Digital Marketing and sales statistics breakdown 2017

Chart of the Day: Digital Marketing statistics - Converting leads to customers remains a top marketing priority over the next 12 months - part 1 of 10

It is important to know how sales and marketing are evolving, and how/ when this will affect your business. There are various marketing and sales priorities to think about when outlining your business strategy and initial planning but it is also important to know its challenges and how to face these.

Marketers are making the leap into visual content creation while salespeople are slowly shifting from the hard-seller stereotype to a more trusted advisor.

- Brian Halligan CEO HubSpot

In this chart series, I will breakdown the HubSpot 'State of Inbound 2017' report for all your sales and marketing needs - taking you through section by section and breaking down its results.

The 10 areas that will be covered are:

1. Top business priorities
2. Inbound marketing priorities and challenges
3. Sales priorities and challenges
4. Is marketing effective?
5. Marketing and Sales alignment
6. The Sales  business
7. The Marketing business
8. Distribution channels
9. Communications and trusted sources
10. Sales is evolving!

What are your company's top marketing priorities over the next 12 months?

The majority of respondent prioritized converting leads to customers  (70%) and attracting visitors to their site (55%) whilst considerably less (29%) said sales enablement was a top priority.

It is critical to have a structured sales process in order to convert leads into customers. First, think about the process and methodology; find customers, convert and then analyze. In order to achieve this ask questions like:

• What are my objectives? (attract visitors)
• What tools do I need to accomplish this?
• What is my exit criteria?
• When do I know it's time to move onto the next stage?

Surprisingly, not that many respondents said that sales enablement was a high priority within the next 12 months. This is placed at a much lower priority even though it is an important part of any business. Without training, coaching, organization, and equipment it can be challenging for your sales team to convert those leads into customers which are what you ultimately want.

The low percentage of this result could be because companies believe their sales team are already trained to a high standard and have the equipment and knowledge they need to push for a higher conversion of customers and the capability to increase revenue from pre-existing customers.

What are your company's top marketing priorities over the next 12 months? (by geography)

Increasing revenue from existing customers is most important in Latin America (49%), yet least important in North America and Austrailia/ New Zealand (43%).

As you can see there are slight differences in priorities across different continents. Whilst the highest priority is always converting leads into customers, there are minor differences in other priorities. Austrailia/ New Zealand, Europe/ Middle East/ Africa and North America place importance on growing traffic to their site (58%-65%) whilst Latin America place this just as important as increasing existing customer revenue.

Whilst most continent priorities offer large percentage differences in some areas from others, Asia's seem to be the most evenly split between the 6 priorities with only a 32% range compared to NAM's range of 50% difference.

We would love to know how you prioritize your marketing goals, and whether these stay true to HubSpot's research. Comment below or tweet us to let us know your thoughts.

If you can't wait until my next Chart of the Day, you can view the full report online

• Source : HubSpot
• Sample Size: 6,000+ worldwide inc CEO's, Directors and individual contributions from large and small businesses
• Recommended resource: Sales and Marketing integration guide