Report: Inbound Tactics Tied to Marketing Strategy Effectiveness

As marketers look for more effective ways to drive leads and customer engagement, inbound marketing is proving to be a worthwhile strategy, according to recent research from HubSpot.

The “State of Inbound 2016” report discovered that 81 percent of respondents who primarily conduct inbound marketing claim that their marketing strategy has been effective. This is compared to just 18 percent of those leveraging primarily outbound tactics.

However, even with inbound marketing success, marketers are still faced with a number of challenges. Nearly 66 percent of marketers claim that their strategy is not effective at generating leads and traffic. About 45 percent said that their plan is not effective when it comes to proving the ROI of marketing activities.

In addition to highlighting the challenges facing marketers, the report looked at the relationship between sales and marketing teams. Just 22 percent claimed that they have tightly aligned sales and marketing teams, but 44 percent said they were generally aligned. Out of the companies that said their marketing strategy is effective, 82 percent claimed that they have well-aligned sales and marketing teams.

Strengthening the Bond between Sales and Marketing

In the past, research has indicated that marketing automation platforms can potentially enhance communications between sales and marketing teams.

In the “SMB Marketing Automation Blue Book” from Salesfusion, 60 percent of organizations that have integrated MAPs with customer relationship management solutions and service level agreements have “exceptional” communication between sales and marketing. This is compared to just 22 percent of companies that have a MAP but no CRM or SLAs.

Out of the 700 B2B marketers who took part in the Salesfusion report, 62 percent stated that they had marketing automation currently in place.