17 Latest Inbound Marketing Statistics (2024 Data)

Do you need a few inbound marketing statistics to help you become more effective with your inbound marketing campaigns?

Inbound marketing methods like social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing and SEO marketing have become vital to helping companies stay afloat in the transition from traditional media consumption to digital media consumption.

Inbound marketing is a specific component of digital marketing that lets you use tactics like blogging and publishing short-form videos to social media as a way to help you attract high-quality leads.

Fortunately, the inbound marketing statistics we’ve listed in this post will help you become more effective with your inbound marketing efforts.

General inbound marketing statistics

1. 10% of marketers say short-form video has the highest return on investment of all marketing trends

HubSpot asked marketers about the marketing trends they use as well as which marketing trends have the highest return on investment (ROI).

According to their results, 10% of marketers say short-form videos published as TikToks, Instagram reels, Facebook reels and YouTube shorts have the highest ROI.

These are marketing trends with the highest ROI, according to marketers:

• Short-form video – 10% of marketers say this marketing trend has the highest ROI
• Influencer marketing – 7%
• Using social media direct messages for customer service – 6%
• Search engine optimization – 6%
• Creating content that reflects your brand’s values – 4%

Source: HubSpot

2. Of all marketing trends, 33% of marketers use short-form video

According to HubSpot’s data, the majority of marketers, or 33%, use short-form videos, one of the hottest marketing trends in the industry at the moment, in their marketing strategies.

This means marketers are publishing entertaining or informative content as TikToks, Instagram reels, Facebook reels and YouTube shorts.

Here’s the full list of marketing trends marketers are using, according to HubSpot’s data:

• Short-form video – 33% of marketers use this marketing trend
• Mobile-friendly website design – 32%
• Creating content that reflects your brand’s values – 30%
• Using social media DMs for customer service – 29%
• Messaging via SMS, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp – 28%
• Influencer Marketing – 26%
• Selling products directly in social media apps – 25%
• Virtual events, webinars and conferences – 23%

Source: HubSpot

3. If a recession happens, 24% of marketers say they will have to reduce their marketing budgets

A post-pandemic recession is possible according to many financial experts, so naturally, HubSpot asked marketers how they’d respond to a recession.

Here’s what marketers expect to happen to their marketing budgets in the event of a recession:

• 24% expect to have to reduce their marketing budgets.
• 20% will have to adjust their marketing goals.
• 20% will have to reduce their scope.
• 19% expect to have to pivot their tactics entirely.

The biggest budget cuts will come to tactics like print ads, physical ads and in-person events.

However, marketers would also have to make cuts to the following inbound marketing tactics:

• Paid social media content
• Email marketing

These inbound marketing tactics would be safe:

• Content marketing, particularly blogging and SEO marketing
• Podcasts
• Long-form video
• SMS marketing
• Organic social media marketing

Other tactics that would be safe from budget cuts include direct mail and virtual events.

Source: HubSpot

4. 29% of marketers will rely on social media for targeted advertising to replace third-party cookies

In a post-GDPR world, more and more marketers are losing access to third-party cookies, which allow them to showcase targeted ads to potential customers and learn more about these customers in the process.

Because the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) allows customers to opt out of the tracking that third-party cookies require, marketers are having to find other ways to reach customers with targeted advertising.

HubSpot’s survey revealed that 29% of marketers will rely on targeted social media ads to circumvent the impact of the GDPR.

28% are collecting first-party data from their customers directly while 27% are experimenting with Google Topics API, which is a “privacy sandbox” that preserves a user’s privacy while also making it possible for a browser to share information about a user’s interests with third parties.

19% are exploring universal identifiers, and another 19% are exploring contextual advertising.

Source: HubSpot

5. 89% of marketers who use influencer marketing increased their use of the strategy in 2023

Influencer marketing is becoming a crucial component of a successful inbound marketing strategy.

According to HubSpot’s survey, 89% of marketers who were already using the strategy either maintained or increased their budget for it in 2023.

This means those who try influencer marketing think it’s effective enough to either keep using it or to increase their use of it.

In fact, 17% of marketers tried influencer marketing for the very first time in 2023.

Source: HubSpot

6. 38% of marketers say working with macro influencers has been most effective in influencer marketing campaigns

HubSpot’s survey revealed that the majority of marketers, or 38%, find working with macro influencers to be most effective when it comes to influencer marketing.

In the marketing world, influencers are categorized by the number of followers they have: nano influencers with 1,000 to 10,000 followers, micro influencers with 10,000 to 100,000 followers, macro influencers with 100,000 to 1 million followers, and mega influencers with over 1 million followers.

The survey revealed that 64% of marketers work with micro influencers while 57% work with macro influencers.

27% work with nano influencers, and 24% work with mega influencers.

When asked about the type of influencer that’s most effective in marketing campaigns that utilize influencer marketing, 38% of marketers said macro influencers are most effective.

Here’s how effective marketers think other types of influencers are:

• Macro influencer – 38% of marketers think working with influencers who have between 100,000 and 1 million followers is most effective in marketing campaigns.
• Micro influencer – 33% of marketers think working with influencers who have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers is most effective.
• Mega influencer – 18% of marketers think working with influencers who have over 1 million followers is most effective.
• Nano influencers – 11% of marketers think working with influencers who have fewer than 10,000 followers is most effective.

Source: HubSpot

7. Inbound leads increased by 6.66% across all industries in 2022

HubSpot keeps track a number of different marketing-related benchmarks

In 2022, they discovered that inbound leads increased by 6.66% across all industries around the world in 2022.

They also discovered that web conversions were 11% higher that year. This is in spite of web traffic being down by 6% across the globe.

Source: HubSpot

Inbound marketing case studies

8. Twenty20 reduced their cost per marketing qualified lead by 72.49% with the help of SEO and social media marketing tactics

Twenty20 was a crowdsourced stock photography marketplace and service that specialized in offering royalty-free stock photos for social media advertising purposes.

It was acquired by Envato in 2019 before being shut down in 2022 after its library was moved over to Envato’s subscription service, which includes a library of digital assets like photos.

However, while Twenty20 was still around, digital marketing agency Single Grain helped it increase its website traffic and decrease its cost per acquisition by implementing inbound marketing strategies.

These included social media advertising and SEO.

After a while, Twenty20’s web traffic increased by 403% while their volume of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) multiplied by 16.42.

Their cost per acquisition of MQLs decreased by 72.49%. Free trial user submissions also increased by 1,600%.

Source: Single Grain

9. A scooter manufacturer was able to generate $1 million in revenue in one year with inbound PPC ads

Single Grain’s client was an expert in the scooter industry, but the manufacturer wasn’t able to implement an effective marketing strategy on their own.

Even worse, the company was working with a limited marketing budget.

Because the manufacturer sold a physical product, Single Grain knew the most effective way to market it would be paid ecommerce ads displayed through Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Amazon Ads.

The manufacturer’s target market was high school-aged kids, and so, Single Grain ensured the company’s ads were mobile friendly.

The digital marketing agency used the following tactics to maximize the manufacturer’s limited budget:

• Display ad campaigns to raise brand awareness.
• Product-listing ads targeting competitor keywords on Amazon.
• Monitoring daily spending and ROI on per channel and per ad bases.

The inbound marketing strategy increased conversions by as much as 600% for the scooter manufacturer and brought in over $1 million in revenue over a one-year period.

Source: Single Grain

10. A manufacturer of powder metallurgy components was able to achieve an email open rate of 32.85%

Inbound marketing agency protocol 80 was able to help their client, Horizon, achieve higher open and click rates from their email list in a niche market that doesn’t get much attention.

Like the scooter manufacturer in our previous statistic, Horizon was a proficient manufacturer but lacked the necessary skills in marketing to see success.

protocol 80 began their work with the company by implementing a complete design overhaul of their website, one that would actually lead to conversions.

They did this with a call to action page where customers could request quotes as well as a Services page that explains exactly what Horizon does and who their target customer is.

Then, they helped their client achieve more web traffic by publishing a lot of blog posts and offering premium content, like ebooks and demonstration videos.

Along with SEO marketing, Horizon distributed their content through email and social media platforms like LinkedIn.

The inbound marketing strategy helped raise Horizon’s traffic from a few hundred visits per month to just under 15,000/month.

They also achieved an email open rate of 32.85% and a click-through rate of 6.32%.

This is pretty spectacular considering that, according to Mailchimp’s analysis of its customer base, the average email open rate for all industries is 21.3% while the average click-through rate is 2.6%.

Source: protocol 80

General marketing statistics

11. 47% of marketers increased their marketing budgets in 2023

The good news is that because a recession did not occur, 47% of marketers were able to increase their budgets in 2023.

Another 45% maintained their budgets.

Only 7% of marketers decreased their marketing budgets in 2023.

Source: HubSpot

12. 86% of marketers have been affected by changes to data privacy

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has made a lot of changes to the way internet users browse the web with the intent of keeping the private data of those users, namely EU citizens, safe.

It’s why you’re asked to respond to an “accept” or “reject” cookie pop-up every time you visit a new website.

According to HubSpot’s data, 86% of the marketers they surveyed say they’ve been affected by recent changes to data privacy.

Even worse, 85% say their marketing strategies are slightly or completely reliant on third-party cookies with only 8% saying they’re not important to their strategies.

However, 77% of marketers are prepared to lose access to third-party cookies. 16% of marketers are not.

Source: HubSpot

Content marketing statistics

13. 79% of marketers use content marketing to generate high-quality leads

According to Semrush’s State of Content Marketing report for 2020, the majority of marketers, or 79%, say they use content marketing to generate leads.

Traffic was a close second at 75%.

Here are other goals marketers want to achieve through content marketing:

• Generate more quality leads – 79% of marketers want to achieve this goal with an effective content marketing strategy
• Attract more traffic to our website – 75%
• Improve brand reputation – 57%
• Improve customer engagement and loyalty – 47%
• Promote positioning of new products – 26%
• Increase the number of payments – 17%

2% voted for “Other.”

Source: Semrush

14. 25% of marketers say video content has the highest return on investment of all content types

HubSpot asked marketers about the types of content they use as well as which types of content have the highest return on investment (ROI).

According to 25% of marketers, which was the majority, video content has the highest ROI, making it a great tactic to achieve a higher inbound marketing ROI.

Here are the marketing world’s top six content types based on ROI:

• Videos – 25% of marketers say this content type has the highest ROI
• Images – 12%
• Blog posts – 9%
• Case studies – 8%
• Podcasts or other audio content – 7%
• Infographics – 7%

Additionally, these are the top six content types marketers use:

• Videos – 50% of marketers use this content type
• Images – 47%
• Blog posts – 33%
• Infographics – 30%
• Podcasts or other audio content – 28%
• Case studies – 28%

Source: HubSpot

Social media marketing statistics

15. 22% of marketers say Facebook has the highest return on investment out of all social media platforms

HubSpot asked marketers about the social media platforms they use as well as which platforms bring the greatest return on investment.

According to the results of the survey, 22% of marketers, which was the majority, say that Facebook has the highest ROI of all social media platforms.

These are the top five social media platforms that have the highest ROI, according to marketers:

• Facebook – 22% of marketers say this platform has the highest ROI
• YouTube – 16%
• Instagram – 16%
• TikTok – 16%
• LinkedIn – 7%

The survey also revealed Facebook to be the most-used social media platform among marketers with 64% of marketers using the platform:

• Facebook – 64% of marketers use this social media platform
• Instagram – 58%
• YouTube – 57%
• Twitter – 43%
• TikTok – 42%
• LinkedIn – 33%
• Snapchat – 25%

Source: HubSpot

16. Effective marketers are 27% more likely to create custom content for each social media platform they publish to

HubSpot’s report states that effective marketers are 27% more likely to create custom content for the social media platforms they publish to.

However, HubSpot’s survey of 1,200 B2B and B2C marketers also revealed that the majority of marketers, or 46%, repurpose content across multiple social media platforms.

This means they publish the same content to all social media platforms.

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35% create content that’s optimized for the platforms they publish to while 19% do both equally.

This means you can do a lot for your inbound marketing strategy by learning the ins and outs of each platform you want to use and creating optimized content for it.

Source: HubSpot

Email marketing statistics

17. Email open rates were down by 12% in 2022

According to HubSpot’s metrics on marketing benchmarks, email open rates decreased by 12% across all industries around the world in 2022.

Source: HubSpot

Final thoughts

Inbound marketing has become an effective marketing strategy that has helped the digital marketing tactics marketers have become accustomed to that much more effective.

An effective inbound marketing strategy can help you connect with your target audience much more reliably than outbound marketing and even traditional marketing can.

You can do this by utilizing inbound marketing methods like content marketing, SEO marketing, social media marketing and email marketing to attract, acquire and nurture high-quality leads that are much more likely to buy whatever products or services you’re selling.

Check out our guide on how to build a strategy for social media marketing for help with inbound marketing.

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