Blogs

HubSpot has released its "2013 State of Inbound Marketing report" [download page], with a host of statistics covering adoption and use of inbound marketing tools. Among the insights from the survey, 27% of marketers report below-average costs per lead (CPLs) for both email marketing and social media, with SEO and blogs close behind (25% and 24%, respectively). When looking at lead conversion rates by channel, 15% of respondents say SEO delivers above-average sales conversions, with social (13%) next on the list. Read more »

An online survey of 5,000 US adults, conducted by Nielsen on behalf of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), reveals that respondents rate newspapers (in print and on the internet) as the most effective advertising source among various media. The study measured advertising effectiveness across various metrics, with print newspapers coming out on top overall, ahead of radio, internet, and TV. Breaking the media types down into different segments, the local paper topped the ratings for likelihood to purchase and propensity to notice ads. Read more »

27% of Americans' time spent online last year was spent accessing social networking sites and forums, says Experian Marketing Services in newly-released data. That's the equivalent of 16 minutes of every hour spent online, ahead of time spent with entertainment (9 minutes; 15% share) and shopping (~5 minutes; 9% share). But it isn't all rosy news for social networking: that 27% share of time spent in the US is actually down from 30% in 2011. Social media's share of online time also declined in the UK and Australia, by 3% each (to 22% and 24%, respectively). Read more »

3 in 4 CEOs aged under 50 say they "mostly consume information online," and close to 2 in 3 aged over 50 agree, per results [download page] from a CEO.com survey that examines the ways in which 358 business leaders stay informed. But while their information consumption may have gone largely digital, it hasn't migrated to newer forms of interactive content, according to the survey's results. Asked which forms of online media they prefer, 57% indicated text, compared to 18% who cited infographics (with preference for this format skewing younger), 8% video, and 2% podcasts. Read more »

83% of executives from around the world surveyed in 2012 reported using at least one social technology, up from 72% in 2011, per results [pdf] from a new McKinsey survey. Of those, 9 in 10 reported some measurable business benefit with employees, customers, and business partners. 65% said their use of social tech increases marketing effectiveness (down from 69% in 2011), while 51% said it increases customer satisfaction (up from 47%) and 47% said it reduces marketing costs (up from 43%). Read more »

Modern B2B marketing - increasingly reliant on digital marketing - has been shaped by forces such as tech-tracked ROI and the rise of social media, but one tried and true digital marketing channel remains most important, according to [download page] a study from BtoB magazine, sponsored by Eloqua. Respondents to the survey, who indicate greater adoption of modern marketing practices today than ever before, indicate that email (64%) is their most important digital marketing activity. Read more »

92% of the 2012 Inc. 500 companies use social media, ranging from popular tools such as LinkedIn (81%), Twitter (67%) and Facebook (67%) to emerging ones, such as foursquare (28%) and Pinterest (18%), according to a study released in January 2012 by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Interestingly, though, when executives from these fast-growing companies were asked how necessary social media has been for their growth, about 4 in 10 responded that social had been "somewhat" (24%) or "very" (15%) unnecessary. Read more »

In a study [pdf] using data from 5,048 customers and surveys from 236 professionals knowledgeable about their company's marketing strategy, HubSpot has found that virtually all of its customers experienced an increase in traffic since using HubSpot, with a plurality (25.1%) attributing that increase to blogging. SEO (18.9%) social media (16.9%) and email marketing (13.5%) also got the nod for traffic increases, although few said paid search ads (5.6%) were behind their gains. Read more »

Tumblr may not be a popular player on the world stage, but data from a new comScore study [download page] shows that it's heavily used by Americans, relative to other popular sites. Analyzing share of time spent on social networking sites in December 2012, comScore reveals that while Facebook dominated at 83% share, Tumblr occupied the second spot (5.7%), more than Pinterest (1.9%), Twitter (1.7%), and LinkedIn (1.4%) combined, and almost as much as the aggregate of all other social networks (6.1%). Read more »

When it comes to non-traditional marketing, North American retailers have mostly cottoned onto hosted social networking sites (75%), but are far less likely to have implemented other strategies such as SMS (40%), 2D barcode scanning by customer smartphones (30%), and location-based social networking (29%), details Boston Retail Partners [download page] in a January study. The results also show that many retailers aren't interested in blogs: 42% have no plans to implement their own hosted blogs, and 39% won't monitor external blogs. Read more »