As of 2022, almost 30% of business is conducted online, a 5.2% increase over the past five years. This trend will likely continue to tick upward, especially as B2B companies move their services and products online.

Inbound marketing for these businesses will be a big focus since websites and social media channels serve as the most significant drivers of brand awareness. Even though inbound marketing can yield big results, it’s also a point of contention for some businesses because of the level of effort and strategy involved, leading to many abandoned initiatives.

This disagreement about the benefits of inbound tactics stems from organizations putting time, energy, and money into feeding the content beast with few tangible returns. Prospecting and acquiring high-quality leads is still a major issue for many sales and marketing teams.

Let’s explore a few reasons why this has led some businesses to not believe in the power of inbound marketing.

Reason 1: It was something we tried, and it didn’t work.

Downloadable content, social media campaigns, and SEO optimized content like blog posts are among the most common tactics organizations use to drive leads, build awareness and increase sales. According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, 82% of marketers include content marketing as part of their strategy.

Some companies reap the rewards of content creation on their revenue, while others don’t experience even a fraction of those returns. But sometimes, it boils down to not tracking the results. HubSpot reported that 45% of marketers had “drive conversions” as a business outcome in 2021. Yet fewer than 25% said they didn’t pay much attention to the relationship between their campaigns and revenue.

It’s difficult to tell whether your inbound tactics work if you’re not looking at the numbers. When you produce content without a solid plan or roadmap, it’s easier to throw in the towel when you don’t measure your efforts.

Reason 2: Inbound marketing costs too much money

The cost of inbound marketing is all over the board. Emails are usually a cost-effective way to market to prospective customers. While producing audio and video content, like podcasts and YouTube segments, tend to be more labor-intensive and expensive. But they’ve proven themselves time and again to increase sales.

Email marketing delivers some of the biggest returns on investment. Campaign Monitor estimated that marketers experienced around a 760% increase when integrating email campaign segmentation into their strategy. Open rates and conversions also increased when businesses gave their audiences relevant email copy and impressive designs.

But that’s not all.

When it came to videos, People who watched them were more likely to buy products from businesses. And when surveyed, 88% of people were convinced to purchase after watching a branded video.

However, this number doesn’t only apply to short videos.

Video hosting platform, Wistia reported that while shorter content is still popular, engagement remained high even for longer videos. Fireside chats and webinars tend to run longer than other types of video content. Even with these extended videos, there wasn’t a huge drop-off in engagement.

While expenses come with inbound marketing, companies can recoup their investment many times over by delivering content that makes sense for their prospects.

Reason 3: My site’s ranking never improved with inbound marketing

It’s all about the keywords for websites, right? Not anymore. For far too long, businesses have been told that customers will come streaming in if they publish blog posts filled with keywords.

But nowadays, it’s all about quality for people visiting sites. In 2021, 55% of businesses that achieved success with inbound site traffic did so because they were laser-focused on creating quality content.

Keyword rankings and organic traffic are still the main metrics businesses use to determine whether their content is effective. And while SEO is still a large part of content and inbound marketing, keywords don’t play as large of a role in search engine rankings.

If you’re not producing highly relevant content for your audience, it will be an uphill battle to make your inbound efforts work long-term.

Conclusion

If you’re one of those, who thought inbound marketing wasn’t worth the effort, you might want to reconsider. It still makes a considerable contribution to the success of many businesses with an online presence. Yes, it will involve developing strategies, bringing in resources, tracking metrics, and adjusting your plans.

But when you start seeing the effects of your social media, email, and other marketing campaigns bringing in more leads and sales, spending time on this critical part of your business will make perfect sense.