5 Insights from HubSpot's The State of Inbound Marketing 2010 Webinar

 

HubSpot conducted a webinar on February 18th titled: The State of Inbound Marketing 2010. The webinar focused on key trends in inbound and outbound marketing uncovered from a survey HubSpot conducted in early 2010.  Hubspot's analysis reveals many insights on how businesses are using inbound marketing to reinvent and improve their marketing strategies. This is great content so I've posted the slides in case you didn't have the opportunity to attend the webinar.

The State of Inbound Marketing 2010

View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing.

Mike Volpe (VP Marketing @HubSpot) and Adam Blake (MIT-Sloan MBA Student) presented many thoughtful insights.  Here are some golden nuggets that really hit home:

Insight 1 - Cost Per Lead for Inbound Marketing Channels is Significantly Lower Versus Outbound Marketing Channels
(Slide 5) Inbound marketing channels (i.e., social media, blogs, SEO - organic / natural search, PPC - paid search / Adwords) cost per lead averaged around $134.  Outbound marketing channels (i.e., telemarketing, trade shows, direct mail) cost per lead averaged around $332 per lead.  Thus, inbound marketing lowered costs per lead by 60%.

Insight 2 - Almost All Inbound Marketing Channels Generate Lower Costs Compared to Any Outbound Channel
(Slides 6, 7) 63% rated social media and blogs as "below average cost" for generating leads.  43% rated SEO as "below average cost."  In addition, these three inbound marketing channels performed better than all outbound marketing channels.  In slide 7, Mike observed that the outbound channel 2010 results for "below average cost" were better than 2009 for all categories.  He noted customers are probably negotiating better terms due to current economic conditions (e.g., a short-term benefit).

Insight 3 - Social Media is One Component of a Healthy Inbound Marketing Mix
(Slide 8) The lesson here: Don't put all your eggs in one basket.  Although respondents rated social media as their most important source of leads, SEO and blogs rated second and third respectively.  In fact, SEO was rated only 1% lower than social media (i.e., 59% to 60%). 

Successful Google results via organic search will continue to be important.  The eMarketer article, Organic Search Still Reigns, reinforces why landing on the first page results of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing is huge.  The rationale: 95% of search-referred traffic comes from first-page results.  Less than 2% of search-referred traffic comes from visitors willing to keep looking after the second page of results.

Insight 4 - Blog Post Frequency Significantly Impacts Customer Acquisition
(Slides 16, 17) Most respondents said they blog primarily once per week.  However, the firms most successful at customer acquisition were those who blogged more (i.e., two to three times per week, daily, multiple times per day). 

Mike and Adam think this is a result of gaining more experience in blogging.  When a firm blogs more frequently, it gets better at writing.  This yields better content which attracts more site traffic (and firms begin investing more time in their company blog).  When HubSpot was a smaller firm, Mike noted it blogged once per week.  When the firm started growing, their blogging frequency increased and they now create blog posts on a daily basis.

Insight 5 - Smaller Companies Implement Inbound Marketing (Larger Firms Not So Much)
(Slide 13) 44% of smaller firms utilize inbound marketing (versus 32% for larger firms).  Mike and Adam cited how smaller firms have more limited marketing budgets (i.e., many are start-ups).  In addition, the larger firms are more established, and they probably achieved their status through outbound marketing.

Insight #5 doesn't surprise me.  It makes sense why smaller firms would look to blogging, social media, and organic search as natural marketing vehicles.  The biggest expense is the investment and prioritization of time to inbound activities.  For the larger firms, I think they look at inbound marketing as additional channels to augment traditional marketing activity.

Check out this blog post: The Fortune 500 and Social Media by Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross from reputationXchange.com.  It provides some great statistics and data on social media adoption (or lack therof) by the largest US corporations.

What do you think of these findings?  Do these results surprise you?  Please comment and let me know what you think.

Photo Credit: By psd via Flickr

Comments

[Suzanne Vara]

Tony

I have not yet tuned into the webinar however your analysis seems pretty solid. I am pleased to see that they are speaking about all eggs in one basket as there has to be a mix. Yes social media is very important but it is not the only strategy to employ. There is a community around you that still needs to know you are there through other means of advertising. Reaching out to the local community who does engage in SM is another way and in doing this you are reaching people outside your local area. In advertising and marketing we see the trend of when something is new for people to drop the old and flock to the new as if it is some sort of magical pill that will drive business. In some cases it does but in many it does with a combination of strategies.

I am not completely shocked on #5. SM allows for the playing field to be leveled and provides a great shot for the small biz to get higher rankings. One would think that large biz would be the leaders as they have more resources to dedicate where the small biz owner wears a lot of hats already.

Your post regarding google back in dec. was and is a great one to refer back to as search is changing. It really was well done as it gives us insight into what we are facing on just that search engine alone.

Great stuff Tony.

[Tony Faustino]

@Suzanne - Thank you for the kind words and such a thoughtful comment -- Highly Appreciated!

I agree it's good that HubSpot points out the importance of integrating social media into a firm's overall marketing mix. You're also right on the money that the current social media phenomenon can falsely make people think that traditional marketing will be 100% replaced. Not everyone learns about new services or products via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. That's why understanding and doing the due diligence on our buyer personas is vital. We have to deliver the message in the way our audience prefers it (not how we'd like them to receive it because we think tweeting is cool).

So kind of you to stop by and review my other posts. I appreciate the feedback, and I look forward to reading more great content from your blog: http://kherize5.com/blog/

[SEO Company]

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