What is Inbound Marketing: Why you should be in the know

What is Inbound Marketing? Statistics and Definitions Revealed.

What is Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing by Definition:

We often run across the same question over and over again, which is "What is Inbound Marketing"? Inbound marketing is promoting a company through blogs, podcasts, video, eBooks, enewsletters, whitepapers, SEO, social media marketing, and other forms of content marketing which serve to attract customers. In contrast, buying attention, cold-calling,direct paper mail, radio, TV advertisements, sales flyers, spam, telemarketing and traditional advertising are considered "outbound marketing". Inbound marketing refers to marketing activities that bring visitors in, rather than marketers having to go out to get prospects' attention. Inbound marketing earns the attention of customers, makes the company easy to be found, and draws customers to the website by producing interesting content. Inbound marketing methodologies are used to reach potential customers at various levels of brand awareness. These tactics require a commitment in order to steer marketing efforts into increased opportunities, as it provides the prospect to both learn about potential customers and have potential customers learn about the business.

David Meerman Scott recommends that marketers "earn their way in" (via publishing helpful information on a blog etc.) in contrast to outbound marketing, where they "buy, beg, or bug their way in" (via paid advertisements, issuing press releases, or paying commissioned sales people, respectively). The inbound marketing term was coined by HubSpot’s Brian Halligan, in 2005. According to HubSpot, inbound marketing is especially effective for small businesses that deal with high dollar values, long research cycles and knowledge-based products. In these areas prospects are more likely to get informed and hire someone who demonstrates expertise.

Source: Wikipedia

Email Marketing Stats

80.8% of users report reading email on mobile devices. (HubSpot)
12% of people use separate work and personal inboxes. (HubSpot)
Over 50% of respondents say they read most of their emails. (HubSpot)
"Secrets" is the most clicked lead nurturing subject line word. (HubSpot)
"Posts" and "Jobs" are the most clicked subject line words. (HubSpot)
Click through rate (CTR) is higher when using the recipients first name in the subject line over no use of the first name. (HubSpot)
CTR is higher when using the recipients company name in the subject line over no company mention. (HubSpot)
88% prefer to receive HTML emails vs. 12% who prefer plain text from companies. (HubSpot)
65% prefer emails that contain mostly images vs. 35% who prefer mostly text. (HubSpot)
6 AM has the highest CTR of any hour. (HubSpot)
Most unsubscriptions come on Tuesdays (0.52% unsub rate). (HubSpot)
"Click Here" gets the highest % of clicks over "Go" and "Submit." (HubSpot)
In 2014, email marketing was cited as the most effective digital marketing channel for customer retention in the United States. (eMarketer).
59% of B2B marketers say email is the most effective channel for generating revenue. (BtoB Magazine)
49% of B2B marketers spend more time and resources on email than on other channels. (BtoB Magazine)
Triggered email messages get 119% higher click-through rates than "business as usual" messages. (Epsilon)
Your most recent subscribers are the most likely to click through. (HubSpot)
Saturday has the highest CTR at over 9% (Sunday is second just under 9%). (HubSpot)

Blogging Stats

There are 31% more bloggers today than there were three years ago. (eMarketer, August 2010)
46% of people read blogs more than once a day. (HubSpot Science of Blogging, 2010)
Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI. (HubSpot State of Inbound, 2014)
Nearly 40% of US companies use blogs for marketing purposes. (eMarketer, August 2010)
B2B companies place a higher value on educational formats like blogging and webinars, whereas consumer businesses are slightly more willing to experiment with advanced digital formats like interactive content and online tools. Infographics were also preferred. Download infographic templates here. (HubSpot State of Inbound, 2014)
84% of inbound marketers - compared to only 9% of outbound marketers - cite organic sources (blogging, SEO, social media) as rising in importance. (HubSpot State of Inbound, 2014)
82% of marketers who blog daily acquired a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% of marketers who blog monthly -- which, by itself, is still an impressive result. (HubSpot State of Inbound, 2013)
79% of companies that have a blog report a positive ROI for inbound marketing in 2013. (HubSpot State of Inbound, 2013)

Lead Generation Stats

48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign. (MarketingSherpa)
68% of B2B businesses use landing pages to garner a new sales lead for future conversion. (MarketingSherpa)
16% of landing pages are free of navigation bars. (MarketingSherpa)
48% of offers have multiple offers built in. (MarketingSherpa)
42% of offer-related graphics on landing pages are not clickable. (MarketingSherpa)
The biggest challenge B2B marketers face in regards to lead generation is generating high-quality leads (61%). (B2B Technology Marketing Community)
84% of companies that have a CRM have a lead scoring process in place to determine the quality of leads. (Direct Marketing News)
Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. (Demand Metric)
37% of B2B marketers are using marketing automation to generate leads. (MarketingProfs)
44% of B2B marketers have generated leads via LinkedIn, whereas only 39% have generated leads through Facebook and just 30% through Twitter. (ReachForce)
B2B marketers say that their greatest barriers to lead generation success are the lack of resources in staffing, budgeting, or time. (B2B Technology Marketing Community)
Nearly 50% of B2B marketers’ lead gen budgets will increase this year,compared to 44% that will remain the same and 7% that will decrease. (B2B Technology Marketing Community)
71% of B2B marketers use content marketing to generate leads. (MarketingProfs)
People are more likely to visit a B2B tech company’s website after seeing a tweet from the company, getting them one step closer to becoming a lead. (KoMarketing Associates)

Are You Convinced Yet?

Bottom line is that you need inbound marketing if you want to maintain viability within your market verticals. We would be happy to show you why we should be the obvious choice for all of your inbound marketing needs. What is Inbound Marketing in the end? We are inbound marketing. We are Kpahi. Choice matters, so choose Kpahi!