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The HubSpot INBOUND conference is always a great opportunity for marketers to learn about the latest trends and strategies from fellow marketing professionals and leaders. This year's conference was no exception and as a HubSpot Platinum partner, we came away with new approaches to try, current best practices, and good reminders for us and our clients.

The pandemic forced most organizations to adapt and add additional sales, marketing, and service tactics to meet the needs of a remote world. Coming out of the pandemic, we are operating in a hybrid environment where employees and customers expect “all of the above”—all the digital, remote, and in-person options available in highly personalized combinations. The customer drives these combinations, and it is important to remember that omnichannel is customer-centric, not business-centric.

What to expect in 2022? After the last two years, we are prepared for anything! There are ongoing changes to privacy regulation and management that will impact what you can measure, and what you should expect in the year to come.

Here we are, entering another year where the only certainty is uncertainty. Take a deep breath and recognize all the growth you’ve achieved and the stability you’ve provided in spite of rapid change. You’re helping to build a culture of resilience and action in the face of ambiguity. 

According to McKinsey, marketing’s holy grail is digital personalization at scale because “personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5-15%, and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10-30%.”

Whether you’re a startup working through a product launch, or a large enterprise operating a small division, there will probably come a point where find yourself in the catch 22 of business growth: You need more accounts to fund a sales team, but you need more sales from your current team to get there. It’s through these growing pains that efficiency is paramount in your sales process. We’ve been helping companies overcome challenges like this for over 30 years, and we’ve got some tips to share from this experience.

Whether you are in a start-up or second stage growth, taking your current size into consideration is important in evaluating and prioritizing marketing tactics and spend. In a recent webinar, Launch Team’s President Michele Nichols discussed the many approaches to developing your marketing mix and how companies in the technology space can help find leads and connect with potential customers. She also elaborated on:

• Specific types of tactics that are working for customers
• How to identify what tactics are advantageous and what are outdated.

It's safe to say that in 2019 we are exposed to thousands of ads per day. Because of this, many Americans implement an ad blocker into their browser, causing an estimated $9.1 billion in missed revenue in 2019 alone. Getting inundated with intrusive advertisements is bad enough for consumer trust and attention, but when you add on annoying marketing tactics, it's clear why 72% of people dislike online popup ads, and 43% dislike native ads.

As the digital landscape expands, more and more small to medium-sized businesses are utilizing marketing automation tools to take their sales process to the next level. Most often it seems that companies this size narrow their choices down to competitors HubSpot and Salesforce’s Pardot. We had two of our team members compare and contrast the two tools. Sarah Campagna and Sarah Holland break down both tools’ offerings and share tips to consider for integrating marketing automation into your sales process for 2018 and beyond.

Lumetrics: A Case Study in Content Success

Not too long ago, Lumetrics, a Rochester N.Y. based company who makes high-precision thickness measurement and gauging systems, was spending around $3,000 per month on Google AdWords. The clicks were there but the leads weren’t. With only 2-3 new leads per week, Lumetrics’ leadership knew that their marketing strategy had to change. At the advice of Launch Team, Lumetrics began using the HubSpot Marketing Platform for an inbound rather than outbound marketing approach. Lumetrics’ engineering team began developing technical application notes meant to drive not just web visits but new leads as well.

Though Launch Team has been presenting at Photonics West for the past five years on the topics of sales and marketing, the questions that we are asked are a bit different each year. Many of these questions relate back to the topic of inbound marketing. This concept addresses the tremendous increase in online research that is done by the buyer before they engage with your company on an individual level. In order to be found by or attract leads who are searching for technical information, and to nurture these leads to a point of readiness and beat out the competition for the sale, technical content has become almost essential to success.

Scenario: You’ve spent the past three days at a trade show. You were really good about not answering emails on your phone while on the exhibition floor. You ran a lead generation promotion that brought in double the leads over last year.

But now it’s Monday. You’re back in the office and your inbox is overflowing. You’ve downloaded the lead list, but there isn’t possibly enough time to do lead qualification research on all of them—and certainly not enough time to make calls. How will you ensure consistent lead follow-up?