The three main aspects of B2B Marketing 

Inbound Marketing 

These are the inbound marketing, the outbound marketing and the account-based marketing. The best known and most widespread B2B marketing approach is inbound marketing. Here, the aim is to generate attention from potential customers with expressive information on the company. This should support the process of the purchase decision. Inbound marketing is therefore about building trust with the customer and getting the customer to decide to buy from the company on their own.

Outbound Marketing 

Unlike inbound marketing, outbound marketing involves the company addressing potential B2B customers directly. In other words, the company approaches the customer aggressively and does so with as many measures as possible to win the customer. In this process, other sub-disciplines of marketing are used to attract the potential customer. These methods contain for example, advertising mails, banner advertisement, posters or also Postwurfsendungen. Here, the focus is that the potential customer gets the information in mass and the company is fixed in his memory. However, the path to a purchase decision is often very short.

Account-based Marketing 

The third method of customer acquisition is account-based marketing, also known as ABM. This measure is not aimed at the masses, but at smaller potential customer groups. Thus, with this method, it can happen that each potential customer is addressed individually and personally. Here, the IP addresses of the other companies are used, so the companies can be addressed individually. For this purpose, dynamic websites are usually used, which automatically adapt to the customer and the characteristics.

Advantages of Inbound Marketing 

It is obvious that helpful content provides higher added value for the customer than, for example, an advertising banner, which may not attract his attention at all or, in the worst case, may even get on his nerves. The big advantage is that inbound marketing is many times more sustainable and shows its effect in the long term.

– Inbound marketing is also interesting for smaller companies, which usually have smaller marketing budgets, e.g. for start-ups. Even someone with a small budget can in principle generate just as many leads and traffic as a financially strong company with a large marketing department.

– The ROI (return on investment) is much higher with inbound marketing than with conventional marketing methods, so that increasing sales can be expected in the long term.

– Inbound marketing activities have a trust-building effect, unlike many outbound measures. Content marketing in particular can bind people even more strongly to a brand or a company. Ideally, this creates a relationship. Inbound marketing thus makes it easier for you to enter into a dialog with the customer, get to know him or her, and in this way find out what the target group needs or what its wishes are.

Outbound Marketing 

• – Outbound marketing is disruption-based (= push marketing).
  – The company finds the customers
  – One-dimensional communication
  – Content does not promise added value for customers
•  

Inbound Marketing 

• – Inbound marketing is permission-based (= pull marketing)
  – Customers find the company
  – Two-dimensional communication
  – Content promises added value for customers