Marketing at a corporate level has evolved quite a bit over recent months and years. No longer are massive email blasts the primary way for companies to connect with potential new users. GDPR data privacy rules not withstanding, you’ll do better developing new sales leads by having them come to you for help.

So, how do you get potential customers to come to you? One answer is by developing content online that users want, and giving it to them for free. The content can pretty much anything that’s easy to distribute and consume online.

Inbound marketing content types include:

• Documents –  This includes best practices guides, thought leadership documents, white papers, resource guides and anything of value to your targeted persona.
• Webcasts & Videos – Many people prefer video to reading, so having a reasonably sized collection of short videos, complete webcasts, training videos and more can be of great interest to your market.
• Tools – A well-executed return on investment (ROI) calculator is always popular with sales teams. One that is executed to calculate the ROI on your general type of solution (NOT just your own solution) can lead many to check out your products before others in the market. This is only one of many tools worth considering for inbound interest.
• Free/Freemium Offers – It is fairly standard in the world of software to have a demo or trial product for new users. It’s even better to give your leads a fully free version of your software. This can be specific tool that’s targeted at a small problem in the same industry as your main solution. Get them using your free product daily and when they need your bigger solution, you’ll be their first stop.

While you might say “I’ve got content! I’ll just slap all of my data sheets and sales flyers online and call it done!” I’d recommend caution with this approach. The best way to get people interested is to offer them help with their current problems and not hit them with a hard sales pitch.

For example, while at Extensis I created a Server-Based Font Management Best Practices Guide. This document was designed to help those who lead creative teams, IT managers, CTOs and business leaders to understand how to manage fonts for their team. It is not a hard sales pitch about the product, but a guide that helps potential customers understand the issues surrounding font management and to help with planning.

A document like this can be considered “high value” where you can put it behind a form. The information required for the form can be very basic, such as an email, and then you can put the person into a nurture program where you give them more information with each new piece of content. You also have the opportunity to progressively profile your lead by asking for small pieces of information with each new piece of content. So when your lead has reached a position where they are ready for a conversation, you have enough information to to best understand their needs, and how you can best meet them.

These are just a few inbound tactics that I have used in the past. There are of course an almost infinite variety of options available for your team.

Want to talk more about Inbound Marketing? Shoot me a note!