10 Of The Most Important Points Of Data From The State Of Inbound 2017

2 min read
Jun 28, 2017 10:54:15 AM

Each year, HubSpot puts out its State of Inbound report, which looks at the challenges and priorities of marketing and sales professionals, as well as trends and emerging channels. If you want some insight into where the future of inbound is headed, this report is a good place to start.

This year’s survey had participation from a diverse group of 6,399 marketing and sales professionals from 141 countries around the world. These data points will give you an overview of what is happening in inbound marketing, and help you to evaluate your own strategy. 2017 State Of Inbound HubSpot

You can download the complete State of Inbound report from HubSpot.

Top Marketing And Inbound Priorities

  1. 61% of respondents said that growing SEO/organic presence is their top priority related to inbound specifically.
  1. Finding ways to get more leads and turn them into customers is consistently a top goal for marketers. 70% of marketers’ top priority for marketing is converting leads into customers. 55% also are focused on growing traffic to their website, while 45% are most focused on upselling existing customers.

Top Marketing Challenges

  1. The top two challenges for marketers are generating traffic and leads (63%), and proving the ROI of marketing activities (49%).

Biggest Disruptor

  1. Video is reported to be one of the top disruptors by survey participants. “Many see video as a great channel to better connect with a prospect, while others fret that video will make their day jobs obsolete,” states the report. Audiences want video content, and paying attention to video marketing trends will help you find ways to incorporate it into your strategy.

Buyer Preferences

  1. When answering the question, “What sources of information do you rely on when making a purchase decision for business software?” 54% responded that word of mouth was their top source and 45% stated customer references. It’s important for marketers to acknowledge the value of these sources and look for ways to use them as part of their efforts.

Sales

  1. The State of Inbound report showed several potential issues with alignment between sales and marketing. One example is with the top source of sales for sales organizations. 38% of salespeople said leads sourced by sales, while only 25% said leads from marketing.
  1. According to 52% of marketers, inbound practices provide the highest quality leads for their sales team. Even if marketing believes these leads to be high quality, there seems to be a disconnect in many organizations where sales finds their own lead sourcing efforts to be more beneficial.
  1. 38% of salespeople agreed that getting a response from prospects is more difficult to do now, compared with just 2 to 3 years ago.

Discrepancy Between Executives And Employees

  1. 69% of executives believe their organization's marketing strategy is effective, but only 55% of individual contributors in marketing agree.
  1. 31% of executives believe that there's tight alignment between their marketing and sales teams, but only 17% of both managers and individual contributors agree. Executives seem to have a more positive view of how their departments are functioning that may not match what is actually going on. Communication between executives and the rest of the employees needs to be improved.
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