5 Ways B2B Inbound Marketing Works for Tech Companies

Both startups and established technology companies face challenges when it comes to marketing. There's no silver bullet that can solve the diverse issues faced by technology companies as a whole, but ManoByte firmly believes that Business to Buisiness inbound marketing can be an extremely helpful tool to overcome some of these issues.

Keep reading to find out how B2B inbound marketing is right for your tech company:

1. It Lets You Sell Before You Sell

B2B inbound marketing works on the premise of the buyer's journey. Every prospect is grouped into a buyer persona that represents one type of your ideal customer. Those personas move from awareness of your company, to consideration, to decision. This isn't a new concept. The difference is that in B2B sales, most of the awareness and consideration phases of the journey happen without a buyer every contacting someone on your sales team. According to Lori Wizdo, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, B2B "buyers might be anywhere from two-thirds to 90% of the way through their journey before they reach out to the vendor." With inbound marketing, you're with those buyers, talking to them and educating them with your content, long before they need to make contact. You're selling to them before they let you sell to them and that can be extremely helpful in reaching those ideal customers and closing deals with them.

2. Inbound Saves on Marketing Costs

In technology companies, particularly bootstrapped startups, money isn't always easy to come by. Even though you know marketing is essential, you might not have the cash to spend on traditional avenues. B2B inbound marketing can actually save you cash compared with traditional outbound measures. Sending emails, building landing pages, and creating content can be a lot more cost effective - and can earn better returns and lower cost per customer - than outbound marketing tactics. In fact, HubSpot found that "inbound marketing-dominated organizations experience a 61% lower cost per lead than organizations that predominately leverage outbound marketing."

3. Segmentation is Easy

According to Black Enterprise, one of the top reasons that high tech companies fail is a lack of market focus. They target channels instead of individuals. Inbound marketing is built upon the idea that every lead that comes in should be organized into its associated buyer persona. This makes it simple to tailor your marketing message to the specific market you are trying to reach.

4. Gets Everyone Involved

Marketing teams from all types of companies are often butting heads with other divisions in the company. Marketing of any type works best when it's built into every piece of the company. B2B inbound marketing can support these efforts by letting everyone on the team get involved. With inbound marketing, content doesn't and shouldn't just come from marketers. It can come from product developers, executives, and even the sales team. Everyone has a chance to contribute and watch the process work, which will only build more support for the marketing team's efforts.

5. Use Your Problem-Solving Skills

Most technology companies get started because they want to solve a problem. Good news: inbound marketing is all about solving problems. You might think that because you're marketing to other business you have to be completely data driven, Powerpoint ready, and buttoned up. But even in B2B marketing, you're talking to people and people have problems. No matter who you are in the tech company hierarchy, you want to solve problems and you can do that with your inbound content. Solve someone's probably and they'll want to give you their company's business.

B2B inbound marketing can and does work for technology companies. If you're ready to give it a chance, it's time to download our guide to inbound marketing and take the next step towards watching your tech business grow.

This post was originally created in 2014, but has been edited and updated for accuracy.