How to Fix 4 B2B Inbound Marketing Mistakes

B2B inbound marketing is the best way to bring qualified prospects directly to you. Why? Because the methodology is based on attracting customers by creating valuable content tailored to their specific wants and needs. 

While inbound marketing is popular, many people still don’t know what it actually is. (Here’s a super handy breakdown from HubSpot). When this happens, misconceptions and mistakes can creep into your inbound marketing strategy, rendering it ineffective and wasting your resources. 

Here are a few of those mistakes and how to fix them.

 MISTAKE #1  
Basing buyer personas solely on job titles.

When you think of your ideal customer, it’s easy to reduce them to a job title. For example, based on your sales process you already know you want to speak with the Chief Financial Officer. While job titles are helpful—we recommend brainstorming example job titles when building your buyer personas—they aren’t the only information you need to know about a prospect. You want to build a more complete picture to create effective content that resonates with your audience.

FIX IT: Base your buyer personas around:

• Roles
• Goals
• Challenges
• Age
• Income
• Education
• Location
• And more!

BENEFIT: You’ll produce more valuable content that guides your prospect through the buyers’ journey and helps them convert.

 MISTAKE #2  
Creating content before selecting target keywords.

Creating captivating content is a crucial part of the inbound marketing strategy, but it doesn’t matter how well it’s written if no one can find it—or worse, no one is asking for it. You need to create content that answers the questions your customers are asking. By determining what your customers are searching for, and which search terms they’re using, you can plan for and design content optimized for your audience to easily find. 

FIX IT: Select a target keyword or keywords before writing content and creating a plan. You can use a tool like SEMrush to find the keywords your audience is searching for. You might be surprised by which search terms are most relevant! 

BENEFIT: Your audience will not only find your content more easily but also turn to your business as a trusted source of information.

 MISTAKE #3  
Creating content without promoting it.

While SEO is an important strategy for helping your audience find your website, it’s not the only tool you should rely on. If you’ve taken the time to create content, you want to promote it on as many channels as you can. If you’re following the principles of inbound marketing, your content will attract, delight and engage your audience, who will be eager to learn via email or social media that you’ve posted a new piece of content. 

FIX IT: Do research on where to reach different audiences, and promote your campaign through those channels. For example, while LinkedIn is the top website for professional networking, 43% of internet users use any social media for work purposes. You need to promote your content where your audience is. If you’re not sure where to start, leverage some of these ideas for promoting your content.

BENEFIT: When you build a comprehensive content promotion strategy, more people will see your content and download it and your conversion rates will increase. Woot woot!

 MISTAKE #3  
Forgetting to market to current customers to boost retention.

If you’re focusing all of your marketing efforts on attracting new customers and not on retaining existing customers, you’re leaving money on the table. Even though you’ve already made the sale, you need to continue to delight and engage your existing customers to ensure you don’t lose their business to a competitor. While the strategy might look a little different, you still need to be intentional about how you market to this audience.

FIX IT: Create exclusive content or insider information for your customers. Survey them to get advice on how to update your product or service. Send them a monthly newsletter to keep them in the know.

BENEFIT: When clients feel appreciated, they’ll promote you to their networks and stay with you longer. This means better quality leads for you, and a more predictable bottom line.

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When you execute a true inbound marketing process, you’ll see impactful results.

The proof is in the pudding:

Curious how inbound marketing could work for you? Contact our B2B inbound marketing agency to chat!