The State of Inbound - 2017

HubSpot released their State of Inbound 2017 recently and I've only had a chance to briefly read it. I plan to go back and read it several more times and truly focus on each section and each fact so I can better lead my agency and my clients.

Download a copy of the report here.

There are already many blogs out there that outline some of the finer points of the report, including this one from HubSpot themselves: 9 INBOUND MARKETING STATS YOU NEED TO KNOW IN 2017.

For now I wanted to point out a few items that I plan to focus on more closely in the next year:

• Sales & Marketing Alignment: 22% of respondents say Sales & Marketing are Tightly Aligned, 44% say Generally Aligned, and the remaining 34% say Rarely Aligned or worse... This is actually better than I expected. My experience shows that Sales & Marketing are not aligned at all. I see that there is still friction between the sales and marketing teams at many of my clients. 
• Main Disruptor is Video. All I know is that video is more popular than ever. A few recent tests we've conducted show much higher user engagement is with videos than static messages.
• Social Media Disrupts Marketing. Agreed...it all makes our heads spin. However, we haven't been too thrown off our path with new channels lately. Our primary focus for our client's has been utilizing mostly traditional social channels. The key is paying attention to the newest "add-ons" to the more traditional social channels and be ready to test and react - i.e. Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, etc...

Sales and Marketing alignment will be a bigger focus for us in late 2017 and 2018 - it has to be for organizations to be successful. And we will be using much more video for ourselves and our clients.