5 years ago, when I barely created the MMIO agency, I affirmed loud and clear to anyone who would listen that inbound marketing represented a definite competitive advantage for those who decided to initiate the strategic approach. before the others by scrupulously following the methodology and putting the necessary fuel. Since then, many things have changed: customers of course, companies too, the methodology itself, all against the backdrop of economic crises (yellow vests, Covid).
Today I consider again, for the reasons that follow, that '
Inbound Marketing remains a competitive
advantage when properly deployed, with the means of its ambitions . And all the
more so if you are a challenger or an outsider in your market and the leader
does not have an innovative strategy.
Consumers, your customers will continue to change
Long before the yellow vests and Covid crises, we already
knew that 80% of consumers (and 93% of executives) inquired about and decided
to buy online (according to the FIFG). The customer was becoming
"hybrid" or rather omnichannel. The recent health and social
situations have only accelerated the process.
If your customers are online to do their research, it seems
obvious that there also needs to be an efficient way for them to find you ,
with:
• an
efficient site
• a
regularly updated blog (every week if you want it to be your best business
contributor)
• a
marketing automation and CRM tool to follow your prospects throughout the customer
journey
• a real
digital strategy based on content marketing with tactical levers: adwords,
social selling, social networks, SEO, emailing, database management ...
If you have not implemented this "minimum
marketing", it is impossible today to build a competitive advantage
online.
If you are not there, it is very likely that in the long
term you will be invisible to your personas, your ideal targets. Therefore, you
are giving way to your competitors, who are more and more numerous (6 in 2014
against 22 competitors on average in 2018, source Hubspot Research )
And unless you put in big money (and more), your business
will be absent or almost in a media that has become essential. Catching up on
this delay, in the eyes of your future prospects and search engines, will be a
titanic and rather expensive job to undertake. And it's not a few messy
"tactical" campaigns that will change that. When you are done with
your campaigns, your site's audience will immediately collapse. Which is not
the case with the audience that you are building and that belongs to you.
.... and the methodology too
When it was created at MIT in 2006, not far from Harvard,
the methodology of Inbound Marketing is represented as a funnel or tunnel ( the
funnel in VO). It is relatively simple and of "good commercial
sense": to attract, to convert, to conclude, to retain.
Since trade has existed, it has in fact been a question of
seducing customers, of interesting them, of selling them a product or a service
with a good customer experience, and finally of trying to retain them in order
to generate recurring income and word of mouth. positive ear.
But in 2018, Brian Halligan, one of the 2 co-founders of the
methodology, found that the tunnel
generates friction for the buyer along his purchasing path but also for the
sales and marketing teams. In addition, the customer is the end of the process, but is not at the
center of it , while all companies trumpet to anyone who wants to hear it that
their company is “customer-centric” and wants to offer the best experience. .
The methodology then evolves towards an Inbound cycle: the
flywheel (flywheel in VF).
Aligning your teams around the customer is undeniably a competitive
advantage
The principle of Inbound Marketing and its flywheel is to
make the marketing, sales and customer support departments work better together
(customer relations, after-sales service, ticketing, etc.)
The less friction the flywheel has, the more it spins and
picks up speed.
It is the simple principle of the flywheel, the large
chainring of your bike, or the 5th gear which consumes less ... Efficiency and
efficiency at the same time.
Aligning team objectives around the same methodology always
seems to me to be a decisive competitive advantage in the long term . Even more
so if your sales cycles tend to span weeks, months, or even years.
Inbound marketing costs less in the medium to long term
In 2020, inbound marketing remains the most efficient for
your prospect acquisition strategy but above all the cheapest.
The production of quality content, the optimization of your
website and your natural referencing , the very foundations of inbound
marketing, will often represent the most important part of the budget to be
invested.
Keep in mind, however, that the costs on digital media
remain much lower than those spent on traditional media where most of the
marketing / sales budgets are still invested.
Generating a new lead costs on average 61% less with Inbound
Marketing than with traditional marketing methods ( Source HubSpot) . This is
the case with most of our customers who have either increased prospects, or
reduced their customer acquisition cost , or both at the same time.
Do not hesitate to monthlyize this data and compare with the
budget envelope that you reserve for your more traditional actions and the ROI of
each.
Finally, given that 61% of consumers have today already made
their decision before consulting a sales department (IFOP), your customer acquisition costs (CAC) will also be optimized.
You can always accurately measure the ROI
If you know how to measure ROI , in particular by tracking
all your actions, then you are spending less than your competitors to acquire
and retain a customer.
In 2020, this aspect is still a competitive advantage since
you can in a few clicks know the source of your
commercial business , the journey of your customers, how much each new
prospect has cost you, or even relate the generated turnover to them .
What your competitors probably do not do, who continue to
squander their budgets on classic actions.
Inbound marketing allows you to build your own community and take strategic
positions for the future
Your investments in building your community and your
database are long term, but you're going to have to hurry because everyone
wants to produce content. It is even today the No. 1 challenge for marketers.
For simplicity :
• The web
content that we create for us and our
customers is of course accessible all the time and viewed by your prospects and
customers when they want it, not when you impose it on them.
• The
indexing of this content ultimately brings better authority in the eyes of
Google and the regular addition of new articles or videos for your audience,
strongly contributes to the gradual improvement of natural referencing, the
notoriety and the visibility of your
brand online.
• This
presence allows you to build a more
lasting relationship of trust with the consumer.
Finally, unlike traditional media, the cost is not linked to
the audience. Whether your article, infographic, or video is read by 50 or
5,000 people, the cost is the same. The content is yours and it will pay off
even more in the long run, including updating it.
For example, some of our articles the most read by our
audience, or the most generating leads, were not written recently, but 2 to 3
years ago, or even more for some!
Helping your customers has never been so relevant
We have been saying (and we have been doing it) for more
than 5 years: the best way to attract your ideal client is to
distribute qualitative and interesting content, likely to answer the
questions he might ask at different
stages of the cycle. sale.
And at each stage, it is then a question of offering him an
unforgettable experience, one that clearly marks the difference and takes over
from your competitors at 30 meters.
To do this, it is always a question of being more
interesting than interested.
In this regard, Inbound Marketing remains by far the
"only marketing" which puts the customer at the center of the
process. It still makes good sense: if the customer is at your center, chances
are you already have a competitive advantage, like most successful business
innovators.
Finally, by helping your customers with expert content, you
will gradually gain notoriety in your
market.
Inbound marketing: it works!
And fortunately if I dare say so. In 2020, the many success
stories prove that it works and generates convincing results.
Hundreds of case studies are now available online, and as far as we are concerned, we have
demonstrated this several times to our clients with fairly standard steps:
1. more
audience on their site which generated more leads
2. centralized
management of incoming prospects and good sales / marketing / customer
relationship alignment
3. better
customer experience
4. more
sales (generated turnover)
5. better
use of customer data: loyalty, upsell, cross sell
However, this does not mean that it works for everyone.
Certain sectors or sales cycles are more conducive to the
success of such a strategy.
But this is not a miracle method and it is not suitable for
all problems. So avoid those who promise you guaranteed results .
On the other hand, it is effective if:
• you are
more in B2B (industry, construction, IT, software, services ...)
• you sell
an expensive and / or technical B2C product and / or with strong competition
(swimming pool, real estate, automobile, construction, services ...)
• the sales
cycle is long and / or complex
• the CAC
is high
• you
encounter difficulties in prospecting, concluding, or retaining
The digital presence has become essential for companies and it is not too
late
Example: the pool seller
Imagine that you are a pool seller in Reunion Island and
that, 18 months before you, one of your main competitors (so even the
challenger or the outsider) decides to adopt a real content marketing coupled with a conversion strategy / maturing
with inbound marketing and producing on
your blog around 10 to 15 articles per month (i.e. around 150 articles over the
period) in accordance with the rules of the art of SEO (semantic cocoons,
pillar pages ...)
At the same time, he publishes and offers a range of white
papers and customer case studies on specific issues of his prospects ( personas ), namely:
• How to
choose your swimming pool in Reunion?
• The best
plans to finance your swimming pool
• 4 things
you didn't know about swimming pools in Reunion Island
• What type
of swimming pool to choose in Reunion?
• Shell or
liner pool: which coating to choose?
• 5
essential steps in your swimming pool project
• What
budget for an above ground swimming pool in Reunion Island?
• Swim spa:
the alternative to the swimming pool
• How much
does the maintenance of a swimming pool cost?
• Building
your swimming pool: what you need to know
• The
essential guide to swimming pools in Reunion Island
As a result, it is positioned almost systematically in the
first results of search engines, including Google ( 77% of clicks are played in
the first 3 natural results ), and moreover constantly animates its communities
on social networks .
The company thus dries incoming requests among its
competitors and attracts to it most of the monthly volume of Internet search
and has only the convert leads (prospects, estimates, RV, estimates ...) and
maintain them through marketing automation . All carefully recorded in a good
CRM .
As such, our last case study that we will put online in a
few days is the exact reflection of this seller of swimming pools, in the
blinds and pergolas sector. In 18 months, this client has multiplied its
prospects by 3, its audience by 10, while increasing its incoming demand in the
targeted segment by 120% . And the income with it!
Clearly, this is an undeniable competitive advantage here.
Instead, watch a taste: