If you're interested in crushing your 2020 growth goals, a killer inbound marketing plan is a no-brainer. Inbound marketing is an impressively powerful lead generation strategy, and as marketing technology advances, the opportunities for impressive results with inbound continue to grow rapidly.

The most challenging aspect of creating an effective inbound marketing plan is usually just knowing where to begin. So we've created this easy-to-follow 10-step guide on how to create a powerful inbound marketing strategy that will rock your organization's sales and marketing world in 2020 and beyond.

No matter your organization or industry, your website is the digital epicenter of marketing and sales activity.

How do you ensure that your website not only speaks clearly and directly to your target audience, but that it also actually influences their behavior, getting them to convert on a form or complete another desired action established by your marketing team?

These five steps will outline a blueprint to develop an inbound website - one that will be irresistible to your target customers.

When it comes to boosting your website's conversion rate, you can focus your efforts on several areas to see results almost immediately. Every website is unique, but some tried-and-true best practices within conversion rate optimization prove to increase website lead generation for pretty much everyone.

Try these seven proven ways to boost your website conversion rate and start getting more leads from your existing website traffic. These tips will generate improvement for almost any website, particularly when implemented all together.

Managing a blog for your brand is an awesome way to generate traffic and leads. But very few teams know exactly what to focus on in their blog to get the impressive results they're really looking for. 

You can use these high-impact, low-effort tips to improve conversion performance on almost any blog.

Editor's Note: This blog was originally published in July 2018 and updated in May 2019.

HubSpot CRM is a great tool to help sales leaders gain visibility into their pipeline and to implement measurable change in their organization.

Click here to get the HubSpot CRM. It’s free and it’s awesome, we promise.

Setting up well-defined deal stages is an important first step to gaining insight into your sales funnel and improving sales team performance.

Setting yourself up for success within HubSpot is a critical process. HubSpot contains a powerful set of tools to help increase lead generation and customer acquisition, but it's not a magic button that is ready to go from the gate. You need to properly configure your system to make it work well for your organization, and that starts with properly mapping your sales process using lifecycle stages, lead statuses, and deal stages.

One key trait that identifies all high achievers is that they take action. They don't just talk about ideas; they do. Winning teams practice the art of implementation relentlessly. 

It's not particularly surprising, then, that successful implementation of a strategic marketing plan is one of the biggest challenges consistently facing marketing teams. 

Failed implementation is a stressful situation for any member of your marketing team, but it's marketing leaders that end up taking the brunt of the blame when a marketing plan fails to launch. Organizations regularly cite failure to execute a strategic plan as their primary reason for firing a CMO. 

Data privacy is quickly becoming a business focus around the world, and it's only the beginning. Technology has reshaped our privacy expectations, and there is increasing backlash, as well as legal and regulatory action, that has been generated in response. This rapidly evolving landscape will fundamentally change how business is transacted online.

Huge data privacy scandals are making headlines, and conglomerates like Facebook and Google are being hit with significant financial penalties under applicable laws. As a result of the shifting legal landscape, consumers' expectations around privacy are once again shifting, too.

The ultimate goal of any marketing campaign is to influence human behavior. That’s why the most successful marketing campaigns incorporate and leverage certain principles of human psychology. 

If you’ve spent any time online over the last two years, you’ve more likely than not encountered chatbots. And if you haven’t, you will soon. Chatbots, often referred to simply as “bots,” are heralded by many as the next must-have-technology for marketing and sales.

Businesses of all shapes and sizes are adopting chatbots rapidly, and there are many powerful applications within any given company. More and more big brands, from Nike to Whole Foods, have already embraced bot technology, and now chatbots are quickly becoming mainstream. Research from Forrester showed that in 2016, just 5% of companies worldwide were using chatbots regularly. Compare that to a recent survey by Oracle, which found that 80% of senior marketing and sales professionals expect to be using chatbots for customer interactions by 2020.

Chatbots are an excellent reminder that the digital revolution is far from over. We’re actually right in the midst of it. As more and more companies join in, marketers need to get a good grasp on how to use this powerful technology for the good of their brand.

So, let’s explore this emerging technology, what it means for marketing teams, and how to leverage it successfully for your brand.