Which Marketing and Sales Reports Do We Read?

There are thousands of research-backed reports published each year that claim to provide must-read marketing insights and statistics. In theory, we should have a treasure trove of marketing information at our fingertips, but in practice, it can feel more like a junkyard. The amount of research available is simply overwhelming, and as a result, it is very difficult to discern which reports are gold and which are garbage.

While our team at Element Three can’t prevent organizations from publishing useless information, we can share with you the reports we actually read, so you can see what informs our decision-making and helps us stay ahead of the industry on behalf of our clients.

We will continue to update this post throughout the year as existing reports are updated or as new reports come onto our radar that we find useful. Feel free to bookmark this page as a reference when you’re looking for marketing research to inform your strategy.

Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey

• Years Running: 5
• Last Released: November 2016
• Most Recent Report: Gartner’s 2016/2017 CMO Spend Survey

Why We Read It:

As one of the leading research and advisory firms in the world, Gartner’s reputation hinges on its ability to accurately predict the industry trends most likely to impact businesses. And the Gartner for Marketers annual CMO Spend Survey doesn’t fail to deliver on this reputation. When the report was first released in 2012, it was the first to predict that CMOs would overtake CIOs as the top purchasers of technology by 2017. Fast forward to 2017, and that prediction is set to become a reality. If you’re looking for the go-to resource for what’s going to impact your marketing budget over the year ahead, this is it.

Top Takeaway from Most Recent Report:

Because this report is so important, we couldn’t identify just one. So we chose our top five takeaways from the 2016/2017 CMO Spend Survey. We actually devoted a whole series to this year’s report, so start at our recap post and then proceed to learn about how marketing budgets are expected to change in 2017 and why 2017 will be the year CMOs outspend CIOs on technology.

Limitations to Note:

The sample set of companies represented in the survey ranges from $250M to over $5B in annual revenue (i.e., the companies most likely to actually have a CMO). There are lessons that all sizes of organizations can take away, but it should be stated that the data officially represents only upper mid-market and enterprise organizations.

Salesforce State of Sales Report

• Years Running: 2
• Last Released: July 2016
• Most Recent Report: Salesforce 2016 State of Sales Report

Why We Read It:

There’s a reason Salesforce is the market leader in CRM and sales automation – they understand the needs of the modern sales organization and build their technology to fit those needs. This understanding is reflected in their annual State of Sales Report. In it, the B2B behemoth focuses on two primary areas of sales research:

1. What are high-performing organizations (measured in YOY revenue growth) doing differently than their underperforming or moderately performing counterparts when it comes to sales?
2. How are sales teams using technology to advance their efforts?

If you want to know how to realign your sales and marketing efforts to match those of the most of the most effective companies in the world, the State of Sales is a must-read.

Top Takeaway from Most Recent Report:

There is a ton of helpful quantitative research covered in the report that highlights how customer-centricity is truly the key differentiating factor between high-performing and underperforming sales teams. But we were most interested in the trends in sales intelligence technology: 139% of sales teams plan on using artificial intelligence to automatically recommend products to customers based on their preferences over the next three years. And that’s just the highest category – clearly the rapid expansion of technology adoption isn’t limited to just martech.

Bonus – Salesforce Research:

When you’re one of the largest software companies in the world, you better believe that a healthy amount of research fuels that growth. While we believe Salesforce’s State of Sales Report is the most useful addition to this list for marketers, they also release annual reports on Marketing (yes, we know – controversially not on this list, but still worth a read when you have time), Service, IT, and Analytics, as well as a host of other research. Needless to say, we highly recommend spending some time in Salesforce Research if you haven’t already.

Limitations to Note:

Unlike HubSpot’s State of Inbound (see below), the majority of sales professionals surveyed in the State of Sales Report have adopted Salesforce within their organization. Since Salesforce has prioritized innovation within its product roadmap (e.g. the release of its Einstein AI at Dreamforce in 2016), it’s probably safe to say that those surveyed likely prioritize innovation in sales technology more than the general sales population.

Content Marketing: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America (both the B2B and B2C Reports)

• Years Running: 7
• Last Released: October 2016
• Most Recent B2B Report: B2B Content Marketing: 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America
• Most Recent B2C Report: B2C Content Marketing: 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America

Why We Read Them:

Admittedly, Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProf’s annual B2B Content Marketing and B2C Content Marketing Reports can feel a little repetitive at times – every year, the main conclusions seem to be that most marketers are using content marketing and that most marketers believe it’s effective. We believe the real value of these reports is found in the details: questions about how marketing teams structure their content marketing efforts, which channels of creation and distribution they believe are most effective, and the biggest barriers to content marketing success have served as useful guideposts for us in formatting our own content marketing strategy.

Top Takeaway from the Most Recent Reports:

Both B2B and B2C organizations continue to report that the trio of blogging, social media, and email remain not only the three most commonly adopted content marketing tactics, but the three tactics most critical to content marketing success. Which could suggest that in spite of all of our industry’s talk about holding content quality paramount, marketers continue to feel most comfortable relying on those channels that lend themselves best to repeatability and scale.

Limitations to Note:

The Benchmark, Budgets, and Trends Reports survey content marketing professionals specifically. We can imagine that said professionals are likely to have an optimistic view of content marketing and the impact that it has, which may or may not reflect the actual impact of content marketing.

HubSpot’s State of Inbound Report

• Years Running: 8
• Last Released: September 2016
• Most Recent Report: The State of Inbound 2016

Why We Read It:

Now eight years running, HubSpot’s State of Inbound covers a ton of ground in 128 pages. The survey of over 4,500 marketing and sales professionals reveals changes in marketing and sales team priorities and business objectives year-over-year, which marketing channels organizations are prioritizing, the most significant obstacles to sales and marketing alignment, changing customer expectations, and what marketing and sales talent look for in a company, among other trends. While there is a lot of data to unpack, all of it is clearly presented and easily digested, making it a worthwhile resource for marketing leaders who want to understand how their priorities compare to those of their peers.

Top Takeaway from Most Recent Report:

On the marketing side of things, marketing professionals now rated converting leads to customers as their top priority, unseating lead generation, which had held the position as number one objective of marketers surveyed since 2014. Additionally, while only eight percent of marketing professionals reported finding an executive sponsor as their top marketing challenge, over sixty-three percent selected executive sponsorship as one of their marketing challenges, far surpassing the second most common marketing challenge on the list: hiring top talent (~ 42%).

For sales professionals, 40 percent reported that getting a response from prospects is harder now than it was 2-3 years ago, thus confirming what many of us know intuitively: consumers and businesses are overwhelmed by the number of organizations trying to sell things to them, and frankly, they don’t have time for unwanted outreach any longer.

Limitations to Note:

We’ve shared previously why inbound marketing cannot work alone, and as the profession of marketing gets more and more complex, HubSpot’s dichotomy between inbound marketing and outbound marketing grows less meaningful. So naturally, we’d take data comparing the efficacy of inbound marketing-centric organizations to outbound marketing-centric organizations with a grain of salt. It should also be stated that while the organizations represented in the survey range from those < $250,000 in annual revenue to those making over $1B in annual revenue, the sample skews heavily toward smaller organizations (~50% of companies surveyed made less than $1M in annual revenue in 2015).

Google’s Year in Search

• Years Running: 16 (rebranded from Google Zeitgeist to Google’s Year in Search in 2014)
• Last Released: December 2016
• Most Recent Report: Google’s Year in Search 2016

Why We Read It:

Whereas we rely on the State of Inbound report for depth of data, the strength of Google’s Year in Search lies in its brevity. A recap of the top searches globally across a handful of categories, the report is a fascinating dive into the people, events, and ideas that fascinate us the most. Certainly 20 minutes of time well-spent.

Top Takeaway from Most Recent Report:

Pokemon Go, US elections, Brexit, and many of the unfortunate celebrity losses we experienced in 2016 topped global searches. Strangely enough, Céline Dion took the top spot as most searched living musician worldwide.

Limitations to Note:

Because of its brevity, there’s clearly only so much we can take away from the Year in Search that has an impact on our actual marketing strategy. But as far as guilty pleasures go, there are far worse ways to spend your time (for example, Creed was apparently fourth on that list of most searched living musicians and bands in the world).

Scott Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic

• Years Running: 5
• Last Released: March 2016
• Most Recent Report: Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic 2016

Why We Read It:

There is probably no other person on the planet willing to put in the amount of time and dedication it takes for Scott Brinker, editor of chiefmartec.com, to catalog the entirety of the marketing technology landscape each and every year. His annual supergraphic (because with that much information, the term infographic does it no justice) is absolutely dizzying – the result of the transfer of technology purchasing power from CIO to CMO is that there are now over 3,874 marketing technology solutions on the market and counting. But once you’ve had an opportunity to catch your balance, it’s worth the effort to spend time examining the categories of marketing technology on the market. Every year, we find ourselves learning about software capabilities we didn’t realize existed.

Top Takeaway from Most Recent Report:

When Scott Brinker first published his supergraphic in 2011, he identified 150 technologies. There are now almost 4,000. And nobody believes the space has reached its carrying capacity – be on the lookout for the landscape to surpass 10,000 technologies in 2017 or 2018.

Limitations to Note:

If you’re trying to determine which particular marketing technologies you should purchase, you’re much better served searching G2 Crowd than you are relying on this supergraphic. Scott’s landscape is about breadth and discovery, not about depth in understanding.

What Did We Miss?

We’re always hungry for more useful marketing research. Have a report you think should be on our list? Send us a note at [email protected] or tweet us at @ElementThree – if we like what we see, we will add it to the post and include a shout out to you for the recommendation.