New research from Ascend2 sheds some light on how B2B marketers can perhaps make that process a little easier. The firm surveyed B2B marketers worldwide in September on issues such as which online forms drive the most conversions.

It turns out the answer is the offer of a content download. Two-thirds of those polled said content downloads generated leads with the best conversion rates, more than webinar registration (45%), demo requests (37%), surveys and polls (26%) and even free trials.

The ideal scenario for a company is having maximum domain authority with little to no content surplus within its industry. The worst-case scenario for a company is having minimal domain authority and maximum content surplus within its industry. In this scenario marketers can’t just rely on inbound marketing, but must use earned and paid media, too. Thus, increasing the amount of time, energy, effort and budget required to gain the visibility necessary to be successful online.

In this scenario it’s much more likely that a company’s industry is in a state of content surplus. This is where the amount of content on the internet for the industry exceeds the average domain authority for said industry. It also means that there is more content on the internet than people looking for that content to solve their problems.

Industries come and go every day in this world. As a result, there will always be industries in a state of content deficit or surplus. We must have a strategy that taps into owned, earned and paid media – combining both inbound and outbound. Since most of inbound marketing content is considered top-funnel, helpful and “non-salesy,” our efforts should rely on those channels and methodologies that help drive visibility to said content.

See how email has been transformed from an outbound to an inbound tactic, helping marketers guide prospects and customers, providing education and useful resources all along the customer journey.

"For the most part they do differ.

1. Inbound marketing starts when a visitor looks for your content. An account-based approach requires you to go out into the world and talk to your ideal prospect directly, not wait for them to appear.
2. Typically deal sizes will be larger for ABM than inbound marketing.
3. Despite technological advances, ABM is still limited in scale versus inbound marketing so typically there will be a larger number of deals.

The right approach clearly depends on who your company sells to. Obviously you are a company selling to businesses, but an account-based approach, even one using the latest techniques, does not work if the average lifetime value of your largest clients is small. In this scenario an inbound marketing approach is still the best approach."

"Before you consider throwing your inbound and content marketing strategy calendar out the window, consider the following:

• Your buyers are searching. In the 2014 B2B State of Procurement Study, Accenture found that 94% of B2B buyers did some kind of online research before making a purchase decision.
• Your competition is blogging. Competition is one of the main reasons for a decline in the rate and level of inbound marketing success. Everyone is blogging – making it harder to get noticed. But by cutting yourself out of the picture completely, you’re only guaranteeing you won’t get noticed.
• Lead nurturing is still a must. It takes multiple touches with a brand before someone will hand over their credit card. Over 50% of customer interactions happen over a multi-event, multi-channel journey – emphasizing the importance of being active across multiple channels.
• Brand recognition pays off. Seventy percent of consumers click on “known retailers” first — highlighting the importance of using content publishing, distribution, online advertising, and co-marketing to position your brand as a known industry expert.
• Relevance matters. Of nearly 200 marketers surveyed, 95% identified “better tailoring of content” as a top priority."

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The assumption of inbound marketing is that everything is measurable and trackable in a tidy funnel. But many things that are important in marketing are not measurable – and those that are trackable tend to incorporate bad or incomplete data.

Product marketers took an inbound marketing course, grew pretentious man buns, and rebranded themselves as “growth hackers”. They thought that they could analyse marketing data to determine the precise “buyer journey” and optimise every step along the way.

But human brains do not work that way. Straight lines do not exist in marketing. If you think that our minds process everything linearly and logically, just remember your dreams from last night. As DDB New Zealand stated in the New Zealand Herald earlier this year, the latest research shows that companies need to make brands famous with distinctive advertising and publicity, remember that irrational feelings are more important than logical thoughts, and focus on long-term strategy rather than short-term results.

If you are looking for a way to build your inbound marketing stack, you don't have to worry! This is a real-life case of an inbound marketing stack we built

Your Go-To Business Report for Marketing and Sales Research

Consumer habits are changing … drastically. That's the driving force behind inbound, after all. What your customers want today is different than what they wanted 10 years ago. That means we must change the way we market and sell to match the way people actually want to shop and buy.

Lucky for you, we've been tracking these shifts for the past eight years. Below, you'll find the 2017 State of Inbound report, covering the top challenges and priorities facing marketers and sales reps today, as well as a glimpse into future trends and channels that will soon affect the way we all do business. The inbound journey for marketers, salespeople, and executives alike is just getting started. Together, let's adapt for the age of the buyer — the inbound way.

Spammy Tactic #1. Countdown Timers
Spammy Tactic #2. Autopilot Webinars
Spammy Tactic #3. Overlays

Today, the average decision maker is doing most of his or her buying research online, long before they contact you. In fact, according to a white paper authored by Google and CEB:

“B2B customers reported to being nearly 60% through the sales process before engaging a sales rep, regardless of price point. More accurately, 57% of the sales process just disappeared.” - The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing

So how do you create a comprehensive inbound marketing and sales strategy that will drive your clients’ sales? There are seven core services that your agency needs to provide. In this ebook, we’ll take a comprehensive look at each of them and show you how best to use them to your, and your clients', advantage.

Here are the four things I think every marketer should do next year:

1. Invest in video. Diversify your content playbook to include social + video in addition to text + search.
2. Live in social. We’re not B2B or B2C marketers -- we’re business to human marketers. Humans live in Snapchat, Instagram, Messenger, and a host of other social apps. Find them there.
3. Accelerate your content. Combine content marketing and paid marketing. Repurpose your most successful content for multiple channels and boost it with budget.
4. Automate your buying process. Buyers expect to be able to buy on their timeline with either minimal or no human contact.

The number of solutions and complexity of integrated partners that extend WordPress is pretty amazing. Inbound Brew is a full-service digital marketing, web development, and software development firm, that helped small businesses utilize content marketing to drive engagement and leads. They’ve now published an inbound marketing plugin that provides all the tools necessary to do this – directly from WordPress!

And because of inbound’s popularity, it’s tough even for quality-focused marketers to break through the noise. Inbound isn’t cheap, either. Inbound is designed primarily to attract new customers, which can cost five times more than retaining old ones. 

A targeted combination of inbound and outbound approaches can alleviate the problems of an inbound-only strategy. Take these five steps to make the most of your marketing budget:

1. Know your total addressable market.

2. Build an ideal customer profile.

3. Stop wasting money on automated targeting.

4. Use account-based intelligence to identify targets.

5. Track, measure, optimize, and nurture leads.

Inbound marketing will succeed in doing what it is supposed to (in this case generate enough leads for growth) but you are limited in scope to say when and how and it is unpredictable. This then creates lots of possible problems:

• Lead numbers are good, but heavily skewed by territory meaning reps one month have lots of leads and little the next even if overall sales are great
• You are getting the more saavy, or more progressive low-hanging fruit from inbound. 
• Operations that onboard clients, trainers that show you how to use it and support technicians that are there to hold your hand have to be rostered, budgeted for and hired in line with growth. When you are yo-yoing month-on-month and by territory this cause operational issues and unpredictable workflow to budgeting

Tracking the Future of Inbound Marketing and Sales
HubSpot's 8th Annual Report