Inbound Marketers Depend on their Wits not Wallets

Inbound Marketers Depend on Wits Not Wallets

Kieran Flanagan, Marketing Director (EMEA) @HubSpot@searchbrat kflanagan@hubspot.com

Kieran Flanagan@searchbratHighly motivated marketing geek high on data crack.

Having money is great ...

... but not all of us use it wisely.

People spend money on stupid shit!

This Diamond encrusted blackberry will set you back £15,000.

Or how about a diamond encrusted mouse for £20,000?

Who doesn’t need expensive Guinea pig armor for £14,000?

But what about all the stupid shit marketers spend money on?

The world’ s most expensive billboard ad space is valued at $1.3 Billion.

Booth babes are used to turn desperate men into leads.

A sponsored tweet like this can be yours for £6,000.

Inbound Marketers think Differently.

It’s not about ...

Inbound vs. Outbound.

It’s about being smart with the resources you have ...

+ + =

... and creating value for your audience.

Wits will get you far.

Marketing Grader has generated over 4 million visits and 500,000 prospects.

Hotmail’s “PS I Love you” signature helped them to grow to over 12 million email a/cs

Uber provided free rides to influencers at tech conferences knowing they would share their experience on social.

“It’s easier to focus on a strength than a weakness.” – Elliot Shmukler

“It’s easier to focus on a strength than a weakness.” – Elliot Shmukler

LinkedIn focused on their biggest opportunities to help them scale.

Homepage views: 40% 50,000 -> 50% 63,000 (+13,000) took 4 months

vs. Email Invitations: 4% 25,000 -> 7% 44,000

(+19,000) took 2 years

Marketers with wits are focused on the right goals at the right time.

Company Goal What They Did

HubSpot Increase prospects Create a valuable tool

Hotmail Increase accounts Intriguing line at end of each email sent

Uber Social awareness Free rides to tech crowd

Linkedin Free signups Improve performance of home page

They experiment to maximize scale.

They use data to spot opportunities to do things better.

Right Goals,

Right Goals, Experiments,

Right Goals, Experiments, Data Driven

= Great Inbound Marketer

#1 Why Goals Matter

Goals are easy, right?

but a lot of us make too many goals.

Or don’t know how to make the right goals.

Or struggle to pick the right goals to work on.

10 5 15

100

We lose sight of our path to success.

Goals should be easy for marketers.

The marketing funnel is simple

Get Visitors

Contact

Customers

Retain Users

Visit to Contact %

Contact to Customer %

Churn Rate

The metrics tell us what to work on.

Get Visitors

Contact

Customers

Retain Users

Generate 200 weekly visits

Contact to Customer %

Contact to Customer Rate 50%

The metrics tell us what to work on.

Get Visitors

Contact

Customers

Retain Users

Generate 200 weekly visits

Contact to Customer %

Contact to Customer Rate 50%

Ours should be visits

Looking at the metrics across your funnelwill help you focus on the right goals.

a. Visits per channel

b. Leads per channel

c. Visit-to-lead ratio per channel

d. Lead-to-customer ratio per channel

Chunk down your goals until you can check stuff off

Increase visits

Increase User Generated Content

Community with monthly prizes for top posters

Email partners on why they should create

content for us

Create author pages to profile contributors

Monthly traffic light system to keep team focused

Community with monthly prizes for top posters.

Email partners on why they should create content.

Create author pages to profile contributors.

Sprint format makes sure the team knows what to prioritize.

#2 Experiment for Inbound Success

Thomas Edison – “I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to not make a light bulb”.

Your competitive advantage is being different ...

... not the same.

Part 1

Grow your audience

Content Type

Short Term Traffic

Long Term Traffic

AudienceQuality

Virality

Curated X X X

Thought Leadership

X X

How-to Posts X X

NewsJacking X X

Lists X X X

Experiment with content types and know how to measure each one.

Experiment with content frequency. More is not always best.

SERPIQ study says the average content length for a web page that ranks in top 10 is 2,000 words.

What content is going to help me grow my audience?

Socialcrawlytics can identify your competitors’ best content and their top authors.

Competition for eyeballs is getting harder.

27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day

72% of UK B2B Marketers will be producing much more content next year than they did this year.

@CMIContent

“ “

Eat24 create amazingly good content that’s not always directly related to food.

Creativity helps.

So does posting “valuable” content on other sites.

Buffer wrote 60 guest posts that helped grow their customer based to 100,000.

Part 2

Get more shares.

Upworthy writes 25 headlines. Pick two. A/B test and pick the winner.

Upworthy writes 25 headlines. Pick two. A/B test and pick the winner.

Check out their deck:http://slidesha.re/1nqHwGd

Cute Feature Images Increases Shares

Featured image showing actual tool improved shares for launch posts.

Give users plenty of options to share your content

Give the right options to the right person

Adding those personal touches really helps

Results in emails we send being a huge driver of both traffic and *new leads*

Part 3

Get more downloads.

People feel safe in numbers when deciding to do something.

This is our normal CTA aligned with the subject of the blog post.

We simply added a tweet from someone who recommended this ebook.

Result: 27% Click Through Rate Increase

Cool, let’s try adding more.

Another one of our CTA’s

We added a bunch of tweets from people who enjoyed the offer.

Result: 23% Click Through Rate Increase

What about a lead that showed “buying intent”?

This is a landing page for people looking for demos.

We simply added tweets from people who were happy with the product.

Result: 5% Boost to Conversion Rate

Ok, that worked - what about email?

This is one of our emails offering you an inbound marketing assessment.

We just added tweets of people saying great things about HubSpot.

Result: 7% Boost in Click-Through Rate

Part 4

Nurture Beyond Email.

How most marketers think about email nurturing ...

I hope my next lead nurture email comes today.

The reality is a lot different.

The people you are nurturingare somewhere in here.

We split test our lead nurture workflows.

Workflow 1 (Email Only)

EMAIL 1 EMAIL 2 EMAIL 3

Workflow 2 (Email & Retargeting)

EMAIL 1 EMAIL 2 EMAIL 3

Workflow 2 (Email & Retargeting)

EMAIL 1 EMAIL 2 EMAIL 3

Significant increase in the numberof opportunities created.

#3 Know your Metrics

Just look through the deck.

There are a lot of metrics in it, right?

That’s because ...

Right Goals,

Right Goals, Experiments,

Right Goals, Experiments, Data Driven

= Great Inbound Marketer

Thank You.

@searchbrat kflanagan@hubspot.com