The battle between inbound marketing and outbound marketing has been around ever since HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan coined the term ‘inbound marketing’ in 2005. Since then, marketers have compared the two methodologies arguing which is more effective.
It’s estimated that around 75% of marketers believe inbound marketing is more effective while 25% think otherwise. Inbound marketing may be the preferred methodology nowadays, but it hasn’t always been that way.
If you still stand by the traditional outbound approach or are on the fence about whether it really works, we outline 20 statistics that prove inbound marketing does work.
What is inbound marketing?
Unlike outbound marketing which pushes messages to consumers that they may not necessarily want, inbound marketing attracts potential customers with timely and relevant messaging. Inbound marketing is all about targeting relevant audiences with digital content that is of value to pull them into the buying process.
The hard-sell approach that is suited to outbound marketing methods is no longer effective as audiences become increasingly fragmented. Inbound marketing tries to overcome this barrier by valuing and empowering customers through useful, relevant, and helpful content.
Inbound marketing is all about building meaningful and lasting relationships with your customers by valuing and empowering them to achieve their goals. The inbound marketing process happens in three stages:
- Attract
- Engage
- Delight
Find out more about inbound marketing in our beginner’s guide
The state of inbound marketing
HubSpot has estimated that around 70% of marketers actively invest in inbound marketing strategies. As many as 41% of marketers confirming inbound does produce a measurable return on investment.
Inbound marketing continues to grow with content marketing and social media marketing being the most popular and effective inbound digital marketing techniques. Creating quality content that aligns with your buyer personas is a successful inbound marketing strategy and will continue to head the inbound methodology for years to come.
So, the next question is, does inbound marketing really work?
20 statistics that prove inbound marketing really works
- Using inbound marketing techniques can generate 54% more leads compared to traditional paid marketing.
- Leads that are generated through inbound marketing techniques cost 61% less than outbound leads.
- Leads generated through SEO have a 14.6% close rate compared to 1.7% with outbound marketing.
- B2B companies that regularly post updates to their blog generate 67% more leads per month.
- 88% state that creating video content has helped increase inbound marketing ROI.
- Search engines play a role in starting 93% of all online experiences.
- Websites with between 51 and 100 pages will generate 48% more traffic than websites with less than 50 pages.
- Increasing your landing pages from 10 to 15 can increase lead generation by 55%.
- 59% of marketers state video is their top content marketing format. Short-form videos are the fastest growing on social media.
- 44% of marketers state social media is their top marketing channel for B2C and B2B.
- Blogs that incorporate visual elements receive 94% more views than those without.
- Up to 80% of searchers ignore paid and sponsored search results highlighting the importance of an effective search engine optimisation (SEO).
- Inbound marketing leads have a much lower customer acquisition cost over time compared to outbound marketing.
- Less than 15% of marketers believe outbound marketing strategies generate high-quality leads.
- After implementing a successful inbound marketing strategy for 5 months, the average cost per lead drops 80%.
- Content marketing is 3x more effective at generating leads than paid search advertising.
- Nurtured leads will make 47% greater purchases compared to non-nurtured leads.
- Nearly 2/3 of marketers agree that targeted personalisation increases engagement.
- The most popular B2C inbound content types are blogs (83%), email newsletters (74%), videos (62%), and infographics (55%).
- 76% of customers get frustrated when they don’t receive personalised interactions.
With these 20 statistics, if you were doubtful about inbound marketing, you should now be assured that this methodology really does work. By implementing an inbound marketing strategy, not only will you start to generate leads, but you’ll see a much better ROI than any outbound methods.
If you want to get started with inbound marketing or want to find out how it can help your business grow, get in touch with our friendly team.