An Inside Look At What 12 Months of Inbound Marketing Can Do

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You’ve been around the marketing block a time or two, so you understand that nothing is instant in the business world. The new fall outfit you will buy next month was chosen by the retailer back in February. The marketing campaign you are planning now won’t be implemented for another month or two, and then it will take time for leads to make their way through the entire sales funnel to be ready to buy.

So, if you convince your boss to try inbound marketing, how long will it take to see results?

I’ll be honest. You aren’t going to have new customers knocking on the door the day after you debut your new blog. Inbound marketing requires a commitment to creating content and nurturing leads. But if you are ready to commit to a year’s effort, experience says it will pay off.

According to 2014’s The ROI Report, an analysis created in collaboration with HubSpot and MIT, nearly 93 percent of companies using inbound marketing increase lead generation in the first 12 months. (Click to Tweet!)

Increased lead generation through inbound marketing starts with increasing website traffic. The ROI Report compiled results from more than 5,000 HubSpot customers, plus surveys of more than 200 professionals about their companies’ marketing strategies.

An Inside Look At What 12 Months of Inbound Marketing Can Do

Increased web traffic was nearly universal for the companies included in The ROI Report: 92.34 percent said web traffic increased in the first year; only 2.82 percent reported a decrease in website traffic. And nearly 30 percent of HubSpot’s customers more than doubled their website traffic. (Click to Tweet!)

An Inside Look At What 12 Months of Inbound Marketing Can Do

As I said before, the results aren’t instantaneous. Only 16.7 percent said traffic increased in less than a month. But nearly 50 percent said that they could see increases within 2 to 4 months. That falls into line with the fact that simply generating enough content to impact SEO and increase blog readership takes time. The first month or two are spent building a content strategy, before content creation can even begin

An Inside Look At What 12 Months of Inbound Marketing Can Do

Inbound marketing utilizes a number of complementary elements to attract web traffic and convert it into leads, but the centerpiece is the business blog. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that one-fourth of companies that use inbound marketing attribute the increase in web traffic to the corporate blog. Other significant impacts come from search engine optimization (which includes beefing up website content, on-page keyword optimization, microdata markups and more), social media and email marketing.

We have seen our own clients report similar results. Healthcare consulting firm Primaris used inbound marketing to launch into the commercial market earlier this year. After eleven months, Primaris increased website traffic by more than 500 percent and generated more than 1,100 new leads. (You can see more about how the company did it in our case study).

Other tidbits from The ROI Report:

Nearly 93 percent of companies increased lead generation in the first year of inbound marketing; 38 percent more than doubled leads.
More than 40 percent increased the lead-to-sales conversion rate.
Nearly 50 percent saw an increase in sales within 7 months.

To see more detailed results, plus a breakdown of what 12 months of inbound marketing schedule would look like, download Your First Year of Inbound Marketing: What to Expect.