- In today’s world of hyper-communication, is inbound marketing still “in”?
- How does inbound marketing play nicely with other marketing tactics?
This ITAC Marketing Roundtable was hosted at the MaRS Centre, Toronto, Ontario. The discussion was moderated by Bob Becker, Principal, SMA.
Panelists
- Johanna Delroy, National Director, Marketing, Compugen Inc.
- Faye Caldwell, National Marketing Program Manager, IBM Canada
- James Nicholson, Senior Product Manager, Surface, Microsoft Canada
- Paul Barber, CEO, Prophix Software Inc.
What We Learned
- Reaching prospects is one thing, keeping them engaged is another – relevant content is key
- Make it easy for customers and prospects to share your info. Social media integration is the way to do it
- Outbound marketing is not declining –rather it’s evolving and is becoming more closely integrated with inbound
- Like any marketing activity, the target market should dictate what inbound marketing methods work best. Analyze and understand your market
What is inbound or pull marketing and what does it do?
- It’s a way to attract customers/prospects to come to you. Leverage social media to pull
- Inbound marketing = name acquisition = names in database for continuous nurturing
- Your website content must provide value. Give information they can’t get elsewhere
- Use a tool that offers insight about your website visitors – pages being visited, frequency of visits, etc.
What method of inbound marketing is most effective?
- Inbound Google Adwords, SEO work well but require continuous monitoring for improvement
- Sponsor webinars and include live customer experience
- Blogs increase website traffic. Prospects and customers look for insight and leadership; blogs do this
- Use LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to engage on blogs and allow sharing
- Bottom line, effective inbound marketing is a mix determined by your target market
Should different inbound activities be used to engage existing clients and prospects?
- Ad marketing – “ads that follow you” – are best for prospects
- Blogs are effective for existing clients
- Do lots of data mining. You will have greater success on a smaller targeted list than on a larger acquired list
- Determine who the business decision makers/influencers are; leverage these relationships
How do you measure the ROI of inbound marketing?
- Social media participation and engagement is difficult to measure
- Use marketing analytics to build specific campaigns and attainable targets
- Integrate sales and marketing; work together for messaging and campaigns; use inbound/outbound together
- Understand how prospects find you – where did they come from and how did they get to you?
- Conduct market research
- Understand external marketing spend and track continuously
- Understand the challenges with ROI systems such as Eloqua, Extract, Salesforce – they need to interact
What outbound marketing have you stopped so that you can do more inbound? What outbound marketing activity is most effective that you are still doing?
- Not seeing a decrease in outbound but rather more integration between inbound and outbound
- Profiling continues to be key; follow up on prospects getting to landing page
- Integrate social media in all activities
- Outbound is not going away but is more sophisticated; re-visit outbound tactics often
- The volume of emails are frustrating; subject heading and sender are key
- Pick up the phone; know who you want to talk to
What social media activities are most effective? How do you ensure consistent social media participation and engagement with the right individuals? Where are you going to invest?
- LinkedIn is a great conversation starter. It is an effective tool to increase web traffic and to research clients/prospects
- Twitter is effective to increase your/your organization’s following. Must LISTEN to engage
- Support IT engagement
- Know your target market before engaging in social media. For example, for participants at an IT App Dev conference, Twitter is not effective because that target market does not use Twitter
- Share information so others view you as a trusted advisor; then Twitter process/ following begins
- Retweet relevant customer/prospect posts; retweeting their info is important to them
Thanks for involving me in this fabulous session. I learned a lot and really enjoyed the interaction. Looking forward to putting some of the ideas into action.
Hi Johanna, Thanks for joining the panel. We’re getting lots of excellent feedback to the discussion … I know you’ve had a big impact of tech marketing plans in the next quarter. Bob
Another great marketing roundtable, Bob. I thoroughly enjoyed this session on Inbound Marketing. Your panelists shared very interesting, and in some instances eye-opening, ideas with those of us in the audience. I thank them all for their participation, and you and your team for organizing it.