how integrate an inbound marketing strategy in a btob … · who never delete email and trash mail...

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August 2014

How integrate an inbound marketing

strategy in a BtoB company?

How integrate an inbound marketing strategy in a BtoB company?

Frédéric de Thezy 2014 1

Table of content................................................................................................................................................ 1

Acknowledgement........................................................................................................................................... 3

Glossary ............................................................................................................................................................... 4

1) Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 5

1.1) Example of inbound marketing from a customer point of view .................................. 6

1.2) Inbound vs Outbound marketing ............................................................................................ 7

2) Inbound marketing presentation......................................................................................................... 9

2.1) Origins .................................................................................................................................................... 9

2.1.1) Permission marketing concept ............................................................................................. 9

2.1.2) Inbound marketing = Permission marketing + Internet.......................................... 11

2.1.3) Definition and side concepts............................................................................................... 13

2.2) Inbound marketing pattern and tools ..................................................................................... 15

2.2.1) Attract strangers ..................................................................................................................... 15

2.2.2) Convert onlookers .................................................................................................................. 16

2.2.3) Close leads ................................................................................................................................. 18

2.2.4) Delight customers ................................................................................................................... 19

2.3) Actual context ................................................................................................................................... 20

2.3.1) Figures ......................................................................................................................................... 20

2.3.2) A BtoC pattern .......................................................................................................................... 22

2.3.3) BtoB specificities ..................................................................................................................... 23

3) Inbound marketing in BtoB cases ..................................................................................................... 25

3.1) Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 25

3.2) Case studies ....................................................................................................................................... 26

3.2.1) Case 1: Foundery ..................................................................................................................... 26

3.2.2) Case 2: FreshBooks ................................................................................................................. 30

3.2.3) Case 3: Maersk .......................................................................................................................... 33

3.2.4) Case 4: General Electric ........................................................................................................ 38

3.2.5) Case 5: Dell (for Businesses)............................................................................................... 41

3.3) Adaptation of the pattern ............................................................................................................ 44



3.3.1) Global results of cases ........................................................................................................... 44

3.3.2) Key success factors ................................................................................................................. 44

3.3.3) Standard Vs Customized solution ..................................................................................... 46

3.3.4) Small companies Vs Large corporate .............................................................................. 46

3.4) Consequences in the company ................................................................................................... 47

3.4.1) Human resources management ......................................................................................... 47

3.4.2) Sales process ............................................................................................................................. 48

3.4.3) Outbound marketing ............................................................................................................. 48

3.4.4) Discussion .................................................................................................................................. 49

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................... 50

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................... 52



I would like to thank Ashley Proctor, manager at Foundery, who trusted me and gave me

the opportunity to achieve my final year internship in a wonderful coworking space. She

was also my tutor, and working with Ashley was a real pleasure. Thanks a lot to Jake

Koseleci, founder of the Foundery, who also warmly welcomed me.

Thank to Alex Rascanu, Marketing & Operations Director at Drive Conversion, who

answered lot of my questions about inbound marketing in BtoB.

Thank to Stephen Clarke, former EVP at Saatchi & Saatch, who also spent time with me

to give me his insights about advertising and marketing evolution and trends. Thank

also to his wife, Svetlana Ratnikova, with who I worked with to organize an event.

I assisted to the InboundTo Meetups during this internship. During this monthly based

event, I learned a lot about inbound marketing practices, and met very skillful, and

experiences marketers. I want to thank organizers and participants of this very

interesting Meetup. I especially think of the team of Powered by Search (inbound

marketing agency in Toronto): Dev Basu, Joel Popoff, Dat To, and so many more.

Thank to Gabriel Szapiro from Saphir agency who also was a source of trustful

information on inbound marketing. I wish him success for the soon release of his book: "

L'inbound marketing selon la stratégie du sherpa".

Finally , thank to Christophe Lejeune, my tutor at ESTA, who gave me useful feedbacks

during the different steps of the writing of this dissertation.

I would like to give extra thanks to people who believed in my work and support me in

different ways during the writing of this dissertation.

Geoffrey Bressan CMO at Markentive (inbound and digital marketing agency in

Paris)

Jérôme Simon CEO at Remarqbl (inbound marketing agency in Paris)

All Foundery and Creative Blueprint members



BOFU: (Bottom Of the FUnnel) Hot prospects or customers who are about to buy.

Buyer persona: A semi-fictional representation of the ideal customer based on market

research and real data about existing customers.

Content marketing: The technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable

content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined target audience.

CRO: (Conversion Rate Optimization)

CTA: (Call-To-Action) Small sentence that push the visitor to do a specific action.

Curation: Find information on a specific subject, sort them, comment them and share

them with an audience.

Inbound marketing: Inbound marketing refers to marketing activities that bring

visitors in, rather than marketers having to go out to get prospect’s attention.

Landing page: Page where a visitor will arrive on once he clicked on a CTA.

Lead nurturing: Action from the company in order to reinforce the relationship with a

lead and push him a little bit more toward the purchase.

Lead scoring: Giving a grade to leads according to their interactions with the company.

Marketing automation (software): Software that handle the lead scoring and lead

nurturing. Can be assimilated to a CRM software that handle lead relationship by itself.

(Hubspot is a marketing automation software)

MOFU: (Middle Of the FUnnel) Leads who already interacted with the company but

aren't ready to buy.

SEO:( Search Engine Optimization) Techniques that are focused on giving a higher rank

for a page or website in SERPs.

SERP: Search Engines Result Page

SMO: (Social Media Optimization) Techniques to develop brand image and awareness

with social networks.

TOFU: (Top Of the FUnnel) People who discover the company but didn't interact yet.

UI/UX: User Interface/ User Experience



To explain what is the inbound marketing, it is important to know what is the outbound

marketing first.

Outbound marketing was almost the only way companies used to promote themselves

until few years ago. Before the generalization of the internet access, all medias we had at

disposition were a 1 way communication. TV, radio, magazines, direct mails…

We had no way to interact with these medias, and we had to accept them as they were:

preselected information and mainly advertising we didn’t want. All companies

worldwide were spending huge amounts of money to reach a maximum of people, not

caring about the targets expectations or who would see their advertisements. From our

consumer point of view, we had no real way to avoid them. We were always in presence

of unasked products or services promotion. This is outbound marketing.

Then, internet appeared and all services coming with (forums, emails, wikis, blogs, social

networks…). So, what did companies? They did exactly what they were used to do: spent

a lot of money to create a website, and have flashy and dazzling advertising on as much

as possible websites, and they bought email address list (from a much or less reliable

sources) to send their “digital flyers and magazines”.

But, how do we really find information nowadays when we want to buy a product or a

service? Internet most of the time. In reality, here is what has been happening since the

last few years: there is so much TV channels, radios, newspapers, websites… that the

consumer retrieve its freedom to avoid advertising.

Who don’t change channel when ads come?

Who stay on a website half covered with pop-ups?

Who never delete email and trash mail without opening them?

Technologies and the multiplicity of media channels, give us the possibility to switch

from a media to another in a fraction of second. Less and less people are receptive or

paying attention to ads.

For companies, advertising expenditures goes up, while ROI goes down.



Let’s review what really happens today with an example. Here is how a small company

could buy a new professional printer.

An SME needs a new printer for its activity. For the sake of the example, there is two

fictional resellers possible (company A and company B).

The company A: They sent a salesmen few months ago. He wasn't expected but,

he was politely welcomed. He delivered his speech to the receptionist who didn't

really paid attention to it. Anyway, he left a catalog and a business card " just in

case". Then he sent regularly some promotional mails which all ended on a bin

without being opened. The day the CEO decide to buy a new printer, the buying

responsible remember that there was a printer reseller that never stopped

harassing them. But what was their argument? Where are information about

their product?

The company B: The CEO ask to his buying responsible to find a professional

printer that fits their needs. The buying responsible does some research on

internet to find what kind of printing technology is the most accurate (inkjet or

laser). He land on an informative article on a printer reseller website. The article

answers perfectly his question. At the bottom of the page, a link to another page

on the same topic "how to select a printer and pay only for features you need" is

displayed. That way, the buying responsible go through different content on this

website until he knows exactly which printer he want to buy.

Which company of these two has the most chance to have the deal? Which one looks the

most skillful, the most professional? The one that harass or the one that is helpful?

It is highly probable that the buying responsible will order a new printer through the

company B, instead of calling back the company A.

Off course, this example is simplified, but it still represent two very distinct approaches,

and illustrate outbound marketing (company A), and inbound marketing (company B).

The importance for the seller is to be at the good place, at the good moment, and with

relevant information.

It is all about the three main point of permission marketing: anticipated, personal,

relevant. If we look closer, the company A reaches none of these points, while company

B reaches all of them.



The lesson from this short story is that the company probably received numerous ads

for printers or printing services in past months, but they had no reason to look at them.

But when they had a specific question, when they decided to buy a new printer, a

company was there, at the right place, at the right time to answer it. And once, someone

give you answer and advice, why would you search for someone else?

This is what we call inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing can be summarized in one sentence: get your company found, be

helpful when a potential customer is seeking for information, then guide him to the sale.

This is very different from the outbound marketing which is based on this principle:

come to your eyes, your ears whenever, wherever, by any means necessary.

Outbound marketing is very intrusive and interrupt you in what you are doing, while

inbound marketing is about being reached by yourself with your authorization, when

you want, where you want, and for the subject you want.

There are three objectives for companies which do inbound marketing strategy:

1. Be found

2. Provide resourceful content

3. Convert

It is exactly what our previous example showed. The search engine showed him a

website, he read an interesting content, and he finally bought to this company.

This is the very principle of the inbound marketing. But don’t delude yourself,

implementing that strategy in companies needs numerous different skills, and can’t be

applied in few days. It is a long term view strategy which has to be well prepared and

thought to be effective.

Inbound marketing is probably going to be the main way for companies to reach new

customers in coming years. Look around you to see the buying process of people: less

and less people buy without doing researches on internet, or , in general, without doing

research about the product.

To illustrate differences between inbound marketing and outbound marketing, we can

compare it to fishing and hunting. The inbound way would be fishing, and the outbound

one would be the hunting.



The marketer who is seeking for a new place to advertise is like a hunter walking in the

countryside and seeking for a prey. They both expect that a maximum of target will

come in front of them and that they will be able to catch them. Badly, their behavior is

much predictable by their targets who are easily able to avoid them. The animal would

hear or smell the hunter and run away, such as the potential visitor won't even glance at

the advertising, because he knows this is not in its interest.

On the other hand, we have the fisher, and the inbound marketer. They both give a bait

to their target: a worm for the fisher, relevant information or advice for the marketer. In

both cases, the target can catch the free bait and leave. But in another cases, the fish /

customer might want to go further and have more. Once the fisher got a bite, it doesn't

mean the fish is caught: there is specific techniques to pull up the fish until it goes to the

fisher's basket. Same for the potential customer, the marketer have to bring them more

and more value in exchange of more and more engagement until the sale is close.

This comparison works for other points. The hunter go through forests and countryside,

disturbing many animals that are obviously not its targets: mice, squirrels, raptors,

birds, and so much more. Same for the outbound marketer, its advertising is probably

targeting 5% of the audience, but the other 95% are just disturbed by this advertising,

they just don't care about. In the meanwhile, the fisher is in a corner of the lake, and

animals which are not targeted are not disturbed. If the fisher want to change target, he

just change the bait. Also, the customer seeking for information or advice will find it, but

people who are not interested will never read, hear, or see anything about it.

Finally, let's compare the amount of efforts necessary for these both activities: the

hunter have to walk all day long, with a heavy weapon, and with lot of mud on its boots.

During the same time, the fisher is sat comfortably, drinking its coffee. The outbound

marketer spent huge amount of money trying to be everywhere and be noticed by

everybody, while the inbound marketer focused its efforts on making a great bait, and

pull up its leads to the sales.



Before going deep into the inbound marketing, it is

interesting to speak about what it came from. For

reminder, the inbound marketing concept appeared in

2006 and was really pushed forward by the company

Hubspot and its two founders: Brian Halligan and

Dharmesh Shah.

The direct ancestor of inbound marketing is the

permission marketing. It was defined by Seth Godin

(on the right), previous head of marketing at Yahoo, in

his book "Permission Marketing" in 1999.

Back then, it was still the beginning of internet, when people and companies were

switching from direct mail to email. And this is interesting to see how Seth Godin,

already saw the swift in marketing methods needed to adapt to it.

Mr Godin noticed that direct marketing methods (mails, emails, cold callings, doors to

doors, ads campaigns) were less and less effective. He explain this trend with two

factors.

The increasing number of requests and interruptions.

Indeed, medias are permanently cutting their content to show to their audience

unexpected advertisings. When mass-marketing appeared, there was very few ads. Each

of them were an impact on people seeing it. But nowadays, we are exposed to thousands

of promotional messages per day. Think about every ads which are on medias (tv, radio,

magazine, street panels...), but also ads inside shops (hundreds in each shops), or just

every logos you can see every day on almost every products. How can we be focused on

every one of them? How can get the message that each of company would like to relay?

The point is: we can't. The more ads we see the less impact each of them have. And as

brands are trying to interrupt us every single second of our day, each message have

almost no chance to influence us (or it have to be displayed many times).



The increasing number of ways to escape these interruptions.

Though years, more and more channels appeared in our environment. When mass

marketing started there was few radio stations, few TV channels, few magazines... Then

more and more channels appears: we have now dozens of radios or TV channels,

hundreds of magazines... If we are not satisfied by the content (including ads), we can

switch very easily. Who don't switch of radio stations when commercials start?

Everybody! But this is true for almost all medias: TV, magazines, mails, emails, or even

shops. There is so much of them, that we have no reason to stay with one of them when

marketing is pushing too much.

In a nutshell:

Nowadays, ads are inefficient because they are too much of them, and because you can

skip it very easily.

Let's illustrate this with a parable.

Imagine yourself walking in small and quiet village somewhere in France. Suddenly,

foreign visitors ask you where is the post office. It would be rude to ignore them, so you

would probably spend one or two minutes to explain them how to go to the post office.

Now, imagine yourself on the Champs-Elysée in Paris. It is crowded! You walked 100

meters and you already has been interrupted by a guy who want you to sign a petition, a

guy who ask you if you have a cigarette for him, a tourist who want you to take a picture

of him, a guy who wanted to give you a flyer,

and a guy who tried to make you enter in his

shop... It is highly improbable that you are

going to be kind and spent time to explain to

another tourist how to go to the Eiffel Tower.

And you won't even feel bad, because, five

people in front of you just skip them just as

you've probably done. And in case you feel

bad, there will be another guy who want

something from you 20 meters forward.

The solution proposed by Seth Godin was the permission marketing. It relies on the idea

of turning stranger into friends, then friends into customers. To reach this state the

brand had to create a bait that would interest its market audience. To access to this bait,

the potential prospect have to give the permission to the brand to contact him again.

This permission might be explicit or implicit. Once this permission granted, the brand



have to reach higher permission level step by step by following three essential rules in

their communication with their leads:

1. Anticipated

2. Personal

3. Relevant

To sum up the permission marketing, have a look at the table below.

Interruption Marketing Permission Marketing Anticipated No Yes

Personal Not usually Yes Relevant Sometimes Yes

With these three critical parameters, and with a marketing highly focused on each

prospect' expectations, the brand communication is a way more effective as leads

willing to consume the brand' marketing.

The inbound marketing is widely inspired by permission marketing. It is less theoretical,

and more concrete in the application. Inbound marketing can be summarized as a

process on internet that follow the permission marketing concept.

When the book "Permission marketing" was released, it was the very beginning of the

web: internet access was mainly for comfortable households, people and companies

were switching slowly to emails, social networks and blogs didn't exist yet, and Google

wasn't the uncontested leader it is today. Moreover the world wide web was most of the

time a one way communication: static pages that show information without any way to

interact with.

In 2008, Brian Halligan (on the right on the picture) and Dharmesh Shah (on the left),

released their book: "Inbound marketing: Get

found using Google, social media, and blogs". In

this book they promote tools, technologies, and

interactivity of internet to create a process that

can convert a random visitor into a profitable

customer.

In first years of the world wide web, marketers

tried to convert the ads, they were used to

published on traditional channels, to the web.

Internet was seen as another TV channel, in



which companies would promote themselves as they were used to. But quickly, and with

the fast increase of the internet speed in download and upload, internet became a two

ways communications media. Most successful website are now collaborative, or at least

involve the visitor: forums, blogs, socials networks, Wikipedia, comments, shares,

customers reviews...

On internet, companies can't reach consumers directly. At the opposite, consumers use

internet to find products or information all of the time. The idea behind the inbound

marketing is to be found easily when people are searching for information on subject

related to the product we want to sell. This is in total opposition with interruption

marketing which is based the capacity of being heard, seen, noticed wherever and

whenever by any means necessary.

To be found, the company need to create relevant content in order to provide useful

information to their potential clients. This will create awareness, build trust, and give to

the firm an image of expert in its field of activity.

The inbound marketing is considered as a funnel. At the entrance (Top Of the FUnnel:

TOFU) there are all visitors. Then according to their interaction and engagement, they

move forward in the funnel (Middle Of the FUnnel: MOFU). Once they become customer

they are in the bottom of the funnel (BOFU). They still can go further to become loyal

customers, or even promoters of the brand.

To make the lead move forward in the funnel, the company will provide more and more

value-added content in exchange for more and more engagement. In other words, the

bait is quality content, and the permission is the engagement of the visitor.

Below is the chart that illustrate the inbound marketing methodology promoted by B.

Halligan and D. Shah.



The general concept of inbound marketing:

We see that this definition is totally in agreement with the permission marketing

concept. Moreover, this sentence don't specify any tools, and stay focused on the concept

and don't mention a specific process.

As "inbound marketing" term appears in 2006 with B. Halligan and D.Shah and their

company, Hubspot, it was quickly assimilated with tools they promoted.

From this perspective, there is an obvious conflict of

interest. They promote a method for which their

company offers tools to perform it.

This is why I choose to keep the above definition,

that stay general and explain the concept instead of

a method.

However, the commonly accepted definition is:

While searching information about inbound marketing, this definition might sound more

accurate. Indeed, it is commonly accepted that inbound marketing is an online based

strategy. With this point of view , inbound marketing could be assimilated to web-

marketing, e-marketing, or any other activity related to the promotion of an entity on

the web.



Content marketing

It is frequent to find misuse of the "inbound marketing" term to express a side concept:

the content marketing. This is why it is important to understand how they are linked to

one another.

The definition of content marketing:

This definition is quite close to the previous one about inbound marketing, ant it explain

the confusion with these terms.

Content marketing is limited to the creation and publication of content. It doesn't

involve any conversion of the audience, leads generation or lead nurturing process.

At the opposite, inbound marketing is a global process that start with content marketing

to drive an audience but also handle all the rest of the sales funnel until gaining the

loyalty of consumers.

Criticism of the inbound marketing

The inbound marketing as presented by Hubspot founders is focused on internet

presence. It means that the company have to create remarkable content and diffuse it on

internet in order to convert its audience. Badly, it is not that easy to do. It needs a lot of

different competencies, mainly technical ones, to master the visibility of the content

(SEO, copywriting, PPC campaigns), conversion rates (landing pages, leads nurturing),

and to measure efficiency of the whole inbound funnel (Google analytics, marketing

automation tools). But, while the principles of inbound marketing is just about attract

customers and convert them, the method described by in the 2009 book "Inbound

marketing: Get found using Google, Social medias, and Blogs" never talk about a possible

offline method. Moreover, the method shown in this book is very strict, and it is

presented as the only one. This thesis is about keeping the initial principles of inbound

marketing but discover methods that are actually done in BtoB businesses. This book is

the reference of inbound marketing, but I will go further in the real process of

integration, and adaptation which can be done to match BtoB market functioning and

requirements.



First step of inbound marketing is to attract potential prospect. This can be done

through different way and techniques. Here I'm going to describe main ones as they are

described by marketers: online. The goal is to help people find the company website as it

is the only place it can be manage entirely (in opposition to search engines, social

networks, or any third entity websites).

The most natural way to drive visitors to a website is to be found in results of a search

engine. Search engines have powerful algorithms to scan all websites and pages of

Internet and sort them. Then, when people search for such or such expression, the

search engine present the most accurate pages. As algorithms are kept secret and evolve

every single day, it is impossible to guarantee the rank of a page in search engine result

page (SERP). Whatsoever, main criteria to be well ranked are known, and some

professional can do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to improve the ranking of a page.

Without going into details, there is two main fields in SEO: on-page SEO, and off-page

SEO.

On-page SEO is the optimization inside a web-page. Algorithms scan the page and

try to figure out what it is about. Some techniques are: use of keywords, efficient

coding, server quickness, internal linking, use of semantic beacons...

Off-page SEO is not based on the web-page , but on its impact. Search engines are

looking for links from other websites that point to this web-page. A page with a

lot of links pointing at it is considered as relevant and informative and have more

chance to appear in SERPs.

Through time, some people tried to find some leaks in algorithms and exploit them. But

websites using these "borderlines" techniques usually get caught by search engines and

suffer a penalty in ranking. Some "black hat" techniques (in opposition to "white hat"

ones, and called like this after a recent update on Google algorithm) are: keywords

stuffing, duplicate content, backlinks purchase...

The SEO is the technical way to be more visible on internet through search engines, but

there is another way: the creation of content.



Think about a raffle. If your name is write only once, you have very few chance to be

picked up. On the other hand, if your name is written a lot of time, your chances greatly

increase.

Company blogs are one og the best way to increase its visibility. Each article written is a

new page, and each new page is one more chance to appear in SERPs. As words are

bricks of the internet, the more words the company website / blog have, the better the

visibility will be.

Actually it can be compared to traditional advertising. The biggest advertise is more

likely to be seen. Advertise that appear a multiple time are more likely to influence the

audience.

The creation of content is called content marketing.

Social networks might also be a source of traffic.

Since few years, we hear that content is king. And this is not only for the reason told

above (increase visibility). A message seen only once is ineffective. It is the multiplicity

of the views of a message that might influence. This is why there is advertising

campaigns instead of unique large ads. The same logic is true on internet. One of the

most influent companies in term of SEO and inbound marketing is Moz. Their business is

only based on inbound tactics. However, even considered as the state of the art, their

leads went, on average, through seven piece of content before getting in touch with the

company. Being found only once by a potential lead isn't enough. The visitor have to

land on the same website multiple times before starting to trust it.

Once a visitor found the company blog, the goal is not to promote the awesomeness of

the firm or of its product. Why? Because visitor are not looking to buy something, but

are seeking for answers to their question. Articles on the company blogs, and its content

in general, have to answer question potential leads might have.

For example:

-I'm seeking information to find which variety a flower is more accurate for such or such

event. Google redirect me to a specific article about this subject. If the article is

irrelevant or not answer my question, I leave the website. But if it answer my question

accurately, odds are good that I will stay to this website and order flower from this one

instead of another one.



This is just the same reaction as if I would go in bricks and mortar shop: I'm more likely

to buy from the seller who spend some time to advice me, instead of the one that let me

chose by myself, or advice me poorly.

If it is better for SEO to have content presented as text (as explain in the previous part),

content can be displayed in multiple format: video, picture, webinar, white paper,

newsletter, podcast, infographics, report...

Texts are the easiest kind of content to create, publish and promote. But each format has

its strengths and weaknesses. According to the message, the audience, the goal, the

budget... An article on the company blog might not be the most accurate format.

Once the visitor consumed the company content and consider it (unconsciously) as a

trustful source of information, the objective is to make him interact. Usually the first

information to ask to potential leads is his email address.

Through targeted call-to-actions (CTAs), it is possible to drive visitors to a specific

landing page.

A landing page is a web-page targeting one very specific buyer persona and specifically

designed to make him do a defined action. The creation of successful landing pages is

essential to leads generation. Important efforts have to be made to focus all the websites

to drive visitors to these landing pages, and to reach high conversion rate though them.

Beyond UI/UX, the principle is to create an interesting offer the visitor can have in

exchange of engagement (in the form of personal data). Most common offers are: a

newsletter, a report, a white paper, a demo, a free trial, a discount rate... This is the bait

featured in the permission marketing.

The more appealing the offer is, the more chance the visitor will give his personal

information, his permission. The appeal of an offer can be measured by the value it have

for the prospect, and by the engagement asked.

For a newsletter or to download a white-paper, asking more than just my name and my

email address would be irrelevant. But to receive free sample of a product, I would be

more disposed to give my gender, age, and address.

As the email address is an effective way to communicate in the future with the prospect,

and as, for the visitor, giving it is not a big engagement; it is usually the first thing asked.

This low level of engagement is the most easy way to stay in touch with the prospect,

and it is the first step to build a stronger relationship with him.

However, tricking people to collect their email address is a waste of time, as the

permission given worth nothing. The opt-in system have to be explicit to have a valuable

permission from the prospect.



Once first information is collected about a visitor, he becomes a lead. The goal is to

nurture him to reinforce the relationship with him, develop awareness about the brand,

and build trust. This step is called lead nurturing. It is all about leveraging the

permission granted in the previous step by following the principles of permission

marketing: anticipated, personal, and relevant. This is mandatory, otherwise, and with

the ease given by internet, the prospect can dismiss his permission in one click.

For the potential customers it is very easy to avoid the company communication if it

doesn't match his expectations: unsubscribe from the mailing list, sort emails as spams,

unfollow the company on social networks...

Lead nurturing is actually like dating. It is all about building a stronger relationship little

by little without trying to skip a steps or at the risk of break up the relationship. Exactly

as dating, it might take more or less time and effort to convert the lead into a customer,

and to make him trust the company enough to purchase from it. Physically, these steps

are more and more engagement from the prospect in exchange of more and more value.

This also means that the company have to create relevant content for each steps. If the

relationship is already well established, it would be a shame to offer to hot leads same

content as new comers.

A theoretical path might look like this:

1. The visitor is invited to give his email address to receive a white-paper and

subscribe to the newsletter. He receive the newsletters and clicks on some of

them.

2. The company offer him to assist to a free webinar. To assist to it, the prospect

need to give further details (name, age, gender, country, field of activity).

3. Then, after the webinar, the company offer him to try its product for free. They

asked him specific address details to send him the sample.

4. At the end, the company offer him to buy the product if he liked the sample.

Of course, paths really have to be design according to characteristics of the product or

service to sell. Lot of parameters might influence the complexity of the nurturing

process, and not every prospect will be receptive to same incentives. That is why the

nurturing process have to be customized at maximum with information gathered about

the prospect.

While this can be handle manually in very small companies, it is quickly impossible to

manage if there are hundreds of leads. In corporate with enough resources, a marketing

automation software permit the automation of the leads nurturing. Hubspot, for

instance, is one of them.



Once the lead becomes a customer, the inbound marketing process is not over. As well

known, it is way much easier and cheaper to create customer loyalty, than prospecting

new ones.

It means that the buying action is not the end of the relationship, but a step that can use

as a leverage. With a successful relationship after the purchase, it can lead to multiple

other purchases, feedbacks about the products, recommendations, or even creation of an

ambassador of the brand.

Lead nurturing, as explain in the previous page, is still relevant. Providing extra

information about the product purchased, or access to specific resources to enhance the

customer experience. For example, it can be very effective ways to reinforce the

relationship. By leveraging the permission given previously, before the buying act, the

brand could ultimately turn customers into ambassadors.

Of course, the content provided to people who already purchased still have to follow the

three rules of permission marketing: anticipated, personal, and relevant. While this was

difficult to do before the internet era, nowadays it is very easy to stay in touch with the

customers. Moreover, educating clients after their purchase might avoid some problems

of misuse, or failure of products. It decreases the risk of unsatisfied customers and

reduce the after sales service work.



Figures below are from a 175 pages report done by Hubspot: " 2013 State of Inbound

Marketing". Data come from 3339 companies in 128 countries. Only 9% of answering

companies are Hubspot's customer. However, companies that replies to a Hubspot's

query are more likely to have a favorable opinion of inbound marketing.

From companies which does inbound marketing in 2012, 49% of them increased their

budget in 2013, while only 9% lowered it.

41% of companies doing inbound marketing had a positive ROI and 9% didn't. While it

is supposed to be easily measurable, 34% of them still don't know how to evaluate it.

Finally, the most interesting data is the cost per lead, and the cost for the acquisition a

new customer. Here are figures:

According to these figures, lead acquisition costs 12% less and customer acquisition 5%

less with inbound marketing than with outbound methods.

Another interesting figure, not directly related to inbound marketing, is the average cost

per customer in companies with and without a formal agreement between sales and

marketing teams that determines both teams' responsibilities. A formal sales-marketing

agreement results in a drop of 60% in costs for customer acquisition.

Following figures are from the "B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and

Trends—North America" report done by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). Data

come from 1217 B2B marketers across North America, and 93% affirm doing content

marketing. As the previous report, people who answered a CMI's survey are more likely

to be involved in content marketing.



First noticeable data are the kind of content produced by BtoB marketers. The most used

are social networks, articles (on various media), newsletter and events. In comparison

with the 2013 report, infographics did the largest increase: from 38% last year to 51%

in 2014. Marketers who reach best effectiveness use, on average, 15 of the tactics below.

While social media is the most used tactic, it only 37% of marketers believe in their

effectiveness. As we could expect the tactic that are considered as the most effective are

the ones that bring the more value to the audience: events, case studies, videos, and

webinars. These kinds of content are also much more difficult to produce.



In term of business goals, improving the brand awareness arrives first. However, we can

distinguish two wide objectives: improving the company's image, and leads generation

and nurturing. In the second case, we can guess these companies have an inbound

marketing process.

As the inbound marketing, as described by Hubspot founders, is only online. The first

barrier to BtoB is here. While we can offer standardized products or services to final

customers, it is mostly inappropriate for companies selling on BtoB.

Even if the company have different products targeting different market segment, it is

still easy to track visitors' engagement sign for such or such thing. With a marketing

automation tool, well defined buyer personas and an adapted lead nurturing strategy,

the customers follow a defined path. With experience and testing these paths can be

very accurate and lead to a high conversion rate.

The company can have hundreds of pre-designed emails and the same amount of

landing pages. That way the path will be more and more accurate. Each steps the lead go

forward is a descent into the sales funnel.

From the customer point of view, it means that he will feel understood, and happily

surprised by the relevance of information provided by the company. As the permission

marketing advice it, the content he will receive is anticipated, personal, and relevant.



For BtoB businesses the strategy of the multiplication of paths don't work as good as

BtoC. When a company is seeking for a provider, it don't expect to have a standardized

products. He wants a specific and adapted solution to its needs. No needs of extra

features that will increase the price or a lack of features that will affect it's productivity

or lower its own customers expectations. Moreover, expectations and stakes are way

more important than in BtoC. Guess a misfit engine on a production line, it would affect

the whole productivity of the factory (and all consequences on HR, logistic, customers...

coming with), and even put some employees in danger. In BtoC, there is never so much

consequences. What the worth could happen? The customer won't be happy, he won't

buy your product anymore, and if he has a bit of influence, won't advice your products

to his family and friends. It will be a unique sell but for the customer and for the selling

company consequences aren't very important.

That is why human relationships are even more important in BtoB. Companies buying

from another one expect a specific product but also a specific relationship. They are not

seeking for a random provider but for a long term partner that will be able to react

quickly if needed, even in few years.

That being said, 57% of the BtoB purchase decision-making is complete before

contacting any potential suppliers. This figure confirm the necessity for companies to be

found, provide information, and prove their technical abilities before any sales process

is engage.

The inbound marketing offers a step to turn customers into loyal customers then into

ambassadors. But it is still done through marketing automation tools. In the perfect

inbound marketing as described by Hubspot, face to face dialogue between the customer

and the provider never happens. That is why this inbound marketing can't be applied

this way in BtoB markets. Even if the buying decision making is already well forward, it

is the personal relationship created between companies that is the first factor of

customer loyalty.

If a BtoB business is selling standardized products or services, and if consequences of

the purchase of these products are not critical for the buying company, there is no need

to establish a strong relationship between the buyer and the seller. For examples: a

stationary business don't need to establish strong partnership with its clients, and if

they sell a product that doesn't fit the need or has not a good quality, there is almost no

deep consequences.



However, if products sold are standards (computers, phone, internet access provider...),

they might be mandatory for the smooth running of activities of the buyer. In that case,

services coming with are way more developed than in BtoC. A final consumer can switch

easily of computer, phone, or internet access provider. A company can't afford doing

such a switch, mainly because it is usually linked to many other tools or people within

the business.

In B2C, the buyer is the user (almost always). It also means that the reseller have to

convince only one person to buy the product. The marketing target is the decision

maker, who is the buyer, and who is the user. This is rarely true in B2B. There is usually

lot of people involved in the buying process:

One person to search potential providers (personal assistant)

One person who have the decision making power (CEO)

One person who focused on technical features (engineer)

One person focused on financial aspect (CFO)

One person focused on maintenance and long term services (maintenance guy)

One person focused on certifications and contract details (layer)

One person who will use the product on daily basis (factory worker)

So if we do inbound marketing, in the better case, we would reach a personal assistant,

or a guy in R&D department without any decision making power. And all efforts done to

reach this guy might be pointless. This is a reason why defining different buyer personas

is important. Content created have to alternatively feed interest of different buyer

personas, and answer their respective questions.

People, as customers, are well connected to internet and to social media. But companies,

as potential customers are not. If a company reach someone online, he reached is target

directly. But how a company can reach another company online? Contacts information

available are always generic email address (info@..., contact@...) that are almost never

taken into account. Another ways might to contact the company through its after sales

services, or directly on their social media profiles. Either ways, there is very few

chance that the person on the other side of the screen will be directly interested by what

you want to sell. This prove that outbound marketing tactics aren't relevant online, and

that other ways have to be used.

Anyway, inbound marketing is about being reached, and not be able to reach. The

remaining problem is that you can't target the decision maker because you don't know

who he is. In some companies the financial guy will decide, in others it will be the

engineer. They both have very different goals within the business they are working for.



In following pages, I'm going to analyze very different companies that seems to practice

inbound marketing. The following businesses, except for Foundery, are well known for

their online presence. There would be no point of doing an analyze of a company doing

only outbound marketing.

I choose to analyze five companies. It enables to have various situations, and going deep

enough to find specificities of each.

The five companies are:

Foundery

FreshBooks

A.P. Møller-Mærsk

General Electric

Dell

This choice is not random. It was done to cover a wide range of BtoB cases. I choose

companies which have major and significant differences that might impact their way of

doing marketing and promoting themselves.

SME (Foundery, FreshBooks) vs Large corporate (Maersk, GE, Dell)

Product (GE, Dell) vs Service (Foundery, FreshBooks, Maerk)

Pure player (FreshBooks, Dell) vs Brick & mortar (Foundery, GE, Maersk)

Leader (FreshBooks, Maersk) vs Challenger (Foundery, Dell)

Standard solutions (Foundery, FreshBooks,) vs Customized solutions (GE,

Maersk)

The goal of the following observations is to compare the inbound marketing theory (as

exposed in the previous chapter), with the real practices of these companies.

Except for Foundery, which I worked for, it is difficult to study every step of the

conversion of the leads into customers. However, the attraction of prospect and the first

conversion can be evaluated and give a good overview of the global inbound marketing

integration.



Presentation of the company and its activity

Foundery is a coworking space located in

downtown Toronto, Canada. Its customers

are entrepreneurs, startups and

independent workers.

It has been created in 2009 by Ashley Proctor and Jake Koseleci. Nowadays it offer three

floors of office space: 2 of private office and 1 of coworking that might be occasionally

adapted into an event space.

The first coworking space opened in Sans Francisco in 2006 to fit a specific need:

provide affordable office space to people working by themselves or in small teams, and

who haven't resources to invest in a workplace. Coworking spaces offer affordable,

flexible, and adapted workspace for entrepreneurs, freelances and startups. There is

usually no long term contract, and professional equipments are provided. These

workspace are also a good alternative to working from home or from a coffee shop. In

addition to provide a working environment free of distraction, them give the

possibilities to network and share ideas, or skills. With time, the community aspect of

coworking space became a first selling arguments, especially in coworking spaces

targeting narrow niche market.

A consequences of the worldwide coworking trend is the quick growing number of these

spaces. In Toronto, there are eleven coworking spaces within the city. Foundery is the

third biggest in term of number of seats, and one of the oldest. In term of price,

Foundery is in the average with a full-time membership at CAD 290 (Toronto average:

CAD 305). However, we noticed that potential coworkers are most likely to choose the

closest coworking space to their home, unless they have specific needs.

The question for coworking spaces is : how to reach their target? Even with a lot of

money, there isn't an obvious way to reach a good amount of them. Of course, we could

spent a huge amount to do large advertising in the whole city in order to be seen by

everybody, including our targets. Even if the ROI of such operation isn't measurable, it is

quite sure it wouldn't be very good. Anyway, at Foundery, we can't afford spending so

much money, and we need to have a good ROI. As we couldn't go out to reach our



audience, we tried the other way: let people reach us. As in many

SMEs, we do that way because we can't do another. But usually,

as soon as they have enough money they turn back to

advertising, cold calling, mailing.

Inbound marketing integration

Facts are when people come at Foundery for the first time and just pay for a day, there is

more than 80% chance that they will subscribe to a monthly membership. From that

reality, the goal was to make them come just once.

The first idea I proposed and that we realized is that to give a maximum of free day pass.

Even if we waived money on their first day, and even if 40% never come back, we are

still making profits from the other 60% who subscribe to a monthly pass. This idea is

easy and not expensive to set up, and can be stopped at any moment in case of a bad ROI

(which is very easy to measure). The counter part of a free day pass is the lack of

perceived value. Indeed, it is a human behavior to give value to a service, or a product

according to its price.

For example, if you buy a newspaper $3, you expect it to find more accurate and relevant

information than information in the free newspaper in the subway. But is that really the

case? Same for clothes, it is not because you buy your expensive shoes they will last

longer, but you think so anyway. At the opposite if you buy cheap shoes, you don't

expect them to last more than few weeks. All luxury brands are based on it, you buy

their product at crazy price because of your perceived value of it (technical and/or

emotional), even if it doesn't really worse it.

Back at our free day pass, people who will have it, might not be aware of its real value

($25), and think that it is what we give to everybody. To counter this risk, I proposed to

define a precise guideline in order to reach targeted people and to make each of them

valuable to us. Firstly, the format of the free day pass has to promote its value. An oral

invitation, as done before, can't obviously reflect that value. We decided to print

invitation cards instead. To reflect the privilege given to the owner of the card it had to

be classy, and to don't look like a basic flyer. That means it doesn't have promotion on it:

only address, logo, and a simple call-to-action. The way we give these cards has also to

reflect the value and the privilege given. We decided that each invitation had to be given

face-to-face, through a human relationship. In other word, they can't just be stacked at

the entrance of the building and free to pick-up. Finally, the question was: to who

should we give these invitation cards? It was simple to answer that question. Firstly, we

give them to every entrepreneurs, independent workers, artists, or startup owners we

can met. We also decided to give some invitation cards to people who are potentially in



contact with the previous target: current members at Foundery, people working with

them, event organizers.

An important part of inbound marketing is the attraction of stranger with a relevant

content. In the case of Foundery, to attract new entrepreneurs, freelances, or startups,

we decided to intensify events targeting these people. Moreover people intending to

these kind of events are more likely to network and shares ideas with other which is

typically the expected people for a coworking space.

For example, I organized an event with a Toronto based startup mentor I met during a

networking event where he was the speaker. During this event the speech was about

advice for entrepreneurs. He promoted this events in his network, so as we did at

Foundery. As Foundery and him have the same target, this kind of events bring potential

prospects for both. As the speaker, he had the opportunity to do a lot of networking. On

the Foundery side, we also did some networking, but also took few minutes to explain

the purpose of the space. Whatsoever, as the inbound way is supposed to be we offered

value in exchange of contact information, a bait. We organized a raffle for people

attending the event and they might win a free mentoring session with the speaker, or a

free monthly pass at Foundery. Then, we decided to pick up winners among the most

interesting profiles for both prices.

The promotion of Foundery was also done through its members. The promotion of a

company that is especially successful, or very innovative can, indirectly, promote the

coworking space where it works from.

For example, the Real Escape Game company was

widely promoted through local blogs, and

newspapers as they were the first of the kind in

Toronto. Their concept: twelve people are locked

in a room and have to work together to find clue

and solve enigmas to escape within an hour.

Another example is Normative. The company

design specific software according to the needs of

their clients. The company started its activity at

Foundery and now is leaving because they have

bigger needs in term of office. This was an

occasion for Foundery to show its appropriate

work environment for small companies.



Thanks to the history of the building of Foundery, and the

renovations done by a famous architect, the Foundery

building was selected to be part of a city wide event:

Open Doors Toronto. This annual event is a weekend

when couple dozens of buildings in Toronto with some

architectural interest are open to the public for free. The

Foundery building wasn't probably the most interesting

one, but it was still very interesting for us to be part of

this event. While doing the tours with people visiting, we

explained the concept of coworking space that is mostly

unknown. Some of visitors were here for the architectural aspect, but some of them

were just from the neighborhood and were just wondering what was going on in there,

and didn't had the opportunity to know. The purpose wasn't to promote Foundery

directly but rather to educate about the coworking concept. It was proven by previous

events in the past years, that new members can come because someone who came at

Doors Open Toronto spoke to them about the coworking.

Results

As all seats in the coworking space were rented, but never occupied all at the same time,

we decided to sell more membership than seats. Moreover, it wasn't very attractive to

new people to see an almost empty space, and it is against the idea of the community we

tried to promote. So, we decided to sell 50% more memberships than seats.

No outbound marketing was done to reach this state. However, an outbound and

intrusive marketing wouldn't be viable and relevant to reach our target.

An interesting comparison might be done with my previous internship done in another

coworking space in Hong Kong last year. A part of my job was to prospect with outbound

methods, and intrusive tactics. Efforts needed for a new lead acquisition were much

higher and these efforts were wasted if the conversion into a customer failed. While,

with inbound methods all efforts can be leverage with a wide audience, and with good

conversion rate. By the way, the most effective ways to gain leads was same methods:

articles about the space, regular events, turn customers into ambassadors...

The real advantages of these techniques for Foundery was the leveraging potential of

these actions, while efforts and money spent remained low.




Freshbooks is a Toronto based company created in

2003 by Mike Derment. It was first designed to offer

invoicing system through an internet website. Through

time, it evolves into a cloud accounting software.

With more than 5 millions paying customers from 120

coutries, and as the leader in cloud accounting solution, it is definitely a success.

However, it wasn't an overnight success, and it has a quite common startup beginning. It

took a year to develop the product, then another year to reach 10 customers (and $99 of

revenues per month). FreshBooks stayed in Mike's parents basement for 3 additional

years. As show on the Google Trends chart below, FreshBooks really started to grow in

2007.

FreshBooks was focused on providing an easy to use invoicing system for small and

medium businesses. In August 2012, FreshBooks change officially its purpose by

becoming a cloud accounting solution. It was a natural evolution of the service to fit

SMEs' owner to save time and effort managing their cash flow.




As an internet based solution that target worldwide SMEs' owner, it rather impossible to

launch an effective advertising campaign.

But it is interesting to know how FreshBooks started to promote its solution in the

beginning. Instead of targeting all kind of SMEs at once, they focused all their marketing

and promotion effort on one specific activity (graphic designers for example). Once they

reach a certain ammount of market shares or a saturation of the niche market, they

switch to another field of activity close to the previous one (web developers for

example). They called their technique "marketing Risk", in reference of the board game

in which players have to conquer small piece of lands one-by-one in order to expand

their territories worldwide.

By building strong relationships with first customers and being deeply involved in a

narrow niche market; FreshBooks benefited from word of mouth. It was and still is a

powerful way for them to expand.

As FreshBooks is typically a pure-player, all its activity is internet-based.

Freshbooks website is a really good example of a conversion

focused pages. Lot of companies are getting into a content

marketing process, but forget the real purpose of it:

converting.

By implementing A/B testing extensively, FreshBooks is

constantly working on its conversion rate optimization

(CRO). For example, the home page on the same day on two

different browser wasn't the same. The presentation is very

different, but the goal is still very obvious: "Try it for free".

Actually their home page is a landing page. Its purpose is to

convert right away. It makes sense as people arriving on

their home page are interested by the product.

FreshBooks manage a blog, updated regularly, mainly about

entrepreneurs and startups' topics.



Results

It seems like FreshBooks rely mainly on word of mouth to expand their market. Their

target is definitely startups and entrepreneurs, which is pretty much logical as they are

not tied with other accounting software yet, and as they are more likely to trust a cloud-

based service than an older SMEs.

FreshBooks figures are not publicly revealed (such as turnover, or benefits). However,

the company has 150 employees today and plan to reach 400 by 2016. In 2012,

FreshBooks affirmed they customers invoiced $8 billion with their software within a 12

months period.

Their expansion is directly impacted by their multi-awarded excellent customer-service

that leads to trustworthy word of mouth.

FreshBooks doesn't practice inbound marketing as Hubspot' founders describe it, but

their customers are attracted naturally to their service. So it s not outbound marketing

either.

The marketing efforts of FreshBooks are the conversion of people who already heard

about them. Their website is focused on this single goal. Their content marketing is not

very developed and don't offer high-value resources in exchange of engagement. There

is no specific CTAs related to the content. Finally their single white-paper, "Breaking the

Time Barrier", can be downloaded without any kind of engagement from the random

visitor.

Their social media strategy don't seems to be very developed either. Their Facebook

page is updated on regular basis but don't get a lot of engagement. Same observation for

their Twitter feed.

The strength of FreshBooks is to delight their actual customers and transform them into

ambassadors of the brand that spread the word in their like minded community of small

company' owners.




Created in 1904, A.P. Moller-Maersk Group. is a

Danish business conglomerate. It is commonly just

called Maersk. It operates in 135 countries, has

117,000 employees worldwide, and has a turnover of USD 59,03 billion in 2012.

Its historical and main activity is container shipping. Since 1996, Maersk is the largest

container ship and vessel supply operator in the world. It also has lot of other activities

such as port management, inland transportation, oil and gas shipping, drilling activities,

oil and gas exploration and production, training, shipyards, and even retail activities.

These activities are handle by multiple subsidiaries of the Maersk group.

The Maersk goal is to manage the all supply chain when its comes to containerization.

Its largest subsidiary, in terms of turnover and number of employees, is Maersk Line. Its

field of operation is containers shipping. They have a

fleet of more than 600 vessels, and have 3.8 million

containers.

I will focus my analyze on container shipping activity of Maersk: Maersk Line.

Maersk started a social media strategy in 2011, and reached within a year incredible

result in term of engagement. According to some engagement measurement tools,

Maersk's Facebook page has a higher engagement rate than Disney, Ford or Red Bull's

ones. This results match with the 2012' "Social Media Campaign of the Year" title given

by the European Digital Communication Awards.

As inbound marketing can't be reduced to social media, let's see if Maersk really do

inbound marketing, and how they did their digital strategy.

Moreover, containers shipping is far from an attractive activity, and it is the case of most

B2B companies. So this case might reflect the situation of lot of companies which believe

digital marketing is not accurate for their market.




Maersk social media activities started in October 2011 with Jonathan Wichmann who

was hired especially for this task. The first interesting observation is, even within a

global company with a turnover of $ 60 billion , only one person was in charge of the

social media strategy and he succeeded. Other observation, all was done internally.

Initials goals of Maersk by going on social media were raising brand awareness,

increasing customer loyalty, improving employees engagement, and developing

customer insights. It wasn't a leads generation tactic.

Currently Maersk Line is present on nine social networks, including the most known

(Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube). It is important to remind that

every social media publication is a piece of content and that it can be part of wider

content marketing strategy.

The communication of Maersk Line on social media is very visual. Most of publications

comes with a high quality pictures. It explain also the Maersk' presence on pictures

oriented social networks such as Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest and Tumblr. Mr.

Wichmannn explains that he started with a huge unused pictures library within the

company files. Now, pictures come from multiple employees worldwide.

He also leverages the history of the company. Every pictures come with a small story,

which all together form the past and the culture of Maersk.



They also use social medias as communication tools. Maersk handled very well an event

that could turn into a real image crisis for the company (or bad buzz). June 6th 2012, a

12 meters long whale was found dead on the front of a Maersk vessel arriving in a port.

Instead of trying to hide the news, finding excuses, or just broadcasting an apologize

message on every traditional channels, Maersk Line decided to expose the information

on social medias, and what they usually do to avoid these kind of accident. That was a

wise move from the communication team that avoid the spread of false information and

limited the image of a company which doesn't care about the environment. A similar

communication was done when there was rumors on internet about the sinking of their

biggest vessel, Emma Maersk, in the Suez Canal.

At the opposite of some companies, Mr. Wichmann was within the company and had a

great liberty of action. The top managers let him do without giving approval (or not) to

all messages. This give a good advantages in terms of reactivity, and proximity with the

audience. Messages aren't corporate oriented or just advertising. Maersk actively

continue this strategy but have now "glocally" messages. Publications feature multiple

local information from different location. The blog Maerskstories.maersk.com is a good

example. All these short stories help to showcase the company culture and vision.



Results

Maersk Line goals wasn't to gain new clients by engaging a social media strategy.

However, after almost 4 years, we can't denied that these activities had a beneficial

impact on their business. Indeed, as the brand awareness increased drastically, and their

social profiles became a hub of information for people within the industry. It is definitely

a success.

Concerning their inbound marketing, they found a way to delivered their company

culture, and spread their information on a wide networks. Here are figures: 1,1 millions

likes on Facebook, 111000 followers on Twitter, 73000 followers on their LinkedIn

page, 26000 followers on Instagram.

Most of these piece of content target mass audience with a brand awareness goal. The

content is not very technical and the important visual aspect help a lot to increase

engagement from no-specialists.

However, Maersk Line keeps few channels for more industry centric subject. I think of

their main blog (maersklinesocial.com), which seems to be very relevant for

professionals. These piece of content are widely shared but almost only on LinkedIn.



In addition, Maersk created private groups on LinkedIn to discuss with a limited number

and selected people.

Maersk Line doesn't do inbound marketing. Indeed, they describe their social media

activities, their side websites, and blogs as communication and not marketing. As we

saw, this is mainly true. They broadcast very accessible messages. Even if these

publications aren't technical or don't give insight about the shipping industry, it seems

that it is still relevant for the audience.

In a late 2012 survey, between 15 and 20 percent of Maersk' Facebook fans were

customers. Furthermore, 68 percent of Maersk Line customers had a better perceptions

of the company thanks to social medias.

Maersk Line reached to be the most influential online presence in the containers

shipping industry. Their digital strategy is a success according to their goals (brand

awareness, customer loyalty, and employees engagement).

Last but not the least observation, this strategy costs only few hundreds of thousands of

dollars. To reach the same goals with more traditional ways would have cost millions of

dollars.




General Electric is a business conglomerate founded in

1892, and with its headquarter in USA. The corporate has

36 subsidiaries and is present within 142 countries. GE has

various activities: energy, transportation, water, oil & gas,

healthcare, appliance, entertainment, financial services.

In 2013, GE reached USD 146 billion in turnover, USD 13 billion in net incomes, and

employed 305 000 people. The turnover is spread as following: 33,7% from financial

services, 33,4% from infrastructure's equipment, 10% from appliances, 9,9% from

healthcare, 8,8% from entertainment, 4,1% from other activities.


Since 2011, General Electric had improved its online presence drastically and

implemented a content marketing strategy.

Txchnologist website, for example, is presented as an online technology magazine. In

other words, it is a blog: it drives traffic thanks to regular publications. However, there is

almost no direct link to GE, nor CTAs that are supposed to catch visitors contact

information. But, Txchnologist magazine highly promote the sharing on social medias.



Another example is GE Reports website. On this one, information provided are more GE-

centric, but still might interest professional who are involved in high-technologies.

Anyway, this website still promote the sharing aspect than a conversion aspect.

These two websites, Txchnologist and GE Reports, are, indeed, Tumblr based. Tumblr is

a popular blogging platform, so it means that the goal was to publish content easily and

get it shared. If the goal would had been to convert visitors, Tumblr wouldn't be an

appropriate platform.

Their social media presence is also remarkable. Their Facebook page has over 1,2

million likes and is updated regularly with facts about GE. This content is adapted to the

non-specialist Facebook audience, such as Maersk do. Information are not technical, and

post are always coming with attractive pictures. On their YouTube account they post

either technical news and information, or either entertaining content. For example, they

did during the spring a serie of videos called #SpringBreakIt in which they put some

random objects into a extreme conditions to see how material react. It hasn't any

scientific interest but reach a wide audience.



Results

The content produced by General Electric is not self-centric but embrace a wide range of

field of industries where GE is involved. From space exploration to healthcare most

recent advancement. It is produced by experts and is at destination of people involve in

these cutting edge field. Here, targets of GE's online content are businesses that are

seeking for technical information and news.

On another side, on their social media channels the content is less technical in order to

reach a wider audience. The goal here is, at Maersk does, to improve awareness of the

public about the brand, its activities, and its philosophy. For this aspect, it is a success:

figures of their social media profile show that their content reach a large public.

The goal of GE is to spread high quality content among professional to improve its image

of innovative thought-leader in the field of technology.

We can notice the total absence of any CTAs or conversion system. This is against the

inbound marketing techniques described by Hubspot founders. However, we can easily

guess that GE's consumers are not going to buy turbines online either.

The online presence of GE is really focused on its image. As few old companies, their

image might suffer while the time goes. This strong online presence focused on

innovation and forward-thinking in the technology field showcases GE as a leader on its

field and innovational-focused.

We can't say that GE does inbound marketing as it is obvious that marketing operations

don't bring customers directly. Whatsoever, they have an efficient content marketing

and handle social media channels very well to enhance brand awareness, and promote

brand' values.




Created in 1984, in Texas by Michael Dell, the famous

computer manufacturer now employs more than 100 000

people and has a USD 57 billion turnover (2013).

Nowadays, Dell is the third worldwide computer seller (in

term of number of products) behind Lenovo and HP, with

13% of market shares. These figures are gathering B2C and B2B.

For servers, a B2B market, Dell is also the third manufacturer worldwide behind IBM

and HP, with around 20% of market shares. In B2B, Dell also offers multiple network,

server and storage' hardware, software, and services.

In 2013 its founder, Michael Dell, with the help of Microsoft, bought out 75% of shares

and leave the stock exchange. He explained that share holder were too focused on short

term profits and that it was not compatible with a long term strategy.

From the beginning, Dell choose to sell its computer online. The idea was to offer

computers at a lower price than the competition thanks to savings due to the absence of

retail stores.


Dell, such as FreshBooks, is a pure -player actor: most of his business is done online.

As Dell provide very technical solutions, its targets are IT specialists. Even if they

probably don't have the final word during the purchase process, they need to be highly

involved.

Moreover, for these kind of products, technical features and services are very important

to make sure that new hardware will run smoothly with the rest of the equipments.



If the prospect's company is new and

purchase IT equipments for the first time, it

is also a great opportunity as it will be more

likely to purchase side services or extra

equipments in the future with higher

profitability for Dell.

Dell created a full website that provide news

and articles about many subjects related to

IT in companies: Tech Page One. This

websites don't just gather news in the IT

field, but give also insights of professional

from various companies. The content come

from various authors with influence or

considered as authoritative. Finally, this

website isn't about Dell's news, products or

services at all.

The "about" page sum up the goals

accurately:

This description and the reality match with

the idea of Mr. Halligan that recommend to

be the hub for a targeted community.

Let's analyze a random page of Tech Page

One (example on the right).

CTAs are present on all pages and invite visitors to stay up to date with IT insights by

email, register for the DellWorld event, or discover their range of server.

Few comments for their CRO:

- Their CTAs are the same on every pages, that means they are not related to a specific

topic and not targeting a defined buyer persona.

- There are three CTAs on every page instead of only one. It attenuates the efficiency of

each.



Results

Dell provide a relevant content for IT managers in companies whatever the size. The

content is not focused on Dell' products or services but it is a hub of information and

news about computing, networks, data, security, cloud and related subjects.

With some CTAs on the sidebar, the visitor is invited to perform one of the following

action:

- Sign up for the annual conference DellWorld, which is mostly for tops IT responsibles

worldwide with cutting edge subject and well-known speakers. This CTA is targeting IT

managers in large corporate.

- Sign up for the Tech Page One newsletter. Once the email address is submitted a new

form quick offers to send a question to Dell. This simple, quick and easy way to stay up

to date on IT subjects gives to Dell a database of email address from a targeted audience.

This CTA is targeting IT managers in SMEs.

- Finally, the last CTA is just a link to the Dell ecommerce website for businesses. In

smallest companies IT guys can build their own solution with standard equipment and

don't need a real discussion with the seller. This CTA is targeting small companies with

few needs in IT equipment.

We can say that Dell do inbound marketing as they attract a targeted community with

specific content and, then, try to convert them with CTAs.



The content marketing is globally well understood. Companies understand that intrusive

marketing, such as advertising, are not the only and main way to reach potential

customers nowadays. They started to provide valuable content on various format for

free: articles, reports, videos, events, expert interview... They also handle pretty well the

medias specificities, and know which, where, and how to provide information according

to the audience and its habits of content consumptions.

Globally the attraction process is mastered, but the conversion aspect is less effective. In

my opinion, the main barrier and problem is within the company. The marketing /

communication team and the sales force were always separated. It wasn't a problem

when businesses did advertising and other kind of outbound tactics. But driving a traffic

of potential prospects (online or offline) might be a waste of time, energy , and money if

there is no conversion process coming with.

We notice two main difference in term of business goals:

Image improvement: For GE and Maersk, their content marketing is a

communication tool. The goal is to improve the image of the company, spread its

message, and showcase its expertise, values and philosophy.

Leads generation: For Foundery, FreshBooks and Dell, the marketing activities

are focused on leads generation. The audience reached through the content

marketing is invited to increase its engagement with the brand and get closer to it

step by step.

While doing research I spotted three key factors that are at the roots of the success or

the failure of an inbound marketing strategy: quality content, conversion, and analyze.

Quality content

The first key success factor is the content. It is quite easy to produce content, but the

challenge is to create content that we will be relevant and valuable to the target



audience. In comparison to BtoC market, the BtoB content creation is much more

difficult as expectations and stakes are higher. With the "race" of content creation that

start to appear, the quantity often override the quality. Quantity might drive more

traffic, but it have a poor conversion rate. In the case of Foundery, if we would have

organized an event with poor interest for our audience, the potential prospect would

have never came back again after wasting few hours of their life.

Conversion

While there is not so much way to gain visibility on the web, the conversion process vary

drastically from one product to another. That is why it isn't relevant to give global

advice. As a sales representative would do, the knowledge about the prospect can be

leverage to get closer to him step by step. Each of them is unique and is receptive to

different appeals. However, it is a masterpiece in a inbound marketing strategy.

Analyze

As a factory process, the inbound marketing have to be constantly improved. Indeed, the

conversion rate of two landing pages can vary drastically. There are a lot of technical

parameters in the UI/UX, but there is also the audience parameter. A same landing page

can have totally different conversion rate from one country to another for example.

Likewise, landing page with a CRO targeting a technical-focused audience will have poor

results on price-focused people.

If the process is mostly online, there are numerous metrics that can be tracked. The

issue is to identify metrics that are representatives of the completion of business goals. A

company focused on brand awareness should track number of visitor on its website, and

the reach of their social media activities. At the opposite, these metrics are pointless for

a company focused on leads generation. For this last one, key metrics could be

conversion rates of their landing pages or the opening rate of their last email campaign.

Once the interesting metrics identified and tracked, it is time to experiment. As

FreshBooks do, A/B testing is one of the best way to improve the conversion rate of a

webpage. All visitors don't see the same page: the CTA might change, the layout lightly

modified, some graphical elements removed or added.... Then the version that reach

highest conversion rate is kept. This optimization process have to be done constantly.



This is probably the factor that impact the most the implementation of an inbound

marketing process.

A standard solutions allow companies to create a limited number of process to drive

strangers to consumers. At the opposite, a business that design unique solutions for

technical and specific needs for their clients can't create a defined buying process.

Moreover, a standard product or service, include a fix price. This is also a factor that ease

the buying process.

As we saw in previous pages, Foundery, FreshBooks, and Dell (partially), that provide

standard solution have a conversion system available for their traffic. At the opposite,

Maersk and General Electric, don't have any conversion system.

This observation also confirm that inbound marketing is adapted to BtoC market, but

can't be applied in BtoB selling projects.

Large corporate (Maersk, Dell and GE) have resources to create high quality content that

drive an audience. Even Maersk that weren't very involved at first, employed one person

full-time and he had access to a huge database and worldwide sources of information.

This is impossible for most SMEs.

For small companies (Foundery, FreshBooks) creating quality content deeply impact

resources within the company. For example, at Foundery, organizing an event require a

lot of time that can't be dedicated to other tasks. The creation of content is done at the

detriment of other aspect of the business. However, it doesn't mean that SMEs can't have

an efficient inbound marketing. The format and quantity of content have to be adapted

to resources available: one event per month for Foundery, one blog post per week for

FreshBooks, few post on social medias per day for Maersk, multiple articles on various

websites and creation of videos for Dell and GE.

The content marketing have this specificities to have an efficiency in relation to two

parameters: the quality of the content, and the promotion of the piece of content.



It was quite easy to outsource outbound marketing. Companies could pay advertising

agencies to create and diffuse promotional message, and ROI was very linked to the

amount paid for creating the campaign.

But content is not as shiny and expensive than ads displayed on giant panels. It have to

be relevant and interesting information targeting a well defined buyer persona. In B2B,

this is even more true as information that might interest potential customers are very

technical and specialized in specific field of activity.

The point is that marketing agencies can't provide relevant content for a B2B audience.

They don't have skills, knowledge, or experiences to speak about products or market of

their own customers.

For companies working in B2B and willing to embrace an inbound marketing strategy, it

means that the content have to be produced internally. For large corporate, it might be

easy to hire blogger, videos makers, or pay a training for their marketing team. But, it

can be a real problem in smaller organizations.

There is also the problem of myths about inbound marketing. As some people present

inbound marketing, it might seems to be an inexpensive and easy web-marketing

technique that gives quick and good results.

Inbound marketing is not proportional to money spent (at the opposite of outbound

marketing), but it needs an important commitment within the company. For most of

companies, someone working full-time on content creation is a minimum. At Foundery,

for example, with only one full-time employee, it is impossible to implement an inbound

process as described by Hubspot. Even an online content marketing wouldn't be

possible as the time needed would be a threat to the execution of other critical tasks.

The implementation of an inbound marketing can also not be taken very seriously by

decision maker. Board of direction are mainly manage by people who hasn't been

educated with an internet approach of business. Their success through years was only

done thanks to outbound marketing tactics. They don't really trust new marketing that

they consider "trendy" more than relevant, and they don't always understand the mind-

shift due to internet. The Maersk case is an example: the social media experience was

more a try than a real strategy (only one guy with no budget).



As it might be a problem in companies using outbound marketing, a defined borderline

have to exist between marketing / communication department, and the sales team. Even

in the sales team, problem can emerge if a prospect is assigned to different sales

representatives during the sales process.

The problem is, most of the time, a lack of information going through teams or

individuals. It means that persons who are first involved in the relationship with the

prospect don't provide all information they had to people involved forward in the

process. Even with CRM system, all information are not assured to be transmitted to the

right person.

In an inbound marketing process, the marketing department is supposed to be the main

source of new prospects, while with outbound marketing the sales representatives are

the main source of new prospects (cold calling, emailing, doors-to-doors...).

The company have to establish a clear borderline between team to insure a clear follow

through with the prospect. This fact is verified with figures given in the first part of this

report: "A formal sales-marketing agreement results in a drop of 60% in costs for customer

acquisition.".

According to the product, or the service, the sales team might be involved sooner or later

in the process. In general, the sales team have to handle the relationship soon in the

sales process when the product is a specifically design or customized solution. At the

opposite, standard solution don't need to involve sales rep, or at the very end. For

example, FreshBooks try to convert its visitors directly into customers because their

solution id standardized and the same to every customers; while Dell don't try hard to

sell something online directly.

Another problem might appeared in companies switching from outbound to inbound is

implicit hierarchy change. With an outbound marketing, the sales team is supposed to

provide information collected on the field to the marketing team. But, with an inbound

marketing, the sales team is totally dependent of the marketing team.

While inbound marketing might be a very effective way to attract new prospect and

customer, it doesn't mean that companies have to stop every outbound marketing

operations.



In the early stages of companies, outbound strategy to earn prospects is still very

effective as we saw with the FreshBooks case. We can also take the example of AirBnB,

the startup that offer to people with extra bedroom to rent it to tourists or people

travelling for few days. They had a similar situation to FreshBooks in their early days.

They started with doors to doors prospection to create their initial offer in term of room

owners. Nowadays these methods aren't necessary anymore and , as FreshBooks, the

satisfied customers (room owners and room renters) spread their message.

Moreover inbound marketing is a long term strategy: it takes few months before

showing any results, and efforts have to be constant. For new companies striving for not

going bankrupt, this strategy isn't the most relevant, as the time needed to reach

effectiveness is a threat.

A side outbound marketing is not irrelevant as well. Most of companies which do

inbound marketing also do some outbound marketing. It might also be a way to prove

the credibility and the reliability of the brand. Indeed, we are more likely to trust a

brand we already saw TV ads about, than a company discovered randomly on internet.

In BtoB cases, if a sales person contact directly a prospect, and even if he gets nothing at

first, it creates awareness. Few months after, if a need pops up, the initial contact can

create a slight advantage in the decision-making process.

The inbound marketing, and especially the content marketing, might encounter, in few

years, a problem called "content shock". This concept recently discussed by some

marketers is about an overwhelming and crowded number of piece of content in a field

of activity. It means that there would be so much content already released that a new

one wouldn't be able to rise from the clutter. So far, it is a theory, but we can imagine

that content marketing will gain popularity in companies in coming years, and that the

amount of content will grow drastically. As the quality of content is already the key to

cut through the clutter, expectations of information seekers increase equally. We can

already think how hard it might be to overcome the quality of content of Wikipedia's

page on some subject. An extreme scenario would be a future internet on which only

corporate with large amount of resources could be visible.

Another situation might emerge with the democratization of inbound marketing.

Advertising was efficient when there was very few of them, but we developed an "ads-

blindness" as we are less and less receptive to them. This could be a side effect of the

multiplication of conversion tries coming with the interesting content. We would

consume the content and consider every CTAs as advertising and treat it same way:

ignoring them.



As we saw with Maersk Line, it started with the discovery of social media, without

having goals defined with figures. Maersk came to social media because of the trend

more than for follow a really defined strategy. It is funny to observe that they are

currently doing exactly the same with blogging / content creation. On their website

Maersklinesocial.com, they say:

It sounds like they are not convinced by their own website. Just like at the beginning of

internet, when some companies didn't feel the need for a website, and some others

created ones without being really convinced by its usefulness; the leads generation

through internet will comes little by little. It is exactly what Maersk Line did with social

networks: companies will discover the interest of online presence step by step.

While a window-shopping website was good enough in past years, it is not relevant

anymore. The web is more and more crowded. Companies which want to cut through

this clutter will have to be more present.

As Maersk Line, lot of companies invest in only one field on internet (social media, e-

commerce, content creation....) but very few have an entire process that drive strangers

into customers.

Another reason of this slow evolution is the mentalities of top directors who always

performed outbound marketing campaign and don't catch and/or don't believe in the

potential of these new tools.

None of the companies we saw in this report have an inbound marketing process exactly

like it is promoted by Hubspot. However, the philosophy of attracting an audience and

convert it is present for some of them. The Hubspot process might be adapted for

standard online-based services or products (such as Hubspot software). For FreshBooks,

this process is almost fully integrated and is relevant. But for other kind of companies,

only an online process isn't the best practice, and they understood it perfectly. Even Dell,

a pure-player, don't rely only on online tactics.



The Maersk Line case is very representative of the fact that digital marketing success is

not proportional to money invested in. With only a full-time employees dedicated to it,

and with already produced content (pictures and history), Maersk is now a major hub

for the maritime community online. The same amount of audience reached with such

regularity would have cost a way more with outbound marketing.

A key success factor of an efficient inbound marketing in BtoB is a close collaboration

between marketing and sales team. In this case, the money saved in leads acquisition

might be lost if responsibilities are not well defined. It is often the difference between a

marketing focused on leads generation and a marketing focused on improving brand

awareness.

As we could have been expected, the online pattern promoted by "inbound marketing"'

creators, isn't totally relevant for BtoB business working by project. For standard

solution, it is easier to implement as the conversion and the nurturing process are focus

on one buyer persona at a time, and a limited range of products to sell. With complex

and specifically designed solutions, the entire buying process is too much different each

time to have a defined buyer person and a lead nurturing process. In these cases, the

corporate still can use the inbound marketing partially: by providing useful, technical,

and targeted content, they can develop their image as a thought-leader, and as at the

state of the art on their field of activity.

Inbound marketing is a trendy expression that, nowadays, is assimilated to online

content creation rather than a conversion process. Even some marketing agencies sell

"inbound marketing" services as they would sell a product. Moreover, a slightly different

concept might emerge and wipe out the "inbound marketing" term, as "inbound

marketing" did with "permission marketing". The general concept is very relevant, and it

is highly probably going to be a growing trends in companies, whatever its name.

The process will remain:

1. Attract a targeted audience with high quality content

2. Get the permission of the prospect thanks to an attractive bait

3. Nurture the lead with anticipated, personal, and relevant content

4. Track and improve these four steps



Books

BENAROYA Christophe, MALAVAL Philippe, 2013, Marketing Business to

Business, France, Pearson Education, 744 p., Collection "Eco Gestion"

BLITZER Adam R., CUMMINGS David, 2010, Think outside the Inbox: The B2B

marketing automation guide, USA, Leigh Walker Books, 160 p.

GILLIN Paul, SCHWARTZMAN Eric, 2011, Social marketing to the business

customer, USA, Wiley, 272 p.

GODIN Seth, 1999, Permission marketing: Turning strangers into friends and

friends into customers, USA, Simon & Schuster, 256 p.

HALLIGAN Brian, SHAH Dharmesh, 2009, Inbound marketing: Get found using

Google, social media, and blogs, USA, Wiley, 256 p.

HUTT Michael D., SPEH Thomas W., 2012, Business marketing management: B2B,

USA, South-Western College Pub, 464 p.

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p.

SCOTT David M., 2013, The new rules of marketing & PR, USA, Wiley, 464 p.

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p.

Articles

BARWISE Patrick, FARLEY John U., 2005, "The state of interactive marketing in

seven countries: Interactive marketing comes of age", Journal of Interactive

Marketing, Volume 19, Issue 3, p. 67–80

GARRIDO José, GUTIERREZ Ana, SAN JOSE Rebeca, 2011, "Online Information

Tools in Industrial Purchasing: An Exploratory Analysis of the Process of

Business-Service", Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce,

Volume 21, Issue 1, p. 50-70



GOLSTEIN Dan, LEE Yuchun, 2005, "The rise of right-time marketing", The

Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, Volume 12,

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marketing communications", Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for

Marketing, Volume 14, Issue 4, p. 357–368

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framework for inbound marketing", St. Gallen Marketing Review, Volume 26,

Issue 6 , p. 6-10

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1, p. 21–31

ROWLEY Jennifer, 2008, "Understanding digital content marketing", Journal of

Marketing Management, Volume 24, Issue 5-6, p. 517-540

Collection of articles

2011, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management, Harvard Business Review

Press, 224 p., Series: HBR's 10 Must Reads

Others

Content Marketing Institute, 2014, B2B Content marketing: 2014 Benchmarks,

Budgets, and Trends - North America, 23 p.

Digital Doughnut, 2013, Digital Doughnut global inbound marketing report 2013,

16 p.

Hubspot, 2013, 2013 State of Inbound marketing, 175 p.

Marketing Leadership Council, 2012, The digital evolution in B2B marketing, 47 p.

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