Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The best marketers I know are curious.

They're curious about the latest social media update. They're curious about finding solutions to the biggest problems their customers face. And they're curious about how they're performing -- especially in comparison to their peers.

If you consider yourself a curious marketer, we've got a treat for you. Below is a highlight of the main charts and stats from the 2014 State of Inbound Marketing, HubSpot's most recent survey of 3,500 marketing and sales professionals across all company sizes and job titles. If you haven't downloaded the report yet, you should -- it'll give you a whole lot more analysis and insight into the minds of other marketers. ...

Inbound marketing focuses on creating content that appeals to your company’s target customers, thus pulling your potential customers to you.Relevant content ranges from answers to questions or challenges customers has through the range of the entire sales funnel.

The content can be form of blog posts, white papers, infographics, videos and more, which are then distributed through channels such as the company blog, newsletter or social media accounts.

With inbound leads costing 61% less to generate than outbound leads, inbound marketing is especially suitable for startups, small and medium businesses with tighter budgets.

If you’re looking to get started with inbound marketing, here are 8 free tools to get your started. We use many of these tools ourselves and with our own clients, so we know first-hand that they’re effective despite being free....