12 Surprising European-US Internet Marketing Statistics

The HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing report has always been US-focused, but a new European edition for 2013 has revealed some interesting, and sometimes surprising, trends when comparing online marketing adoption in Europe with the US. We’ve picked twelve of the best snippets from this survey of 443 marketers across Europe. 

• Adoption of Inbound Marketing in Europe is almost on par with the US. Of European and US respondents, 58% and 59% respectively said they had implemented Inbound strategies.

• Around 20% in both Europe and the US said they simply didn’t know if the techniques they were using were Inbound or not, indicating a need for specialist marketing agencies to better inform and educate.

• Inbound Marketing in Europe is growing at an impressive rate, with 42% of companies set to increase their inbound spending in 2013.

• ‘Reaching the right audience’ was given as the top marketing priority by an equal percentage (23%) of European and US respondents. Increasing lead generation was of far more importance here in Europe, while in the US, lead conversion was of greater concern.  In both markets, ‘proving marketing ROI’ was the lowest priority.

• More European than US companies said Inbound Marketing was “completely integrated” into their marketing strategies, but only by a small percentage (36% versus 35%). An equal number (44%) said Inbound was “somewhat integrated” while just 4% said it wasn’t integrated at all. 

• Only 22% said they had a formal Service Level Agreement (SLA) between their marketing and sales teams. A lack of an adequate SLA can lead to misalignment over responsibilities and procedures, and confusion over goals and metrics. 34% said they had no idea whether they had a formal marketing-sales SLA.

• The top three sources for lead generation reported this year in Europe have been SEO (13%), social media (13%) and blogging (11%). In the US, email marketing replaces blogging in that list. 

• European companies are starting to shift their focus away from outbound channels towards inbound. 15% of respondents said direct mail was less important in 2013, followed by trade shows (14%) and telemarketing (12%). 

• Facebook and LinkedIn are equal in terms of customer acquisition in Europe, with 40% reporting new business from these social networks. However, we’re still some way behind the US, with 49% and 46% reporting new business from Facebook and LinkedIn respectively. 

• In the US, social media is the top source of lead-to-customer conversions, while in Europe Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the winner by quite a margin – 14% reported this compared to the next best converters, direct mail and email marketing, at 9%.

• 49% of European companies do not test their Inbound Marketing efforts, making it impossible to know whether they’re working or not. The US is somewhat better at 43%, but only around one in five in both markets said they were conducting any testing at all.

• Of European respondents, 41% said they either could not or did not calculate marketing ROI. However, “proving ROI” was listed as the top concern in a quarter of all marketers surveyed. This indicates that 25% of European companies want to calculate their marketing ROI, but don’t know how.