26 Statistics That Verify The Effectiveness Of Content Marketing To Increase Lead, Sales and ROI

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Marketers from around the world might have heard about the power of content marketing and how it affects your business.

First, let’s make it clear: what is content marketing?

Content marketing covers any efforts to convert online visitors to buying customers through tactics that align content with customer interests, nurture these leads along conversion paths into customers, and persuade these customers so they become outspoken promoters of the company.

If you are still unassertive about content marketing, here are some impressive statistics that might convince you that content marketing is definitely worth the time, money, and effort.

1. Five Statistics About How Consumers Feel About Inbound Marketing

Knowing where your consumers are spending their time online, how they assimilate information, and how they are influenced is the first step to formulating an effective inbound marketing strategy.

  1. 80% of business decision makers prefer to get information in a series of articles versus an advertisement.
  2. 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content and are also more likely to buy from that company.
  3. 90% of consumers find custom content useful.
  4. 78% of consumers believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.
  5. 50% of consumer time online is spent engaging with custom content.

2. Four Statistics Showing Increased SEO, Website Traffic, and Conversion Rate

Understanding your consumers is a great first step, but does inbound marketing actually improve your website rankings, drive traffic, and compel visitors along the buyer’s journey? The following stats answer that question with a resounding “Yes!”

  1. Blogs give websites on average 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links.
  2. Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8 times higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% vs 2.5%).
  3. Website conversion rate is nearly 6 times higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%).
  4. Inbound marketers double the average site conversion rate, from 6% to 12% total.

3. Nine Statistics Proving Inbound Marketing Increases Lead Generation

Not only does inbound marketing improve your online presence, it can dramatically increase the number of marketing qualified and sales qualified leads.

  1. 78% of small businesses attract new customers through social media.
  2. 34% of all leads generated by marketers in 2013 come from inbound marketing sources.
  3. Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound practices.
  4. 54% more leads are generated by inbound than by outbound.
  5. HubSpot customers average a total of 9,100 leads after 1.5 years of inbound marketing.
  6. Brands that create 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month.
  7. Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages got 7 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages.
  8. Those with over 40 landing pages got 12 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages.
  9. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost.

4. Five Statistics Proving Inbound Marketing Increases Sales

Increasing the number of leads is nice, but it’s all about the bottomline sales.

  1. Customers who receive email newsletters spend 82% more when they buy from the company.
  2. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.
  3. Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months.
  4. Companies with mature lead generation and management practices have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate.
  5. Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

5. Three Stats Proving Inbound Marketing Increases ROI

Swimming in sales is euphoric, but take it a step further by showing your boss that inbound marketing actually costs less per lead compared to traditional marketing with the following stats.

  1. Content marketing produces 3 times more leads per dollar.
  2. Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing.
  3. Within the first 6 months, SmartBug Media ranked in the highest client ROI in HubSpot history with an overall 1,047% ROI.

These are just a handful of compelling stats out there proving that inbound marketing is too important to ignore. Do you have any other stats to add?