Snapshot of Marketing Priorities & Challenges in 2016

Each year, HubSpot takes the pulse of marketing and sales departments around the world, seeking out information on what’s working, what is challenging, and where priorities lie for the coming year.

This annual State of Inbound report highlights the changes in marketing, sales, and technology over the last year with an eye toward what is coming down the road.

Here are a few of the key findings from the 2016 report. How do they compare to your experiences?

Marketing’s Top Priorities

Converting contacts and leads into customers moved to the top of the priority list for State of Inbound respondents in 2016, after being in the number two spot the previous three years behind increasing the number of contacts (2015 and 2014) and reaching the relevant audience (2013).

When the focus is placed specifically on inbound marketing, respondents placed growing their SEO/organic presence at the top of the list.

The remainder of the priorities list:

• Blog content creation

• Content distribution and amplification

• Marketing automation

• Interactive content creation

• Long-form content (ebooks, whitepapers).

Marketing’s Top Challenges

The greatest challenge for marketers in 2016, according to the State of Inbound, is generating traffic and leads, a survey option added this year that edged out the top challenge listed in the three previous years: proving the ROI of marketing activities.

Other major challenges cited:

• Securing enough budget

• Managing the website

• Identifying the right technology to match needs

Marketing and Sales Alignment is Critical

Creating and maintaining alignment between the marketing and sales departments appears to be a critical component in those organizations who say their marketing strategy is effective.

Overall, only 22 percent of respondents classified their marketing and sales as “tightly aligned.”

But of those companies who said their marketing strategy was effective, 82 percent say their sales and marketing relationship was tightly aligned.

The survey also showed a disconnect between marketing and sales regarding where the highest quality leads originate.

Responses from marketers pegged inbound practices as creating the highest quality leads, chosen by 59 percent of marketers; 24 percent named leads sourced by the sales team. But when the same question was asked of salespeople, the most chosen response (38 percent) was leads directly sourced by sales, followed by referrals at 36 percent.

The Future of Marketing

What changes are you making in the next year, and how do they compare with the findings of the State of Inbound report?

If you are looking into video, you aren’t alone. When asked what distribution channels they would add in the next 12 months, 48 percent said YouTube was on their list, followed by 39 percent that plan to add Facebook video.

• Rounding out the top 5 new channels:
  Instagram: 33 percent

• Messaging apps: 20 percent

• Podcasts 15 percent

Who is Creating the Content?

Staff writers continue to be the most common contributors to marketing content. When asked to identify who writes their content, 71 percent of respondents listed staff.

Other sources tapped for content creation include:

• Executives: 31 percent

• Freelancers: 23 percent

• Agency partners: 19 percent

• Guests: 14 percent

• Curation: 13 percent

• Writing panels: 3 percent

These stats just scratch the surface of the information gathered in the State of Inbound report—find the full publication here.

Why does HubSpot gather all of this information each year? Because it helps them continue to refine the integrated sales and marketing services that have proven successful for hundreds of businesses. That dedication to continually offering more effective, more efficient, and more informed solutions is why JONES has chosen to become a HubSpot certified partner. Learn more about HubSpot and how JONES can help you put their solutions to work by requesting a HubSpot demo here.