Introduction: The Anatomy of Inbound Marketing
There are dozens of inbound marketing solutions available today but just four key players: HubSpot, Pardot,1 Marketo, and
Oracle Eloqua.2 You may consider other marketing automation
vendors.3 You can also look at the multitude of resellers and hybrid agencies that package the leaders’ inbound marketing systems with other services such as search engine
optimization and content engineering— typically at a fat premium over the cost of buying the baseline solution alone.
This eBook bypasses the sideshows and focuses on the “Big 4” in the center ring.
The Big 4 are the front line of a marketing revolution that yields a conversion rate of 10 to 15 percent—or higher—a huge surge over the typical 0.5 to 1 percent sales-closing rate won by direct mail, email, advertising, and other forms of outbound marketing. How is that possible? Because their solutions leverage every technological trick in the book to help you build trust with
1
ExactTarget acquired Pardot in October 2012, and Salesforce acquired ExactTarget in June 2013. For the time being, Pardot services are still branded and sold as Pardot.
2
Oracle acquired Eloqua in December 2012. Services are now branded and sold as Oracle Eloqua.
3 There’s ample material for a second book on the subject. A sampling of other vendors:
Infusionsoft, Genius, Teradata Aprimo, Neolane, Manticore Technology, TreeHouse Interactive, SalesFUSION, Silverpop, OfficeAutoPilot, MakesBridge, Right-on
Interactive, LeadFormix, and Net Results.
Inbound Marketing’s Big 4—HubSpot, Pardot,
Marketo, and Oracle Eloqua—can help boost
prospective customers, accelerate the sales cycle, and keep them coming back for more. Need proof that inbound marketing works? Here you go:
Through Pardot, an enterprise software company improved its lead conversions 65 percent.
With Oracle Eloqua on board, a “Big Data” company increased qualified sales leads by 150 percent.
Using HubSpot, a risk management company saw a 360 percent sales spike in two years.
Thanks to Marketo, a software company serving the mobile telecommunications industry boosted revenue 400 percent.4
Gone Fishin’
Inbound marketing is a wee bit complex, so let’s start with a simple analogy. Think of inbound marketing as online selling’s version of big game fishing. What you do:
1. Cast your line: You attract prospects with an irresistible free offer—priceless content.
2. Set the hook: Access to the offer is gated, meaning that to receive it, prospects must first fill out a form and provide their names and contact information. Quid pro quo.
3. See what’s on your fishing line: With prospects’ basic info
captured, you can grade them according to their potential value as customers. Is the visitor a C-level executive or other manager with purchasing authority, or just a high school
4
student researching a topic for her essay? The right contact form makes it easy to determine whether prospects are keepers.
4. Sprinkle more “chum” in the water: By chum, I mean bait,
not your best pal. Inbound marketing pulls prospective customers into your sales funnel through a drip marketing campaign, a steady succession of increasingly high-value content tailored to the prospect. Analytics capabilities let you segment lists so that different groups of customers receive content designed for their niche.
5. Reel ʼem in: The more that prospects gobble the bait and
interact with your company for new offers, the greater their mass, measured in potential value. Prospects are scored accordingly, and thus, in addition to the initial qualifying grade, they accrue scores that show measureable progress toward a commitment.
6. Land ʼem: When they grow to “trophy weight,” prospects are
turned over to your sales department and “landed.” What if a customer has second thoughts, tugs back on the line and revisits your website for another look? Any sudden change in a customer’s online activity triggers an alert to your
company’s marketing department. The manager in charge then chooses the appropriate response, for instance, a personal call from the sales rep to find out what’s on the customer’s mind and counter any last minute objections to making a purchase.
7. Keep your gear in tip-top shape: Throughout the inbound marketing process, other analytics tools show which offers, campaigns, pay-per-click ads and landing pages are the most successful so that your marketing department can make adjustments.
Easy, eh? Well, actually there’s more to it. Let’s put the fishing rod analogy aside and take a deeper dive into the components that make inbound marketing work.
The 12 Core Features of Inbound Marketing
Imagine you’re a digital physician examining a typical inbound marketing solution to gain a better understanding of its anatomy. Pull back the covers and what do you find? A “body” closely similar to other members of the species. All inbound marketing systems are designed to provide or integrate with 12 software features. That doesn’t mean that all are built the same. A closer
look reveals that most are absent a vital organ or two (or three) and need a transplant of whatever’s missing from other software providers.
Regardless, whether a component is built-in or borrowed, all 12 features must be present—or available from another source and deployed—for an inbound marketing solution to deliver optimal performance.
Here are the 12 features. The three most commonly absent from vendors’ solutions—meaning you have to bring the component yourself—are listed first and marked “MIA” (missing in action).
All inbound marketing systems rely on 12 anatomic parts—but some are missing a vital
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Keyword Research: This is
a basic research function that identifies and assesses the words or phrases that prospective customers use when Googling a
product or service. Why that’s important: The strategic placement of keywords in all company website pages and new content is essential to attracting customers who search online for what companies like yours offer. (MIA)
Blog Platform: The blog platform is an easy-to-use tool for
creating blogs, one of the key vehicles for providing fresh SEO-optimized content that draws potential customers to your website. There are dozens of blog platforms, with
the best known being Typepad,
HubSpot, and the world’s most popular blog platform, WordPress, which in recent years has expanded to offer full content management system (CMS) functionality. (MIA)
Content Management System: A CMS
centrally manages the publishing,
editing, and modification of content to ensure integration among components such as blogs, website pages, landing pages, calls to action, and social media. Content management systems apply the principles of user-friendly posting, editing, and modification to the entire website. (MIA)
CRM Integration: Many enterprise companies operate massive
databanks loaded with information on their customers. Sales and marketing departments use customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to harvest this data, automate the process of
Don’t confuse blog platforms with content management systems.
A CMS manages all website content. Blog
platforms are purely blog-focused.
poring over individual files to learn more about their customers, and hunt for clues that will reveal new ways to boost sales and loyalty. As companies begin to use inbound marketing to develop prospects—or to up-sell to existing customers—it is essential to integrate the two systems so that customer records are accurate and consistent across all data platforms.
Social Media: All the Big 4 players provide social media
management capabilities that automate social media interaction and sharing, and provide analytics to measure lead generation and the return on investment (ROI) of social engagement.
Call-to-Action: The call-to-action is a “teaser” that draws
prospective customers to a specific page called a “landing page,” where you use various enticements to capture their identities. A call-to-action might be as simple as a banner on your company home page, for example, “For our free eBook on how to write a great call-to-action, click here.” Inbound marketing firms provide easy-to-use call-to-action templates, or you can buy your own templates from independent providers and integrate them with your CMS.
Landing Pages: In inbound marketing, the landing page is where
the prospective customer makes that all-important decision: “Am I going to provide my name and contact info—or not?” Good
landing pages incent the mystery shopper to divulge his identity, offering valuable content in exchange for his contact information. All inbound marketing solutions provide templates that make it easy to create landing pages. They also display a preview so that you can see the draft landing page before it goes live. Some
page to test which performs the best. Extremely cool: Most
solutions offer a smart content feature that adjusts landing page content to the viewer, keyed to his interests. As with calls-to-action, you can use an inbound marketing vendor’s templates or buy your own.
Lead Grading: Once the prospective
customer’s identity is revealed, a lead grading function assigns an initial value or “grade” based on analysis of the contact information provided in exchange for the free offer. Grading
gives you the big picture to determine the expected value of the lead, based on name, title, type of job, budget, type and size of organization and location, and source of the lead (certain sources may convert more quickly and thus earn a higher grade).
Lead Scoring: After the initial grade, the sales prospect is scored
over time according to the type and quality of ongoing interactions with the company, such as number of events attended, number and type of pages visited, number and type of content downloads, frequency of interaction, changes (up or down) in engagement, email response to lead nurturing, and off-site engagement such as interaction with your company’s social media presence.
Email Marketing: Think of this feature as “one email marketing
app to rule them all,” with the ability to build segmented lists and handle the mechanics of creating artsy, sophisticated, or plain emails, depending on your need or preference.
Trust begins at the landing page—where the customer “shakes hands” and reveals his
Lead Nurturing: Lead nurturing automatically triggers emails
tuned to customers’ interests and online behaviors. When a customer gravitates to a specific topic, the system recognizes him, and lead nurturing begins a content feed. Want a personal touch? Every email contact can be set up to carry a signature giving the recipient the impression that the email came from you.
Marketing Analytics: Marketing analytics help determine the
effectiveness of your inbound marketing program and point to improvements based on prior results. Analytics also tell you how a prospect found out about your company, what triggered a
conversion, and what your company’s most successful campaigns are for generating new leads.
Missing Pieces, Ease of Use
As stated, not all the Big 4 players offer each feature. However, lack of a “vital organ” isn’t necessarily a defect. For example, Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, and Pardot don’t provide content management systems or blog platforms, or much in the way of SEO keyword research. They assume that most customers already have websites with these features in place.
Although it is not a feature per se, ease of use is also an
important consideration. Inbound marketing is, for the most part, automated. However, it still involves work: between 6 and 10 hours or more per week depending on a given solution’s
robustness (in other words, the bells and whistles built in).
Like to get started? Good. But don’t rush out to buy an inbound marketing solution just yet. First you must pass through the four Star Gates.
