[VIDEO] INBOUND MARKETING IN ACTION

Inbound is making an impact on businesses all over the world.

Let's look at what one company has done with inbound marketing and what effective inbound strategies look like in action.

Work Meter is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company. The company is made up of a team of expert IT professionals and has established itself in the public, technology, banking, insurance, and engineering sectors, among many others. They have more than 15,000 users and have become the leading productivity software in Spain.

Work Meter's directors realized they had to improve their marketing strategy if they wanted to maintain that success, since the traditional methods they used weren't working the way they used to.

The marketing team once relied too heavily on telemarketing and cold calling to generate sales leads. Over time, they saw a considerable decline in lead generation and could no longer sustain their distribution channel program or their direct sales.

Lacking a strong digital presence and lacking authority in search engines, their website and blog posts weren't delivering the desired results, especially for generating new leads.

When they did generate leads, they had a hard time educating them about the services they and their business partners could offer.

Fortunately, they understood the value of Inbound Marketing and began expanding their online presence, focusing on one overall goal: Generate more leads so they could reach the goals they had set.

The marketing team started by developing their Buyer Personas and created a detailed profile that closely represented the people they wanted to reach. Raúl, the business owner. By understanding their customers' main characteristics (demographics, role, business problems), the team was able to create content, emails, and offers that were better targeted to their audience.

After their research, here's the Buyer Persona they created.

Raúl the business owner is usually in his 40s. He runs a small company that he started after a few years of working in the industry. He's married, has a couple of kids, and drives a modest car. He has some kind of graduate degree. He's been running his company for a little over 3 years, and it has been growing thanks to his dedication and his industry contacts.

Raúl is reliable, a determined individual, and a natural leader. He has a talent for business. He has very high aspirations for his business and can spot good business opportunities to keep growing his own. Cash flow can be a limitation on his potential growth, and lenders don't help much when it comes to providing funding for growth.

He cares a lot about making sure his small staff is productive and wants to make the most of the few resources he has so he can grow faster.

Raúl also feels a bit overwhelmed because he has to be and do everything in the company, but he likes being his own boss.

Imagine yourself as a member of Work Meter's Marketing team. Do you have a better idea of who you're trying to reach in order to make a sale? Do you have an idea of the different types of content you could create to help this buyer persona solve their problems and overcome their challenges?

That's the purpose of having a story for your Buyer Persona! You can get inside your buyer's mind and understand them much better.

Next, the Work Meter team worked on spreading the content they offered on their website and created free ebooks and better blog posts, sharing experiences and tips so small business owners could improve productivity in their companies and grow more.

Let's look at some different titles from these blog posts:

• Infographic: What is our real productivity at work?
• Keys to good corporate communication
• Tricks to motivate and guide your sales team toward productivity

Do you think these blog posts would interest their Buyer Persona?

Yes!

Remember that in Raúl's story, he cares a lot about making the most of the resources he has, especially his small staff. All of these blog posts speak directly to Work Meter's buyer persona.

As a result of implementing inbound marketing, Work Meter was able to increase traffic to its website by 200% over a 6-month period. They have all the tools in place to easily generate more leads from their website, and leads have increased 9.6X.

With lead management and nurturing, they've improved their sales-ready leads by 153% and have a 1:3 close rate compared with the 1:20 they had before implementing inbound marketing. Sounds like it worked, right?

Every industry is different. These 6 months of inbound marketing are what has worked best for Work Meter, but your inbound strategy will be different, and it will be yours.

Congratulations! You've finished the first module toward taking the Inbound certification exam; you'll find the link in this video's description, but there's still a lot to learn.

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