Inbound

Marketing
v2.0
A few years ago, we wrote an
eBook on the secrets of inbound
marketing. It outlined some of the
basics of inbound and why it was
an improvement on traditional
marketing methodologies.
But that eBook was written in
2014 when inbound was still a
relatively new concept.
A lot has changed since then.

Donald Trump was elected President of the USA, Leicester City won
the Premier League and the Spice Girls are back. Zig-ahzig-ahh.

Meanwhile, inbound marketing has expanded and evolved. Although

the key principles of inbound remain the same, the methodology is
unrecognisable from what it was in 2014. In this guide, we’ll explore
where inbound marketing is now and some of the most important
techniques your business needs to adopt.

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 02

Contents
Want to skip to a particular section?
Just click on the headings below.

What’s inbound 2.0?

Why inbound? The indisputable stats of inbound marketing

Flywheel - the extended version

Know your persona

Setting goals

Beyond HubSpot

The future of inbound - what lies ahead

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 03

CHAPTER ONE

What’s
inbound 2.0?

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So we’re all on the same page, here’s a very quick
definition from our friends at HubSpot.

“Inbound marketing is a
business methodology
that attracts customers by
creating valuable content and
experiences tailored to them.
While outbound marketing
interrupts your audience
with content they don’t want,
inbound marketing forms
connections they’re looking
for and solves problems they
already have.”

At the core of inbound is the aim of delivering value to customers.

Every blog, social media post and email should be created with
the customer’s needs and pain points in mind. This idea has been
part of inbound since Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah coined
the term in 2005.

It’s almost 15 years since the term inbound marketing started to

be noticed in the corners of websites and search engines, so now
seems a good time to reassess its journey and what’s changed.

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 05

You only need to look at old blogs and videos about
inbound marketing to see how things have changed.
One of the most obvious is the move away from the
traditional funnel towards the new and improved
flywheel (more on that later) which was announced at
INBOUND 18.

Inbound 2.0 is a look at what’s working right now and the future steps
businesses can take to achieve success in saturated markets.in the
long run, that amazing content can help your sales team close more
sales.

We’re 100% inbound marketing

at Digital 22 and we’ve spent the
last six years experimenting,
tweaking, learning and growing
with inbound. We know it works.
Head to the next section for the
statistics that prove it.

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 06

CHAPTER TWO

Why inbound?
The indisputable
stats of inbound
marketing.

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 07

There are so many different
surveys, studies and statistics we
could reference in this section that
highlight just how effective inbound
marketing is.
Here are some of the best.

75%
75% of inbound teams feel that their organisation’s
marketing strategy is effective, compared to only 62%
of outbound marketers.

53%
53% of marketers agreed that they saw a higher ROI
from inbound marketing tactics than outbound.

47%
47% of buyers view at least three to five pieces of
content before deciding to speak to a member of the
sales team.

On average, inbound marketing generates

300%
three times more leads than traditional methods.

61%
Inbound leads cost 61% less on average than similar
outbound alternatives.

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 08

Properly executed inbound marketing is

10x
10x more effective for lead conversion than outbound.

Content marketing leads to triple the leads of

traditional marketing and costs 62% less.
62%
55%
55% of marketers say blog content is their top inbound
marketing priority.

59%
59% of marketers believe that inbound produces higher
quality leads for the sales team.

The average website conversion rate increases

from 6% to 12% with inbound marketing.
12%
The average cost per lead drops 80% after five
months of consistent inbound marketing.
80%
It’s clear from these statistics that marketers
are enjoying the improvements caused by
adopting inbound. More leads, higher ROI and
an increase in conversion rates - inbound
marketing has risen in popularity over the last
few years because businesses simply can’t
ignore these benefits any longer.

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 09

CHAPTER THREE

Flywheel -
the extended
version.

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INBOUND 18 saw the introduction
of the flywheel. If you’ve adopted
inbound marketing at your
business, then it’s likely something
you’re already familiar with.
The idea behind it is fairly straightforward, but it’s
always good to know how to explain it to someone who
might not have a clue what you’re talking about.

Inbound Methodology with Customer Lifecycle

Strangers
Prospects
Customers

Promoters

Basically, a flywheel works by minimising friction and

fully utilising the force it’s put under. When everything is
working as it’s supposed to, it’s a super-efficient way of
harnessing energy.

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 11

So, in practice. We attract consumers to our website and this gets
the flywheel moving. As long as there isn’t much friction between
the inbound marketing content and sales conversions, then there
isn’t a drop in leads and the flywheel keeps spinning.

The flywheel works best when you focus less on closing deals and
more on establishing relationships with customers. Let buyers
engage with you on their terms. They’ll come to you via their
preferred channels and at a time that suits them best.

Once you make a sale, we shouldn’t forget to continue to delight

customers. Customers are good, repeat customers are better
but loyal brand advocates are best. By delighting customers, you
solidify the relationship.

This stage is one of the most neglected by marketers. It’s easy to

focus on the earlier stages and turn our attention elsewhere when
visitors have converted.

If your customers are delighted, they’re more likely to shout about

you to their network or continue to purchase from you again. This
puts more energy into the flywheel via more leads and more sales
happen as a result. Meanwhile, the flywheel keeps spinning and you
drive growth as a result.

So, the flywheel’s stages are attract, engage

and delight. But what does that actually mean
for us marketers? What should we be doing at
these stages? Well…

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Attract
Grab someone’s attention with the answers they’re looking for. Make
it as easy as possible for a user to find this information. The more
obstacles you place in their way, the more likely it is that they’ll head to
your competition for the answers they need.

- Educational blogs -T
 op tips and step-by-step guides

- Infographics - Thought leadership eBooks

- Industry reports, analysis and

stat-heavy pieces

Engage
This is your opportunity to present the user with an answer to a problem
they have. Create content that outlines how you can solve their pain
points and why you and not your competition, are best-placed to help.

- Podcasts. - Technical blogs.

- Webinars. - Downloadable tools

and templates.
- How-to videos.

- Q&A style blogs.

Delight
Exceed a customer’s expectations and ensure they return in the future.
Delightstage content is an opportunity to cement a positive experience
and encourage customers to share their great impression of you with
others.

- Follow-up emails - Feedback surveys

- SMART content - Demo videos

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 The How
So we’ve touched on why inbound marketing is the
right course of action for your business, so let’s focus
on how you can go about doing it. In the past, blogs,
smart content, workflows and landing pages were just
some of the actions marketers took when delivering
effective campaigns.

The Inbound Methodology

The best way to turn strangers into customers and

promoters of your business.

ATTRACT CONVERT CLOSE DELIGHT

Strangers Visitors Leads Customers Promoters

Blog Forms CRM Surveys

Keywords Landing Pages Email Smart Content
Social Publishing Calls-to-action Workflows Social Monitoring

These tactics are still useful today but now there’s so much more marketers
can do to elevate their work and really get the most from inbound. Things
have changed. For example, the above image doesn’t feature some of the
most effective tactics that can be utilised today.

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 14

Inbound video
You don’t need us to tell you how massive video is. 54% of consumers
said that video is their preferred form of content from brands. It’s
difficult to find categorise video as being right at any particular
moment of the buyer’s journey. It’s engaging and useful at all points,
from first contact to post-sale.

Paid social
Social media is likely to already be a key part of your marketing strategy.
But with so many voices shouting across so many different platforms it’s
easy to get lost in the noise and fail to reach your target audience. With
paid search, you can reach the right people to convey your message.

Paid search
With paid search results taking up so much of the results page on
Google, can you really afford not to incorporate it into your campaign.
Falling early in the buyer’s journey stage, it’s a great way of driving
traffic to the right places.

Conversational marketing
Ensure your campaign is working hard 24/7 with a chatbot. This frees
up the marketing team to focus their efforts elsewhere and allows
customers to receive the valuable information they need quickly and
easily. Plus, you can keep an eye on conversations and step in to say
hello if necessary.

Live chat
Live chat is a fast and effective way of delivering real value to your
customers. By simply talking to your customers, you can identify their
pain points and any missed opportunities that your business could be
taking advantage of.

Plus, HubSpot has a bucket load of new apps and tools available that
can accomplish pretty much anything you need. There’s more on
integrations and the HubSpot App Partner Program a little further on.

These are just some of the latest tactics that your business really needs
to be utilising to ensure you’re delivering inbound marketing campaigns
that have reached their full potential. To understand which tactics are
right for your target audience, it might be time to refresh your personas.

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 15

CHAPTER FOUR

Know your
persona

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Are you currently producing content
your personas are looking for? Is it in
a format that your target audience
regularly engages with? If the
answer to either of those questions
is no, then you need to reconsider
your content strategy.

Revisit your personas.

Are they still relevant?
Before you can answer this question, you need to consider your existing
personas. Do they capture your target audience? It doesn’t matter how
good your blogs, videos and podcasts are if the right people aren’t
finding them.

If it’s been a while since you created your personas, then it’s worth
revising them. You need to make sure they fully capture your target
audience and are updated with any new information you might have
discovered about them.

This information will shape not only what you focus your content
marketing efforts on but also where your persona wants to consume it.
Knowing if they prefer podcasts or written content, short-form blogs or
deep-dive pieces and whether they use Twitter or Facebook is all vital.

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Where to focus your content
Follow the tips below so your sales team can get better-qualified leads:

- 83% of women use Facebook compared to just 75% of men.

- 71% of Instagram users are under the age of 35.

- 40% of LinkedIn users visit the site at least once a day.

- 32% of adults have listened to a podcast in the last month.

- 54% of consumers want to watch more video content from a brand or

business they support.

Stats like these show just how important it is to focus your content
distribution in the right direction. With so many different things vying
for our attention online, if you’re posting in the wrong place then your
brand will get lost in the noise.

Consider some of your business’ key engagement metrics. Things like

blog sessions, social media followers and podcast subscribers can
determine where your brand is currently connecting most meaningfully
with your audience.

Are you dedicating time, money and energy on an email newsletter

that no one’s looking at? These resources would be better spent
elsewhere (or on a newsletter that’s engaging, direct and sent at the
right time).

INBOUND MARKETING V2.0 18

What should you do?

Blogs, emails, social posts - analyse everything you’re

currently doing. Are these blogs and posts having the
desired impact with your persona? Some of the key
metrics we mentioned above will provide a good insight
into what’s working but the best thing to do is actually
speak to your audience.

Ask them what they want to see and where they want to see it.
Customers will happily answer a few quick questions if they feel as
though their voice is being heard. Some of the answers you receive
might surprise you and lead you to reevaluate your existing strategy.

One of the key takeaways of this process might be the confirmation

you need to embrace some of the emerging content formats. Videos,
podcasts and chatbots are all relatively new ways of engaging with
your customers. If you aren’t exploring these formats already, then
you’re falling behind the curve.

Customers today want to be able to watch a product review video or

find the information they need from your website quickly via a chatbot.
If they see you aren’t producing videos or podcasts and your website is
difficult to navigate, then they won’t stay loyal to you for long.

Video in particular is a format you just can’t ignore any longer. Brands
of all sizes and from different sectors are showing just how important
video is to inbound marketing. Read our inbound video pillar page now
for tips on getting started with video at your business.

TAKE ME TO THE VIDEO PILLAR PAGE

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CHAPTER FIVE

Setting
goals

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Are you working towards
established goals right now? Did
you hit your targets for the last
quarter? Setting goals is a crucial
part of inbound marketing but it’s
something that many businesses
fail to do effectively.
When setting a goal, make sure it’s SMART. This might be
a term you’ve come across already, perhaps in relation
to self-improvement. Setting SMART goals ensures that
goals are always:

Specific
The more specific your goal, the more focused your work towards it
can be. Vague goals are much harder to find success with as it’s more
difficult to know when you’ve actually achieved it.

Who’s working towards it, what are you looking to achieve and when do
you think it will be completed? There may be smaller key objectives that
need to be met along the way to achieving the goal.

Measurable
Goals should have milestones that can be measured. There needs to be
key metrics that signify how well your business is progressing towards
that goal. Blog views, new leads, profit levels, social media followers -
whatever your goal, find a metric you can measure.

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Attainable
Be honest. Can you achieve the goal you’re setting out? Unrealistic goals
are disheartening for the team and can cause you to lose focus.

If you currently have an email open rate of 10%, then a goal of 15% is
attainable. Setting a goal for an email open rate of 50% isn’t.

Relevant
Are your goals relevant to your business right now? There’s no point in
creating a long-term goal that isn’t useful at the moment.

Don’t set a goal for 5,000 new social media followers if the biggest
challenge facing your business right now is your sales figures. Social
media engagement might be one of many factors you think about to
achieve higher sales but it shouldn’t be the key focus.

Timely
Long-term thinking is good for any business but your goals should be a
little more time-sensitive than that. Giving yourself five years to achieve
something isn’t especially proactive.

Put a deadline on your goal of six months and it’ll give you the
motivation you need to work towards it successfully.

SMART goals work at all levels of the business. Set yourself some goals
to improve your performance at work or speak to the leadership
team about top-level business goals that will drive growth and ensure
everyone is pulling in the same direction.

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CHAPTER SIX

Beyond
HubSpot

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There used to be a time when
inbound marketing just meant
using HubSpot. The innovative
platform did so many of the
things we needed but there were
occasional functionality gaps.
That’s completely different now.

New apps, features and packages allow us to use

HubSpot for so much more now. Whatever you need,
there are apps available on the marketplace that can
help. However, if you’re new to the platform, it can be
quite a lot to get your head around.

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HubSpot App Partner Program
HubSpot knows that your business already relies on
software and systems from a wide range of providers.
That’s why they have the App Partner Program. It was
originally put in place in 2015 and since then it’s grown to
include over 300 different partners.

This image from HubSpot shows just how far-reaching the program is.
When first starting with HubSpot, there’s always a worry that you’ll be
unable to use some of the systems that are really useful. That isn’t the
case thanks to the partnerships HubSpot has with some of the biggest
names in lead generation, video, live chat, content, sales and more.

If you’re already using Drift, AdRoll, Accelo, Seventh Sense, Vidyard or

any of the other software that’s featured in the image, then you can
take advantage of seamless integrations thanks to HubSpot.

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HubSpot App Marketplace
The App Partner Program shows you who HubSpot’s
working with but the App Marketplace is where you go to
get the extras you need. Discover new integrations and
innovative systems all in one place.

Visit the marketplace and find all of the essential information you need
about each integration. Its pricing details, data flow structure and even
demonstration videos can all be accessed quickly and easily from
within the marketplace.

There’s also a really useful filter and search feature that makes it
easier than ever to find the app you’re looking for. Choose from useful
categories that are specifically curated for marketing teams, sales
teams, startups, agencies and more.

Gmail, Outlook, Mailchimp, Zapier, WordPress, Slack and Google Search

Console are just some of the most popular apps that are currently
available on the marketplace.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

The future of
inbound - what
lies ahead?

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We asked some of Digital 22’s
resident inbound experts to think
about what’s coming next. They’ve
seen how the methodology has
changed over the years and witness
the death of the funnel and the
emergence of the flywheel.

Here’s what Digital 22’s Founder and Director Rikki Lear

and Head of Creative Paul Mortimer had to say:

What do you think is working in inbound right now?

Rikki: “Video is working, it has been for a while now but people
are actually starting to do it at scale. Look at LinkedIn, Instagram,
Facebook [and so on] - the posts that get traction have video.
Behind the scenes, you can see the same is true for other mediums
such as landing pages and emails.”

Paul: “A multi-faceted content ecosystem is a must. Using a singular

medium simply isn’t enough. People want to consume video, short-
form content, long-form content, email, events, training courses...
they have multiple content consumption contexts and we need to
cater for them all.”

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What do you think the next big thing is in inbound?
Rikki: “Of the current trends, conversational marketing seems to
have the potential for the biggest impact in the next few years.

“Conversational marketing is using what you know about your

visitors to provide a tailored conversational outlet for them to quickly
get the information they need.

“Many marketing software companies have moved into this space,

such as HubSpot, the key to success with this isn’t technology but
implementation. [It’s about] making sure it genuinely can help the
user get what they need and speak to the right person, rather than it
being another frustration point.”

Paul: “Training courses. But don’t tell anyone.”

Do you see any key turning points in the road ahead?

Rikki: “Google is getting more aggressive on providing zero click
results, i.e. the number of searches they solve themselves rather
than directing people to a website. Most weeks, there is a new tool,
calculator or feature which solves the whole query, keeping people
on Google and reducing organic traffic.

“At some point, the balance will change where Google is a

competitor to a huge amount of companies, rather than the place
leads come from. Depending on your business, this could happen
soon or very far down the road. At this point, you need to be aware of
the possibilities.”

Paul: “Personally, the death of the 1,000-word run of the mill blog very
shortly. It will be replaced by video, short form and long form pieces
only very soon. Why read 1,000 words when a video will tell me the
same level of depth in two mins?

“But people will want to read thousands of words of well researched

and well written prose. Always have, always will.”

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What has been the most significant change in
inbound up to this point and any final thoughts?
Rikki: “The inbound methodology is more than 10 years old. What
is always important to remember is that the tactics under the
methodology can and will change every couple of years.

“But the key message remains the same - find a way to attract
new people to you, help them and give genuine value, provide
opportunities for them to convert at all stages of the buyer’s journey
and use the context you have to help your sales team close.”

Paul: “Topic clusters. It’s changed the planning and formation of

effective content strategy entirely. I kinda miss the days we could
target on a keyword by keyword basis.

“From training in-house marketers this year, what’s key is really

moving the content subject away from your product and right up
to the start of the buyer’s journey. True awareness content is still a
revelation to most inhouse marketers I speak to.

“It’s easy in the inbound agency world to think we’ve reached a

saturation point of knowledge of the methodology but we haven’t.

“One key tip would be for our readers to not be afraid to talk about
stuff that just helps their persona rather than talks about their
product.”

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Book a call

Interested in getting the absolute most from HubSpot and

inbound marketing as a whole? Speak to a member of our
team today to see how we can help you to unleash the
potential of inbound marketing.

We’re a Diamond HubSpot Partner, the #1 HubSpot agency

in the UK and able to offer everything your business could
ever need from under one roof.

GET IN TOUCH

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