The dynamics between consumers and brands have shifted. Gone are the days when consumers had to sit around and be advertised to by multiple companies. Today, all information is on-demand – and consumers like it that way.
Instead of simply being receivers, consumers now seek out the information they need, whether it’s your business’s location or your product details. As a business owner, it’s your job to make that information readily available and visible to your prospects. You can start by crafting an effective inbound marketing strategy. But first, what is inbound marketing?
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is an all-encompassing methodology that leverages the power of discovery to attract more traffic to your website. Essentially, it refers to all activities that seek to improve your business’s visibility online to acquire more leads and more opportunities for conversions.
Inbound marketing does away with outbound marketing tactics, AKA traditional marketing, which can come across as invasive and often disruptive. Where outbound deals with proactively looking for people who want to do business with you, inbound marketing focuses more on building valuable assets that draw people to your website.
The tactics involved in inbound marketing include topical blogging, social media campaigns, eBooks and search engine optimized web content – all tailored to your audience’s experiences. As a result of this thoughtful methodology, target customers gravitate towards your business and become more likely to convert.
Inbound Marketing Facts
In the battle between inbound vs outbound marketing, businesses today are leaning more towards inbound marketing. Take a look at some inbound marketing facts to understand why inbound emerges as the winner in the inbound vs outbound marketing debate.
• Inbound Is Cheaper Than Outbound
Inbound marketing return on investment (ROI) is generally higher than outbound since it has a higher conversion rate and costs less to acquire each lead. According to inbound marketing stats provided by HubSpot, the cost for lead acquisition for inbound is at least 67 percent less than that of outbound.
• Companies With Inbound Marketing Generate More Leads Than Those Without
People care about content. And the more regular content you create, the more chances your target customers get to discover your business through your content. As proof of this, businesses that apply inbound marketing tactics can generate as high as 126 percent more leads than those that don’t.
• Leads Generated Through Inbound Marketing Have a Higher Chance of Converting
According to inbound marketing statistics, leads gained through SEO have a close rate of 14.6 percent as opposed to just 1.7 percent with outbound. It goes to show that the more quality content you publish, the more you are seen as a trusted resource. And as trust grows, you are more easily able to convert your leads into customers.
Now, we’ve answered the most important question: What is inbound marketing? And we’ve also shared with you some inbound marketing facts. Are you ready to implement your own inbound marketing strategy? Great! We scoured the internet for the best and latest inbound marketing stats and compiled them into our inbound marketing statistics 2022 guide to fuel your campaigns. Use this guide to attract more leads and drive conversions.
General Inbound Marketing Statistics 2022
Generally speaking, inbound marketing is the preferred method for marketing specialists all over the world – and these inbound marketing stats 2022 show it:
1. Ninety-five percent of business-to-business (B2B) consumers say a business’s content helps them trust it more (Demand Gen Report, 2016).
The content you produce through your inbound marketing efforts is considered a marker for evaluating the trustworthiness of your business. The more you exude authority and knowledge through your content, the more you are seen as a worthy business partner.
2. Eighty-two percent of companies say they actively engage in content marketing (HubSpot, 2021).
Marketers and businesses are leveraging inbound marketing tactics, either by themselves or through inbound marketing services, which is a testament to the strategy’s ability to attract and convert leads.
3. Building brand awareness is the primary goal for 49 percent of businesses that implement inbound marketing strategies (Clutch, 2020).
Although increasing sales is the ultimate goal, another primary goal for about half of the companies surveyed is to simply make their brand more recognizable online to their target audience. Businesses eventually experience increased sales when leads acquired are nurtured until conversion.
Inbound Marketing Stats for Various Channels
Various inbound marketing services utilize different methods and channels for distributing content. By looking at the stats below, learn what channels an expert inbound marketing agency would use to maximize the exposure of your content:
4. Search engines are now the leading source of referral traffic (34.8 percent), overtaking social media (25.6 percent) (Shareaholic, 2018).
According to inbound marketing statistics shared by BrightEdge, search engines account for nearly 68 percent of all web traffic. With 5.6 billion searches made every day, it’s no surprise search engines have become the leading source of referral traffic.
5. Facebook is still the most popular channel for content distribution among marketers (HubSpot, 2020).
Despite search being the number one source of referral traffic, many marketers still rely on social media, particularly Facebook, to distribute content through links.
6. Campaigns that integrate multiple channels have enjoyed a 90 percent higher customer retention rate than single-channel marketing strategies (Omnisend, 2019).
Omnisend’s inbound marketing stats 2022 reveal that businesses can enjoy the highest retention rates and ROI when investing in omnichannel strategies instead of sticking to a single channel. By utilizing all available channels, your content gets maximum exposure without incurring significant marketing costs.
Inbound Marketing ROI Statistics
Inbound marketing offers so many benefits over outbound. One of these is ROI opportunities. But by how much? Our inbound marketing company shows how much you stand to gain from a well-implemented inbound marketing strategy through the following stats:
7. The number of engagements your content receives is the number-one metric 36 percent of marketers use to measure performance (Altimeter, 2021).
As mentioned above, the primary goal of businesses engaging in inbound marketing is to drive more brand awareness. So instead of measuring sales generated from each piece of content, they measure how well their content resonates with their audience through the number of engagements produced.
8. Eighty-two percent of marketers who have a blog enjoy positive inbound marketing ROI for their efforts (Invesp, 2016).
A large majority of marketers have seen considerable success thanks to their inbound marketing efforts.
9. A properly executed inbound marketing campaign is 10X more effective for lead conversion than any outbound tactic (Invesp, 2016).
There is no debate between inbound vs outbound marketing when it comes to the ability to convert leads. Inbound is 10X more effective because of one thing: engagement. Leads acquired through inbound tactics are more engaged than those acquired through outbound methods, which are often seen as disruptive.
Inbound Marketing Trends
The needs of the market are constantly evolving. And we must learn to adapt to these changes to ensure the continued growth and success of our business. Our inbound marketing company has identified a few of these trends, which we share with you below:
Blogging Is Still King – but Video Content Is Starting To Dominate
Blogging is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. Marketers have achieved great success in driving qualified traffic back to websites through a well-implemented blogging strategy.
But recent inbound marketing trends show that video content is starting to gain traction and is poised to take over as the primary driver of traffic. Eighty-seven percent of marketers say they use video in their content strategy and are satisfied with its ROI. And with the rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels, LinkedIn Stories and YouTube Shorts, short-form video content is becoming more popular with marketers who are targeting a much younger audience.
Forms Are Becoming a Thing of the Past
Industry experts agree that forms are becoming less effective in capturing information. It’s because users take too long to respond or fail to respond completely. Drift tested the response time of 433 companies using forms. Only 32 companies (seven percent) responded within five minutes, while 240 (55 percent) either took more than five days or failed to respond at all.
So if forms aren’t effective anymore, how do you capture user information? You can use smart applications that deliver target messaging like chatbots. Or, instead of asking for information all at once, use progressive forms to ask for pieces of information at a time so the data collection process doesn’t feel overwhelming.
Combine AI and Inbound Marketing Leads To Improve Customer Experiences
More and more companies are leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to aid their inbound marketing processes and deliver better customer experiences. As industry experts point out, AI can be used to collect data and deliver insights that reveal how consumers make purchasing decisions. AI can also be used to improve the efficiency of content marketing efforts through better segmentation and automation.
Conclusion
In the digital age, audiences prefer to do their own research at the awareness phase. As savvy business owners, your job is to ensure that this pursuit of information leads directly to your business. This is why inbound marketing works so well in helping you succeed in such a competitive, constantly evolving landscape. And to pave the way for your growth, we came up with this inbound marketing statistics 2022 guide.
In this guide, we shared with you our choices for top inbound marketing stats 2022 and information about inbound marketing ROI to supercharge your future inbound marketing strategy. We also identified some key inbound marketing trends that are poised to make an immediate impact on the industry. We hope the insights you’ve gleaned from this guide will help you implement a successful inbound strategy.
But when that turns out to be tricky, you can turn to our inbound marketing agency for help. Thrive is a client-centric inbound marketing agency that helps you leverage the power of these statistics through our inbound marketing services. Reach out to our inbound marketing company today to schedule a free consultation.
