10 Stats About Inbound Marketing That Will Make Your Jaw Drop

Recently, there has been a lot of talk in the marketing community about how marketing has evolved from an art to a science. While sexy, creative, catchy copy and eye-popping design are still relevant and important, today, the numbers rule.

How many visitors did we get to our website yesterday? How many leads did we generate from our new e-book? How are we performing compared to our goals for the week? These are the rallying questions heard throughout marketing departments around the world.

This shift towards a more analytical approach underscores the growing importance of inbound marketing, which thrives on data-driven strategies to attract, engage, and delight customers in a digital world.

Along with all the numbers comes even better data on what works and what doesn’t. Here are ten of the most amazing inbound marketing stats that we collected from all over the community of inbound marketers.

1) Blogging and Lead Generation

According to Social Media B2B, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t. This should make a lot of sense. If you have an active blog, you have a better chance of making a connection with your website visitors. With educational content delivered in a conversational tone, your prospects get to know your business in a more personal way.

2) Online Readership

The Content Marketing Institute reports that 8 out of 10 people identify themselves as blog readers, and 23% of all time spent online is spent on social media sites. The numbers don’t lie. More and more people are reading blogs, and when they find blog articles they like, they are sharing them with their social media networks. To leverage this new buyer behavior, you need both an active blog and an active presence on all the relevant social media networks.

3) Blogging and SEO

ContentPlus published that blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links. Indexed pages and indexed links translate into higher rankings with the search engines, and that means more website traffic to your site. Also, an additional benefit blogging brings to search engine optimization is content freshness. Google is looking for new and fresh content. The more you blog, the more likely your site will rank highly on the search engines.

4) The Decline of Paid Ads

The people have voted, and Search Engine Land shares that up to 80% of people ignore Google-sponsored ads. This is not surprising, and with Google making changes to their ranking algorithms and presenting more educational content like blog posts and videos instead of simple website urls, expect this number to continue to climb in the future.

5) The First Page Wins

HubSpot’s research shows that 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. This statistic is also not surprising, given how quick we are to scan our results, click a few links and be on our way. Now, more than ever, it is vital to continue creating compelling, educational content that people love and share. This is how you end up on the first page of Google results in 2014.

6) Inbound vs. Outbound Leads

According to Search Engine Journal, inbound leads cost 60% less than outbound leads. Considering the amount of waste associated with traditional, impression-based advertising, inbound marketing provides a much more focused program that matches today’s buyer behavior.

7) The Bounce Rate

Microsoft Research reports that people spend only 10 seconds on your homepage before leaving if they don’t immediately connect with your marketing messages. Consider this in terms of your own browsing behavior. How quickly do you jump on that back button if the site is too complicated, too slow to load, too hard to read or too difficult to navigate? You only have one chance – make it count with strong, emotional messaging and powerful educational offers.

8) The Effectiveness of Webinars

Two educational powerhouses, the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, teamed up to report that 61% of B2B marketers rate webinars as the most effective content-marketing tactic. Best practices around inbound marketing dictate that you need educational offers for the top, middle and bottom of your sales funnel. Webinars are great educational offers for that middle-of-the-funnel prospect who has started the research phase of his or her buyer journey and is now getting into the consideration phase, looking for more information.

9) The Importance of Imagery

Jeff Bullas writes that articles with images get 94% more views over those without an image. Most people are visual learners. In fact, up to 60% of the population consists of visual learners, meaning they prefer watching over reading. Images appeal to visual learners; therefore, it’s important to feature images on your blog posts and articles if you want to garner more visitors.

10) Content is King

Content Marketing Institute recently reported that 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus in an advertisement. The bottom line: We don’t want to be sold to, we want to be educated, and articles deliver the kind of information your prospects are seeking in order to make smart, well-informed decisions.

The data is in! Inbound marketing delivers results that other marketing tactics just can't match. Apply inbound marketing at your company and watch as your marketing metrics respond like the research above.