Want to read part one about working out your inbound marketing strategy ROI?
Here at Six & Flow, we’re very proud to be a gold tier HubSpot partner. One of the many benefits of this is the huge amount of market research we have access to! HubSpot has witnessed many an inbound marketing strategy in action, and staff members have been quietly noting down what works and what doesn't.
The leading marketing automation software provider recently surveyed 3,570 of its 11,000 customers for its State of Inbound Report 2015, and found a huge amount of valuable information. One thing they discovered is that customers see an average visitor-to-lead conversion rate of just 2%. While this number takes into account many factors (and it’s true that some companies may see a much higher conversion rate), this puts into context the number of visitors a company is likely to need in order to generate a lead, let alone a customer.
Imagine the most basic, ‘bare bones’ inbound marketing strategy, run as a side project by an ambitious but overworked marketing manager. This might include a couple of blogs a month and maybe an afternoon of lead generation work each month, plus a few social posts. All in all, it’ll take around 20 hours of work per month.
From month six onwards, you could expect to see a gradual increase in website traffic and leads. However, there would likely be few, if any, new customers as a result of your inbound marketing efforts.
Compare this to a committed inbound marketing strategy. You’d expect to spend up to 20 hours a month on blogging alone, and around 60 hours on the complete collection of tasks.
Six to twelve months after beginning this inbound marketing strategy, you could expect significant growth in traffic and leads, with numbers increasing by 300%-600%.
As a result, companies are likely to see positive ROI towards the end of the year, depending upon the product and sector. HubSpot predict a 2-3% visitor-to-lead conversion rate, and 5-20% lead-to-customer conversion rates.
Naturally, the more you put in to an inbound marketing strategy, the more you will get out.
Having a dedicated inbound marketer on your team would give you approximately 120 hours a month (give or take for the odd holiday)
Over a period of 3-6 months, this would be expected to drive dramatic growth, with traffic and leads rising tenfold. As a result of this high level of commitment, it can also be expected that your lead conversion rates would improve and be closer to 5, while customer conversion rates might also increase to 30-40%.
You can expect positive ROI within this period, depending on your product and market.
Naturally, these figures are all rough, and there are always exceptions to the rules. If you can create an inbound marketing strategy that blows up your web traffic with only 12 hours of work a month, I’m all ears. However, experience has taught me that it takes time and effort to really reap the benefits of inbound.
On the other hand, you need to be realistic. You probably won’t see astounding results by getting an intern to hodgepodge your inbound campaigns, but you can’t waylay senior management for constant meetings about blog content either.
It’s all about balance. Sometimes this balance is found by involving outside help. One common approach is to outsource content creation, which undoubtedly helps to save time but still leaves you running the inbound campaigns on an ongoing basis.
Another way of finding the balance is to work with an agency who can help you to manage your inbound marketing strategy from start through to finish (and every step in between, too!)
The times are changing, outbound is outdated and in some cases, can be potentially dangerous for your brand financially and in a reputational sense. Big fines are being handed out to serial data offenders. With inbound you can avoid this and get the best from your leads so read our blog “How to create Inbound Strategy Masterclass” for more information.”