Many organisations are seeing significant ROI as a result of their marketing strategies, but for others, this is a pipedream

Where are they going wrong?

Many business owners will have left the year-end meeting with a problem not two months ago: they missed their 2019/20 target. Whether or not you were among them, it’s no stretch to imagine the pressure this puts on the commercial team. Keen to address the issue (and make sure it doesn’t repeat itself), you might find yourself turning to the marketing department for a dependable and sustainable solution.

On paper, inbound marketing delivers those desirables. We know that thanks to increasing connectivity, today’s buyers are taking more and more of the sales process into their own hands. What’s more, 70-80% of those buyers tend to ignore paid ads in favour of organic results. Creating a platform of content that reflects these search terms, matches buyer intent, and addresses their questions represents a phenomenal opportunity for businesses to drive the dependable, sustainable growth they need to meet their 2018/19 targets.

Unfortunately, this is where many businesses falter. When it comes down to it, they don’t know how to turn this tactic into an accountable strategy with demonstrable ROI.

Joining the dots between sales and marketing

It’s a familiar story. Too many companies are making the mistake of investing heavily into marketing strategies without taking the time to properly understand how they can demonstrate their impact on the wider business performance, never mind a return.

The cost of a marketing strategy that doesn’t deliver can be crippling. If you already have a marketing strategy in place and you still missed your target this year, this will ring especially true. Here’s the thing: your marketing team might argue that it has contributed to leads closed, but without the data to back it up, they can’t prove or disprove this either way—and nor can you.

Three ways to fix the problem from the ground up with inbound marketing

For businesses looking to see predictable, scalable, and repeatable business growth from inbound marketing, is it important to understand three key things.

1. Content is the machine powering today’s customer-focused strategies, but it needs to be approached in such a way as it can directly contribute towards your business goals. The keyword here contributes. Content naturally encroaches on every aspect of your marketing activities, from the copy on your homepage to the text in your paid adverts. When you produce content, it should both support and be supported by these other areas.

2. The marketer’s day creating content solely off the back of internet research appears to be waning. To produce assets with a fighting chance of standing out from the digital libraries of articles and videos published every day, you should reconsider how you hire for your inbound marketing activities and how that team operates in terms of content planning and production.

3. Marketing and sales naturally integrate to serve the buyer together. When your organisation understands the inbound methodology across sales and marketing, all of your team can align to achieve the common goal of delighted customers who happily promote you to others.

It’s time to fix all of these problems from the ground up. In the same way that an inbound approach to marketing is transforming the way businesses engage and qualify their leads, a more customer-centric sales process is going to transform your business from selling to helping to buy.

Changing your sales and marketing processes to become buyer-focused is a transformative step. Still, it’s absolutely crucial if you want to join the data gaps between these two traditionally disparate business units—and walk away from next year’s annual sales meeting smiling.

Do you still need help with your inbound marketing strategy?

BabelQuest is here to help you unlock your full potential in inbound marketing!

Tom Brown