9 Facts About Inbound Marketing in 2017

Although a complex process, inbound marketing is centered around one guiding principle: offering truly relevant and helpful information to a target audience. Although this sentiment doesn’t change, technology, industry, and relationships do, and that means that marketers and salespeople alike must take time to learn how to adapt in order to keep providing their customers with what they need.

In an effort to better understand consumer needs and industry changes, HubSpot regularly collects data from marketing and sales professionals across the globe and evaluates the “State of Inbound.” You’ll be amazed by some of the key facts gleaned from the 2017 report.

1. The Majority of Inbound Marketers Feel Their Marketing Strategies are Effective

It was found that 68% of inbound marketers feel strongly that the marketing strategy being deployed by their organization is effective. This is especially compelling information when you consider the fact that the majority (52%) of outbound marketers don’t feel like their strategies are effective.

2. 1/3 of Marketers Feel That Outbound Marketing is Overrated

The success of inbound marketing compared to outbound is pretty huge. Every year, a growing number of outbound marketers are jumping ship and leaving their world behind. Why? Because they feel that it’s overrated. 32% of marketers reported feeling this way in 2017, believing that outbound is a waste of time and resources.

3. Company Leadership and Individual Contributors Disagree About Organizational Marketing

It was discovered in the report that while 69% of C-level executives feel that their organization’s marketing tactics are working, a smaller number (55%) of individual contributor employees agreed with this sentiment. This means that leadership has a responsibility to effectively communicate their business’s vision and goals to its employees and to encourage inbound.

4. The (Metrics-Driven Challenges) Struggle is Real for Marketers

Marketers are the folks who find tracking and analyzing/making sense of performance metrics to be the greatest challenge. In fact, 63% of marketers indicated that this was their top challenge. Better analytics tools need to be in place to help make sense of big data, leads, and other valuable information.

5. Businesses With SLAs are 3x as Likely to Succeed

Guess what? Organizations that have adopted a Service Level Agreement (SLA) were three times more likely to indicate that they feel their marketing strategies are effective than those without a strong SLA. SLAs help to align goals throughout the organization and bring them to fruition.

6. Salespeople Struggle to Get Responses from Prospects

For salespeople, one of the greatest challenges is getting a response from prospective customers, with 38% of respondents admitting to this struggle. They have challenges in incorporating social media into the sales process, as well as in making use of sales technologies to communicate with prospects. This means that the next big innovation in inbound could be related to eliciting consumer responses.

7. Marketers Think Video and Messaging Apps are the Next Big Thing

Marketers have to look ahead to the future, and many are viewing the appeal of video and messaging applications. They believe that these have the potential to disrupt current marketing tactics. To prove this point, nearly half (48%) of respondents are planning on investing in YouTube, with another 39% planning on working with Facebook video. Many others are playing with messaging apps to expand their reach.

8. Manual Data Entry Eats Up a Lot of Sales Time

In the report, 45% of salespeople indicated that they’re spending more than an hour each day performing manual data entry. Because this wastes valuable time, we expect to see a surge in CRM being integrated into other platforms in order to automate this process.

9. Marketers and Salespeople Don’t See Eye-to-Eye

Not a big shocker, but there’s a disconnect between how marketers and salespeople perceive the quality of leads. While 59% of marketers feel they’re providing the sales team with high quality leads, only 25% of salespeople agree. This data reinforces the need for and importance of SLAs.

The pros at Madison Taylor Marketing understand the state of inbound marketing in 2017 and are able to help you stay ahead of the curve and find success.