Blog originally published Sep 4, 2018.

Having a healthy stream of leads coming in from your website is a great first step toward generating revenue attributable to your marketing efforts. But turning those leads into customers requires a bit more strategic attention.

Lead scoring is a valuable tool that any sales and marketing team can implement to close more customers. Lead scoring is a system that ranks your prospects based on their perceived value to your organization. It is an automated way to identify and hand off your hottest leads to your sales team so they can work their magic and close more deals.

So….2020 probably isn’t going quite as you’d planned. The COVID-19 pandemic has completely upended our way of life and caused massive disruption in nearly every industry and business.

For marketing and sales teams, this means, among other things, that in-person lead generation activities, like trade shows, conferences, and networking events, are canceled for the foreseeable future. 

Thousands of companies are struggling to figure out what to do next. Many B2B companies rely heavily upon in-person events to generate leads, and the COVID-19 crisis has created an alarming gap. 

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. 

Smart marketers know that basic marketing metrics (traffic and engagement) on their own provide a narrow view, and only small piece of the puzzle. While useful for optimizing campaigns, they are not necessarily tied to larger business goals and objectives.

Analytics that matter to organization leaders and boards go beyond the basic number of leads generated per quarter or increases in lead conversions. Leads, opportunities, and customers are easy and obvious numbers to focus on, but more important are the metrics that allow companies to track, project and predict growth. This is particularly true when it comes to SaaS (and IaaS, PaaS, FaaS) companies and others with a subscription-based pricing model.

Chances are, you're already familiar with Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). This is a number that investors care about, which means it is a number that companies care about, which means it is a number that marketers care about. MRR, however, is just scratching the surface of revenue metrics that matter and must be measured.

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.

Pop-Up Forms, formerly known as "Lead Flows," are a great and easy tool inside of the HubSpot growth stack that lets any website add a conversion point (form) to any website page, without any coding knowledge at all.

Pop-up forms are simple three-step forms for gathering customer information that can be set to appear on any page on your website. 

Here's how to use them effectively to generate leads.

Improving SEO and growing organic traffic is a top priority for many marketing teams. Yet, few teams excel when it comes to creating content that regularly earns favorable attention from search engines.

Creating content that search engines love means following a set of best practices to earn positive attention. Stick to these best practices, and you'll see dramatic uptick in organic website traffic and leads, along with a marked return on your content marketing investment.

Today's best marketing teams have an innovative mindset - constantly testing, integrating, and optimizing new technologies into their marketing tech stacks for continually better results over time. 

Indeed, the right marketing technology tools can be the difference between lackluster and amazing results. Fortunately, having an awesome tech stack doesn't have to cost a fortune. In fact, there are hundreds of tools that can make you a more amazing marketer without costing you a penny.