100 Inbound Marketing Statistics Every Marketer Needs to Know

The future of marketing is inbound. And it's really no surprise; any marketing strategy that provides relevant, useful information to people when they want it is destined to outperform annoying, interruptive marketing tactics. But just in case need more evidence, here are 100 marketing statistics to make the case for inbound. Feel free to throw any of these statistics around to impress your friends, amaze your coworkers--or convince your boss that you need to start doing inbound marketing!

Inbound Marketing

• Inbound marketers double the average site conversion rate, from 6% to 12% total

• Website conversion rate is nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters

• Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound practices

• 84% of audiences age 25 to 34 have left a favorite website due to intrusive advertising 

• Content marketing produces 3 times more leads per dollar

• Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing

• 43% of B2C marketers with a content strategy considered themselves effective, vs. 33% of those without

• 42% of B2B marketers viewed themselves as successful with their content marketing efforts in 2014

• The most-trusted types of online promotional content are peer reviews, natural search results and brand websites

• The number of marketers who state they are practicing inbound rose from 60% last year to 85% this year

• 13% of marketers concede they don’t do inbound marketing 

Blogging and Content Creation

• 8% of the time you take to write a blog post should be spent on promoting it

• 92% of @Hubspot blog-sourced leads come from old blog posts

• 46% of people read blogs more than once a day 

• Nearly 40% of US companies use blogs for marketing purposes 

• Most people read 5-10 blogs

• 80% of business decision makers prefer to get information in a series of articles versus an advertisement

• 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content

• 90% of consumers find custom content useful

• 50% of consumer time online is spent engaging with custom content

• Blogs give websites on average 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links

• Brands that create 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month 

• B2B companies that blog only 1-2x/month generate 70% more leads than those who don’t blog

• Companies that increase blogging from 3-5x/month to 6-8x/month almost double their leads 

• Companies see 45% growth in traffic when increasing total blog articles from 11-20 to 21-50

• 79% of companies that have a blog report a positive ROI for inbound marketing

• Companies that blog generate 126% more leads than those that don’t 

Lead Generation and Nurturing

• 48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign 

• 34% of all leads generated by marketers last year came from inbound marketing

• Companies with mature lead generation have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate

• Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost

• Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads

• 67% of B2B marketers that use lead nurturing see a 10% or greater increase in sales opportunities

• Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first 

• 25% of marketers who adopt mature lead management processes report that sales teams contact prospects within 1 day 

• Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads

Marketing Automation

• Marketing automation high performers have a lead-to-sale rate 1.6x better than their competitors

• Nearly 70% of businesses are either using a marketing automation platform or implementing one

• 75% of companies using marketing automation see ROI in just 12 months

• Companies that use marketing automation convert 53% more leads 

• 63% of companies growing faster than their competition use market automation 

• Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months

• The adoption of marketing automation technology is expected to increase by 50% by 2015

• Marketing automation has seen the fastest growth of any CRM-related segment in the last 5 years

• By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship without talking to a human

• Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads

Social Media

• Companies with 51-100 Twitter followers generate 106% more traffic than those with 25 or fewer

• Social marketing has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing

• 78% of small businesses attract new customers through social media

• 93% of marketers use social media for business

• 75% of marketers planned to increase strategic efforts on social media and social networking sites this year

• 82% of buyers say they trust a company more when its CEO and senior leadership team are active in social media

• 80% of US social network users prefer to connect to brands through Facebook 

• 59% are using social media for 6 hours or more each week

• 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business

• 42% of marketers say Facebook is critical or important to their business

• The number of businesses that say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased by 75%

• 62% of marketers said social media became more important to the marketing campaigns in the last 6 months 

• Websites using the +1 button generate 3.5x the Google+ visits than sites without the button

• Two of the biggest user groups on Google+ are college students and software developers

• 63% of Google+ users are male 

• Daily Pinterest users have increased by more than 145% since the beginning of 2012

• The top interests on Pinterest in the U.S. include crafts, gifts, hobbies/leisure, and design 

Email Marketing

• Customers who receive email newsletters spend 82% more when they buy from the company

• The average email list deteriorates 22.5% per year

• 65% prefer emails that contain mostly images vs. 35% who prefer mostly text 

• 122,500,453,020 emails are sent every hour 

• Email is almost 40 times better at acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter

• 80.8% of users report reading email on mobile devices

• 12% of people use separate work and personal inboxes 

• Over 50% of respondents say they read most of their emails

• "Secrets" is the most clicked lead nurturing subject line word 

• "Posts" and "Jobs" are the most clicked subject line words

• Click through rate is higher when using the recipient's first name in the subject line 

• CTR is higher when using the recipients company name in the subject line over no company mention 

• 88% prefer to receive HTML emails vs. 12% who prefer plain text from companies 

• Your most recent subscribers are the most likely to click through 

• Saturday has the highest CTR at over 9% (Sunday is second just under 9%)

• 6 AM has the highest CTR of any hour

• Most unsubscriptions come on Tuesdays (0.52% unsubscribe rate) 

• Clicks by button text: "Click Here" gets the highest % of clicks over "Go" and "Submit"

• 89% of marketers said email was their primary channel for lead generation

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• 70% of the links search users click on are organic, not paid 

• 60% of all organic clicks go to the top three search results

• 75% of search engine users never scroll past the first page of search results 

• Websites with 51 to 100 pages generate 48% more traffic than websites with 1 to 50 pages 

• 87% of people today use a search engine and 78% use it to do searches for products and services 

• Mobile Googling alone will exceed over 27 billion search queries by 2016 globally 

• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate as compared to outbound leads at 1.7% 

Conversion Rate Optimization

• Businesses with 31-40 landing pages got 7x more leads than those with only 1-5 landing pages 

• Those with 40+ landing pages got 12x more leads than those with only 1-5 landing pages 

• Conversion rates typically range from 1 to 3 percent

• A 20% increase in decision simplicity results in an 86% increase in likelihood to purchase 

• 80% of traffic goes to the top 10% of landing pages 

• 61% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase

• More than 90% of visitor who read your headline also read your CTA copy

• Conversion rates increase when your goals and your users’ goals meet

• Long landing pages can generate up to 220% more leads than above the fold call-to-action

• Using correct targeting and testing methods can increase conversion rates up to 300%

• The average landing page conversion rate was 2.35%, yet the top 25% are converting at 5.31% or higher