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The inbound movement has always been about one thing: being relevant and truly helpful to your audience.

This approach shouldn’t change, but as consumer habits evolve, marketers and salespeople must adapt to better connect with and help their prospects and customers.

To better understand how consumers are changing, we collected data from 4,500 marketers and salespeople from around the globe, resulting in the 2016 State of Inbound report. It details benchmark data on ROI, the lowdown on collaboration between Marketing and Sales, and a look at what the industry’s foremost marketers are adding to their strategy in the coming year.

Check out the full report here or view some of the most interesting highlights below. 

8 Stats You Need to Know From the 2016 State of Inbound Report

1) Inbound organizations are 4X as likely to be effective. [Tweet this]

Over the past few years of the State of Inbound report, we’ve established the challenges and priorities of marketers and salespeople. But this year, we introduced a new angle in our study: Do marketers believe their organization’s marketing strategy is effective?

As it turns out, we’re glad we asked. Out of all the datapoints in the report, the fact that inbound marketers are much more likely to be satisfied with their organization’s playbook is among our favorite insights.

2) 1/3 of marketers think outbound marketing tactics are overrated. [Tweet this]

It’s not simply the effectiveness of the inbound philosophy that encourages us, but the success of inbound when compared to alternative methods. Each year, marketers tell us that outbound practices are overrated.

While we admit we might be a bit biased, when we cut the data outbound marketers agreed. According to this year’s data, 33% of inbound marketers and 31% of outbound marketers rank outbound marketing practices such as paid advertising as the top waste of time and resources.

Marketers aren’t just saying outbound is overrated — the data supports it. Our survey revealed outbound marketing teams have more trouble proving ROI, securing budget, and training their team compared to their inbound counterparts.

3) Organizations that can calculate ROI are 1.6X as likely to receive higher budgets. [Tweet this]

Speaking of calculating ROI, organizations that are able to do so receive higher budgets. Additionally, 72% of organizations that calculate ROI say their marketing strategy is effective. Only 49% of organizations that don’t calculate ROI say the same.

The logic here is clear: Marketers that calculate ROI both receive more budget and are more successful. With the help of an inbound methodology, all of these goals are easier to achieve.

4) Marketers struggle most with metrics-driven challenges. [Tweet this]

Marketers find tracking and making sense of their metrics a challenge. This year, 65% of marketers admit that their top challenge is generating enough traffic and leads. This is followed by 43% who struggle proving the ROI of marketing activities and 28% who are trying to secure enough budget.

All three of these top challenges are metrics-driven. Without the proper tools to track concrete campaign results, this will continue to be a struggle.

5) Inbound organizations with an SLA are over 5X as likely to be effective. [Tweet this]

When we began publishing this report eight years ago, much of our data revolved around the adoption of inbound marketing. As the message spread, we began to see why it’s crucial for both marketing and sales teams to adopt the inbound methodology together. One of the main ways this is done is through a service-level agreement (SLA).

Despite the fact that only 22% of organizations say they have a tightly aligned SLA, the benefits of having one are clear: 82% of marketers with an SLA think their marketing strategy is effective. In fact, there is no combination of factors more strongly correlated with marketing success than being both inbound and having an SLA.

6) 40% of salespeople say getting a response from prospects is getting harder. [Tweet this]

While marketers struggle with tracking the metrics of their campaigns, salespeople admit that getting a response from prospects is their top challenge. However, as you dive deeper into the data, you see the problem goes beyond prospects not answering email or phone calls.

Instead, there’s a disconnect between Marketing and Sales around the quality of leads. According to this year’s report, 59% of marketers say they provide salespeople with their best quality leads, while salespeople rank marketing leads last. In fact, marketing-sourced leads are ranked behind referrals and sales-sourced leads by all sales levels from the C-suite to individual contributors.

There’s always room to improve the handoff between Marketing and Sales. For the coming year, both departments will need to continually communicate and refine their SLA, even if there’s already one in place.

7) Marketers think video and multimedia platforms have the potential to disrupt. [Tweet this]

As marketers prepare for the future, many plan to add more multimedia content. In the past, content marketers poured their efforts into their blog. With the rising trend of content decentralization, marketers are now seeing the benefit of publishing on additional channels.

In our study, marketers are accounting for video’s global appeal, with 48% planning on using YouTube and 39% looking to add Facebook video. Podcasts are enjoying a resurgence in popularity, while others are turning to more visual platforms such as  Instagram and Snapchat.

But, don’t think the age of the blog is over. Decentralized content marketing is all about augmenting your blog to make it more effective, not scratching all of your existing strategy. Marketers can start by repurposing their most successful blog content into additional multimedia formats.

8) 22% of salespeople don’t know what a CRM is. [Tweet this]

Marketers are not the only ones who should be thinking about how new technologies can alter their future strategy. A quarter of all salespeople say improving their sales technology is their top priority over the next year. Yet, 22% of respondents still don’t know what a CRM is and 40% continue to use Excel or Outlook to store customer data. It’s no wonder so many salespeople are spending an hour or more on data entry every day.

The more time salespeople spend on data entry, the less time they have to sell. And if lead records are stored in a haphazard way, there’s potential for a prospect to get contacted by multiple reps, receive redundant emails or calls, and end up with a disjointed and frustrating selling experience. As Sales looks to improve their numbers and scale their business, implementing a CRM should be a top priority for the future-thinking sales organization.

Want more data-backed insights? This is just a preview of the State of Inbound report. Download the report for free to discover how inbound marketing and sales is evolving.

It’s no secret: Many agencies struggle every single day to acquire new clients.

And while a strong marketing mix of advertising, social media, and public relations can certainly go a long way in promoting your agency, none of these channels quite equal the value of a positive client referral.

According to Wharton School of Business, a referral customer costs a lot less to acquire and has a higher potential for retention and loyalty. In fact, a referred customer has a 16% higher lifetime value than a non-referred customer.

Client referrals are one of the most powerful user acquisition channels you can use to grow your agency, since you’re able to go straight to the decision maker without having to exchange a bunch of calls or cold emails.

When I was running a lead generation agency, I noticed that the deals that came through referrals had the shortest sales cycle. In fact, leads generated through referrals convert roughly 30% better than leads generated from other marketing channels. People are more willing to commit to an agency that they trust — and the best way to build early trust is through a client referral.

Referrals are undeniably powerful, but how can you generate quality referrals for your agency? The most underused tactic for getting referrals is leveraging customer feedback. In this post, I’ll cover some simple ways you can leverage customer feedback to get more referrals for your agency.

5 Ways to Leverage Client Feedback for More Referrals 

1) Identify your advocates

Identifying potential client advocates can seem like a huge challenge for a busy agency, but using a simple Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey can help make the process a little easier. Using an NPS survey can help you pinpoint potential advocates and turn your client feedback channel into a referral growth engine.

A Net Promoter Score is a customer loyalty metric utilized across multiple industries to measure how happy a customer is with your product or service. An NPS score is determined by sending out a single-question survey to your clients that asks: How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?

Respondents are asked to score their answer based on a 1-10 scale. Responses of 7 or 8 are labeled as “Passive”, and scores of 0 to 6 are considered “Detractors.” If a client responds with a score of 9-10, they’re labeled “Promoters” of your business. This group is most likely to provide referrals.

2) Follow up with your promoters

Just sending out a Net Promoter Score survey isn’t enough. You need to follow up with potential advocates and keep the positive momentum rolling along. What’s the use of seeing a set of data with people who selected 9 and 10 if you’re not going to use it to your advantage?

You have to mobilize your promoters by engaging with them. Your promoters are your advocates. They are the people who took the time to select a NPS response and pretty much raised their hands saying, “I am willing to recommend your agency to my friends.”

Once you have identified your promoters, you should formulate a plan to follow up and make it easy for them to refer your agency to their professional network. Consider using an automated NPS follow-up tool (such as YesInsights) to immediately reach out to your promoters with a discount or referral code.

If you have an employee at your agency who handles new business development, you can have them reach out personally and see if your promoter would be interested in referring your agency. The key here is to make it easy for your promoters to refer your services to their professional network. Referrals and recommendations from real clients will outperform any share button or social media campaign over the long term.

3) Use promoter feedback for testimonials on your website

“One of the best ways to connect with prospects is by using stories from existing customers.”

– Alex Turnbull from
Groove

People are more likely to trust your agency early on if they have social proof of your expertise. Groove, a helpdesk software company, found that adding quality testimonials to their homepage, guest post landing pages, and email marketing led to an increase in conversions by up to 15%. As a tech founder myself, I’m more likely to try a product or service with a good testimonial from someone that I know or know of that’s an industry expert.

For an agency, testimonials and case studies are one of your most powerful assets. A great way to get testimonials for your agency is simply by asking for client feedback and turning that exact same feedback that you receive into a testimonial on your website.

There are two ways you can approach this: One is by analyzing all the comments you get from the NPS survey, and then personally emailing each respondent to ask for permission to use their comment as a testimonial.

The second way would be to send out a short survey soliciting client feedback from promoters. Let’s say you worked with a client recently and you know that they’re delighted by the results based on a recent NPS survey. This would be an ideal client to reach out to about writing a quick testimonial for your website.

4) Turn passive clients into promoters by acting upon critical feedback

Eric Siu, founder of Single Grain, likes to ask his clients, “What’s one service we can add to our list that will make you super happy?”

People value service that goes above and beyond their expectations, and they tell others about those experiences. As an agency, your top goal should be to provide the most elegant experience for your clients. This is done by creating exceptional experiences that cultivate long-lasting and positive client relationships. One of the best ways to turn clients into promoters who are likely to refer your agency is to act on their critical feedback.

Think about some initiatives you can implement to make your customers sit up and say, “whoa that was great.” Account managers checking in regularly with the clients or the CEO of the agency personally reaching out and engaging with the clients is a great way to boost these type of advocate-building experiences.

5) Offer a referral incentive to your clients

By now, you should be actively engaging with your clients and ultimately trying to generate as much feedback as possible. If you’re sending out surveys and actively engaging, you can also offer them a referral program where your client can gain some sort of incentive for referring their professional network to your agency.

After you send out your NPS or one-click survey asking the client for their feedback, consider directing users to a thank you page offering a reward for sharing their testimonial on social media or via email.

Does this necessary need to be a cash offer or a referral program? Nope. You can add value to your customers by offering extra training on new products, sending them some free t-shirt or swag, or even taking them out for a day of golfing. Each of these examples show you’re genuinely investing in the relationship.

Ever notice how everyone in a workplace knows who the bad boss is—except the bad boss? If you’re supervising others, and you’re frustrated with their performance, it’s possible that the problem isn’t your team. You could be the not-so-great boss.

Disengaged employees cost the U.S. more than $500 billion in lost productivity annually, and most of that disengagement can be traced back to poor leadership and management. From large corporations to small marketing agencies, the impact of a bad boss can have catastrophic consequences to morale, revenue, and customer satisfaction.

This infographic from EOS Worldwide, the creators of the [Entrepreneurial Operating System®], explains the difference between a Great Boss and a Not-So-Great Boss so you can figure out where you fall on the spectrum and take steps to move away from the dark side.