Keeping your sale pipeline filled is critical to meeting your revenue goals. It’s a continual process to feed the funnel and it can feel like a grind. While closing sales can be exciting, prospecting, qualifying, and nurturing potential customers can wear you down.
That’s why an efficient and effective system for both inbound and outbound marketing efforts is so important. By creating a streamlined and strategic approach to your marketing, you can focus your energy on high-value B2B targets while letting your marketing efforts carry some of the load for you.
The most successful B2B companies are employing a mix of inbound and outbound marketing efforts:
Outbound marketing: Email marketing, account-based marketing, direct mail, and LinkedIn outreach can lead your outbound marketing strategies and keep your messages in front of identified potential customers. Outbound helps you reach decision makers at companies you target.
Inbound marketing: SEO, content marketing, social media and landing pages, blogs and shareable content will help you be found in search and social where people are looking for the services and products you provide. Inbound help builds your brand and convert prospects into leads when they are looking.
Leveraging Inbound Marketing Efforts
Inbound marketing creates content that brings attention to your products or services and generates interest.
For B2B sales, getting people to know your company, trust your brand, and reach out to you takes work. When they do see your marketing efforts, you need to make sure they are working at peak efficiency. You need engaging content to draw them in, and you also need technical strategies and distribution strategies to increase the visibility of your business and bring in qualified leads.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Even the best website content isn’t going to help if people can’t find you. In today’s digital world, B2B buyers spend time doing online research before they will ever contact you. Effective SEO helps with organic search and increases the likelihood someone will find you instead of your competitors.
Content Marketing
Fresh and engaging content will also help your SEO efforts. Great content that users find helpful can help you dominate keywords without having to buy your way to the top. It provides a channel for B2B sellers to demonstrate experience and insight.
Content marketing also serves as a central component to generate leads. Using social media, such as LinkedIn, or as content to drip feed potential customers throughout your outbound marketing efforts.
Social Media
Social media is an effective way to showcase your content, your company, and your products and services. Relevant and original content can catch B2B buyers’ attention and drive them to your other inbound marketing efforts. Strong content distributed through social media can be extremely effective to gather leads.
Social media can keep your awareness high with B2B prospects and can also positively impact your SEO.
Landing Pages
Once you have done the work to get visitors to your website, the job is to convert them to leads. An efficient landing page will target inbound traffic with a customized form that gathers essential information without being cluttered. When they want information, make it as easy as possible.
An effective inbound marketing strategy helps bring in more qualified prospects. It helps with your search engine rankings and increases referral traffic. With a lower cost per lead than traditional advertising or outbound marketing, it can generate more leads and increase your sales and revenue. Consider working with an experienced Inbound Marketing Agency to maximize your efforts.
Leveraging Outbound Marketing Efforts
Outbound marketing pushes targeted messages to decision makers. Your B2B customers are bombarded with advertising and marketing messages. It’s critical to send the right message at the right time to the right potential customer with a combination of the right strategies.
Email marketing
Reports of the death of email marketing are premature. The people in the trenches say it’s still the most effective digital marketing channel and provides the biggest positive impact on revenue. We may complain about the amount of B2B email we get, but it still works.
Account Based Marketing (ABM)
Few sales happen on the first contact. ABM is a strategy to nurturing decision makers through the sales funnel. Connecting with specific prospects with timely messages keeps prospects warm and helps strengthen business relationships. Touches are sequenced and personalized.
Direct Mail
Highly-targeted direct mail campaigns can also drive leads. Email from unknown sources can be deleted quickly while a mail piece is a familiar and trusted delivery mechanism. Direct mail pieces get seen. The more personalized your approach for specific audiences, the better results you will get.
LinkedIn Outreach
LinkedIn outreach produces B2B sales results. With strategic content targeting economic buyers, it can place your marketing in front of the right prospects. LinkedIn’s research shows that 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn and it is responsible for nearly half of all incoming website traffic from social media.
Often you can reach a C-level executive on LinkedIn much more easily than by email or phone.
An effective outbound marketing strategy targets potential customers. It can nurture them from awareness to interest to desire to action by strategically increasing touch points with relevant information at the right time. While maintaining a personal approach, marketing automation can keep your messaging in front of potential customers. Consider working with an experienced Outbound Marketing Agency / Account Based Marketing Agency to optimize your outreach.
Combining Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing Strategies
The most effective strategy is to combine both inbound marketing and outbound / account based marketing efforts. When working in concert, both tend to magnify the effectiveness of the other. Outbound marketing can entice people to seek out more information. Our inbound efforts can provide quality content to turn them into leads.
KEO Marketing is a full-service Inbound Marketing Agency and Outbound Marketing Agency / Account Based Marketing Agency. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation to see how we can help you get the most of your inbound marketing and outbound marketing to keep your sales pipeline full.