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Good marketing is all about balance.
The right mix of inbound and outbound methods for your audience will keep a steady stream of leads and repeat customers flowing. But it can be difficult to find that balance in business-to-business (B2B) industries, where sales cycles last much longer than in the business-to-consumer (B2C) business world.
So, we teamed up with Growth Operations Firm to discover successful inbound and outbound B2B growth strategies. Together, we ran a survey and Benchmark Group to see what works in 2024. You can still join the partnered Benchmark Group to anonymously compare your HubSpot leads data as a manufacturing and professional service company with $10M to $250M in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
This blog post will examine the results from the survey and Benchmark Group, broken down into these categories:
The Growth Metrics Benchmark Group for High-Achieving Manufacturing and Professional Service Companies lets manufacturing and professional service companies with an ARR of $10M to $250M compare their HubSpot performance. Growth Operations Firm hosts this group to give these companies benchmarks to compare their HubSpot Marketing and HubSpot CRM metrics to.
The group currently has enough data for companies to compare their new leads in HubSpot Marketing. According to July 2024 data from 278 contributors, participants had a median number of 141.5 new leads for the month. But top performers in that group had a median of 647 new leads that month, showing plenty of room for growth.
120 companies from a variety of backgrounds took our survey on B2B growth methods. Let’s dig more into these backgrounds to see what part of the B2B industry they represent.
Just over half – 56.67% – of respondents work in their company’s marketing department, meaning a lot of the perspectives in this survey come from the marketing side of things.
The companies involved in this survey tend to be smaller, with more than half having 50 or fewer employees.
Many of the companies we surveyed have experience in their industries. Most of them have more than four years of operation, and an impressive 37.50% have more than ten years of operation.
What inbound and outbound strategies do B2B businesses use in 2024, and how well does each method work? We explored these questions in the closed-ended section of our survey.
Covering both inbound and outbound growth in this survey begs the question of which method is more effective. It seems that our respondents notice the most leads and conversions from inbound marketing, with 40.2% stating they get the best performance from inbound methods. You’ll also see that 31% got results from an equal mix of inbound and outbound tactics.
You can also see the impact of inbound marketing on B2B when we go into individual channels. Search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and email marketing – three of the most popular inbound methods – were the top three channels for return on investment (ROI).
Inbound efforts also improved respondents’ sales processes. When we asked about the impact of marketing strategies on sales metrics like deals closed, content marketing, SEO, email marketing, and social media marketing were often the top contenders.
Now that we know that inbound tactics tend to bring more growth for the companies in this survey, what strategies go into those tactics?
When we asked respondents about their primary goal for inbound marketing, more than 65% stated they want to generate quality leads.
Going a little deeper, the specific inbound tactics that contribute most to respondents’ growth are SEO and content marketing. Conversely, more than a third of respondents stated they don’t use webinars or influencer marketing at all.
According to survey respondents, the top factors contributing to their inbound success are content quality, audience targeting, and SEO performance.
Even though inbound came out on top for B2B businesses, plenty of the companies we surveyed count on outbound efforts, too. Let’s see how they approach outbound marketing.
Respondents have the same top goal for outbound marketing as they do for inbound marketing – lead generation (43.68%). But in outbound’s case, driving sales is the second highest priority, with about a quarter considering it their primary goal.
Digging into the growth potential for specific tactics, cold email and paid advertising contribute the most to these companies’ growth.
In outbound marketing, our respondents consider target audience segmentation, message relevance, and message personalization the factors that contribute most to their growth.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a popular outbound marketing tactic. The companies we surveyed mainly count on personalized content (65.12%), target account selection (60.47%), and marketing and sales alignment (53.49%) as best practices to follow in their ABM campaigns.
Survey respondents turn to some of the best-known tools in ABM to execute their strategies. 36% use Apollo.io, 34% use HubSpot ABM Features, 26% use Zoominfo, and 24% use Salesforce.
The ABM strategies and tools respondents prefer can take time and investment. Such dedicated strategies and advanced tools suggest that the companies we surveyed target high-value accounts through a focused and strategic approach.
With so many tactics available, challenges with executing them can come up.
The companies we surveyed most often have challenges related to identifying and prioritizing target accounts, aligning sales and marketing, and personalizing at scale.
But while respondents have these troubles, they previously mentioned seeing positive ROI on many marketing activities. This trend suggests that while you have hurdles to face in your inbound and outbound efforts, you can still succeed with the right mix of marketing tactics.
While we covered what tactics work for B2B businesses on a broad level in our survey’s closed-ended questions, we can still go deeper by asking for individual stories. So, we also asked respondents to share success stories to see what tactics work best for them.
Here are three strategies that came up in those stories:
Some respondents backed up content’s effectiveness in driving growth. Specifically, developing content carefully targeted toward their audience brought in more leads, traffic, and conversions.
“One pivotal strategy that fueled the substantial growth of our B2B business involved harnessing the power of targeted inbound content,” says David Reid of VEM Group. “By creating highly relevant and valuable content tailored to the pain points and interests of our target audience, we established ourselves as thought leaders in the industry. This not only attracted organic traffic but also positioned us favorably in the minds of potential clients.”
Reid continues, “Through comprehensive SEO optimization and leveraging various content formats like blog posts, whitepapers, and webinars, we managed to establish a robust online presence. The inbound approach not only generated quality leads but also facilitated a smoother transition through the sales funnel, resulting in a notable increase in conversion rates.”
At First Aid at Work Course, Derek Bruce also found success in targeted content. Bruce says, “We initiated an all-encompassing strategy for inbound marketing; its core? Crafting and sharing stellar, insightful content across diverse platforms — including blogs, whitepapers, and webinars. Our approach positioned us not only as thought leaders in workplace safety but also noticeably boosted our online presence—thereby directing a consistent flow of leads to our business.”
The key was a focus on the audience’s needs. “Our consistent focus on clients’ pain points and challenges fostered trust and built lasting relationships; notably, our ‘First Aid Readiness’ campaign—offering a complimentary on-site assessment of first aid preparedness—achieved profound audience resonance through targeted email marketing and social media, culminating in a 45% surge in qualified leads and a 30% increase in course enrollments within half a year,” Bruce says.
SEO goes deeper than on-page optimization. While you can optimize a page as much as possible, your website’s code and outside links also play a role. These respondents went all-in on SEO to attract new leads and conversions.
The SEO Works practiced what they preach – good SEO – and improved their exposure and conversion. Let Alex Myers explain:
“Our search engine optimisation has helped us to effectively reach new audiences and increase our number of good quality leads. Utilising market-leading technical, content, and link-building practices, we have developed a high number of top 3 rankings in key commercial terms. By coupling this with effective brand building on other channels to help lead nurturing and effective linking of sales and marketing, we have also increased closure rate on these leads, leading to a very strong ROI and impressive business growth.”
Alex Myers
Head of Marketing at The SEO Works
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Related reading: Conduct a DIY Technical SEO Audit with These 17 Questions | Databox
The Digital Hitmen team invested in good backlinks to get better leads and rankings. Brad Russell says, “We’ve always relied on SEO marketing strategies to facilitate our brand awareness. One of them that has been successful is the strategy of gaining backlinks for our brand. We utilized sources like HARO, Featured, and Qwoted to seize the attention of journalists and blog writers.”
Russell continues, “Many of our brand’s executives gave unique and pertinent answers to their queries. When they posted our answers on media outlets with high DR rates, we could highlight our expertise to a large base of target clients. By clicking the backlinks, they could directly reach the website of our brand. Besides raising the data traffic of our website, it helped us to attain many new clients. We could also heighten our website’s SERP rankings.”
You can learn more about getting backlinks for your brand in our Link Building 101 guide. Digital Hitmen’s strategy is just one way to build links.
One respondent brought up a less-talked-about but still crucial tactic in inbound marketing: how they share pricing. While you’ll find all sorts of opinions about pricing transparency out there, keeping your pricing clear can build a smoother funnel for your company.
Here’s how Laura Grant and the BlueSky Solutions team approach pricing to drive growth:
“Most potential customers (even those that have received a ‘cold call’) will want to visit your website, check the credibility of the brand, and ensure the price they are being offered is competitive. For this reason, we have tried to be as transparent as we can when it comes to pricing at different wholesale volumes. Displaying the prices in an easily comprehensible format has decreased bounce rates, and increased our order volume and conversion rates.”
Laura Grant
Senior Marketing Manager at Bluesky Solutions
Now that we know what worked in the past, it’s time to apply that knowledge to future strategies. We also asked survey participants about their future inbound and outbound plans and their reasoning behind them to guide B2B businesses. These three tactics appeared in their answers:
Two respondents want to focus on quality over quantity in their inbound marketing for their B2B businesses moving forward.
For Foundation Collective’s Laura Brooks, this principle extends to client relationships:
“I have found that the most important factor in identifying success is to align expectations with clients. This means I should only be saying yes to work where I truly feel I can make an impact and my output will be valued. This also means getting tight on my targeting and not being afraid to say no if it’s not a perfect fit for work style or expectations.”
Laura Brooks
Co-Founder & Principal Consultant at Foundation Collective
Brooks wants to expand sustainably in other ways, too. “When considering expansion, I need to first ensure that we are appropriately staffed to take on the extra workload and scale. From there, my focus will be on quality, not quantity. I believe we can best do this through content marketing because it’s a way to educate and demonstrate our value. From there, we can better attract leads who understand our mission and can see how we fit their overall strategy,” Brooks says.
After trying high-scale outbound tactics, Sunny Arora and the Broadcast2World team are turning to quality-focused inbound marketing. “So outbound is getting difficult with time; Gmail has become strict with bulk emailing in [the last] year. But we have realised if you are looking for consistent growth, inbound marketing is going to be the key.”
Arora continues, “When we started with inbound, we were only focussing on building good quality content, but we analysed that without link building, it’s not giving us enough results. So now we are focussing our energies on link-building strategies as well. Especially creating linkable assets that are unique and original to our company.”
A few respondents plan on combining their inbound and outbound efforts to reach a variety of people in their audiences. This approach will help them diversify their channels and find leads they wouldn’t be able to by sticking to just inbound or outbound.
“Looking ahead, our company plans to continue investing in both inbound and outbound marketing strategies,” says VEM Medical’s Derrick Hathaway. “The rationale behind this decision lies in the recognition of the complementary nature of these approaches. Inbound strategies, such as content marketing and SEO, continue to be instrumental in attracting qualified leads organically. On the other hand, outbound strategies, like targeted email campaigns and personalized outreach, allow us to actively engage with potential clients.”
Here’s how VEM Medical will tackle this approach: “The allocation of resources will be influenced by the evolving dynamics of our industry and the specific needs of our target audience. We aim to strike a balance between digital channels and traditional methods, ensuring a comprehensive and adaptable marketing strategy. This balanced approach is crucial to reaching diverse segments of our market effectively.”
C Shakhawat Sultan explains how Code Rex will invest in inbound and outbound equally to maximize its reach:
“We will have an equal distribution of resources on both inbound and outbound marketing. We will work on SEO, content marketing, and video promotion, while also conducting email marketing, lead generation, and sales campaigns. At the same time, we will resort to collaborations with other companies, influencer partnerships, and affiliate promotions. They both will contribute to the overall growth and reach of our products.”
According to Diana Zheng, Stallion Express also wants to mix inbound and outbound tactics moving forward. Zheng says, “We’ll continue to invest in inbound strategies, especially SEO and content creation, as the importance of organic search continues to grow. Our goal is to improve online discoverability and offer valuable resources to prospective clients.”
Zheng continues, “We’ll also continue to refine our outbound efforts, providing personalized communication to reach and engage our target audience. The allocation of resources is driven by the need to maintain a balanced approach, combining digital and traditional channels for a holistic and effective marketing mix.”
One company we surveyed plans on using AI data mining to improve its inbound and outbound efforts.
Tom Vota of Gotomyerp says, “We planned to invest in AI tools for robust advanced data mining. The data mining will help us to hyper-personalize our emails. It will help us convert our leads into customers. We will also be able to retain our old customers.”
While popular inbound strategies like SEO and content marketing reign supreme in B2B, outbound tactics like cold email and ABM can reach parts of your audience you could miss with inbound. Finding the best methods for your team will take careful monitoring of your data to see where you get traction.
One way to improve your B2B growth is to watch how your metrics compare to others in your industry. If you work for a manufacturing or professional service company with $10M to $250M in ARR, you can join Growth Metrics Benchmark Group for High-Achieving Manufacturing and Professional Service Companies. There, you can anonymously share your data to get group-wide HubSpot performance trends.
It’s free – you just need a Databox account with the relevant metrics linked.
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Melissa King is a freelance writer who helps B2B SaaS companies spread the word about their products through engaging content. Outside of the content marketing world, she writes about video games. Check out her work at melissakingfreelance.com.
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