3 Must-Read Stats on the State of Inbound Marketing in 2015 [New Research]

Every year, the marketing industry undergoes some serious changes. New technology emerges, people's behaviors change, and as a result, marketers are often left with an entirely different playing field. 

To make better sense of these changes and trends, we did some research and collected insights from 4,000 marketers and salespeople. HubSpot's new State of Inbound 2015 report is available today, and we have a ton of valuable industry data to share with you.

While the report dives deep into a number of different focus areas, we wanted to highlight a few quick takeaways that really stuck out. That said, check out these three revealing statistics that emerged from the research.

3 Must-Read Stats on the State of Inbound Marketing in 2015 

1) 3 out of 4 marketers across the globe prioritize an inbound approach to marketing!

Okay, so this statistic isn’t really a surprise to HubSpot, but we were extremely heartened to see how inbound has taken off globally.

Inbound is especially popular in smaller organizations, who are running lean and mean marketing teams and leveraging inbound concepts to attract visitors and leads to their brands on a limited budget. Larger organizations have more equally distributed their resources, focusing half their efforts on inbound tactics and half on traditional outbound campaigns like print ads and investment in events.

2) Inbound campaigns achieve higher ROI than outbound.

Marketers who track marketing ROI reported a clear payoff with inbound campaigns. This holds true across different company sizes, regions, and budgets. Inbound campaigns return more value than traditional paid tactics because content generated through inbound has the potential to attract visitors and shares long after the marketer has moved on to their next project. What’s more, marketers who could prove positive ROI are 2x more likely to get higher budgets in the next year compared to those who couldn't.

The lesson from the data is clear: Inbound creates higher ROI. Tracking and proving ROI makes marketing teams more successful. And successful marketing teams often get more budget.

3) Outbound marketers think outbound marketing tactics are overrated.

Every year we ask marketers to identify the most overrated marketing tactic. We admit that inbound marketers tend to be biased and rate outbound tactics, like paid advertising, as the most overrated. We cut the data to compare the responses of inbound marketers and outbound marketers and got a big surprise. Outbound marketers seem to loathe outbound marketing tactics too.

Perhaps it’s because it’s really hard to measure the success of outbound campaigns, or because once you stop paying for an ad, the flow of leads and contacts immediately disappear. At any rate, this has a lot of interesting ramifications for marketing in general. As marketers move away from traditional marketing channels, what will crop up to fill the gap? Native advertising is now getting its stride, and many brands are further exploring social and interactive advertising. We’ll keep asking this question in future State of Inbound Surveys and track how sentiment changes over the years.

The full State of Inbound report contains even more fascinating insights about today's sales landscape. Download the full study to discover:

• The #1 challenge marketing teams face globally               
• The #1 priority marketing teams are tackling
• How marketing budgets have changed since last year
• Who’s creating content for marketing teams
• Whether alignment with sales means success within marketing