Inbound marketing allows software publishers to generate leads by attracting them directly to their brand. This marketing technique is increasingly replacing the traditionally more commercial methods of B2B publishers. How does it differ from content marketing, which also aims to attract potential customers by writing web content optimized for search engines? Our answer in 5 points: motivation, interaction, socialization, automation and collaboration.
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The end of outbound marketing?
Before developing an answer to the question posed, it is important to understand that, in just a few years, outbound marketing has given rise to practices that are partly counterproductive for software publishers. Indeed, outbound marketing is above all advertising marketing via more or less omnidirectional paid channels, such as television kazakhstan whatsapp data commercials. But in the era of online advertising, Internet users are over-indulged in poorly targeted transactional marketing messages to which they pay less and less attention.
What's more, outbound marketing budgets can quickly become very high for advertisers, without their performance being measurable and therefore without their profitability being in line with objectives. Traffic managers, those responsible for generating web traffic on a site and managing outbound campaigns - such as Google Adsense, to name a classic lever - are well aware of this difficulty and do not deny it.
This situation was further aggravated in 2015, especially for software publishers, with the massive arrival of Adblock technologies, which prevent the display of advertising banners on websites.
The arrival of content marketing
Content marketing developed from this observation. Content marketing encompasses a number of terms that are broadly equivalent, such as branded content. Branded content is promotional content about a brand, to improve its visibility and reputation, rather than about a topic related to a company department. The aim in both cases is to produce impactful content with real added value, in line with web users' queries on search engines, in order to generate leads.
White papers, case studies and company blogs have been appearing on the web for almost 10 years. Content marketing integrates the communication logic of a brand or service into a relational marketing approach in the media, rather than being directly transactional. Content marketing is therefore well suited to B2B software publishers seeking inbound contacts through communication close to their raison d'être and their know-how.
However, over the last 4 years or so, content marketing has reached its limits, and more and more software publishers are writing content... As a result, inbound marketing has quickly become the logical evolution of content marketing.
5 differences with inbound marketing
Inbound marketing also seeks to attract the attention of potential customers by offering them quality content that provides them with a real service; but its field of action is much broader.
In fact, inbound marketing manages the entire life cycle of a potential customer and the value chain of a software publisher. All areas of communication (product, marketing and sales) are affected, from a visitor's first contact with a brand, to purchase and renewal.
Inbound marketing therefore encompasses all the marketing and sales processes of a brand : producing content becomes as important as sharing it on social media or reusing it in relational emails. Motivation, interaction, socialisation, automation and collaboration are the 5 fundamental elements that differentiate content marketing from inbound marketing.
1) Commitment to the goal
Inbound marketing combines quality content with the use of incentives , i.e. rewards and actions that motivate Internet users to provide information about their profile and expectations. Sending a white paper to a known email address, an eBook that can be consulted online after a "LinkedIn connect" or even an infographic shared on a Facebook profile, with data retrieval in the process. The possibilities are endless.