Inbound Marketing: what if you became interesting rather than interested?

Why?

Quite simply because the digitalization of the economy has radically changed behavior. The Internet has profoundly altered the relationship between buyers and sellers, and the latter no longer put up with intrusive commercial pressure... even if they still demand information.

They can search for this information on their own, at their own pace and at a time that suits them. What counts today is being seen when these potential leads are in the research phase. Thanks to the Internet, marketing offers companies new tools and, above all, a new way of doing business that positions the company as interesting rather than interested.

This isInbound Marketing. 

Why adopt an Inbound Marketing strategy?

First of all, from a salesperson's point of view, it's now counter-productive to go out looking for contacts or leads. It's a huge investment of time for a more than uncertain result, whatever the salesperson's skills and motivation, based mainly on volume, in other words the number of outgoing calls. It's an exhausting, time-consuming, low-value-added activity that wears salespeople out! But salespeople should be investing their time where it adds the most value: converting leads into customers. Better than a long speech, here are 10 key figures to help you rethink your vision of traditional marketing :

1. 1. 68% of online shoppers enjoy spending time reading content published by a company that interests them(The CMA).
   2. 80% of decision-makers in the industry prefer to obtain information about a company via a blog post rather than an advertisement.(Content Marketing Institute)
   3. 83% of online buyers find their suppliers on Google.(MarketingSherpa)
   4. In the USA, 84% of BtoB CEOs use social networks to find out about a company before making a purchasing decision and 56% of buyers consult the blog of the company selling the products they are interested in(Salesforlife).
   5. 89% of BtoB buyers do research on the Internet before contacting a company, with an average of 7 to 9 queries on the Google search engine.(Google)
   6. 66% of BtoB marketers believe that content production is effective when this content is then disseminated via a variety of channels: social networks, blogs, public events...(Kapost)
   7. Leads generated via inbound marketing cost 61% less on average than qualified contacts generated by traditional techniques (outbound marketing).(HubSpot)
   8. Leads that continue to be nurtured in the conversion funnel spend 47% more than leads that have not been nurtured.(The Annuitas Group)
   9. Properly structured and executed inbound marketing techniques are 10 times more effective in terms of lead conversion than outbound marketing techniques(Gartner).
   10. 34% of salespeople consider prospecting to be their most difficult task(Hubspot)

 So why adopt an Inbound Marketing strategy? Because it's what customers want and it's the best ROI for you!    

What is Inbound Marketing?

 Inbound marketing consists in organizing a reverse flow, i.e. creating the conditions for generating inbound contacts, or leads. In response to the trends described in the first part of this article, the aim is to attract customers to your company. It ' s an approach that allows you to create contact in a less aggressive way and, above all, at the right time with the right person, making your sales strategy more effective. 

In this approach, marketing has a deeper impact on the sales funnel. It no longer limits itself to raising awareness and arousing interest, but goes all the way to intention and even evaluation, in other words, lead generation. It invites the prospect to act, via "call to actions" on a website, for example.

Clearly, this marketing strategy opens up a wide field of action, which can also have an impact on the company's internal organization, in particular by bringing marketing and sales closer together.

This is a topic we'll be tackling on several occasions, with a forthcoming zoom on how to implement this strategy and the key points to be effective.

In the meantime, we invite you to follow on this blog or via our newsletterKESTIO Insights) the various articles we will be proposing on topics related to sales performance.

Webinars have become an essential Inbound Marketing tool: thanks to their audience and content, they can generate a large number of leads. Find out how in this webinar: