A 2010 study entitled “The State of Inbound Marketing” analyzed data from businesses about what types of marketing programs deliver the best return on investment.
The major finding was that inbound marketing-focused businesses have a 60% lower cost per lead – less money is utilized to produce more results.1
Should we say that again? A 60% lower cost per lead. But that’s only part of “What’s so great about Inbound Marketing.”
All of us are familiar with Traditional or “Outbound Marketing,” which includes print ads, television ads, telemarketing/cold calls, direct mail/e-mail, trade shows, etc. It’s a “push” technique that relies upon interrupting a broad target audience at the optimum moment. Anyone who’s done a trade show or print advertising campaign knows that Outbound Marketing typically has a very high cost per lead.
So where did Inbound Marketing or “new marketing” come from? It is usually viewed as a response to economic changes and changes in consumer behavior that reflects:
· The explosive growth of social media
· The increasingly powerful search capabilities of Google
· The need to reduce cost per lead in a tight economy.
In other words, at the very time when companies needed to do more with less, the technology was there to make it possible.
As recently as two years ago, I would have told a client that they needed to do an email newsletter – on a regular basis – in order to drive traffic to their web site. Well, if their mailing list has only 100 names, then the amount of “traffic” is likely to be 100 people or less – probably a lot less.
So here’s the key: Google cannot see your email newsletter. It’s invisible. So are many of your other expensive Outbound Marketing activities, like cold calls, television ads and print ads.
So what’s so great about Inbound Marketing?
It enables you to position your company so that your ideal clients can find you because you are everywhere.
AND your cost per lead is significantly less – which means greater return on a lower investment.
In addition, your conversation with your target audience is not limited by ad space, booth size, or other constraints. You talk to your audience through your web site, your blog, your LinkedIn page – and if you are working with a HubSpot Certified Inbound Marketing Consultant – you have the ability to integrate your content across all media. You wrote a Blog post? Go ahead and Tweet it! Or ask your HubSpot Consultant to automatically publish your post to your company’s LinkedIn and Facebook pages.
It’s true that there’s a lot that must happen behind the scenes to make all of this work (like effective use of keywords, understanding the metrics, consistent follow through and more). But the good news is that the tools are there to create, integrate, promote and analyze web sites and social media.
Ask me how! It’s a whole new world!
1HubSpot, Inc. (2010). “The State of Inbound Marketing 2010.”
As always, this post is loaded with great information. I was curious about where the emphasis on inbound marketing came from and this post provides the answer.