Apprenticeship graduation and next steps
In this latest apprenticeship blog, Taylor from our team at sister agency Peter Bush Communications talks about her apprenticeship experience and what's coming next for her...head over to the Peter Bush Communications site to read Taylor's Blog.
Interempresas Media announces new publication Eurofach Electronica
The publishers of Electronica & Communicaciones, Interempresas Media, has taken a step further in its expansion strategy thanks to the acquisition of the technical publications Eurofach and Electronica & Communicaciones and the resulting creation of Eurofach Electrónica. Eurofach Electrónica will have 6 issues per year with a circulation of 12,500 and a newsletter subscriber base of 11,400 due to the acquisition. Cristina Minguez from Electronica & Communicaciones takes the helm as editor of Eurofach Electrónica.
Interempresas Media is part of the Catalan Nova Àgora Group which currently publishes 40 printed magazines, 55 e-magazines, and more than 115 industry newsletters per month. As such Interempresas Media has one of the best known industrial portals aimed at Spanish-speaking readers in the world, with an average of approximately 900,000 visits each month.
Finland to Host their first ever Embedded Conference
Finland will hold their first ever Embedded Conference in May this year, hosted by the publishing house ETN. This one-day event will be invitation only, gathering professionals from both the embedded hardware and software industries.
The event will have significant keynotes, panel discussions and two technical tracks; Software and Hardware solutions. The website for this event has just gone live - visit Embedded Conference Finland for more information.
If you’d like to get involved and participate as an exhibitor, get in touch with Editor-in-Chief Veijo Ojanperä at vo@etn.fi, or Sales Manager Anne-Charlotte Sparrvik at ac@etn.fi for more information.
What does HubSpot’s 'State of Inbound 2016' report tell B2B marketers?
As proud partners of HubSpot, we eagerly awaited their eighth annual State of Inbound Report, presenting the trends and growth of inbound marketing. We weren’t disappointed as we delved into HubSpot’s report, discovering the state of inbound marketing in 2016 and HubSpot’s predictions for the future of inbound marketing.
74% of marketers surveyed recognised the importance of converting leads to customers, rating it as their company’s top marketing priority for the next 12 months. If the time taken to convert leads to customers can be shortened and speed through the sales funnel increased, then inbound marketing is the perfect marketing strategy and is a highly profitable approach for businesses. Here at Napier, we understand the value of maximising lead conversions to make B2B campaigns more profitable, and are continually working hard to develop techniques that increase the speed that a lead converts to a customer for our client’s campaigns.
Interestingly, the State of Inbound report results showed that although conversions are named as the biggest priority, when companies were asked to look at their marketing on a project level, the projects that they actually prioritised were SEO and blogging. Less than half of the respondents prioritised marketing automation. Unsurprisingly given this information, HubSpot’s research shows that a quarter of companies convert less than 10% of their leads to customers, so there is clearly a need for companies to focus on marketing activities that drive conversions.
The report highlights the ongoing transformations in inbound marketing and how the methodology is being employed by marketers. For the last two years, marketers have been focusing on increasing the number of contacts or leads. Now we are seeing a shift from purely quantity metrics to a mix of quality and quantity. For 2016 and beyond, companies are concentrating on conversion rates and how to achieve a higher conversion rate for the best ROI. Inbound, by nature, is all about attracting the the target customers for your business and so it follows that the leads you generate will inherently be of a higher quality and which will lead to better conversions.
As we know, marketing and sales are dependent upon each other and the results of this latest HubSpot report reinforces the importance of this co-dependent relationship. The 2016 report shows that closing more deals is unsurprisingly the top priority for businesses, with 70% ranking this as the most important priority, however this percentage has dropped by 2% in comparison to last year. Improving the efficiency of the sales funnel is the next most important sales priority with reducing the length of the sales cycle following close behind. The stats for this are interesting as there has been a 2% increase from 2015 to 2016 in respondents focusing on speed. The increasing importance of reducing the sales cycle shows that companies are looking for ways to work smarter and implementing inbound marketing can definitely play a part in this.
We were encouraged to read that HubSpot’s findings are very closely aligned to Napier’s unique focus on increasing the speed at which visitors become leads and ultimately customers, and that inbound marketing is a great tool to support this goal.
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