Official: The best metric to grow your business? Teamwork

We’re a HubSpot partner agency and every [good] partnership has its perks. We’re at the forefront of the latest digital trends and techniques when it comes to growing online. It also gives us a first-hand opportunity to access some of the most in-depth reports and statistics around online sales and marketing habits.

One of those reports is their annual State of Inbound Marketing Report, with the latest (seventh) release packed full of information and insight about global online trends from the world’s top marketers. And, while it’s packed full of words like ‘buzzworthy’, it’s also given us plenty of food for thought.

Because we’ve studied the 2015 report in-depth, cut through the fluff, and come to some interesting conclusions about the future of inbound marketing and how you can use it to grow your company.

Inbound is the key

Duncan Bannatyne told a start-up on Dragons’ Den years ago how easy business is when he pointed out if you buy a bunch of bananas for 10p and sell them for 20p, then you’ve made a profit. Simple, he scoffed.

We also know a lot of people that use a similar broad formula for growing online. ‘If your website isn’t making money for you then it’s not working.’

Makes sense, but you can’t afford to use such sweeping statements online. Growth is different for all companies, no matter their shape or size, whether they’re looking to make sales, collect data, increase subscriptions and reach out to a community.

Which is why it’s interesting to see in the report how essential an effective inbound strategy is for the vast majority of the 3,957 global marketing companies surveyed. In fact, according to State of Inbound, three out of four companies prioritise inbound over all other forms of marketing.

They also concede that real inbound success is a long game, not an overnight solution. It’s the preferred marketing strategy regardless of company type and focus, and delivers adopters a higher ROI than outbound.

That’s not to say that outbound is useless, though, or doesn’t matter. Quite the opposite; a varied marketing strategy is the best way to attract prospects and generate leads if well balanced, but the report does indicate that a heavier lean on inbound is the go-to strategy for smaller businesses with a tighter budget.

Rating your ROI

The report though is heavily in favour of inbound, according to the findings from the marketers surveyed. Most focus on improving inbound, increasing their budget for it, tracking ROI, and ultimately improving conversions.

But those with a serious budget can use techniques like marketing automaton to not only improve their outbound strategy but provide serious ROI data, too. An amazing 52 per cent of companies saw a greater ROI using automation software than in 2014.

All well and good for big companies with huge turnovers that can afford it. But there’s one point that sticks out for us in the whole report when it comes to improving company growth: teamwork.

One of the underlying themes in the report is that inbound success doesn’t solely come down to the individual aspects of the sales or the marketing teams. It comes from a willingness of both departments to work together, break down barriers, and collaborate to refine the customer acquisition and sales cycles.

The most important data for us in this report is that those marketing and sales teams with a solid agreement working together were more likely to see an improved ROI, get a budget increase, and recruit more team members.

Come together

There are all sorts of little nuggets to take out of the 72-page report; North American companies are better at tracking ROI, for example, but the region isn’t too concerned with training, instead focusing on being able to prove that ROI.

What also sticks out is that sales teams are frustrated with data entry tasks and a lack of information as it takes their focus away on what they do best; nurturing potential customers and converting leads into revenue.

Again, improvement can boil down to sales and marketing departments strengthening their relationships and how they work for the benefit and overall growth of the company, whether it’s choosing a particular kind of software to manage data, restructuring internal communications, or evolving the overall aims and goals of the business.

There are other problems, too. Sales technology budgets are decreasing and sales managers aren’t at all confident in the tools they have. Add to that the problems with data entry and difficulties prospecting thanks to a lack of information and the job’s becoming increasingly harder.

All the more reason for the relevant departments to come together to boost growth and benefit the wider company, then, especially when salespeople’s second most important goal is to improve the efficiency of the sales funnel. It’s how to do that that’s the problem…

The report indicates that when lead data is shared with sales the team has more information to approach prospects and better chance of a conversion. Refining that relationship between departments is the key to business growth.

One voice

Duncan Bannatyne’s good at that business malarky, no doubt about it, but growth in a hugely diverse online industry is much tougher than he’d probably like to think.

And while HubSpot’s latest report is hugely important and highlights a lot of trends for the coming year, it’s great to see that the message is a highly social and team-based one for consistent future growth.

Work on your internal strategy and systems and get the team working together to share valuable information about prospects to provide them with the absolute best experience possible. Sometimes looking inside helps you to improve on the outside; that’s no different in the world of business.

A solid inbound strategy combined with sharing the right metrics and data internally could and should be the foundation that sees your business grow in fast, new, exciting ways. If you'd like to find out more, why not get in touch. We are a Manchester inbound marketing agency with plenty of love for HubSpot, and the expertise to help your company run successful inbound marketing campaigns.

As an experienced inbound marketing agency, we’ve worked with brands from all backgrounds to deliver bespoke inbound strategies across a variety of channel. We help people better identify and attract those who matter most to their growth ambitions. Want to know more? Read “Lessons from an inbound marketing agency”.