Insight From HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2014 To Boost Your Marketing Strategy [Infographic]

HubSpot recently released their annual report, State of Inbound 2014, on how companies are using inbound methodology and content marketing. The report is based on survey results from marketers concerning challenges, priorities, tactics, and results.

There were 3,570 respondents, consisting of both HubSpot customers and non-customers; employees B2B, B2C, and nonprofit companies; and marketing and sales personnel from various company sizes and job levels. The data has been organized into the four sections of budgeting, planning, execution and measurement. There are many shareable results from the survey.

This infographic from Growth Learner highlights the key findings of the 54-page report and will help you plan ahead.

Key Highlights

Budgeting: Performance history has the greatest influence on a budget with 50% of respondents citing past success as the largest factor for securing a higher budget. There’s another incentive to track ROI.

If you don’t have enough historical data, use Service Level Agreements between marketing and sales.

Planning: Half of marketers across all types of companies ranked inbound as their primary lead source, exceeding the average of all other channels combined. 

Outbound is down by about 35% from last year while inbound has remained steady.

Executing: The top priority for “high performers” is exposure. High performers focus on initiatives to get their content and company found. To establish or accelerate your inbound marketing, the data suggests blogging, SEO, and content distribution.

A successful inbound program requirement a cycle of measurement and optimization.

Measuring: Marketers that measure inbound ROI are 17 times more likely to see the same or greater ROI over the previous year. And those who prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to see positive ROI.

Remember, positive ROI is likely to lead to budget increase.

Conclusion

Along with your own data, you’ll definitely want to take into account the findings from HubSpot’s report.

And here’s one final note. Leads sourced through inbound practices are consistently less expensive than outbound leads, regardless of company size.