The following is a guest post by Kirsten Knipp, Director of Product Evangelism at HubSpot. Kirsten will be presenting on “Modernizing your business marketing efforts with inbound marketing” at our B2B Marketing Europe event in December in Berlin (see the programme for further information or have a look at the other speakers). You can find her on Twitter as @kirstenpetra or on Linkedin, as well as read more blog postings by her and her colleagues at blog.hubspot.com.
Can Inbound Marketing Deliver 60% Lower Cost per Lead in Europe?
Companies in North America are generating leads at 60% lower cost per lead using inbound marketing to cut through the clutter and deliver valuable, optimized content to potential customers. Can the same inbound marketing concepts apply in Europe with such a broad variety of languages, cultures and online marketing regulations?
Source: HubSpot ROI Study
Yes. In fact, Inbound Marketing has the potential to be even more effective in Europe for a few key reasons:
- European digital privacy regulations make opt-in marketing tactics even more attractive
- Diverse audiences seek tailored content, a key component of inbound marketing
- Social media, a core element of inbound, is on the rise with strong preferences for Facebook
First, European digital privacy regulations are much stricter than those in the US, especially when it comes to email marketing and the tracking of users response to campaigns. Inbound marketing is, by definition, about attracting audiences to your sites and to your remarkable content using blogs, SEO and social media, rather than pushing content or offers at your target market. These types of opt-in tactics can reduce dependencies on email lists and other highly regulated channels. Inbound marketing relies on creating remarkable content that people will value and share, and ensuring that it is available not only on a company’s site, but also via a range of social media channels like SlideShare, FaceBook and more.
This content has the chance to reach more potential customers via their preferred channels, helping marketers grow their reach and ultimately the flow of traffic back to their sites without stumbling on the many regulations governing outbound marketing. Additionally, because site visitors are arriving based on specific keywords of interest, they are more likely to be highly qualified prospects. Getting the right, opt-in visitors to your site will increase conversion yields further down the pipeline.
Second, because inbound emphasizes frequent creation of unique content, it gives marketers a platform to provide targeted information to Europe’s diverse audiences. Successful inbound marketers use the idea of the ‘long-tail keyword’ to drive content creation and website optimization. This means targeting content about more specific or niche topics rather than very broad ones so that a site can rank in search engines for a very specific query. The result is that prospects looking for a specific answer or solution to their need are more likely to find what they seek on the site of an inbound marketer with content that is unique and tailored to them.
An example might be a search for mobile phone service plans; a prospect might search
- “mobile phone service plans”
- then “mobile phone service plans London”
- and then “all you can eat mobile phone service plans London”
With each subsequent search, employing a ‘longer-tail keyword phrase’, the prospect will get fewer but more relevant results. Inbound marketers excel at topping the results for long tail searches because they have a lot of highly targeted content. When dealing with diverse audiences and ideas, more remarkable, optimized content equates to more chances to get found online. In fact, inbound marketing studies show that companies that blog more frequently, are more likely to attract leads and sales to their business.
Source: HubSpot ROI Study
Last, after a very fragmented beginning for social media in Europe, with geographical divergence in the popularity of varied platforms like Bebo, MySpace and ASmallWorld, Facebook is emerging as a leader across the continent. With almost 100 million European users, Facebook is the number one social network #1 in the UK, ranks as the second most visited site in France, after Google, and is growing in Germany and further east. That is great news for inbound marketers who adopt social media as a key engagement channel. Instead of trying to be present on all possible social media platforms, European marketers can start with Facebook and one or two local or vertically specialized social networks relevant to their audience.
By focusing on social media efforts, marketers can experiment and learn without large investments. Additionally, Facebook provides relatively easy to use and inexpensive ways to observe and listen to prospects and customers, share content and even test out potential marketing campaigns and concepts. Adopting inbound marketing to share remarkable content on dominant social channels will bolster European marketers’ ROI.
While a number of marketing concepts haven’t crossed the proverbial pond with much success, inbound marketing, growing rapidly in the US since 2006, may be the one that does. Some European-based companies are already practicing elements of inbound while others have yet to implement this lower cost, higher return marketing methodology. With inbound, it seems that some of the elements that make marketing in the two regions different are the very reasons inbound can succeed in Europe and deliver leads at 60% lower cost.
To meet Kirsten and learn more about Inbound Marketing, sign up for the Next Generations Marketing conference on December 1-2, 2010 in Berlin!
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The following is a guest post by Madlen Nicolaus 
