41% of marketers say that inbound marketing demonstrates ROI for their company, compared to 9% who believe it doesn’t, according to HubSpot’s newly-released “State of Inbound Marketing 2013” report. But another one-third cannot (or do not) calculate ROI. A difficulty in tracking reliable metrics may be why despite healthy inbound implementation rates and projected spending increases, a leading 25% of inbound marketers say that proving ROI is their top challenge.
That concern rises to 29% of marketing agencies, and is also higher among B2B (28%) than B2C companies (22%).
Separate results from the survey indicate that 58% of respondents have adopted inbound marketing strategies, with a further 19% unsure. Respondents’ top inbound marketing goals include converting leads to customers (23%) and increasing total lead volume (20%), with almost 1 in 4 also focused on reaching the right audience. Creating quality content (18%) and proving the ROI of marketing activities (14%) are less popular goals.
Other Findings:
- Marketing agencies are 26% more likely than average to have implemented inbound marketing strategies (73% vs. 58%).
- B2C companies are 28% less likely than B2B companies to have adopted inbound marketing (47% vs. 65%).
- 48% of respondents plan to increase their inbound marketing budgets this year.
About the Data: The data is based on a survey of more than 3,300 executives, business owners and marketers around the world, just 9% of whom were HubSpot customers.
