Inbound Marketing is not just a Marketing topic
Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 8:20 am
3. Inbound Marketing is not just a Marketing topic
Inbound Marketing is a misleading term because it naturally makes you think that it is a marketing-only topic.
The first two lessons I presented to you demonstrate the opposite, but it is even more global than you think.
So much so that today, we no longer accept working with a company in which the Management is not involved.
Inbound Marketing changes the life of Marketing and the daily life of salespeople. Inbound also impacts Management, human resources, after-sales service, logistics, etc.
I only understood this in 2016. And I had to go through a series of customer frustrations to understand it.
In fact, I noticed that my clients – even if they were generally satisfied – always felt frustration at the same time in my support.
And that's where I discovered the subject of change management.
As I said in the introduction, Inbound is not just a Digital Marketing strategy. It is above all a iceland email list profound transformation of the company's commercial development.
Transformation means change. And change means support for employees or project failure.
To put it simply, the success of your Inbound Marketing strategy depends directly on your ability to provide educational and reassuring support to employees.
It is also necessary to understand everyone's interests and align timeframes to move forward effectively.
( Dedication to Fanny Bourdon-Bart who allowed me to make this concept a little more concrete
This is why a company that entrusts the reins of its Inbound Marketing strategy to a young graduate alone will often hit a wall.
It's not a question of intelligence or skills. It's simply a question of experience and a good understanding of each person's profession.
(I'm not saying that we shouldn't hire young graduates, on the contrary, I know some very good ones! We just need to put them in the right frame of mind.)
4. Inbound Marketing requires the right tools
Theoretically, you can do Inbound Marketing “ hands-on ”.
I believed it at first.
I remember my last experience as an employee. My employer at the time asked me what I needed to succeed in my missions.
I told him that all I needed was an internet connection.
The punchline is striking but it clearly illustrates the lack of knowledge of Inbound Marketing that I had at the time.
To attract visitors to a website, you can actually do it yourself. There are a whole bunch of free tools that allow you to work on your SEO, for example.
But I learned that things got worse after that:
How to be sure to recover all the Leads generated on all the forms?
How to measure the maturity level of Leads?
How can we effectively fuel their purchasing thinking?
How do I measure the performance of my actions?
And I asked myself dozens of questions like that. For each of them, the answer was a tool.
I was able to realize then that multiplying the tools also meant multiplying the risks.
Juggling between a multitude of tools inevitably leads to errors and wasted time.
We only have to take the subject of reporting, an essential subject for the success of our Inbound Marketing strategy.
How many tools do you use to do your reporting? How many platforms do you connect to?
As I thought about it further, I realized that the salespeople I worked with also used different tools.
Tools I didn't have access to, naturally. Not great for transmitting information.
This is where I became interested in the subject of Marketing Automation .
I discovered complex software that allows Marketing and Sales to work under the same interface.
I then started using Hubspot which allowed me to automate all low value-added tasks, track my Leads and send them the right message at the right time.
If you are interested in the subject, I have written a feedback on my use of Hubspot .
B2B marketing automation guide
5. The most important thing: people before numbers!
So that took me a long time to really understand.
I have always been human-oriented but I found myself getting lost in the numbers and the optimizations that come with them.
As we have seen throughout this article, Inbound Marketing is a strategy in which performance analysis is essential.
The risk here is that you will rely solely on figures to define your actions and implement them.
When I started Inbound in 2010, I went by feeling since I had no experience. I was authentic but not always effective.
Then over the years, I started to analyze everything and optimize my actions based on my performance.
I stopped what wasn't working, that's cool.
I over-optimized what worked, it's cool, and less cool!
Because yes, by doing this, the return on investment is there, but little by little, your audience gets tired of it.
And there, you risk a drop in the curve. Worse, you will cause confusion among your customers and prospects who will no longer recognize your DNA.
It reminds me of my mother and cooking
My mother is the type to put on a plate "all the good stuff" and/or "the good stuff because it's expensive"
Taken one by one, the ingredients are good, but all together, the plate is no longer coherent.
You know what I mean? The famous plate of pasta with rice and nuggets
Anyway, I digress again and the article is coming to an end.
In conclusion
I hope that this article has helped you understand the complexity and also the interest of the Inbound Marketing strategy.
Ultimately, Inbound is just a term, but what lies behind it is a profound and exciting digital transformation.
Humans are at the center of everything and it is essential, in my opinion, to constantly question ourselves.
Inbound Marketing is a misleading term because it naturally makes you think that it is a marketing-only topic.
The first two lessons I presented to you demonstrate the opposite, but it is even more global than you think.
So much so that today, we no longer accept working with a company in which the Management is not involved.
Inbound Marketing changes the life of Marketing and the daily life of salespeople. Inbound also impacts Management, human resources, after-sales service, logistics, etc.
I only understood this in 2016. And I had to go through a series of customer frustrations to understand it.
In fact, I noticed that my clients – even if they were generally satisfied – always felt frustration at the same time in my support.
And that's where I discovered the subject of change management.
As I said in the introduction, Inbound is not just a Digital Marketing strategy. It is above all a iceland email list profound transformation of the company's commercial development.
Transformation means change. And change means support for employees or project failure.
To put it simply, the success of your Inbound Marketing strategy depends directly on your ability to provide educational and reassuring support to employees.
It is also necessary to understand everyone's interests and align timeframes to move forward effectively.
( Dedication to Fanny Bourdon-Bart who allowed me to make this concept a little more concrete
This is why a company that entrusts the reins of its Inbound Marketing strategy to a young graduate alone will often hit a wall.
It's not a question of intelligence or skills. It's simply a question of experience and a good understanding of each person's profession.
(I'm not saying that we shouldn't hire young graduates, on the contrary, I know some very good ones! We just need to put them in the right frame of mind.)
4. Inbound Marketing requires the right tools
Theoretically, you can do Inbound Marketing “ hands-on ”.
I believed it at first.
I remember my last experience as an employee. My employer at the time asked me what I needed to succeed in my missions.
I told him that all I needed was an internet connection.
The punchline is striking but it clearly illustrates the lack of knowledge of Inbound Marketing that I had at the time.
To attract visitors to a website, you can actually do it yourself. There are a whole bunch of free tools that allow you to work on your SEO, for example.
But I learned that things got worse after that:
How to be sure to recover all the Leads generated on all the forms?
How to measure the maturity level of Leads?
How can we effectively fuel their purchasing thinking?
How do I measure the performance of my actions?
And I asked myself dozens of questions like that. For each of them, the answer was a tool.
I was able to realize then that multiplying the tools also meant multiplying the risks.
Juggling between a multitude of tools inevitably leads to errors and wasted time.
We only have to take the subject of reporting, an essential subject for the success of our Inbound Marketing strategy.
How many tools do you use to do your reporting? How many platforms do you connect to?
As I thought about it further, I realized that the salespeople I worked with also used different tools.
Tools I didn't have access to, naturally. Not great for transmitting information.
This is where I became interested in the subject of Marketing Automation .
I discovered complex software that allows Marketing and Sales to work under the same interface.
I then started using Hubspot which allowed me to automate all low value-added tasks, track my Leads and send them the right message at the right time.
If you are interested in the subject, I have written a feedback on my use of Hubspot .
B2B marketing automation guide
5. The most important thing: people before numbers!
So that took me a long time to really understand.
I have always been human-oriented but I found myself getting lost in the numbers and the optimizations that come with them.
As we have seen throughout this article, Inbound Marketing is a strategy in which performance analysis is essential.
The risk here is that you will rely solely on figures to define your actions and implement them.
When I started Inbound in 2010, I went by feeling since I had no experience. I was authentic but not always effective.
Then over the years, I started to analyze everything and optimize my actions based on my performance.
I stopped what wasn't working, that's cool.
I over-optimized what worked, it's cool, and less cool!
Because yes, by doing this, the return on investment is there, but little by little, your audience gets tired of it.
And there, you risk a drop in the curve. Worse, you will cause confusion among your customers and prospects who will no longer recognize your DNA.
It reminds me of my mother and cooking
My mother is the type to put on a plate "all the good stuff" and/or "the good stuff because it's expensive"
Taken one by one, the ingredients are good, but all together, the plate is no longer coherent.
You know what I mean? The famous plate of pasta with rice and nuggets
Anyway, I digress again and the article is coming to an end.
In conclusion
I hope that this article has helped you understand the complexity and also the interest of the Inbound Marketing strategy.
Ultimately, Inbound is just a term, but what lies behind it is a profound and exciting digital transformation.
Humans are at the center of everything and it is essential, in my opinion, to constantly question ourselves.