Hubspot Inbound 2016 & Relevance of Content Marketing Services
Categories 2016 Marketing Trends, Content Marketing
Long intros and goodbyes are boring – let’s dive into the most interesting stats about the relevance of content marketing services in view of current inbound trends.
And let’s get something out of the way first.
The most overrated marketing tactic
Irrespective of where they were located, almost all businesses considered paid advertising the most overrated marketing tactic.
No, this doesn’t mean you can scratch the budget allocation on paid advertising entirely. This does, however, mean that you should seriously calculate your ROI and focus on specifics.
We can see next what happens when you don’t.
ROI and Budget Allocation on Inbound
This is exceedingly ridiculous.
Businesses allocating budget without measuring ROI – what are they thinking? There’s the answer right inside the stats:
- 25% of them saw industry leaders making the change,
- 25% had a change in management,
- economic conditions determined it for 35% (understandable) and,
- they also based their decision on past successes and failures with Inbound Marketing (on what data, exactly?).
On the other hand, 58% of those that did calculate ROI, allocated budget based on past successes with Inbound Marketing practices. Kind of makes sense, if you ask me.
Interestingly, those that did not calculate ROI are more prone to blame the economy (read, blame others) for whatever results they had. One can imagine that the perceived ROI was not good because we tend to credit ourselves when we have any measure of success.
And, only 5% of those that made informed decisions had a bad experience with Inbound in the past.
Inbound vs Outbound – ‘Our Strategy is Effective’
Anyone else think the numbers are funny? Of those that consider their marketing effective, 18% are primarily outbound and 81% are primarily inbound.
That’s kind of got it cinched, eh?
Okay, one more time.
Where do companies get the most quality leads from?
Even companies with primarily outbound strategies get the most quality leads from inbound practices. Kind of makes you wonder why they are still primarily outbound.
Alright (yeah, ‘alright’ is a legit word!), one last time, and this time, we have a global perspective.
NAM – North America | ANZ – Australia and New Zealand | SEA – Southeast Asia | EMEA – Europe, Middle East, and Africa
Let this sink in:
Inbound marketing organizations report being more strategically effective compared to outbound organizations.
The majority of strategically effective organizations use inbound marketing.
Content marketing services figure in all of this – how?
That’s how.
It doesn’t matter whether you are writing and marketing content in-house or hiring somebody, if your goal is the same as that of the participants of this survey, you’ll want content marketing services lined up with very definite content marketing strategies. Search engine optimized content is not something you can do without in the coming years even if your brand is popular enough.
The only way your priorities could be different is when your ROI shows you don’t need content marketing. In which case it would be perfectly okay to go your own way – it’s your business.
Sales – most difficult aspects, and possible remedies
Getting a response from prospects has become the most difficult. Do you smell an oxymoron here somewhere? Prospects are individuals from whom you can reasonably expect a response. That is why they are prospects.
This is how the Business Dictionary defines ‘prospects’:
Potential customer or client qualified on the basis or his or her buying authority, financial capacity, and willingness to buy. Also called sales lead.
Let’s look at possible reasons.
Without stretching facts, if your prospect is familiar with your company and the product that you are trying to sell, they would be more inclined to buy. Or not. At least, there would be less uncertainty involved. If they are agreeable, well, you try to close the sale. If they aren’t, try and make a case for yourself. At any rate, you’d be prepared.
Beats facing someone who is supposed to be showing interest but does not.
With paid advertising being the most overrated marketing tactic, how do you achieve this goal of having well-informed prospects?
Content marketing does seem like an option you’ll want to look into. And that corroborates what we noticed in top inbound marketing priorities earlier.
To put things in perspective: if you have a blog with useful information about your product ranking for strategic keywords to attract your target audience, you stand a better chance with your prospects.
So, what are your options when choosing Content Marketing Services?
Hubspot’s got you covered, bless ’em!
There’s more. We have an industry specific comparison list as well (these guys left nothing out) which could help you understand your own position.
If a picture says a thousand word, you’ve heard more than 10,000 already.
And having said all of that, I’d still consider this worth a repeat: Calculate that ROI and figure out what you need.
Unless you are in some unusual business, you will likely need to allocate some serious budget for content marketing this year and the next.
Have you ever methodically invested in content marketing services?
Hubspot is kind of industry standard for statistics but why not talk about your views? Do you have your content marketing experts? Leave a comment and give us your take. I’d love to hear from a real flesh and blood person and if there are enough comments, conduct my own survey, perhaps? 😉
Source: Hubspot | The State of Inbound 2016