Senior marketers are viewing their marketing plans through rose-coloured glasses and are more likely to rate their strategies a marketing success than their employees, according to HubSpot’s ninth annual State of Inbound report.
The global report, which covers more than 6000 respondents from 141 countries, shows a division between executives and lower-level employees within marketing and sales teams on priorities moving forward and past achievements.
In ANZ, 77 per cent of management-level respondents said that their business’s marketing strategy was effective – compared to just 51 per cent of their employees.
“There are a range of challenges in the development of great content,” said Ryan Bonnici, HubSpot Senior Director, Global Marketing. “But the issue is that the more content businesses produce, the more competitive the market becomes, and suddenly the target audience sees individual business content as less valuable than before.”
“The key finding in this year’s State of Inbound report is the level of disconnect between those leaders who set the vision for their businesses compared to those in sales and marketing departments who execute on this ambition,” HubSpot APAC Head of Marketing James Gilbert says.
“Within this is a huge opportunity for organisations to better align their efforts across marketing and sales and the broader business hierarchy and together use the power of inbound marketing to more effectively reach customers. Ensuring teams have a cohesive view on strategy across the business is key for company growth.”
The research broke down results based on business size, and the key take-outs from businesses of between one and 25 employees was as follows:
- 40 per cent feel their organisations marketing strategy isn’t effective
- 57 per cent agree that inbound marketing practices provide the highest quality of leads for their sales team
- 31 per cent believe that paid advertising is the most overrated marketing tactic
- inbound marketing has demonstrated a greater ROI than the previous year for 33 per cent of these organisations
- 20 per cent use informal means such as Microsoft Excel or Outlook to store its lead and customer data
- 72 per cent cited generating traffic and leads as their biggest marketing challenge
- 40 per cent said inbound marketing gives them higher ROI
Inside Small Business
