Jen Spencer is the Vice President of Sales & Marketing for SmartBug Media, a leading growth marketing agency in inbound marketing, digital strategy, design, marketing automation, and PR, that assists businesses in generating leads, increasing awareness, and building brand loyalty. For more information or to contact Jen directly you can send her an email or give her a call at (949) 236-6448.Show NotesInbound marketing is about buyers and buyer behavior.  The power in the sales process has shifted from being with the salesperson to being with the buyer.The concept of inbound marketing is that you first identify who your ideal customer is and then put content out there and promote it in places where your ideal customer is listening. This is intended to drive people back to your website and convert them to leads.This isn’t just a numbers game nor about simply creating more content. Because there’s so much content out there right now, buyers are starting to gloss over much of the sub-par content that people are promoting.It’s best to use data oriented strategies in your execution. It’s important to do thorough psychological research for your buyer personas, then use that content in not only the way you approach your content creation but content but also things like your website, PR and sales enablement.Inbound marketing can work as well for B2C as it does for B2B. If your buyer buys online or looks for information to education themselves online then inbound makes sense. It matters more about how your buyer makes their buying decision.The customer journey starts with creating your buyer personas. These are semi-fictional representations of your buyer. SmartBug interviews 3-5 different individual that are purchasing a product so they can understand how they think and operate and to find out what’s important to them.When you’re starting a company you always have a ton of ideas. It’s important to prioritize these ideas to determine if they’re inline with your buyer personas and what kind of impact they will have. Then, identify the pain this person has and how you can help them. You need provide value before they’re willing to get to know you or give you their credit card.When you’re putting together a buyer persona the types of things you want to know about are their your consumer’s responsibilities, how they are evaluated, what’s going to cause them to look for some kind of a solution, and how will they measure success.You should ask these questions of people that are actually your customers or your potential customers so you don’t introduce your own bias about what’s important. You should also figure out what objections or challenges they have that would keep them from investing in your product. Why would they not choose you and what’s potentially at risk for them. You should also know what role that individual plays in the decision.The best way to move someone through the sales process is to focus on what they’re interested in. sending people information about content and services they’re not interested in will only make the buyer feel like you don’t care about themSome of the key benefits you get from a marketing automation platform is it should both meet the needs you have today and also be able to grow with your business. Your technology should give you a window into buyer behavior and should also be easy to use.You have to make an investment in more complicated technology if what you’re offering is more also complex. If you have a simple offering or a single buyer persona then you may not need a more sophisticated tool.Some of the differences between simple email marketing and a marketing automation tool are the ability to nurture individuals as well as setting up automated campaigns that will drip the right content to the right people at the right time. It should also be able to turn that content on or off depending on their behavior.Buyers today expect that you know everything about them.