INBOUND ACCELERATOR

How often does your marketing department share information with sales? What about the flow of information the other direction, from sales to marketing?

Let’s face it — not everyone works in companies where the two departments work well together. In fact, according to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Report, as many as 1 in 3 marketers and sales professionals say their two departments are not well aligned. And that hurts results for everyone.

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Sound familiar? Today’s marketers continue to face the same challenge John Wanamaker wrote about nearly a century ago: Difficulty knowing what marketing or advertising tactics are truly producing results.

Data management and analysis is increasingly essentially to marketing, especially as inbound marketing tactics and closed loop marketing put worlds more data at our fingertips every day.

Inbound marketing shouldn’t be an experiment in which you throw random ideas at the wall to see what sticks. It should be a targeted strategy based on providing prospective customers with the precise information they want, when they want it.

I know you already keep track of plenty of statistics for your inbound marketing and website:

• How many website visitors you get each day, week, month or year

• How many visitors convert into leads

• How many leads become closed sales

• How many social media followers you have

• How many email subscribers you have.

Successful marketing requires information. You need to know who your customer is, what they want, and how they go about making decisions. Closed-loop marketing is one of the best ways to gather that information, following the sales cycle full circle. (Click to tweet)

Statistics are fun. Numbers you can play around with to prove or disprove your theories and opinions, to impress your friends and colleagues, or to back up your assertion that your efforts really are paying off.

When your car’s wheels in are alignment — with the angles set to the manufacturers’ specifications — it drives more easily, gets better gas mileage, and reduces wear and tear on the tires.

When your sales and marketing teams are in alignment — each with clear objectives and duties, and with a shared understanding of key definitions and processes, aka “manufacturer’s specifications” — leads flow more smoothly, the sales cycle is more efficient, and there is less stress within your workforce.

As marketers, we are tasked with appealing to customers while appeasing the executive suite. It’s a tricky position to be in when top management wants hard numbers, but we’re accustomed to the softer world of consumer behavior and emotion.  Perhaps that’s why nearly 30 percent of marketers told HubSpot in 2014 that proving ROI of marketing activities is their biggest challenge. (Click to Tweet!)  

Which is more important in marketing: intuition or information?

It’s true that marketing has a lot of art involved — sometimes you can just “feel” when a certain brand approach is right or wrong. But decades of research have also shown that many parts of marketing can be accurately predicted based on prior experience and backed up with data.  You need to take a scientific approach to your marketing.