Learning from your peers is one of the best ways to see if you should get started with inbound marketing, or whether you're on the right path to building a solid lead generation strategy

That's why we started the "5 Questions With..." series. In today's edition, we get to hear from Mark Zimmer, Owner of Zimmer Radio, Inc., out of Joplin, Missouri. 

It’s easy to put inbound marketing and outbound tactics into two completely separate buckets. We’ve got online lead generation, content marketing, blogging, thought leadership, lead nurturing, SEO, and organic social media that fall under the umbrella of inbound marketing. While TV and radio ads, database marketing, cold-calling, digital ads, paid search, and sponsorships fall under outbound. However, what I’ve come to believe is that neither is as strong on its own as it would be if integrated with the other.

You see, “Together we stand, divided we fall,” is a great patriotic motto but it is also very applicable to marketing and sales tactics.

In 2015 (yes, three years ago!), I wrote a blog post titled, “3 Things Every Media Company Needs to Do in 2015,” and it was pretty popular. I consider myself uniquely qualified to write about this topic because I spent the first half of my career selling advertising at a media company and the second half (so far) consulting media companies on their B2B marketing, lead generation, and sales enablement needs.  

As inbound marketers, we work really hard to generate leads for our salespeople. We labor away at content revisions, review analytics and trends, optimize for SEO, schedule tweets and posts, and do everything in our power to get qualified visitors to the site to ultimately convert into leads. Whew! It’s exhausting to even think about it sometimes… the amount of work that an average marketer puts into their inbound marketing program.

Creating compelling B2B content is only half the battle when it comes to a solid content marketing strategy for your business. While your content must be grammatically correct, educational, formatted properly, and a good representation of your brand, it must also be strategically created following proven best practices that most inbound marketers follow. These tactics are what help ensure your content isn’t just interesting or nice to read, but ultimately driving prospects closer to doing business with you and taking some kind of action or next step.

When it comes to developing a strategic marketing plan or sales process, one of the first things we recommend any company to do is to get a clear and accurate understanding of their customers and prospects. What’s key here is that this profile (commonly called a Target or Buyer Persona) is based on research, not assumptions. Which means you’ll need to conduct some actual research (or hire a company like LeadG2 to do it for you). The most effective way of doing this is with a mix of online surveys and live interviews. The surveys allow for a large sampling size, while the interviews allow for a deeper dive and further understanding. You can dive a little deeper into what that target persona survey process might look like here, but for the sake of this article we’ll be focusing on what it is exactly that your Target Persona should tell you about your B2B prospects so that you can have better and smarter marketing, content, and sales conversations.

I recently had a call with a prospect who is thinking about working with our team at LeadG2 for their B2B inbound marketing development. They are talking to a few different inbound marketing agencies, and had some really thoughtful and insightful questions to ask us. Personally, I appreciate someone who wants to ask the tough questions and get a better feel for how an agency works and what makes them stand apart from their competition.

Choosing the right inbound marketing agency (or any agency for that matter) isn’t something an organization should take lightly, as there are a lot of really great options out there (especially when it comes to HubSpot partners). However, not all agencies are created equal—and even ones who are equally effective might not be the right fit for your business.

So, I’m going to assume you’ve narrowed it down to some of the top inbound marketing agencies around. Then, how do you decide between Awesome Inbound Agency A and Awesome Inbound Agency B, and so on? When they all have successful and happy clients, a positive track record, a strong portfolio, and passionate employees? What sets them apart?

At LeadG2 and our parent company, The Center for Sales Strategy, we use the HubSpot CRM to manage our sales pipeline and activity. We also provide full customization, set-up, and training on the HubSpot CRM for our clients. Coming from a media sales background myself, I’ve seen my fair share of CRMs being rolled out, and ultimately never effectively used internally. This is why I love working with media companies today and helping them simplify the process of choosing, setting up, and using a CRM with the HubSpot CRM. 

While no CRM (or really any software tool) is perfect—we personally think the HubSpot CRM is at the top of the list and provides unique benefits that other CRMs can’t deliver on. This is why I’ve developed a list of what I believe to be the top eight reasons media companies will love (and do love!) the HubSpot CRM.

Creating compelling, strategic premium content as part of your lead generation strategy is only half the battle. The next—sometimes overlooked—step involves the promotion of your content across a variety of channels including both inbound and outbound methodologies. This article is meant to give you a comprehensive overview of the top places you should be promoting your premium content offers in order to drive prospects to the corresponding landing page with a form. While every campaign may not include all of these elements, the more you can incorporate into your plan, the more potential buyers you will reach with your offer.

It’s likely that you know at least a little bit about each of these methodologies, but let’s start by taking a closer look at what the difference is between each before diving into how well they can work together.