Firms can reduce their cost per lead by up to 60% by adopting blogging and social media over more traditional marketing techniques. The problem for small businesses is how to create quality content without compromising business performance.
Recent research published by Hubspot highlights the extent of the shift away from traditional marketing techniques towards digital tactics. This has big implications if you are the owner of a small business, as digital communications can have a significant impact on your bottom line.
Whilst the research is US based, the findings are still relevant for the UK and Europe. The research looked at the effectiveness of inbound versus outbound marketing techniques. Inbound refers to activities like blogs, content publishing, social media and web traffic resulting from SEO. Hubspot defines outbound as telemarketing, direct mail, tradeshows and more traditional activities.
In truth, the Hubspot definition for outbound tactics can be challenged. It’s probably better to consider techniques in relation to their interruptive impact on the target audience. Inbound represents tactics where the audience are in control of when they engage with your business.
At the other end of the scale would be outbound phone calls / telemarketing which represent perhaps the most disruptive tactic when engaging your audience. In between are a range of other techniques reflecting different degrees of audience disruption.
The Hubspot research found that inbound tactics featuring low on the audience disruption scale also had the lowest cost per lead. This is reflected in the chart below which shows that blogs, social media and web leads from SEO enabled traffic, head the list.
The research also found that, on average, the outbound lead cost was $346 compared to just $135 for an inbound lead. That’s a massive 60% saving on average lead costs.
The inbound digital marketing techniques that were most successful in generating new business for B2B firms were:
* LinkedIn 65%
* Blogs 55%
* Facebook 43%
* Twitter 40%
The research does not say if any of these tactics were combined when generating new business leads but the overall trend is still impressive.
However, a separate report highlights that many SME owners find the effort required for social media and blogging too onerous. Some 33% of SME owners want to spend less time on this area. Yet, if they stop, they know it will directly impact their lead generation performance.
If you run a business and recognise the value blogging can contribute, you have essentially three options:
1. Write the blog posts yourself
2. Allocate the task to someone in your organisation
3. Outsource the task to a professional
Which option you choose will largely depend on your budget, the capability and bandwidth of your staff and the extent to which you enjoy writing.
Building your social media and blogging presence in today’s economic climate is fast becoming mandatory in order to maintain business awareness. The cost implications alone demand that you re-balance your marketing budget towards more cost effective digital tactics. They have moved on from being experimental fads to mainstream marketing tactics.
Traditional lead generation tactics will no doubt continue to play a key role in your lead generation programme. However, you should seriously consider how much of your budget should be allocated between traditional and digital channels for 2013.
Hubspot Research respondent profile:
972 respondents in January 2012 (presumably in the USA).
57% had less than 25 employees; 72% were B2B and 38% were owners or heads of business.
Industries included professional services, communications, technology, media, education and others.
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