Can Inbound and Outbound Marketing Co-Exist? (Notes from conference panel)

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Last week, I was on a fun panel at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference called " Can Inbound and Outbound Marketing Co-Exist?".  (Moderated by Brent Leary, the panel also included Michelle Burtchell from Constant Contact and Mike Lewis from Awareness.)  Summarized below are my answers to some of the questions.

Definition of Inbound Marketing

Turning your website into a magnet for prospects, ways to get them into the funnel, move them along the sales funnel – and accomplishing all this through content (and amplified via social media and SEO). (Largely plagiarized from HubSpot.)

Compare and Contrast IM vs. OM

• Inbound: low cost per lead; takes time to get a serious volume of traffic, subscribers, leads; requires commitment and investment by team to create content; but is an “annuity” – traffic and leads that continue to flow;
• Outbound: faster “0 to 60” to get going, higher cost per lead, lower conversion rates, better for targeting accounts;

Does Inbound Replace, or Enhance Outbound?

Inbound is a huge enhancement to outbound, but you (probably) need both.  Depending on the business model, dial can be at 80/20 or 20/80 (and anything in between).  I say “probably”  because there’s certainly some freemium models that generate enough inbound leads to not require much outbound activity; or the cost-per-lead constraints are such that outbound leads might not be profitable.

Currently, for us ~80% of our sales reps’ activity is taken up by outbound (a dozen reps need a lot of leads to fill up their day!) Though we’re seeing the inbound/outbound activity ratio move up as more inbound leads come in).  And interestingly, >50% of the business is coming from inbound marketing – those are inherently better leads.

Compare Inbound Marketing at a Large Enterprise vs. SMB

• Enterprise Marketing Team: With deeper pockets, you can have a bigger team, with more specialization.  Some might be focused on blogging; others on video production; others on creating white papers / eBooks; events; etc.   With a larger marketing team, you have more of an established base (of content, of programs, of knowledge, etc.) - at the same time, there’s more inertia.
• At a smaller company or start-up, there’s less of a foundation, you need to learn quickly and refine.  But the good news is that you can, and it’s easier than at a large firm.  Though it’s all the more important to have the right team members – can’t afford to make mistakes when you only have 2-3 people in Marketing.  And, they need to be comfortable wearing multiple hats.
• But, whether at a large or small company - basics are the same: figure out what the learning and purchasing process is from the customer’s perspective, and design an experience to facilitate that.

How Does Inbound Change Marketing Team’s Make-up?

• “Traditional” marketing teams: activities and deliverables included direct mail, events, collateral.  As a result, skills were around copywriting, events, creative messaging pros, collateral production, direct marketing campaigns;
• “Inbound” marketing teams: Because everything starts from useful content, first and foremost you need content creators – passionate domain experts that can help educate your prospects. Once you have the content, you’re ready to promote it via social media, so you need evangelists and networkers – folks that can do their magic both in person (cocktail parties and tradeshows) and online (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).  And finally, you need analytical optimization-focused “geeks” – to understand where success is coming from (so you can invest more there), and what to tweak (to improve marketing ROI).  Here's a great post on this from the HubSpot team.

How Does Inbound Impact Customer Relationship Management?

Increasingly, the prospect/customer line is blurred.  For example, for “freemium” products and inbound marketing :  there’s a natural progression from trying the free product, to becoming a prospect, then making a 1st purchase order, a 2nd purchase order, etc.  With our software, folks running a data center first download the  Community Edition, then purchase our premium product for a single cluster, and 3-6 months later may purchase it to help manage the entire data center.  The marketing team is responsible for delivering a smooth nurturing process that takes the customer along this journey.

Impact of IM on Marketing/Sales Relationship

Sales and Marketing should hopefully be joined at the hip – this goes without saying. For example:

1. Conduct regular reviews of key metrics – activities (leads, calls, demos, etc.) by lead sources (various inbound programs, events, tradeshows, etc. as well as outbound cold-call lists, etc.) – and results (opportunities, deals)
2. Jointly develop a sales/marketing “service level agreement.”  What constitutes a “sales-qualified lead” that Marketing endeavors to deliver (e.g., “someone who download a product trial, attended a webinar, and watched 3 online videos)”, and what Sales will do with it (call within 1 business day).  After all, some leads are much hotter than others, in terms of both conversion rate and half-life.
3. Define a nurturing process: there’s several key groups that all need to be nurtured in their own way – customers, prospects, leads, and cold-call suspects.  So working with Sales, Marketing ought to define a “curriculum” that – over the course of 6+ months and multiple touch points, the prospect is touched via some activity, and is presented with some relevant content, with an opportunity to take an action along the way (attend an event, a webinar, download an eBook, see a demo, etc.)

ROI

If you’re not doing inbound marketing, you’re trying to clap with one hand.  Or put another way, you’re missing easily half the opportunities out there, and are bearing a much higher cost per sale than you need to be.  If half your leads are NOT from inbound marketing activities – it’s a missed opportunity.  If you’re not nurturing customers throughout the sales cycle – that’s lost productivity, and represents extra (and expensive) work that your Sales team winds up taking on.

Lessons Learned

• Content creation is key to drive inbound marketing.  Use the blog as a “content laboratory” – see what people are interested in, what drives traffic, comments, interest.  Then build out the most interesting content in variety of ways – eBooks, webinars, videos, tutorials, etc.
• Integration of sales/marketing systems is key – need to engineer this just like you engineer your product.
• “Thermostats, not thermometers” – don’t measure things just to know the metrics; do something with the data – take action, adjust something about your process, the campaigns, the business.