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Outbound marketing, with diminishing returns, is on its way out today. Customers have become smarter over the years and no longer value, or trust, the pushy and intrusive ways of traditional marketing. Marketing has evolved into helping potential buyers find products and services as well as creating a demand for those products and services. Marketing is now about addressing customer needs on multiple levels.

Aptly called 'inbound marketing', the focus is on converting casual visitors into prospects, and then into loyal customers using less interruptive and more personalised messages. Inbound marketing nurtures and engages customers throughout the sales cycle by supplying relevant information and targeted messaging. This means replacing television ads with videos that prospective customers are looking for, replacing display ads with business blogs that people would yearn to read, and replacing cold calling with useful content so that potential customers can get in touch for more information.

By automating and customising lead nurturing, giving rich and instant insights into a prospect's preferences and needs, and by cutting down significantly on the expenses involved, inbound marketing has transformed the spray and pray of traditional marketing into more successes for each campaign, reduced cost per lead, and improved ROMI (Return On Marketing Investment).

With inbound marketing, B2B enterprises can increase brand awareness organically, build preference by engaging with buyers who self-qualify (buyers seeking sellers), convert them into leads over a period of time, convert leads into revenue-generating customers and then eventually lead to post-purchase engagement.

The 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report by HubSpot throws light on how inbound marketing is gaining traction with enterprises. According to the report, 58 per cent of companies will implement inbound marketing strategies in 2013 and about 48 per cent of marketers are geared up to spend more on inbound marketing this year. The report also finds that inbound marketing is estimated to deliver 54 per cent more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound methods. When viewed from the cost perspective, twice as many marketers believe the average cost per lead generated by inbound marketing is less when compared to outbound marketing.

A major IT company based in the US uses its Web site extensively to generate quality leads. The content and design of the Web site is innovative. There are multiple calls-to-action (CTAs) placed across the Web site, inviting visitors to experience the company's solutions. The messaging is conveyed through rich media content, social media content and a multitude of content that supplies them with relevant information and aids the purchase decision process.

The ideal way for enterprises to enhance lead quality and improve conversion rates is to create buyer profiles or personae, and then build different campaigns that are tailored to each buyer category. A key pillar of effective inbound marketing is creating and distributing relevant and shareable content. The messaging must resonate well with customer needs. A good way to start is to build a messaging matrix that is mapped to the needs and decision drivers of the target audience.

Targeted messaging includes providing a piece of content, service or incentive that entices Web site traffic to become a lead or customer. Lead nurturing strategies such as targeted email campaigns, blog campaigns and engagement through social media help generate interest about the enterprise and build relationships with prospects.

The next important aspect of inbound marketing is analysing the results. The top metrics used for measuring success include analysing organic traffic on the Web site, tracking leads, measuring social media engagement scores, lead generation by content asset and source, and conversion through each marketing channel.

Though unique to a plan, KPIs (key performance indicators) are based on factors such as tools leveraged, time and money invested and the stage of the marketing cycle. (See chart on left listing KPIs for the four primary types of inbound marketing techniques.)

Inbound marketing strategy is the future of marketing. To formulate an effective strategy for a B2B enterprise, it is important to master the basics of inbound marketing. A thorough understanding makes it easier to push a lead further into the sales funnel and eventually convert it into a customer.