The inbound marketing model epitomized by companies like HubSpot and Marketo is straightforward:
- You’re offered an incentive, like a webinar or download.
- You fill out a form with your contact details.
- Submitting the form to “register for a webinar” or “download your guide” adds you to their system.
- The system starts sending you automated emails from a “lead nurturing” or “drip” campaign.
- Once you’ve triggered enough signals to pass some threshold, you’ll get a phone call from a salesperson.
Three-ish years ago I was a big fan of this approach. It was based on intent, it qualified leads, and — best of all — it was automated.
But now I’m jaded. Jaded because my inbox is filling up with offers of B2B guides and tools and tips and tricks and secrets and every friggin’ landing page is a ten-field census form.
First name. Last name. Title. Company. Size of company. Industry. Phone number + extension. City. Country. Province or state.
Really?
At first I thought it was just a bad practice, companies not knowing what they were doing. Forgiveable. Yet I keep getting more and more of these in my inbox every week.
So, two things here:
- Progressive profiling is a thing and yet you’re asking me to fill all of this out at once? Stop it.
- Your five point guide is a glorified blog post + sales pitch. Heck it’d probably be more use as a blog post.
Just sayin’.
