Inbound marketing is the future - because the world wide web is no longer about finding customers, but about being found by them. This can be through useful content, for example, which in turn serves to generate leads. What you need for this is a well-thought-out strategy along the inbound marketing process and a team that has internalized the inbound philosophy. But the right inbound marketing software can also provide significant support on the road to success.
The challenge: inbound marketing combines a variety of marketing disciplines
Inbound marketing includes disciplines such as content marketing (for example through a blog), public relations, social media marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), email marketing and search engine optimization. In order to be able to implement and analyze each of these disciplines in the best possible way, there are various software tools that have been developed specifically for content marketing, social media & co. These tools are important for gaining an insight into the individual disciplines and thus keeping an eye on the performance of the respective channel.
The content management system
In order to run a blog or an entire website, you need the right platform for your needs - a system with which you can set up and maintain the content of your site and/or blog intuitively and (almost) without any programming knowledge. Mark's tip: Think about the requirements you have for such a platform in advance - what criteria must be met in any case? And does the CMS offer you enough freedom to develop your site over time?
Social media management
Anyone who is anyone is also represented on social media. Depending on your target group, this can quickly add up: Facebook, Twitter, Xing, Instagram - all these channels need to be maintained regularly. After all, old posts and unanswered comments and inquiries are a definite no-go - quite a lot of work! Special social media publishing tools help you to plan and publish several channels from one platform. Monitoring functions help you to always have an overview of what moves your community and what is circulating about you on the social web.
Email marketing
Those believed to be dead live longer - and so email marketing is still a popular method of attracting potential customers or developing existing customers. Of course, this requires a powerful software tool that allows you to create emails and newsletters quickly and easily, keep your contact database up to date and measure the success of your email campaigns.
Search engine optimization
If you produce targeted content, you should not do without an SEO tool. Because if you want your content to have an impact on the findability of your site on the Internet, it is essential to know how you can optimize it for search engines.
A colorful software bouquet
As you can see, if you want to carry out effective inbound marketing, there are many tools that can help you. And the list goes on: CRM, sales tools, support tools - they all offer you comprehensive functionalities in their respective areas of specialization. That's quite a lot!
The more disciplines there are in the company, the more tools are used in order to optimally play out and analyze the individual measures. This can quickly make inbound marketing confusing and time-consuming. The results from the analyses are not automatically bundled, but have to be compiled manually. A task that costs your team a lot of time. Numerous individual solutions also mean that there is no view of the big picture and the overall ROI is difficult to measure. But what is the alternative?
The jack of all trades: complete inbound marketing software solutions
In contrast to inbound marketing tools that can only be used for individual disciplines, complete solutions cover the entire inbound marketing process - from content planning and creation to distribution via blog, social media and email through to evaluation. The advantage: the functions and data are bundled in one place. Platforms no longer have to be switched and analysis data no longer has to be laboriously compiled and evaluated by hand. Another advantage for your employees: they no longer have to familiarize themselves with each tool, but can work with a single solution.
The example of the HubSpot marketing and sales platform illustrates how to work with such an all-rounder: The software solution can be used to create websites and landing pages, among other things, without any programming knowledge. The blog and social media channels are also managed centrally. At the same time, all analysis data is collected in one place, simplifying the holistic evaluation of inbound marketing campaigns. The result is a comprehensive marketing hub - a hub from which all inbound marketing activities originate and where all measurable data from them converge.
The impact on sales can thus be clearly identified and optimizations can be made at any time if necessary. By integrating additional sales and CRM solutions, customer interactions with the company can be tracked and the results of the various measures can be analyzed as a whole. The entire marketing and sales funnel becomes transparent.
Do all-in-one solutions change the structure of the company?
By dispensing with individual inbound marketing tools and bundling the individual disciplines on one platform, the structures in the company can also change.
In principle, all-rounders enable faster and more efficient work. Teams or departments, especially marketing and sales, grow closer together, perhaps even blur or at least become more networked. In addition, the IT structures in the company are also changing. Instead of hosting and supporting numerous individual applications with countless logins, IT can be significantly simplified. This also reduces the workload for IT staff.
Our conclusion: it depends on your needs
What is preferable? A comprehensive marketing stack or an all-round talent? On the one hand, this depends on how comprehensively you use inbound marketing. Are you just starting out and want to get to grips with content marketing, social media and the like? Then it might make sense to "get a taste" of various tools in order to gradually find out for yourself
a) Which methods actually work for your target group
b) What you expect from the software tools and what you don't.
It is also important to ask yourself: do you value several tools that offer your functions and evaluations down to the smallest detail or would you prefer an all-rounder that also offers some functionalities, but whose main focus is on mapping the entire process, from the first contact to the purchase and beyond?
Whether individual solutions or all-rounders - read our new eBook on b2b lead generation to find out which lead generation steps your tools should definitely cover:
