Inbound Marketing as a codified methodology of marketing has been around for 10 years and it’s still constantly evolving to match the behaviour of your prospects and how they make buying decisions. In this episode, we review the new State of Inbound 2017 report, what’s changed and what the future of inbound marketing holds.
Download the State of Inbound 2017 report to dive into it yourself!
Buzz 1: New LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Collect quality leads from your ads on LinkedIn with seamless pre-filled forms.
More information about LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms.
Featured Buzz: State of Inbound 2017 Review
In this episode we dive into the new State of Inbound 2017 report to pull out four key insights and implications for brands today:
Insight 1: There are huge inefficiences in the sales process, too much needless time wasted & automation is the answer.
57% of respondents said they spend 1 hour on data entry per day!
Additionally, closing deals and improving sales funnel efficiencies globally rated highly as top sales priorities:
And by region:
Insight 2: If you can align sales & marketing team together, leads from inbound marketing will be significantly stronger
Without a doubt, sales and marketing teams that are closely aligned experience a higher ROI time and time again.
Inbound practices in general generate higher quality leads for sales teams:
However when looking at how tightly aligned sales and marketing teams are in the context of highest quality leads, companies where marketing and sales teams have defined SLAs get even higher quality leads from inbound marketing:
Takeaway: Consider implementing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between sales and marketing teams. The best SLAs are documented and they note everything from the definition of a lead, the metrics that will be tracked, how often will they be evaluated and agreed upon goals for revenue.
Here’s a useful guide from HubSpot on How to create effective sales and marketing SLAs.
Insight 3: Video is the ‘distruptor’ you don’t have an option to ignore
Check out one of our most popular episodes: Episode 55 – How to create your own video on a budget
Insight 4: Brands have a long way to go in the adoption of inbound marketing and frankly, even understanding what it means
The majority of respondents in the survey confirmed they conduct inbound marketing:
However we highly challenge this statement represents most marketers globally for a few reasons:
Firstly, when you look at lead sources, only 25% were from marketing, the rest were sourced from sales and referrals – not typical of a company who has adopted inbound marketing:
Secondly, when you consider who was interviewed, the biggest segment at 18% was marketing agencies followed by other, followed by IT & Services – arguably companies who are more likely to be aware of or have adopted inbound marketing practice.
