Challenges and opportunities for inbound marketing in 2017

It’s not easy to create a successful inbound marketing strategy, but it still offers great opportunities once marketers understand its potential. What do we need to know, then, about inbound marketing in 2017?

Content can be a powerful tool for a business when used strategically, and that’s how inbound marketing has become an effective method of capturing leads and increasing traffic.

More marketers are ready to explore its benefits, which is why we’re examining the best ways to use it in 2017. It’s interesting to look into Hubspot’s State of Inbound 2016 to see what other businesses think of inbound marketing and how to take advantage of its potential.

Top marketing priorities

Marketers are leaving 2016 behind, and their top priorities for the year ahead are:

• converting leads into customers
• growing traffic to their website
• increasing revenue from existing customers
• proving the ROI from their marketing activities

All these priorities have to do with the effectiveness and the profit coming from their marketing efforts. As competition increases, it is becoming more important to find the tactics that will boost a brand’s goals, and inbound marketing has played a key role in this attempt.

Top inbound marketing priorities

According to Hubspot, inbound marketers are much more likely to be satisfied with the tactics their organisations are prioritizing. Ranking their priorities for the past year, the growth of SEO and their organic presence was their main focus, while content creation and distribution were next.

Another interesting priority was marketing automation: there seems to be a growing interest in the best ways of including automation in a marketing strategy.

Moreover, blog content doesn’t seem to be the only concern, as marketers also included interactive and visual content among their main priorities.

All these priorities demonstrate the complexity of inbound marketing and how each organization interprets it differently, depending on their goals and their plans.

Top marketing challenges

Inbound marketing is not just about great opportunities, but also about big challenges, ranging from finding effectiveness to budget and training.

It’s not easy to create a successful inbound marketing strategy, and the main challenge for marketers is to generate traffic and leads from it, while justifying their activities through ROI is also a big concern.

Moreover, as content evolves, so does the need for a bigger budget. This is a challenge that small businesses understand, especially when they’re trying to compete with bigger ones.

Adding new content distribution channels

A good way to overcome the challenges in inbound marketing is to explore new content distribution channels. For this reason, marketers are ready to focus more on Youtube, Facebook videos, Instagram and messaging apps, as these seem to be the biggest trends in content marketing.

Moreover, podcasts are still among their preferences when trying to reach a different audience, while Medium is also an interesting choice in terms of simplistic content consumption.

Their first three choices for 2017 indicate that visual content and video, in particular, is a key choice for the coming months, and as it seems to increase engagement, we can expect more businesses to try it out this year.

Inbound vs Outbound

When it comes to marketers’ primary approach to marketing, Hubspot’s State of Inbound shows that 73% of respondents pick inbound marketing over outbound marketing.

Although both aspects are important, the preference over inbound marketing proves how the rise of content turned it into a powerful weapon for every marketing strategy. Despite the challenges and the budget limitations it may occasionally bring, the consistency in inbound marketing can lead to great long term results.

Inbound marketing in 2017

It’s an interesting time to explore inbound marketing, as content creation and distribution reaches new levels of maturity. This means that more businesses will be able to find the desired ROI when embracing inbound marketing techniques as part of their bigger marketing strategy.

Although marketers are aware of the challenges that come with inbound marketing, they seem to be focused on finding the best ways to make it work along with their goals.

The best way to start exploring the benefits of inbound marketing is to analyse your existing content and explore its potential and how it can affect your marketing and sales goals.

How can you improve it? How can you create more strategic content from now on?

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