Hubspot published their 2013 Inbound Marketing Report today. They surveyed over 3300 marketers across various business types and industries. There are some interesting tidbits in their findings. Among the most fascinating data points was this one:
54% more leads are generated by inbound marketing than by outbound marketing.
Uhh…that’s kind of a big deal. This is pretty staggering when you consider the vast PPC budgets marketing departments have and huge amount of resources companies pour into live events, outbound campaigns, and branding.
The study goes on to say that traditional and PPC channels deliver the least leads, as compared to all marketing channels and types.
Naturally Hubspot recommends that companies scale back outbound and PPC strategies and, instead, start doing more inbound marketing. Note: They are the inbound marketing experts, after all, I would expect this recommendation from Hubspot. 🙂
Additionally, the study found that inbound leads are cheaper than outbound leads.
2 times as many marketers say inbound deliveres a below average CPL as compared to outbound leads.
So, in summary, marketers love inbound and content marketing because it generates a lot of leads on-the-cheap. Great.
Our Experience With Inbound and Content Marketing
If you’ve read our blog lately, you know that we are profoundly committed to inbound marketing.
Webinar – We host at least one marketing webinar a week. These webinars feature marketing experts from agencies, major corporations, or consultants. We’ve had incredible guests like Tim Ash, Michael Fleischner, Greg Cesar, Jeremy ‘Shoemoney’ Schoemaker, and Brian Massey. These webinars have have produced thousands upon thousands of leads and MANY accounts.
We make sure they focus, not just on call tracking, but on other useful marketing concepts, strategies, and tactics. We’re focused on long-term useful content, not short-term traffic increases.
Blog and Articles – We recently completed a content marketing push of 150 blogs in 50 days. This strategy resulted in substantial increases in leads, overall traffic, and organic traffic to both the blog and the site.
The impact of inbound marketing is continuing to be felt all over the Internet. And as Google gives more credence to authorship, author rank, and author authority, we expect content to be enthroned as the number one marketing tactic. We’re trying to get ahead of the game.
