How Inbound Marketing "Awesomeness" Built a Hubspot All Star
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Mon, Apr 12, 2010
"If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing..." - @
We've been ranked #8 in a list of 100 HubSpot All Stars - yahoo!
Hubspot is software & advice that helps your business get found online by more qualified visitors, convert more visitors into leads, and more efficiently close leads. But their inbound marketing community has 10,000+ marketers doing amazing things every day. How did we rank at #8?
According to Hubspot, All Star status reflects,
“the long-term viability and awesomeness of a customer's marketing programs. The higher the CHI score, the more traffic and leads are likely to be generated by that customer in the future. (Traffic and leads make customers happy, hence the name.)”
What is "awesome" when it comes to inbound marketing programs? Here's what worked for us:
- First principles: give reliable, ethical advice aimed at helping you move the needle. Have humility. Own mistakes. Learn daily.
- Awesome content is king: We strive to publish content you might actually want to read. But success with our published content didn’t happen over night. Our first ebook was on the dry side, for example. And I've written some lame blog articles (no, I won't entertain you by linking to them here!). With the help of my awesome team, we've published moderately successful stuff. Our ebook "Six Marketing Gotchas CEOs Can Avoid" has been the most popular.
- Close the loop! Using Hubspot's awesome analytics, over time we've learned more about which keywords are best to focus on, what content you like best, and how you are finding us. Take the Six Gotchas ebook as the example again. You commented and linked the most to articles that called out common marketing mistakes. We wrote an ebook in that vein, gave it a catchy headline, jammed in as much concrete advice and examples as we could muster, and showed on the cover an executive slipping on a banana peel - doh! (Hankering to see what's behind the cover page? Awesome...)
- Brains over cash: Pick cost-effective ways to promote content - like social media marketing and PR. We invest time just about daily in LinkedIn, and just about weekly in Twitter (@b2bcommunicate and @b2bjt). We follow and comment on relevant websites, blogs, LinkedIn questions, and tweets too. Hubspot's awesome Social Media Module makes it possible for mere mortals to stay on top of myriad social media accounts.
- Be clear about the next step. If you get our Gotchas ebook, for example, you'll also get a link to access a menu of services. It's our job to be clear about how to move along. You choose whether or not to take the next step.
High threshold for follow up
Because this whole system results in daily leads, we keep a very high threshold for follow up. For example, almost daily folks download our stuff, and/or click through from the follow up email to get more stuff like the 2010 Information Kit.
There is no way we can call all these folks, so we focus on keeping up with requests for services.
More resources
See all the great resources available in the Hubspot Service Marketplace.