The State of Inbound: PPC & Inbound Aren’t Such Strange Bedfellows After All

HubSpot’s The State of Inbound 2016 report is out, and it was well worth the wait. This is the inbound marketing software brand’s eighth annual iteration of the report and this year, they’ve come up with a staggering 127 pages of insights gleaned from surveys of over 4,500 marketing spanning B2B, B2C and SMB.

There’s something in the report for everyone, from budgets to tech solutions, shifting priorities, resource allocation and more.

But what I found most interesting was the marketing industry’s current perspective on the state of PPC.

Overall, marketers felt that online paid search is the second most overrated tactic in all of marketing.

I found this shocking, to be honest. Done properly, PPC is one of the most effective inbound tactics going.

So where’s the disconnect?

Personally, I think marketers are still a bit lost as to how to use PPC for inbound in ways that are crazy effective instead of creepy.

Take remarketing, for starters. Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) allow you to tailor your ads to specific pockets of consumers, based on whether users have visited your website or app and what they did while they were there.

RLSA campaigns are insanely effective because the people you’re advertising to are already familiar with your brand. People used to sign up for email marketing lists, and you would then start a campaign to gradually nurture them towards conversion.

That relies on them to take that first step of connecting with you, though.

RLSA lets you get in front of them again and again with personalized, targeted content and messaging, reinforcing your brand and nurturing them to convert.

And it works.

Check out this analysis we did recently of RLSA vs non-RLSA campaigns:

RLSA campaigns completely kick ass with:

● 2x the click-through rate

● Half the cost per click

● ⅓ the cost of conversion

Sounds incredible, right? So why isn’t everyone on to this?

RLSA definitely has a learning curve, and some of it might be counterintuitive. For example, it doesn’t help produce volume — it’s actually going to dramatically slash your volume. RLSA isn’t going to add to your total conversions; it’s just basically segmenting out your return vs. new visitors.

So at first blow, if that’s what you’re hoping for, it’s going to let you down.

What you need to do is exponentially increase the size of your target pool, for as inexpensively as possible. And for that, we use a second crazy effective inbound PPC tactic: using paid social ads to promote your best content.

Mastering social ads for content promotion is probably one of the most effective but least understood or talked about inbound tactics going.

It allows you to get your best content in front of massive groups of consumers using crazy precise targeting options based on demographics, offline purchases, expressed interests, location and more.

This is a whole topic unto itself, and I’ve written extensively on the top social media advertising hacks and how to better leverage PPC for social content promotion, so check out those linked articles to get started.

In short, I don’t disagree with the findings of HubSpot’s The State of Inbound 2016 report (which you can download direct from HubSpot here) — clearly, marketers are feeling that PPC is overrated as an inbound tactic.

But I think this points to an amazing opportunity for savvy marketers who can think outside of the conventional wisdom and put the combined power of social PPC and RLSA to work.

As with so many things in life, you can only get so far if you’re focusing on the exact same things that are working for the majority of people. In every industry, there’s an opportunity to break out and stand apart from the pack.

Maybe 2017 will be your year to do just that.

You can download the State of Inbound report for yourself — free — and let me know what insights you gain.

Follow me on Twitter for more helpful marketing tips, tricks and hacks. And this fall, be sure to join me in Boston for HubSpot’s epic INBOUND conference, where I’ll be sharing a growth hacking session with The Top 10 Facebook and Twitter Content Promotion Hacks of All Time on Nov 9 at 10:30 am.

About The Author

Larry Kim is the CEO of Mobile Monkey and founder of WordStream. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.