The Facts About Inbound Marketing

Is Inbound Marketing right for your business or organization?

We have been experimenting with inbound marketing for the better part of the past year and it is incredibly powerful. Inbound marketing is an online-based system designed to develop buyer, donor or membership relationships by providing meaningful information and offers to audiences. The companies that do it best articulate and demonstrate the advantages of their ideas, values, and services and help visitors to their site access information easily. These companies don’t rely on impulse buyers but instead look to attract considered purchasers—people who do their research before they commit to investing in a service or opportunity.

Inbound in recent years has grown as more companies look for ways to cut through the media and Internet clutter. What I really like about it is that it helps to humanize marketing; inbound uses good, relevant, remarkable content to attract users to a website and keep them coming back for additional ideas and information. When done well, inbound design and marketing does not spam, harass, bombard or overwhelm

Here are some statistics that help show why inbound is fast becoming the marketing methodology of many businesses.

The Bad News: It’s harder to get seen today than ever before.

• 77 percent of web display ads are never seen. Source: CMO by Adobe
• 80% of those surveyed say they ignore Google Sponsored Ads. Source: Search Engine Land
• Only 8% of internet users generate 85% of the display ad clicks. Source: Comscore
• The average click through rate of display ads across all formats and placements is 0.06%. Source: Google’s Display Benchmarks Tool
• The average person is served more than 1,700 banner ads per month. Source: CMO by Adobe
• You are more likely to complete Navy SEAL training than click a banner ad (crazy). Source: HubSpot
• Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months. Source: PageFair

The Good News: Content targeted to the right audience delivers results.

• 8 out of ten people say they read blogs. Source: Content Marketing Institute
• Buyers go through about 57% of the purchasing process before ever talking to sales. Source: The Executive Board
• 80% of decision makers want to be educated not sold. Source: Forrester Research
• Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages plus 97% more indexed links. Source: HubSpot
• Inbound Marketing can reduce the cost of a qualified lead by over 60%. Source: Search Engine Journal
• Inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound marketing. Source: HubSpot
• BTB companies that blog generate 67% more leads. Source: HubSpot

In sum, companies, organizations and institutions who want to build customer relationships and loyalty for complex services while minimizing their marketing budgets should consider embracing inbound marketing. Inbound provides a new, better and more holistic way to market your services and products using content and leaves behind the insanity of direct mail, purchased email lists, and paid search. It’s marketing for the long-term and it’s way more humane than anything we have experienced in the past century of being talked at.