We’ve blogged before about inbound marketing – “pull” marketing tactics such as search, blog and social media – being the wave of the future in terms of how your B2B’s prospects want to work with you.
We’ve also been pretty sure it’s also less expensive… but now there’s proof, according to research data from HubSpot, summarized recently by eMarketer. The “2010 State of Inbound Marketing” report indicates that spending on lead generation is 60% less among companies that devote at least half of their budget to inbound marketing, compared with companies spending at least one-half of lead-generation dollars on outbound tactics. The average cost per lead from inbound marketing was also significantly less… like $134 vs. $332.
Not surprisingly, the difference is producing a corresponding shift in marketing budgets: inbound tactics are seeing a slight increase in their share of lead generation budgets, while traditional outbound tactics are decreasing. Another non-surprise: for B2Bs, LinkedIn was the most effective social media channel for customer acquisition.
We do hope you’re on the right side of this sea-change in how B2Bs find prospects.
