Marketing Pilgrim’s Inbound Marketing channel sponsor HubSpot is firing on all cylinders these days. With over 7,000 customers worldwide and a vision for expanding well beyond where they are today, HubSpot is making this happen through living out a mantra to create marketing that people will love (see video at the end of the post).

The latest evidence of the success and the trust from investors that the growth will continue is the announcement of a $35 million mezzanine level investment. HubSpot is also giving a peek into the private companies plans as they report on 3rd quarter results. A few of the highlights are

• Mezzanine proceeds will be used for hiring, international expansion, and acquisitions.
• We’ve been methodically preparing systems and staff to operate “as if public”

This is a guest post by Sarah Goliger, an inbound marketer at HubSpot. HubSpot is a marketing software company based in Cambridge, MA that makes inbound marketing and lead management software. HubSpot is also the sponsor of Marketing Pilgrim’s Inbound Marketing channel.

If you’re generating leads for your business, you should know that roughly 50% of those leads will not be ready to buy immediately, according to Gleanster Research. What can you do, as a savvy inbound marketer, to convert more of those leads into customers? The answer is lead management.

By nurturing them with content that is closely-targeted to their needs and interests, you can educate your leads and pull them through the initial stages of the buying cycle until they are ready to be handed over to your sales team. But how do you know when a lead is ready for that first sales call? With the latest analytics tools and lead management software it’s easy to track behavior on your website and collect data that will help you make smarter marketing decisions.

Here are 5 B2B buying signals you should look out for and specific actions you can take to increase your sales.

Our Inbound Marketing Channel sponsor, HubSpot, has released a study that looks at the 7000 businesses (Marketing Benchmarks for 7000+ Businesses) that are currently using the HubSpot marketing automation suite of tools and found that blogging, yes that old school activity, generates traffic and leads for both B2B and B2C marketers.

How much you ask? Take a look at this information regarding the number of posts and traffic for sites when taking into consideration company size.

So size does matter, huh?

Another look at traffic measurements as it relates to B2B and B2C marketing

So traffic is nice but when it comes to businesses and their websites, leads are the true measuring stick. So what happens with leads in these situations? Interestingly enough the little guys are the ones that get the most leads even if their traffic numbers aren’t as robust as the big boys.

Marketers have a lot on their plate. Now imagine if that plate were their budget and the marketing world just kept piling on new things until the plate, which has a finite capacity, overflowed. No matter how good the stuff on that plate looked marketers can only eat put so much on that plate / budget.

With that said, marketers must constantly evaluate how they will allocate the limited space in their budget for the myriad options available in the online and offline marketing worlds. A report from the folks who put on the eTail conferences each year gives insights into what their attendees were interested in spending externally just this past August. Remember this is external spend with vendors and additional avenues of help. Here is a summary chart.