We’ve all heard and read the boilerplate pitches heralding the many benefits of inbound marketing. Hell, we’ve even written on the business benefits of inbound marketing ourselves. Much like ours, these articles say the same, undeniably true, yet overused things…
It’s easier on your budget.
It generates more leads.
It helps your brand stay relevant in an increasingly consumer-driven marketplace.
We get it. These benefits may seem nice and are certainly great attention grabbers, but many executives still look at the inbound methodology with skepticism, especially when their overarching benefits sound too good to be true or are just simply overused.
While it is definitely true that a well-thought out and properly executed inbound marketing campaign can help an organization get more from their marketing budget while generating more leads and better connecting with their target market, there are much greater benefits to implementing inbound marketing that I believe executives would like as much, if not more. At the very least, they should know about them so here we go:
Inbound Marketing Can Connect Your Digital & Traditional Marketing Channels
While many will preach that inbound marketing can successfully drive results for a company as a standalone campaign, it is most effective when it and the connected marketing automation systems work to integrate all other areas of your marketing in one place. Not always on the top list of features promoted, marketing automation systems provide marketing departments the opportunity to not only track and attribute their inbound marketing activities and results within the platform but also those of other digital and even traditional marketing campaigns. By connecting the end results for all campaigns in one place, marketing can focus on creating more integrated campaigns that better reach and speak to their target market while still collecting, sorting and attributing results across the various channels.
Inbound Marketing Can Align Marketing & Sales While Establishing a System of Accountability
Inbound marketing and marketing automation’s connectivity doesn’t stop just within the marketing department. One of the greatest benefits of inbound marketing in many executives’ opinions is its ability to align both the marketing and sales departments through an integrated system of accountability.
While inbound marketing and marketing automation systems are relatively new, CRM platforms have been around a little bit longer, meaning that many organizations are likely to already have a Salesforce, Zoho or Microsoft Dynamics system in place for their sales teams. As inbound marketing has progressed over the years and marketing automation platforms like HubSpot, Marketo and Oracle Marketing Cloud (Previously Eloqua) have become more common, the need to connect both these tools and their departments has increased. Through integrations, marketing automation and CRM platforms can finally connect the marketing and sales departments, sharing information between the two and offering a 360 degree view of the marketing and sales landscape while also providing insight into what is and isn’t working between both departments.
Properly established marketing automation and CRM integrations have made it possible for organizations to assign and attribute ROI to various marketing and sales sources in a much simpler fashion, reducing the amount of ROI black holes from marketing campaigns and silencing the excuses of both the marketing and sales departments when it comes to missed projections.
