6 Inbound Marketing Success Stories That Bring Impact & Results

Inbound marketing is an exciting way to get more leads and customers by offering value in every stage of the inbound process. How does it work in real life? What exactly happens in an inbound marketing campaign? Here, we look at 6 inbound marketing success stories that exemplify how an inbound campaign should be done.

Quick Read: What Is Inbound Marketing: An Introduction

As you’re reading, take note of the tools, methods and metrics each campaign is using. Let’s jump right in:

1. iProperty

Image source: https://www.iproperty.com.my/

As a portal for property listings and guides in Malaysia, iProperty needs to build trust among its target audience and understand their needs. For its inbound, the site would publish a free e-book on topics that’ll attract leads, such as, how to find the right property or how to buy your first home. Then, they follow-up with email campaigns and newsletters, directing leads to their listings, blog articles and more helpful content. 

This is a classic way of doing inbound marketing that provides value to customers and ensuring your leads are funnelled efficiently through the inbound stage. The result is more property deals made in the platform, giving iProperty more leverage to market their site to property-sellers and make their brand known.

2. Binging with Babish

Image source: https://www.bingingwithbabish.com/#top

For those who haven’t heard of him, Andrew Rea aka Oliver Babish started this Youtube channel to share cooking recipes from traditional and pop culture. One of his most watched videos is his take on Ratatouille from that Disney movie. Using his skills as a filmmaker, Babish created video content that people find enjoyable and experiential. 

How does he make money when his videos are free to watch on Youtube? Well, his free videos are part of his inbound strategy. His real revenue comes from product endorsements, his cookbooks, events, and other merchandise he sells on his website. Customers are attracted to his many helpful video tutorials and if they’re really serious, they’ll buy his kitchen tools and recipe books to match those delectable dishes Babish made on-screen. 

3. L’Oreal Malaysia

For its Raya campaign a few years ago, L’Oreal worked with several Malaysian influencers to hype-up its brand for the festive season. Influencer marketing is part of inbound marketing when the influencers talk about the brand to the target audience on their platform such as social media in a casual, non-promoting way.

The ‘Raya Cantik Bergaya’ campaign gave L’Oreal some amazing social metrics; two times more than the industry benchmark on impressions and engagement, four times more on mentions, and 500 times more on engagement than competitor campaigns! L’Oreal played their cards right with this inbound strategy using KOLs to retain the brand name in the customer’s mind.  

4. Lalamove

Image source: https://www.lalamove.com/global

With the rise of on-demand B2C and C2C delivery, there are many runner service providers vying for market share in Malaysia. But unlike other delivery companies who rely mostly on outbound, Lalamove uses inbound marketing to attract and retain customers. They do this via blog articles that help the target audience solve their problems and email newsletters to nurture leads.

Thanks to strategic content and inbound marketing, Lalamove is the fastest-growing company in the industry today. Blog articles helped customers realise the many services Lalamove offers, especially for small, SOHO businesses.

5. Neil Patel

Image source: https://neilpatel.com/

This internet marketing guru is a master of inbound marketing. He publishes an insurmountable number of video and blog content on digital marketing, e-commerce, website development and many more. His end goal? To get clients to work with him via his many ventures - Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, KISSmetrics, Ubersuggest and others.

His blog articles often rank top list on internet searches, which only accelerate as he made a brand of himself. Ranking high brings in more traffic to his website. And leads both hot and cold would get valuable insight from his content because of his willingness and openness to share knowledge, experience, successes and failures.

6. HubSpot

Image source: https://www.hubspot.com/

As the company who coined the term inbound marketing, Hubspot is one of the best inbound partners to have on the internet today. Their inbound strategy stretches from video tutorials and blog content to free trials, email marketing and events. Even their social media has some very effective inbound tactics that drive engagement and traffic. Hubspot truly believes inbound marketing is the way to go and they exemplify that through the many possibilities of what inbound can do. 

As the market leader, Hubspot has made over 86,000 and counting satisfied customers around the world, ranging from large MNCs to emerging SMEs.  

Could It Be Your Turn Next?

As you may observe, all 6 businesses use a variety of tools and methods of inbound marketing, but many make use of content. Even L’Oreal, who needs content to standardise the message across different influencers. Content is the brick that builds inbound strategy.

Now that you’ve seen what an inbound campaign looks like and what result it can bring, think about where inbound marketing can fit into your marketing strategy. Can it help reach your goals? Will it help your customers better? Is it aligned to your business purpose? If you think your business could use an inbound marketing strategy, better start soon. Your success story has just begun!