INBOUND

THE STATE OF INBOUND MARKETING
KEY FINDINGS
As we’ve combed through
thousands of blogs, websites and
Twitter feeds (plus a lot of
company LinkedIn, Facebook,
Google+ profiles and more), we’ve
got to know a lot about the
people behind the brands, about
what they do and how they
present themselves to the world.
We’ve seen a huge range of
innovative approaches to digital
marketing – everything from
hilarious tweets to truly inspiring
videos and some of the most
brilliantly designed websites out
there.
What have we learned? When we
first hit on the idea of ranking
Microsoft Partners on their
marketing in 2015, we focused
exclusively on Office 365 and
SharePoint Product Vendors. This
year, however, we wanted to cast a
wider net, and rank any Microsoft
Partner that works with or supplies
enterprise productivity tools. In
2015 we were looking at around
2,000 Partners. This year, we
looked at over 25,000.
As a direct result, the standard this
year went through the roof. We’ve
been consistently impressed by
the high quality of companies on
this list, and there’s often been just
a couple of decimal places between final placement in the
runnings. The average overall score of the top 10 was a mighty
7.29 out of 10.
With the super charged nature of this year’s list, what are the key
findings from our research?
CONSISTENCY ACROSS CHANNELS IS KEY
The digital revolution has changed the way we do marketing.
There is now a huge range of options open to the savvy marketer
– from emails to websites to a plethora of social feeds. While few
companies have the resources to maintain a presence on all of
these, being consistent in the channels you do select is essential.
So, if you’re going to blog, make sure you tie your blogs in with
your website content and eBooks, and tell the world about your
material over Twitter and other social media platforms. The
companies that did best in our ranking excelled in all the
channels they use; we rarely saw a Twitter feed or blog that had
been neglected for more than a couple of days.
YOUR SHOP WINDOW
Most, if not all, of the companies on this list have impressive
websites with smooth, slick and modern interfaces. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, Infragistics (a New York based UX design
company) received the highest ranking in the website category in
our scoring. Nonetheless, many companies on this list had very
impressive websites, with great quality navigation and next
generation features such as integrated video and regularly
updated landing pages.
Our report shows that WordPress is the go to CMS for 85% of the
top 20. Speed was also a big factor for the best sites, with the
average load time for the top 10 an impressive 2.64 seconds.
The top 10 also paid huge attention to mobile users, with an
average score of 9.6 out of 10 for mobile responsiveness.
“
In 2015 we looked at around 2,000 Partners.
This year we looked at over 25,000, meaning
everyone in this year’s report can class
themselves as among the top 1%.
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