81 Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Statistics: What's Best ...

Posted: December 7, 2021 | Last updated: April 4, 2024

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Are you considering veering away from the traditional outbound marketing path to the much greener pasture that is inbound marketing? Then, you have some serious reading to do. But worry not because we’ve curated the recent and most relevant inbound vs outbound marketing statistics for you.

In recent years, inbound marketing has slowly overthrown traditional outbound marketing. Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing lures the customers into a product by curating valuable content tailored to suit their tastes and needs. Traditional marketing often disrupts audiences (a.k.a potential consumers) with content they possibly don’t want to see, while inbound marketing seeks to create connections with them.

So, allow us to walk you through the figures and help you decide the method that’s best suited to your brand’s goals, objectives, and success.

Inbound Marketing Statistics 2021

We all know you want your company to stand out from the crowd. Who doesn’t want to, right? Thus, it’s imperative to leverage your strategies carefully. But as technology advances and numerous modern influences shift your consumers’ behavior, it’s a hurdle to discover how you could maximize inbound marketing to the fullest.

For that reason, you should consider the data and figures surrounding inbound marketing and other inbound vs outbound marketing statistics.

Marketing Statistics

20% of marketers from all over the world believe that inbound marketing is the most effective marketing tactic.
According to a 2018 survey by Statista, most marketers expect to increase their budget on AI spending by 50% in the coming years.
25% of marketers aren’t sold out on the effectiveness of inbound marketing, while 75% think inbound marketing is effective.
From around the world, 74% of organizations rely heavily on an inbound approach to their marketing efforts.
The challenges most companies face are: generating traffic and leads (61%), proving their marketing activities’ ROI (39%), getting sufficient budget (27%), managing their website (25%), identifying the precise technology (24%), training the team (23%), hiring top-notch talent (22%), and looking for executive sponsors (8%).
According to a report by the Content Marketing Institute, 24% of marketing professionals say that an obstacle to executing their campaign is their lack of integration with tools.
88% of B2B companies say that analytics tools, such as dashboards or web analytics, are the primary technology used in their inbound marketing efforts.
Jumping from 45% to 58%, B2B inbound marketing increased workflow, collaboration, and content creation.
71% of consumers prefer to know more about a brand through dynamic content than through ads.
In 2018, 47% of B2B companies in the United States ventured into personalized marketing, 42% on account-based marketing, 41% on video marketing, 39% on inbound marketing, and 36% on automation and artificial intelligence.

Sales and ROI Statistics

For 53% of brands and marketers, inbound marketing helped them generate higher ROI than outbound marketing.
Meanwhile, only 16% say that outbound marketing helped them produce a high ROI.
69% of brands say their top marketing goal is converting leads into customers, while 59% say they want to increase their website traffic.
For 34% of marketers, their primary goal is a successful product or service launch.
Inbound marketing leads cost 61% less than outbound marketing leads.
Lead nurturing—an advantage of inbound marketing—supports companies in generating 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lesser expense.
You may ask: what percentage of leads should be inbound? While inbound is seen to be superior to outbound, it’s recommended that your inbound leads should be less than 30%.
Wondering what is a good conversion rate for inbound leads? For most marketers, an inbound marketing campaign’s average conversion rate is a conservative 3%.

Strategies Statistics

According to Statista’s inbound vs outbound marketing statistics, the most effective digital marketing techniques include content marketing at 20%, artificial intelligence and big data at 14%, social media marketing at 10%, and marketing automation and mobile marketing at 9%.
Most companies’ top inbound marketing goals are improving their organic online presence (61%), blog content creation (55%), marketing automation (50%), content distribution (47%), and interactive content creation (36%).

Success Statistics

A single dollar spent on inbound marketing generates thrice the leads of outbound marketing.
Among all social media channels, Facebook generates the highest ROI.
Properly-executed inbound marketing campaigns convert 10x more leads than outbound marketing.
Meanwhile, SEO-generated inbound marketing leads have a closing rate of 14.6%.
Omnichannel campaigns have 90% more consumer retention rates, 250% buying frequency rates, and 20% more engagement rates than single-channeled campaigns.
An integrated and properly-designed inbound marketing strategy can generate an ROI of up to 1,270%.
Following 6 hours a week dedicated to social media marketing, 60% of marketers saw more benefits in lead generation.
Brands that implement a well-integrated marketing strategy saw a massive 1,408% growth in blog views, 168% more total leads, and a 51.64% rise in rates of email clicks.

Channels Statistics

A. Blogging and Content Marketing

82% of marketers’ inbound marketing strategy is content marketing.
As revealed in recent inbound vs outbound marketing statistics, brands that prioritize blogging generate 13x more ROI from content marketing.
Blogs are considered to be the top content marketing priority of 55% of decision-makers.
Moreover, brands with blogs claim to have seen 97% more shared links to their website than those who don’t have blogs.
Brands that published blogs more than 11x a month received thrice more traffic than B2B companies that blogged zero to a single time per month.
Meanwhile, websites that own blogs have more indexed pages by 434%.
More than 90% of B2B marketers believe in the pandemic’s long-term impact on the success of their content marketing.
On the other hand, 49% of B2B marketers admit to having outsourced their content marketing activities, and 69% say that finding partners with adequate expertise on a subject matter was their biggest challenge.
55% of companies claim that they have 1 to 5 employees dedicated solely to content marketing. Only 35% don’t have any.
According to 47% of consumers, they look at 3 to 5 pieces of the brand’s content before reaching out to a sales representative.
Moreover, 65% of marketers agree that link building is the most difficult SEO strategy.

B. Social Media Marketing

The platform that produces the best overall results for 96% of B2B firms’ organic content distribution is LinkedIn. This is followed by Facebook and Twitter at 82% each.
Over the last 3 years, content consumption on Facebook increased by over 57%.
Pinterest consumers spend 20% more than consumers referred from non-social channels.
The number of social media users from around the world is 3.6 billion. This figure is expected to skyrocket to 4.41 billion by 2025.
The top 7 social media platforms as ranked by the number of active users are Facebook, YouTube, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and TikTok.
Since 2020, most marketers’ primary content distribution platform was Facebook.
In the earlier years, the top platforms were YouTube by 45%, other professional networks by 43%, Facebook videos by 41%, and several other messaging apps by 24%.
90% of brands depend heavily on social media to increase their brand awareness to as many audiences as possible.
In recent inbound vs outbound marketing statistics, 30% of audiences are up for social media posts that contain links, 18% love to see graphics and photos, and 17% like videos.
70% of consumers are expected to make business transactions via social media messaging, including product inquiries.

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C. Video Marketing

Video marketing statistics — The most powerful aspect of videos is they entertain while informing people at the same time.

80% of consumers claim to have purchased software or an application after they’ve watched a brand’s video.
Moreover, 55% of consumers demand more video content from the brands they support.
For 93% of marketers, creating video content is their topmost priority.
Meanwhile, 61% of marketing professionals expected changes in their video marketing budget in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Out of 10, 7 businesses believe that their video marketing budget would rise in the coming years.
On the other hand, 40% of marketers say that the COVID-19 pandemic affected their plans on video marketing.
Brands have seen up to 78% increase in traffic after placing videos on their social channels or websites.

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D. Other Marketing Channels

For 89% of marketers, ROI from influencer marketing is superior to other channels. However, this strategy doesn’t apply to all businesses.
Over 70% of consumers who use search engines open organic results only.
For 41.5% of marketers, infographics are what works best for their campaigns.
According to inbound vs outbound marketing statistics by HubSpot, you could earn an average return of $42 for every $1 spent on email marketing.
In 2020, email marketing helped small businesses generate sky-high ROI.
The use of segmented campaigns can boost a brand’s revenue up to 76%.
45% of consumers prefer to receive emails regarding discount codes, 43% prefer emails for free samples, 38% prefer an email on free delivery, 30% prefer loyalty awards, and 21% prefer competition details.
Moreover, 16% prefer the release of products, 15% prefer privacy policies and guidelines, 12% prefer VIP access, and 10% prefer product reviews.

Outbound Marketing Statistics 2021

Traditional outbound marketing used to be the primary marketing method for businesses. Its tactics include TV and radio ads, cold calling, leaflets, email newsletters, and even social media. However, most marketers now are grim at the idea of outbound marketing and wonder: is it as ineffective as most claim it to be? Can it not complement inbound marketing? Let the figures speak.

General Statistics

64% of marketing professionals believe that outbound marketing is effective, while 38% believe otherwise.
When it comes to overrated marketing methods, 30% of marketers voted for paid advertisements, 14% chose organic social media marketing, and 11% voted for email marketing.
Only 18% of marketing professionals believe that outbound marketing produces high-quality leads.
Approximately 84% of users aged 25-34 left a website because of pop-up ads or flashy banner ads. Hence, outbound marketing sometimes fails to deliver to the intended audience.
91% of users have unsubscribed to an email list because of unnecessary content.
Meanwhile, 44% of mail listing subscribers don’t open direct mail at all.
86% of viewers skip through TV ads or commercials.
On the other hand, 90% of viewers skip video ads.
55% of TV ads viewers don’t pay attention because of switching channels, multitasking, or fast-forwarding.
Moreover, 90% of an average viewer’s time is accounted for on TV.

Lead Generation Statistics

75% of sales executives would set an appointment or rush to a particular event based on cold calls or cold emails.
In terms of importance, companies rank outbound marketing 7.3 out of 10.

Strategies Statistics

70% of salesmen generate meetings or connect with prospective customers over the phone.
With the persistence of sales representatives, outbound calls can boost the conversion rate up to 70%.
Businesses that don’t engage in cold calling experience 42% less growth than those that do.

Is Inbound or Outbound Marketing More Effective?

It would be unfair to say that outbound marketing isn’t effective at all. Every business requires various marketing strategies based on its individual goals, objectives, and target audience. What works for one brand might not be beneficial for another.

However, inbound marketing facts revealed that it currently yields more and better results than outbound marketing, particularly with the technology and the kind of users we have today. So, is inbound marketing effective? The answer is yes (at least for most). Is outbound marketing dead or completely useless? Definitely not.

So, Inbound or Outbound Marketing?

Inbound vs outbound marketing — A quick overview of brands’ preferences over inbound and outbound marketing. | **Source**: Digital Media Stream

It can’t be argued that hardly any business today could thrive without investing in inbound marketing. Although outbound marketing isn’t entirely useless and irrelevant, it has been proven that inbound marketing could cater to more consumers, particularly those who prefer to research before purchasing or those who don’t want to feel like brands are being intrusive.

So, should you go for inbound or outbound marketing? The answer lies in your hands, but always consider the statistics! Learn more by reading our “2021 Guide to Creating an Integrated Marketing Campaign.”

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