Local media experts BIA/Kelsey put out a forecast stating that 70% of small to medium size business’ marketing budgets will be allocated to digital marketing mediums by 2015.
These include social media, blogging, mobile, email, search engine optimization, PPC, and customer management. More companies are seeing the light in inbound marketing, and not just online-based businesses. Companies across multiple industries like construction, education, health and wellness, hospitality, legal services, manufacturing, etc., have discovered the low-cost, clever nature of inbound marketing. The strategic move from traditional marketing to inbound marketing spells a success story for some of these B2B companies.
Atlas RFID
Atlas RFID Store is an established B2B eCommerce company specializing on RFID technologies. The company initially struggled with connecting marketing strategies with sales and revenue growth. They knew they were generating leads, but barely got qualified leads. Relying on basic marketing data alone didn’t provide them with more accurate ways to measure the impact of their marketing activities and sales generation. To address this issue, they started launching content offers, and blogged consistently.
Within a year, this new strategy resulted in a 50% revenue growth, 128% increase in customer lifetime value, and a whopping 752% increase (7.5 times their initial number) in leads. New Calls-to-Action (CTA) buttons alone helped increase blog subscribers to 1,933%. The company can now score leads and understand their leads’ interests via page views, social media engagement, and email. James Thrasher, the company’s Digital Marketing Manager, says that the content they create “is now directly responsible for 7% of our overall revenue”.
Finnleo
Finnleo boasts of having the world’s largest and most technologically advanced sauna heater and sauna room manufacturing plants. As a leader in their industry, the company focused marketing efforts on catching more leads and increasing web presence to generate more sales. The problem was, their website did not have the complete SEO work it needed, making it difficult for search engines to find it and list it properly. Also, they barely got leads online, and their inability to track online activities of their visitors hindered them from knowing what kind of changes they needed to address. This all led to slower turnaround times for sales. To turn things around for the better, the company went for a big content push in 2013. Key missing SEO elements were setup properly, a variety of CTA buttons were created to connect to helpful resources, and they started creating content for their blog.
Since then, Finnleo saw a 41% increase in leads, 93% increase in traffic (in Q4 2013 vs. Q4 2012),and 113% increase in web traffic. Finnleo’s Director of PR and Social Media, Craig Lahti, enjoys improving their content for search and says, “I love writing, content creation both makes sense, in terms of becoming a thought leader and respected expert in the field, it naturally creates links and opportunities to have more calls to action.”
Kinvey
Kinvey is a backend service provider for mobile app developers. They develop content with multiple subjects (agencies, developers, enterprises, etc.), making it easier for them to setup and operate their web and mobile apps. The company uses inbound marketing for daily blogging, finding interesting news and industry events, plus sharing this helpful info with their network. They always strive to create relevant and helpful content—the kind that customers want to read but couldn’t find elsewhere. Kinvey’s Director of Inbound Marketing, Brian Whalley, reflects that inbound marketing is useful to them because “it helps show our authority on these subjects” and that “we know a lot about this space and people understand that best when they see our ideas and presentation”.
ShoreTel
ShoreTel, Inc. is a leading provider of “brilliantly simple” business communications solutions with their award-winning all-in-one IP phone system. Before jumping into inbound marketing, the company relied on Eloqua, a marketing automation system they found to be inflexible, slow, and complicated. The limitations of their marketing tools slowed down their ability to execute more ideal strategies. When the company switched to inbound marketing using an all-in-one marketing platform, they yielded a 36% increase in leads, 60% increase in organic search traffic, and 110% increase in qualified leads. ShoreTel’s Senior Manager of Search & Analytics, Michael Freeman is confident that the switch has paid off and gushes that he can execute his marketing campaigns more quickly. He says, “The fewer tools I have to use, the better off I am.”