Making Sales Growth Predictable, Sustainable & Scalable

31 Stats That Prove Inbound Marketing and Sales Development are Worth the Effort

Written by Stacy Bouchard | Oct 22, 2015 4:00:00 PM


In this blog, we talk a lot about inbound marketing and sales development. We believe firmly that taking an “allbound” approach to drive growth yields the greatest results. As Doug says, “Inbound marketing without sales development is charity. Sales development without inbound marketing is cold calling.”

Data is something we also talk about a lot. So today, we decided to share some cold hard facts about inbound marketing and sales development. We’ve compiled a list of statistics and their sources that may inspire you to evaluate your current approach.

Enjoy!

Inbound Marketing

1. Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing. (HubSpot)

2. Content marketing produces 3 times more leads per dollar. (Kapost)

3. Using inbound tactics saves an average of 13% in overall cost per lead. (HubSpot)

4. B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t. (Social Media B2B)

5. 86% of people skip television ads. (Marketing Sherpa)

6. 59% of all Twitter users have visited B2B tech brand sites, compared to 40% of the average population. (Source: Compete and Twitter)

7. 77% of buyers are more likely to buy from a company if its CEO uses social media. (War of Words: Myth-Busting Social Media, SEO and Content Marketing)

8. Companies that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. (Salesforce)

9. Inbound marketers double the average site conversion rate, from 6% to 12% total. (HubSpot)

10. Email marketing has 2x higher ROI than cold calling, networking or tradeshows. (Custom Content Council)

11. Relevant emails drive 18x more revenue than broadcast emails. (Jupiter Research)

12. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (The Annuitas Group)

13. 67% of B2C companies and 41% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through Facebook. (HubSpot)

14. 3 out of 4 inbound marketing channels cost less than any outbound channel. (HubSpot)

15. Leads generated with SEO were more than 7x more likely to close than outbound-sourced leads. (HubSpot)

16. Mobile Googling alone will exceed over 27 billion search queries by 2016 globally. (Infographic Design Team)

17. Blogs give websites on average 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links. (Inbound Writer)

18. 200 million Americans have registered their phone numbers on the FTC’s “Do Not Call” list. (HubSpot)

19. 54% more leads are generated by inbound tactics than traditional paid marketing. (HubSpot)

20. 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus in an advertisement. (Content Marketing Institute)

Sales Development

21. Companies who have a specialized sales development function see a 7-point increase in closing rate. (InsideSales.com and Kellogg School of Business)

22. Leads responded to within 10 minutes are 100X more likely to be qualified. (LeadResponseManagement.Org)

23. Waiting just 10 minutes drops the likelihood of qualifying the lead 4X. (LeadResponseManagement.Org)

24. Yet less than 25% of companies who receive a web lead will qualify by phone. (InsideSales.com)

25. Only 27% of web-generated leads get contacted at all (InsideSales.com)

26. 50% of buyers choose the vendor that responds first. (InsideSales.com)

27. Your sales team has a 56% greater chance to attain quota if you engage buyers before they contact a seller. (Sales Benchmark Index)

28. The first viable vendor to reach a decision maker and set the buying vision has an average 74% close rate. (Forrester)

29. Thursday is the best day to prospect. Wednesday is second best. Tuesday is the worst. (InsideSales.com)

30. In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold all attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts. (Telenet and Ovation Sales Group)

31. The average salesperson only makes 2 attempts to reach a prospect. (Sirius Decisions)