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www.insegment.com 10 Best Practices Every B2B Marketer Should Know and Use

Inbound Marketing - 10 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Know and Use OUTBOUND INBOUND (Interruption) (Permission) VS Cold Calling SEO Cold Emails (SPAM) Blogging Interruptive Ads Attraction Marketer - Centric Customer - Centric Image source: DigDev Media For many B2B companies, inbound marketing is already the preferred marketing method for attracting and communicating with customers. In a world oversaturated with information, useful and engaging content has proven to be one of the most effective ways to reach out to target audiences. Traditional marketing and advertising hacks are becoming a thing of the past as audiences evolve. In fact, 80 percent of business decision makers say that they’d prefer to get information about brands and their products through a series of articles than through conventional ads. The modern customer is more informed than ever and cheap advertising messages simply don’t work like they used to. Instead of forcing ad messages on people, inbound focuses on creating valuable content assets on owned media such as company websites and blogs. Content is then distributed in the right way—and at the right time—so that it achieves the maximum impact on target audiences and brings in new customers. The efficacy of inbound marketing is proven by the statistics. B2B businesses that employ blogging report that their lead generation has increased by 67 percent per month. 87 percent of B2B marketers say they use social media to distribute content, and 91 percent of them have embraced the use of content as a whole. Created by inSegment www.insegment.com 2

Inbound Marketing - 10 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Know and Use B2B LinkedIn 71% 83% Twitter 80% 74% Facebook 80% 70% YouTube 61% 56% Google+ 39% 13% Pinterest 26% N/A SlideSare 23% 20% 12%ieo N/A 10% Flickr 10% 10%Stubleon N/A N/A 8% Foursuare N/A 7% Instagra N/A 7% Tublr 6% uora 2012 2011 N/A 0 20 40 60 80 100 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks–North America: CMI/MarketingProfs Image source: Content Marketing Institute Whether you have already deployed inbound marketing or are considering the idea of starting now, these 10 expert tips will help you set and achieve your B2B marketing goals. Created by inSegment www.insegment.com 3

Inbound Marketing - 10 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Know and Use #1. Master Your Inbound Strategy As a B2B marketer, you know the drill: Every marketing effort should start with a planned-out strategy to bring actual results. Inbound marketing is no exception, but only 44 percent of B2B marketers have a documented inbound strategy. It’s time to start thinking about your website, blog, and social media accounts, and how they can bring leads inbound. The first steps toward an effective inbound marketing strategy are defining your business goals, thoroughly researching your industry, and gaining profound understanding of your customers. Your goals should focus on revenue and the key performance indicators you will observe. You also need to decide what you wish to grow—is it the number of leads, the number of customers, or just the revenue itself? Once you’ve defined your KPIs, you’re ready to move to the next level: understanding your industry. It’s useful to research how your competitors go about inbound marketing and to catch up on important industry statistics. Finally, you have to delve into how best to meet your customers’ needs. #2. Focus on Your Target Audiences with Laser Precision Get found. Get involved. Get loved. strangers visitors leads customers promoters BLOG FORMS EMAIL EVENTS KEYWORDS CALLS-TO-ACTION SIGNALS SOCIAL INBOX SOCIAL MEDIA LANDING PAGES WORKFLOW SMART CONTENT Image source: The Marketing Net Your customers’ needs deserve special attention. Without a sharp eye on your target audience, it will be difficult for any content marketing to succeed. Consider demographics and top channels for communication, and conduct detailed research of your potential customers’ pain points. Created by inSegment www.insegment.com 4

Inbound Marketing - 10 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Know and Use A great way to start is by creating semi-fictional buyer personas. These characters represent groups of target customers, and their needs and rationales for choosing to use (or not use) your products or services. Segmentation is key here. While it’s counterproductive to have too many personas, it’s also important to distinguish different groups within your target audience. This way, you can connect with them on a more personal level. Image source: inalign - Content Mapping for the Buyer's Journey Once you’ve designed personas on the basis of real-life research, you need to thoroughly map out the buyer’s journey. This way, you can ensure that your messages will target the right people at the right time. #3. Enhance Your Lead Nurturing Efforts Getting your timing right is crucial when communicating with leads. The purpose of lead nurturing is to make the potential customer sales-ready, so that your sales team can more easily convert them. But it’s easy to make the mistake of sending too many messages to qualifying leads at disorganized times, which might make them think twice about subscribing to your emails. Created by inSegment www.insegment.com 5

Inbound Marketing - 10 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Know and Use If your sales cycle is a couple of months, aim to give people a nudge every few weeks. It’s important to make your messages enticing with a careful choice of words adapted to the buyer persona’s characteristics and your communication goals. Offering leads some kind of reward is also a smart idea—for example, a content asset such as a whitepaper, or an exclusive trial of your services. Either way, make sure that your giveaway is appropriate for how far along in the buyer’s journey the lead is located. #4. Dedicate Resources to Useful and Timely Blogging Image source: Ask the Blogger Content is at the helm of inbound marketing. Blogging is one of the most widespread channels, and has proven to be a truly effective way to bring an audience to your owned media. But, in order to stand out in today’s overabundance of information, your blog has to be useful. It should offer innovative solutions to the real problems of your target audiences and inspire them with original ideas. An important point to remember about content is that quality beats quantity. Valuable, eye-catching information is what will motivate people to follow your company’s blog. Your blog posts also need to be consistent—both with your branding and each other. And no piece of effective content is complete without a call-to-action, giving your readers a clear idea of what to do next. Sources of inspiration for your content can be found everywhere—from FAQs to customer reviews. You can also refer to successful inbound marketing blogs to catch up on the latest trends and best practices. Created by inSegment www.insegment.com 6

Inbound Marketing - 10 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Know and Use #5. Don’t Forget About Guest Blogging Producing rich and high-quality content can be quite resource-demanding. A great way to supplement your work, therefore, is to invite guest bloggers to contribute to your owned media with their own original content. Guest blogging is a great way to collaborate with great authors, industry experts, and influencers. Along with fresh content, they will also bring their audience to your company. How? When contributors publish a post on your blog, they are likely to promote it via their own channels. This means extra exposure for your website, and also shows that the guest blogger approves of your brand. Or, consider becoming a guest blogger yourself. This, too, can give your blog additional visibility, as well as backlinks. #6. Use the Power of Premium Content Want to create content that’s even more impressive? Go premium. Premium content can take the form of a whitepaper, ebook, infographic, case study or how-to guide on topics that would interest your audience. These types of assets can boost your online presence, attract more people to your brand, and help to position you as an industry expert. In this sense, premium content holds great potential for lead generation. While blog posts can be quick and easy to produce, more comprehensive content can offer long-lasting value. Also, different types of premium content can be applied at various stages of the buying cycle, giving visitors what they need to become leads and, eventually, customers. Sharing premium content is also a great way to collect email contacts. Content assets such as guides and whitepapers can be “gated,” meaning that a visitor needs to leave their email in order to download. This Image source: Blogging Pro is how potential leads commonly become subscribers of your email campaigns. Created by inSegment www.insegment.com 7

Inbound Marketing - 10 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Know and Use #7. Build Your Email List Gating premium content is just one of the many ways to compile an email list of qualifying leads. You might choose another—social media interactions, direct queries, or user comments, for example—but, no matter what, building an email list should be a top priority. Try to see every interaction with a prospect as an opportunity to collect their contact details. There are a number of other simple but clever ways to grow your email list—for example, adding a subscription link to all your employees’ email signatures or promoting an offer, quiz, or prize on social media. #8. Showcase Customer Reviews and Testimonials While nurturing leads with original content and email campaigns, it’s important to continue to develop your brand’s presence. Attracting prospects to your owned media is great, but only if they then find sufficient evidence that your company is credible and worth their time. That’s why showcasing your brand’s credibility should be on your inbound to-do list. One of the most effective ways to do this is to include customer reviews and testimonials on your company website, blog, social media networks, and even YouTube channel. Instead of churning out promises about your products or services yourself, provide reviews and testimonials Image source: L-Tron Corporation as trustworthy accounts of what your prospects can expect when they choose your brand. These authentic opinions about your products and services are often the most persuasive to your future buyers. Created by inSegment www.insegment.com 8

Inbound Marketing - 10 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Know and Use #9. Embrace Creative Campaigns Just a gentle reminder: B2B marketing campaigns don’t need to be boring and stiff. Many B2B marketers still expect that their target audiences won’t appreciate humor or unorthodox approaches and instead use a more formal style in their campaigns. But when you craft your inbound campaigns, don’t forget that B2B decision makers are people. While they need to make important finance-related decisions, they are also influenced by emotions like the rest of us. Your content should be educational and high-quality—but don’t be afraid to surprise your audience with the way you deliver the information. In fact, creative messages are more likely to help you reach your campaign goals. Using the right balance of humor, personalization, and storytelling within your content is paramount to your inbound marketing success. B2C campaigns can actually be a great source of inspiration for your B2B marketing efforts. Created by inSegment www.insegment.com 9

Inbound Marketing - 10 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Know and Use #10. Deliver Interactive and Visual Materials Once you’ve gotten ahold of the above techniques for written content, it’s time to get visual. Embedding graphics and imagery is a big win, since these types of information are processed more easily by our brains. Instead of investing time in a long read, people often prefer to check out an infographic or watch a video. Try content repurposing—in other words, turning your old whitepapers and guides into brief multimedia assets. These could be interactive presentations or, if you have extra resources, witty and educational videos. It’s also easier to share visual and interactive content over social media. Content illustrated with relevant images gets viewed 94 percent more, so creating visual content is a top priority for digital marketers. So now you know inbound marketing doesn’t need to be boring—but it also doesn’t need to be complicated. You can produce impressive results from your B2B marketing efforts even with basic knowledge of its principles. The 10 best practices you’ve seen here have proven their value in past years, so why not experiment with them in your own inbound marketing strategy? And the most important thing to remember: Focus on your target audiences and their most pressing challenges, so that your content provides a solution. Start with a thorough plan, craft useful and timely content, and nail down your customers’ buying cycles. That’s how you’ll be able to offer them what they need, when they need it—a surefire way to turn your leads into buyers. Alexander Kesler Bio: Let’s get in touch! +1 (617) 965-0800x800 Email: [email protected] © 2016, inSegment, Inc.All Rights Reserved Created by inSegment www.insegment.com 10