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Marketing & Sales Automation Blog Articles

Toot Your Own Horn: How Lead Tracking Proves Marketing’s Value

After 4 weeks of exploring the most compelling findings from HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2017 report, today marks the final piece in this State of Inbound series (queue Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” while you read this). We’ve already discussed the proven value of email marketing, inbound marketing, smarketing, and lead scoring, so today I will wrap it all together with a nice bow and share some key stats to help you convey the benefit of inbound marketing to your whole company.

HubSpot State Of Inbound Inbound ROI Graph

One of the most dramatic statistics from this survey found that four times as many organizations claimed inbound marketing produced higher ROI than outbound-focused approaches; 46% and 12% respectively. Even more shocking, 41% of respondents either do not know how to calculate marketing ROI, or just simply do not. When companies do not look at ROI, they risk throwing away major portions of their overall marketing budget on ineffective or underperforming methods.

Goodbye, marketing budget!

 

When it comes to other employees seeing the value of marketing, there was a clear disconnect with lower level employees: how can 69% of C-level executives say that the marketing strategy is effective while only 55% of individual contributors say the same? There are many possible reasons for this disparity, but it is likely that individual team members are not privy to the holistic view of performance that is often presented to their managers or execs. To improve the attitude towards marketing, be sure to share your successes company-wide, not just with the executives.

 Que Lead Tracking

Marketing Effectiveness by Role

One easy way to improve the outlook of marketing’s effort is to ensure you have a solid lead tracking system in place. Lead tracking helps to determine the first true source of the lead and actively monitor where your leads are in the sales and marketing funnel. Tracking leads also helps you to determine the appropriate steps to move them through the buyer’s journey.

Sales representatives that responded to the HubSpot survey said their best sources for sales leads are self-sourced (38%) and referrals (36%), followed distantly by marketing (25%). If your sales team receives untracked leads, they may assume it’s manna from heaven or the spoils from their hard work. Remove any question and solidify marketing’s value by tracking leads from the first touch through the entire sales process.

Hubspot State of Inbound Lead Source Graph

If your company needs to boost its marketing efforts or look into adding lead tracking to your current campaigns, SmartAcre® can work as an extension of your marketing team. If you are interested in starting an inbound marketing program or improving the one you have underway, we want to talk with you!