Using Inbound Marketing to Capture B2B Sales Leads
Inbound marketing has changed not only the way businesses interact with their customers but the way they interact with each other. If you pay attention to your marketing stats, you're likely to discover a dramatic drop in the cost-benefit ratio of the "old reliable" marketing techniques you've used for years. Old school marketing techniques (now called outbound marketing) such as tradeshows, cold-calls, print advertising and direct mail no longer produce the lead generation results they used to. In today's fast-paced business world of instant communication, those old reliables just aren't reliable any more. New inbound marketing techniques that make use of popular social medial marketing tools are where the action's at!
The Internet has changed business-to-business (B2B) communication and interaction. Today, more than 90% of B2B buyers begin the purchasing process online. Business buyers are turning to the Internet first to research companies and products and place their orders. Business sellers are responding by centering their marketing efforts on inbound marketing techniques such as well-designed websites, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and interactive web info and order forms.
Inbound marketing tools have the substantial benefit of speeding up the entire purchasing cycle from lead generation to final sale. And not only is the cycle spinning faster, increasing opportunities to boost sales, but inbound marketing is generating a higher volume of leads from more motivated potential customers. The ease and speed with which potential B2B customers can now request information about a product or service (via Twitter, for example) and receive a response is forcing businesses to embrace inbound marketing techniques.
B2B purchasers no longer rely on sellers for research information about a company or its products; they're doing their research online at their own convenience. Potential business purchasers are no longer content to wait for a catalog to arrive via snail mail; they want you to tweet them a link to the online catalog on your website. They don't want to spend hours on the phone responding to unsolicited cold calls; they want to access your website or Facebook page, request the specific information they want and place their order.
Today, the speed of inbound marketing communications is overwhelming comparatively slow and increasingly passe outbound marketing tools. Who wants to limp along with the snails when they can run with the cheetahs?
Are you ready to get with the B2B program?
Photo credit: paulamarttila
