According to the latest Inbound Marketing report produced by Hubspot, three-quarters of marketers are now choosing to devote their efforts to an Inbound rather than Outbound. 

Nevertheless, even though the rise in team skills and the professionalization of digital marketing agencies are real, some Inbound Marketing campaigns don't deliver the expected results. Why?

The British agency Strategic looked into the causes of these failures. It identified six main causes:

1 - Buyer Personas are created without real analysis.

Most often, this type of mistake occurs when a company is too confident in understanding its own customers. It's usually best to outsource the job of creating Buyer Personas to an agency that won't have a bias on the subject.

2 - Marketing and Sales do not work hand in hand

This is like preparing for a doubles tennis match where each player would do their preparation on their own: it doesn't yield good results. If the leads created by Inbound Marketing are not exploited by sales people, the campaign is a failure

3 - The editorial line is not well defined

It is difficult to produce results in Inbound Marketing if the content produced is not consistent with each other. We're not talking about content formats here, but the topics and goals of that content. Too much dispersion leads to low ROI.

4 -Content theming is unclear

This point partially relates to the previous one. To hold the attention of leads, it is necessary to produce content by theme. Thus each Buyer Persona finds its account. 

5 -Distribution channels are poorly calibrated

In order to promote your content effectively, you need to know the concrete impact of the channels (emails, social networks, etc.). To do this, you need to test them constantly, including during the campaign. Without this action, there is a great risk that the impact of the message will be greatly compromised. 

The sales cycle and nurturing are not aligned

In your Inbound Marketing campaign, setting up Marketing Automation allows you to feed relevant content to your leads. By analyzing the data, you can easily determine when the decision is made by your prospect. If the right content misses the right time and the right person, it doesn't have the desired effect.

Here is the infographic that details these six causes of failure: