The Data Behind Inbound Marketing

I’ve always been a fan of W. Edwards Deming. I always chuckle a bit when I hear about the latest trend in manufacturing. Reengineering. Six Sigma. LEAN. Agile. They’re all just manifestations of Deming’s Total Quality Management (TQM).

There were two philosophies that Deming had that are always at the top of my mind:

• A bad system will beat a great person…every time.
• In God We Trust…Everyone else better have data. (This has actually become a core value at Imagine.)

I find myself thinking a lot about TQM, as many of the tenets align perfectly with the inbound marketing and sales approach.

The goal for any growth organization that I’ve ever encountered is to make growth both predictable and sustainable. The problem was that unless you were involved in high volume transactional sales, or a multi-billion dollar enterprise, creating predictability (and therefore sustainability) was something you found yourself talking a lot about, but doing very little with.

Inbound marketing is the perfect match for small and mid-sized businesses.

• It doesn’t require that you “break the bank” to get started (though for full disclosure it does take an investment and commitment).
• It plays to the strengths of non-mega businesses, as your ability to stay close to your customer’s world is essential to the creation of good content.
• It creates transparency throughout the entire sales and marketing process, as you gain the data to assess and improve your efforts.

We know inbound marketing works, but just how well? Our partner HubSpot surveyed over 3,500 marketing and sales professionals across the globe to develop a comprehensive report that shows the impact inbound marketing has had on their businesses.

We’ve taken 10 powerful charts from this report to share with you. The results might surprise you. After downloading the presentation, you’ll learn:

• The average cost per lead of companies using inbound
• The percentage of companies using inbound that are seeing a positive ROI on their marketing efforts
• How blogging and content creation helps increase lead generation

Check out the report today and compare it to how your sales and marketing efforts are working today.