Inbound marketing is one of the most popular revenue-generating strategies for B2B firms. When done well, inbound marketing turns your website visitors into prospects, and hopefully into customers.
If you want to reap the rewards of inbound marketing, you need to be knowledgeable about the tactics that help drive people to your site, including SEO, social media and email marketing. Once you start attracting visitors, you need to keep them and convert them with your skills around quality content, forms,
lead nurture cadences and tools that help you identify, measure and communicate with your prospects.
Mastering inbound marketing requires most every tool in your marketing toolbox.
In this episode of B2B Nation, we dive into inbound marketing with Andrea Moxham, founder of
Horseshoe & Co. Andrea is an inbound marketing expert who specializes in helping clients use HubSpot to grow their revenue and turn their site visitors into customers.
Among the topics we cover in this episode are content, forms, the gating of assets, social media, website experience, chatbots and more.
Podcast highlights
1:36
Mike Pastore: How do you define a “lead magnet?”
Andrea Moxham: You know, it’s funny we even still use this term, as marketers. I think it’s just such a backwards way to think about a marketing strategy. I guess, in essence, a lead magnet is really anything you’re providing to a user in exchange for their contact information to get in touch with them later on. I think the definition of a lead magnet definitely has room to improve, but I think, technically, that’s the way I frame it. It’s anything that you’re giving away in exchange for someone’s email address, essentially.
2:30
Andrea Moxham: The reason why [lead magnet] is such a backwards way to think about inbound marketing is because it’s so marketer-driven and not customer-driven. And… if you’re not new to inbound marketing, then you know that the entirety of that strategy is putting that focus on the end user, the customer. And even calling it a lead magnet… it sounds like “I’m just going to create anything in exchange to get your information.” It really has nothing to do with the value you’re providing.
10:04
Mike Pastore: What do people get wrong about inbound marketing?
Andrea Moxham: I think, primarily, and this is a challenge we see with every client we work with, is not giving clear opportunities to convert. And it doesn’t just boil down to… burying forms on your website, but even cross-channel. So you could be blogging and podcasting and engaging on social media and generating all of this awareness and bringing people to your website. But if you’re not giving them the opportunity to give you their contact information or to have a conversation with you, that’s on you. That’s ultimately why I think a lot of inbound strategies fail.
Burying forms is definitely a common denominator in these inbound mistakes. If you’ve got one form hidden on your Contact Us page, someone’s probably not going to click as soon as they land on your website… they want to browse around. Depending on the channel they came in, they want to see what you do and what you offer before just clicking the Contact Us page. So while they’re browsing, give them the opportunity to convert. If they see something that they’re interested in, whether it’s a piece of content or they want to subscribe to get “More helpful tips like this…” give them that opportunity. And make sure it’s super clear. I think that’s one thing a lot of businesses miss out on.
The other [mistake]… is not using a cross-channel inbound strategy… Let’s say you put a lot of focus on SEO and blogging, we know that’s not enough. We know that you need to be showing up on other platforms because you need to be showing up where your ideal customers are spending time. If that’s social media, if that’s LinkedIn, you need to be spending time on LinkedIn and using it to cross-promote everything that you’re doing in your inbound strategy, to make sure that you are approach inbound in a more cohesive strategy rather than putting all of your eggs in one basket and going after one of these tactics. 
