Producing good content, making it easy for prospects to find, and using content to build relationships over time is what inbound marketing is all about.

And it makes sense, because chances are your leads have become immune to marketing messaging and they're doing their own research and educating themselves on every version of your solution in the marketplace. Nearly all B2B buyers initiate their buying process through online search, and nearly all of the resulting visitors land on your website by clicking on organic search results.

So, adding inbound marketing to your marketing strategy is great for building top-of-funnel leads.

However, taking this seemingly simple approach isn't as easy as it seems. Inbound marketing is more than just building a strategy and expecting leads to come. It's hard work to create content, optimize it for search engines, "socialize" it, and then capture all the resulting visitors when they come to your website.

With so much on marketers' plate already, they need tools to help them with their inbound marketing efforts, such as...

• Marketing automation
• SEO audits
• Social capabilities
• Website tracking

With those platforms in place, marketers can maximize their efforts. How? Well, we know that the vast majority of leads never convert into sales, and lack of lead nurturing is a common cause of poor performance. And, although inbound marketing builds leads, it's the job of those marketing tools to then jump in where inbound marketing steps back.

Inbound marketing creates new, powerful opportunities to build stronger relationships with your target audience. The results may not always be immediate, but with the right tools in place, the effort will ultimately pay off by turning those relationships into sales.

This video from Salesfusion's Marketing Minutes Video Series provides an overview of how to incorporate marketing tools to make the most out of your inbound marketing efforts.