield the best ROI.