0402 340 250 chris.fell@g2msolutions.com.au www.g2msolutions.com.au

Sebastian Junger’s wonderful book “The Perfect Storm” described an

unprecedented combination of meteorological events that led to a storm of

intense ferocity off the New England coast. Such a storm is upon the

marketing function. And it is fundamentally altering the way B2B

marketers do their jobs effectively.

Big picture problems facing B2B Marketers

The internet is a giant resource for buyers. Buyers are undertaking vast

amounts of pre-purchase research online. They are downloading white

papers, following expert bloggers, attending webinars, connecting with

peers and fellow purchasers in user groups on LinkedIn and on Twitter.

Marketers are having to rapidly rethink the tactics they use to find and

influence their potential customers. The go to market teams in firms (both

sales and marketing folks) are becoming disenfranchised and are losing

control of the buying cycle.

Buyers are finding an increasingly large number of ways to block the well

used outbound channels of communication marketers have come to rely

on. Spam filters and regulatory changes are blunting and blocking eDM

campaigns, do not call registers, voicemail and caller ID are creating

barriers to Telesales teams. Effective webinar technologies means

attendance rates at events are falling. In the B2C space TIVO and IQ (in

Australia) are damaging the effectiveness of TV advertising...and so it

goes on.

The resources (both financial and human) being devoted to marketing are

under intense pressure in these financially straightened times. Executives

are asking (quite rightly,) where is the ROI on these marketing

investments I am making? All my other functional areas can justify their

existence, why can’t marketing? Marketers are increasingly being asked

to be analysts not artists. Modern marketing functions need tools that

track campaigns and can demonstrate which tactics result in maximum

quantity and quality of leads.

Implications

The implications for marketers and the functions in the firm that they

serve, particularly sales, are huge. For those relying on traditional

outbound marketing, leads will become harder and harder to come by.

The quality of leads will fall. Firms’ ability to nurture leads through the

Sebastian Junger’s

wonderful book

“The Perfect Storm”

described an

unprecedented

combination of

meteorological

events that led to a

storm of intense

ferocity off the New

England coast.

Such a storm is

upon the marketing

function. It is

fundamentally

altering the way

B2B marketers do

their jobs.

By Chris Fell

Managing Director, G2M

How to survive “The Perfect

Storm” facing B2B Marketers

Page 2 of 4

funnel will be hampered. In short, the go to market engine that drives your

business is going to fail its road worthiness test.

A new need emerges

B2B marketers need a solution and they need it quickly. They need to find

ways to be present in places online where their buyers are going to do

their research. They need to get found online. They need to participate in

their prospects buying journey to reinsert themselves into the online

debate about solutions to the problems that their buyers have. They need

to find ways to influence the decision process of their buyers, to be able to

nurture their contacts to become leads; those leads to become engaged

and interested prospects that sales can take over and convert to a sale.

Survival skills for the “Perfect Storm” - Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing describes the collection of marketing techniques and

technologies that describe how to attract buyers to you rather than more

traditional outbound marketing, where you push your messages out to

buyers.

Inbound marketing is a child of the internet. More recently, it has not only

grown up but come of age in the era of web 2.0. Definitionally speaking,

inbound marketing wraps its arms around such techniques, technologies

and approaches as organic search, pay per click advertising, search

engine optimisation (SEO), keyword research, site links, blogging, digital

content creation, social media, lead nurturing, and web analytics among

others.

So how, you may ask, does inbound marketing solve these pressing

problems of the outbound marketer? What are the required elements of

an effective inbound marketing solution? The answer is, until relatively

recently, with some difficulty. Marketers who wished to embrace inbound

marketing faced a number of challenges.

Educating themselves on the new world of inbound marketing and

decoding the complexities of such areas as advanced SEO techniques,

keyword research and web analytics was a significant investment.

Additionally, effective techniques that allowed your site to rank well in the

Google search engines changed regularly, which in turn required the

marketer to continually invest in their knowledge and upgrade and change

the tools they used.

Secondly, consultants who specialised in the various areas of Inbound

Marketing were able to charge a great deal of money for their services

making Inbound Marketing an expensive proposition.

B2B marketers need a

solution and they

need it quickly. They

need to find ways to

be present in places

online where their

buyers are going to do

their research. They

need to get found

online. They need to

participate in their

prospects buying

journey to reinsert

themselves into the

online debate about

solutions to the

problems that their

buyers have.

Page 3 of 4

However, perhaps most challenging of all was the disparate nature of the

solutions available. To be effective the active and engaged inbound

marketer would have to purchase software from 3 or 4 separate providers

and/or engage with a number of specialist consultants to piece together a

full inbound marketing solution. For example, a marketer would need to

find a keyword grading tool to help work out what keywords they need to

rank for. They would need to find a good SEO consultant, to help them

optimise their site for those keywords. They might need to find a blogging

platform or a lead nurturing offering that they could integrate with the

content management system on their site and then a good analytics

package to analyse data from all these disparate sources. Needless to

say this was highly undesirable, expensive and an inelegant solution.

However in more recent times, huge strides have been made in providing

a genuinely useful solution for the Inbound Marketer. In particular, from

Cambridge MA., based Hubspot. Hubspot saw the need for Inbound

Marketing but more importantly saw how dysfunctional and difficult it was

for the modern marketer to find a full solution and get a jump on their

competition.

Hubspot’s software integrates pretty much all the core elements of a full

Inbound Marketing solution. Its software is divided into three core areas:

Get Found

Convert leads

Analyse results

Get Found

This section of the software covers off all the elements the Inbound

Marketer needs to get their company found online. Inbound marketers:

Select relevant keywords

Develop on page SEO

Develop off page SEO (external links and such like)

Develop powerful content via a blogging platform

Develop and integrate a social media strategy

Measure and track what is working and what is not

Convert Leads

Once your firm has been found online you want to make sure you convert

your site visitor to a lead and then nurture that lead to the point that the

sales team can take the over and convert them into a sale (hopefully). In

this section Inbound Marketers:

Develop compelling landing pages

Hubspot’s software

integrates pretty much

all the core elements

of a full Inbound

Marketing solution. Its

software is div ided into

three core areas:

Get Found

Convert leads

Analyse results

Try Hubspot’s

website grader for

a free assesment of

your website and

areas for

improvement

Page 4 of 4

Develop content suitable to stages of the buyer’s journey

Capture lead data

Analyse Results

Analysing results is one of the single most important advantages of

Inbound Marketing. Being able to empirically prove which campaigns are

working best, generating most traffic to the site, what content is causing

visitors to convert, knowing what your funnel math looks like is

tremendously powerful and allows the inbound marketer to make a strong

case to their management for funding their marketing programs.

HubSpot closed loop marketing analytics lets you understand the entire

sales and marketing funnel Slicing and dicing this single, accurate source

of data across varied campaigns and timeframes lets you report marketing

ROI.

Inbound marketing is growing rapidly, one might even say exponentially.

However this does not mean marketers must abandon al other forms of

marketing and switch 100% of their marketing efforts to inbound

marketing. We advise many of our clients to blend their inbound and

outbound marketing efforts, for example an outbound eDM campaign,

regular briefings and events for qualified prospects, hard copy case study

“leave behinds” for the sales team. It’s just that once our clients see the

power of outbound marketing they often chose to rebalance their

marketing investments in favour of inbound marketing.

Your next steps

g2m Solutions is a Hubspot VAR and offers affordable monthly retainer

based packages, including the rental of the software and expert time to

configure and populate the system, starting with a free 30 day trial to see

if the solution is right for your organisation. Please contact me if you would

like to find out more on chris.fell@g2msolutions.com.au or check out the

solution packages the g2m solutions website. Additionally, Hubspot have

an excellent free tool called website grader, which scores your current

website and provides a report on areas for improvement.