All week long, we’re taking an in-depth look at regional data collected from HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2016 report.
HubSpot released its global 8th annual State of Inbound (SOI) report earlier this week, delivering insights into the biggest challenges and top priorities for marketers and salespeople based on trending data from thousands of the world’s foremost marketers and salespeople.
Today, we’re releasing a SOI report that examines a key region of inbound marketers and salespeople: Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The State of Inbound 2016 EMEA report draws from 4,500 global respondents, with a specific focus on the over 900 respondents from EMEA, where leads dominate much of the marketing and sales headlines.
The data shows that the greatest challenge facing marketers in EMEA (74%) is converting the visitors they attract into leads and customers. It’s no surprise then to find that sales find their lead to customer conversion rate hovering below 20% for almost half of respondents, and 69% saying the top priority of sales this year is to close more deals.
One way organizations are righting this ship? Diversifying and decentralizing their content. Next year, marketers want to adapt their marketing strategies accordingly and grow their efforts in the respective platforms: Youtube (46%), Facebook Video (33%), and Instagram (30%).
By evolving their approach to inbound and Investing in these new channels, marketers hope to drive new leads for sales. And 59% of sales reps agree that inbound leads are the highest quality -- though there’s room to grow, with only 22 percent of salespeople primarily using leads from marketing.
“A business’s success is directly linked to the success of that company’s marketing organization. And success means a balance between lead quantity and quality,” says Christian Kinnear, Managing Director EMEA, HubSpot. “If your marketing and sales teams aren’t aligned to bring highly qualified leads into the sales process, you’re wasting valuable resources and missing out on lost revenue.”
Additionally, data from the report reveals opportunities for marketing and sales professionals in EMEA to benefit from the inbound methodology:
- 57% of survey takers indicated that prospects are “somewhat” or “not at all” knowledgeable about their companies before a sales rep makes first contact.
- 29% more EMEA inbound teams will focus on content creation, compared to their outbound counterparts.
- 28% of companies say social selling is a top priority in the coming year, an increase from 22% in 2015.
- “Lack of integration” was the #1 CRM challenge of 2016 for EMEA respondents.
For more on HubSpot’s State of Inbound findings in EMEA, you can check out the State of Inbound EMEA report here. And, for more on how EMEA compares to the rest of the world, check out the global State of Inbound 2016.
