3 B2B Inbound Marketing examples you can use right now

With 80% of fast-growing B2B companies dedicated to content marketing and inbound, having your own inbound strategy is something you cannot ignore.

Today, B2B buyers go through longer buying cycles, with an average of 12 different online searches, so companies need more than ever to produce and promote quality, enriching, and valuable content.

Does inbound marketing work for B2B?

Inbound marketing is for everyone, including B2B companies. Inbound marketing focuses on making customers feel more comfortable with sales, so they don't feel like they are being "sold" anything.

Basic marketing is nothing more than meeting the customer's need. The key to success? Keep costs low, offer a pleasant interaction, and make it easy for the customer to buy.

Inbound marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on creating useful and educational content for potential customers. By providing valuable information without any hard selling or applying pressure, companies build trust with customers. Email marketing can also be a powerful tool for nurturing potential customers and converting them into clients.

With this in mind, taking the time to create a great content strategy and improve your inbound marketing efforts will be the best investment you can make.

3 inbound marketing examples

• Blogs
• Videos
• eBooks

1. BLOGS

The essence of B2B inbound marketing is providing your buyer personas with the expert and engaging content they are looking for, tailored to your needs at each stage of the buyer's journey to Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight.

The easiest and most important way to attract visitors at the top of your sales funnel is to write a blog. To establish yourself as an authority in your field, there is no better way than offering this type of free, accessible, and expert content on your website.

What makes a good blog?

At LeftArrow, we recommend relying on AI, but it is not yet at a point where it can be fully trusted. Your content is the most important part of your entire digital marketing strategy, and it must be reviewed.

Be human

You may be discussing technical ideas and strategies, but you are still a human being talking to another. Inbound content marketing is always about building relationships with people. Use an appropriate and approachable tone of voice and connect with your website visitors.

Use visual content

We will talk about this later, but use images, GIFs, videos, infographics, slide presentations, and eye-catching designs. Research shows that content using an image every 75-100 words can double social media shares.

Include important keywords

A good blog should be findable by the people you are writing for, that is, those who have a specific problem. Including long-tail keywords in the title, meta description, and body text is good SEO practice and will help search engines crawl, index, and rank your posts so your readers can find them.

What are the benefits of blog posts?

• Increase website visits and page views
• Target specific keywords and buyers
• Convert visitors into leads who will read more content by including internal links and CTAs
• Demonstrate your expertise in your field
• Attract and engage your potential customers
• Show that you are up to date in your industry
• Create something to share on your social media

If you can, publish a blog per week, if not more often. Other useful blogging strategies include: inviting external experts as guest bloggers, blogging off-domain to attract visitors from other sites to yours, and experimenting with length and format. 

2. VIDEOS

• 70% of B2B buyers and researchers will watch videos on their journey to purchase.
• 96% of B2B companies plan to use video in their content marketing over the next year.

Video is the preferred form of content for more than half of searchers, and it is incredibly effective, and an incredibly effective way to gain traction and better results in your marketing campaigns.

Our attention span has been greatly reduced, especially when researching online. Video allows you to convey information in an interesting and engaging way to attract and maintain the attention of potential customers.

You can use video to help explain or summarize complex concepts in simple and visual terms, provide information from an authoritative expert on your team, or simply entertain and amuse your visitors.

Remember that B2B inbound marketing, especially at the top of the marketing and sales funnel, is not about selling something, but about building trust-based relationships.

But where do I start? Today everyone has a smartphone with a camera. You can convey informative tips in a couple of minutes, instead of several pages of text.

As long as it is pleasant and memorable content, you will get people into positive contact with your brand. That is inbound marketing.

HubSpot has found that marketers who use video in their content strategies manage to increase their revenue 49% faster than those who don't. If you still don't know how to get started, contact LeftArrow and we'll tell you how we do it. 

3. eBOOKS

Once you have attracted potential customers with your well-executed blogs and engaged them with entertaining video content, what's next? You want to attract them further down the sales funnel to the "conversion" and "closing" stages.

Now is the time for another staple of B2B inbound marketing strategies: gated content. Basically, it is about doing more of the same. You will continue to offer your visitors useful, valuable, and expert advice, but in more detail and in exchange for something on their part.

Gated content can take different forms: white papers, research reports, case studies, guides, etc. They all do the same thing, which is to showcase your deep knowledge on a topic in a more extensive way. But instead of being open to everyone, like blog posts, gated content is accessed through a landing page in exchange for the visitor's email address or other contact details.

If you know your buyer personas well, you will know very well what their pain points are and how you can help them. An eBook is a more comprehensive guide to addressing their problem. Additionally, it has the added benefit of demonstrating your knowledge and confidence in the subject.

Tips for creating an eBook

1. Design a solid landing page

A landing page is what appears when a potential customer clicks on the call-to-action (CTA) button inviting them to download the eBook or guide.

It should contain a concise description of what the eBook is about and how it will help them.  It should also include a form for the reader to fill in with their contact details, thus converting them for your sales team.

2. Make it informative

An eBook should be a more comprehensive guide on a single topic. Therefore, it should be longer and contain more information than a blog post. Remember that it is your opportunity to show your potential customers how good you are at what you do.

3. Format   

Once they have provided their contact details, the eBook should be free. Whether you send it by email or your landing page takes them to an online PDF, or ideally both, make sure they can download and keep it. Now it is theirs. If it is solid enough, they will be one step closer to becoming a paying customer. Also, don't forget to include some visual elements; graphics help a lot.

4. Follow-up

Coordination between the marketing and sales teams is vital. Now that you have their contact details, your lead is an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). It is time for the sales team to take action.

Conclusion

This is how B2B content marketing can work for your business too. And there are many more strategies at your disposal that we would love to discuss and adapt to your needs. Get in touch with us to see how we can help you.