After spending a week studying in one of Asia’s most technologically advanced cities, I often think that there’s a big disconnect in the retail industry when it comes to using digital marketing and innovation.

In my last interview, I talked about how e-commerce can build much better relationships than bricks and mortar stores. That was a story on digital marketing and marketing automation. But even marketers who are proficient in digital marketing aren’t always adept at their own campaigns. They think that if they continue to spend on a business-as-usual way (without digital marketing but instead using traditional marketing techniques), they’ll continue to build great business without any improvement in results.

According to a KELLOGG study, most marketers still think their business is built solely on ideas – focusing on traditional forms of marketing – without digital marketing at their core.

But let’s take a look at some of the findings from some of the research I’ve conducted since leaving my marketing job to spend some time getting inspired by what other people are doing. And what I found – is that this disconnect is so, so incredibly common.

Inbound Marketing is a great way to bridge the gap between a company’s planning and its execution. Those who use it optimally often do so for the very simple reason that it’s how people want to engage.

What I like about Inbound Marketing is that it gives businesses a blank canvas. It allows the business to start from scratch and start from nothing. What would happen if a business takes the initiative to reimagine how it wants to do business?

A poll conducted by MarketingTechnologyNetwork.com found that 77% of marketers are unsure if Inbound Marketing would be the right tool for their organization. Only 23% of marketers have implemented Inbound Marketing and a little over 20% have quantified any sort of ROI (based on analytics) from their inbound efforts.

That’s why, most brands probably aren’t interested in experimenting with Inbound Marketing because they don’t know how to measure its performance or aren’t sure if it will help them reach the goals that they’ve set out to achieve.

But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a great way to build brand awareness, drive conversion and increase margins. Some brands have found success by getting creative with what they’re calling “impact attribution”, pointing out to people what they’re seeing online, making it an active part of people’s buying behavior, not just what they’re seeing and hearing.

Some brands are also finding success by trying new approaches, like charging clients a small fee to use Inbound Marketing resources and creating an inbound catalog.

The point is that Inbound Marketing is not a thing of the past, as it’s clear that it’s here to stay. It’s an efficient way to jumpstart your business or allow it to capture a market that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach, and it should definitely be a part of your long-term plan.

If you want to improve your business’s chances of success, you need to start using it strategically and to maximize its effectiveness. It’s up to you to determine if Inbound Marketing is a way to keep your business feeling fresh or a tool you have to try first before you can make it work.

This post originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com.