A recent HubSpot report called “The State of Inbound Marketing” offers some enlightening stats about marketers and their blogs:
- Blogs and social media channels are generating real customers: 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquired customers from leads generated directly from their blog.
- More and more businesses are blogging: Businesses are now in the minority if they do not blog. From 2009 to 2011 the percentage of businesses with a blog grew from 48% to 65%.
- Businesses are increasingly aware their blog is highly valuable: 85% of businesses rated their company blogs as “useful,” “important,” or “critica‖,” a whopping 27% rated their company blog as “critica‖” to their business.
And marketers are putting their money where their mouth is:
- The average budget spent on company blogs and social media increased from 9% in 2009 to 17% in 2011.
So who’s blogging successfully? According to HubSpot, marketers in higher education, professional services and consulting, and software and biotech indicated blogging as highly effective with over 50% reporting customer acquisition as a direct result from their blogs.
If you haven’t started blogging because you are unsure about the benefits, let us give you the short list of why you should take another look:
- Nurtures prospects
- Establishes thought leadership
- Improves S.E.O.
- Builds community
- Increases CUSTOMER ACQUISITION
Remember, a blog is just one part of your larger content marketing strategy. It is critical to have something relevant to say and share with prospects across a variety of mediums. For a list of content marketing tactics, download our Content Marketing Strategy Cheat Sheet. It’s free and it will help get you started.
To find out more about inbound marketing in 2011, you can download the report “The State of Inbound Marketing” at HubSpot.
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