Auteur: Rebecca Corliss

A marketer who is skilled at using data — whether you’re entry-level or a CMO — is a powerful force. Having data at your side will help you make smart decisions, suggest fast changes when necessary, and find opportunities for different marketing channels and teams to work together. Who doesn’t want that? 

Quite often, however, even good marketers are in the business of only monitoring the basics: traffic and leads. But there’s a substantial world beyond those important yet simple measurements. In fact, you can go much deeper into your data to see how certain marketing components are working together, learn what improvements can be made to better your marketing, and avoid some serious pitfalls before they happen. All you need is to have your marketing metrics list ready, and the tools to get started. 

So to help you get started, here are some of the key marketing metrics and reports you should be analyzing if you’re looking to advance your marketing game. It’ll help you strengthen your analytical tool belt, and run marketing programs that work smarter — not harder — for your business. You ready? Let’s go.

Goal Setting and Progress Tracking 

The first few sets of metrics and measuring methods are to help you (you fearless marketer, you), stay ahead of your lead generation goals so you can have a solid month.

1) Leads Waterfall

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew at the start of every day if you were on track to meet your leads goals for the month? Well that’s exactly what a leads waterfall graph is for! This chart helps you guide your progress by visualizing what you need to achieve on a day by day basis. As your month progresses, plot what you actually achieve each day to compare your results to your goal. Now you can catch yourself when you’re falling behind the first day it happens, so you can react quickly to pick up the pace. If you’re a HubSpot customer (in fact, with closed-loop marketing software all of the metrics recommended in this post will be much simpler to get), you can simply input your numbers into the software to get a graph like this that automatically updates:

 

 

If you’re not using HubSpot software, you can still keep track of this number using Excel. We’ve written a blog post that tells you how, which you can read here.

2) Traffic Waterfall

The same concept as above can be used for traffic, which is important if you hope to achieve a particular leads goal. Use a waterfall to monitor your traffic growth closely. Again, if you fall behind, you can act quickly, perhaps by creating content that will draw more readers in at a faster rate.

3) Average Lead Close Rate

Do you know the average rate at which your leads close? You should track this often, I recommend on a monthly basis. Why is this number helpful? It will help you monitor the quality of your leads at any given time. If it’s high, you’re attracting high-quality potential business. If that close rate drops, you might not be attracting the right people.

4) Average Leads Per Business Day Month Over Month Growth

Lots of marketers track month over month growth, but fewer track lead per business day month over month growth. So how is that different, and why might that be important? Well, not every month is the same length! In other words, this metric helps you measure growth more fairly by drilling down to how much you can produce in a single business day.

For example, if you generated 300 leads in January, and your boss tells you to maintain that same about of lead generation in February, could you relax that month? Unfortunately no — that actually requires 15% growth in average leads per business day in order to maintain 300 leads. In other words, you need to achieve the same results in 19 days as you did with 22.

Channel Effectiveness 

This next section is to help us ensure we’re closely monitoring how well each specific channel is performing. A channel in this case (no, not ESPN) is a lead source. So “social media,” for example, is a channel just like “SEO” is a channel. By separating these channels individually, you can get some really interesting insights into which are working best for your business, so you know if you’re investing in the right sources. 

5) Month-to-Date (MTD) Goal Per Channel

How closely are you measuring the growth and progress of each of channel? For example, are you on a mission to scale social media as a lead generation channel? Or maybe email marketing? Let’s say you set a goal to generate 100 leads via social media in March. By using your handy dandy leads per business day metric, you can set daily goals to help you there. This is a numerical-only version of the waterfall chart above, but it could also easily be graphed to help you have a visual representation.

This metric is also a great tool to incentivize, say, your blog team to hit a lead goal for their own channel. Now it’s easier for them to do it, because they can actively track their daily progress. 

6) Close Rate Per Channel

Every marketer should understand what channels work best for their business from a customer acquisition standpoint. Maybe SEO is your best volume-producing lead generation channel for your business, and social media is one of your smallest. Well, regardless of lead volume, it’s possible that social is driving more customers for your business! How, you might wonder? Perhaps the close rate of leads generated via social media is significantly higher than leads generated via SEO … so much so that SEO’s volume isn’t enough to make up the difference. That high close rate is also a very strong indicator of the quality of those leads coming from that channel. In other words, do more on that channel! It’s your sweet spot.

7) Paid vs. Organic Lead Percentage

Lots of marketers group their channel analysis into larger buckets — for example, “paid” and “organic” might be separated for analysis. The paid bucket is any marketing that you spend money on (aside from employee time), like social advertising, sponsored newsletters, etc. Organic is the opposite; it’s all leads that you generate without cost other than your team’s time. Blogging, SEO, social media, and email marketing fall into that bucket.

So if you’re a marketing director using both of these “types” of lead generation, you probably want to keep a close watch on how much of your leads are coming from one bucket over the other. You might also set a goal to decrease paid channels as a lead source over time. Measure what percentage of your leads come from each bucket to get a sense for how your organic efforts are working for you, and if you are scaling to reduce your dependency on advertising. 

Content Effectiveness 

How do you measure the impact of a blog post? Or an ebook? How do you know if the effort and time you put into that piece of content … well … paid off? Measuring the impact of content is a tricky, tricky skill, but it can absolutely be done. Below are a handful of wonderful metrics to let you know if the stuff you’re making is paying off. 

8) Leads Generated Per Offer

One great use of content, particularly premium or long-form content, is to gate it behind a landing page to encourage your visitors to fill out a form. That content is often called an offer, because it’s what you are offering on that landing page. But how do you know if that offer was worth creating? Simple! By tracking how many people filled out that particular form on the offer’s landing page. Now that you have that number, how does that lead volume compare to other offers of yours? Knowing that will help you determine how effective different types of offer content are to your marketing efforts.

9) Landing Page New Contacts Rate

So we’re all comfortable with landing page submission rate, or the rate at which landing page visitors fill out your landing page form. But how can you differentiate your repeat form-fillers from your newcomers? Well, new contacts rate is a great place to start! This metric is a wonderful tool to let you know the percentage of new people you’re attracting to your business. In other words, what is the rate at which new contacts only are filling out your form? This is a much better gauge of whether your content is helping you attract a new audience that you can do business with. 

 

 

10) Call-to-Action Clickthrough Rate

Let’s step back for a moment …  how do potential leads get to your landing pages again? Ah yes! Calls-to-action (CTAs)! You know, those little mini “ads” for your best content on your website that guide people to the content on your landing pages. By monitoring your call-to-action clickthrough rate, or the rate at which people visit a page and then click on the page’s CTA, you’ll be able to understand how valuable that offer is to incoming traffic.

It’s also important to note that sometimes, a CTA’s performance can be optimized simply by updating the CTA itself. So it’s wise to test CTA variations like color, text, and position before you decide to change your entire content strategy.

11) Traffic-Driving Keywords

Here’s a hat-tip to the marketers who love SEO. Another way to evaluate if your content creation is impacting your business is by tracking how well relevant keywords related to your business are performing in search.

But wait — we don’t necessarily care about rank. This metric evaluates keyword performance based on the traffic that’s coming to your content via those keywords. Now what should you do with this information? If you have many traffic-producing keywords, you’ve done a great job creating a piece of content that has received significant links and shares, helping it perform better in search engines. Create similar and even stronger content to help your goals. 

Marketing Qualified Leads 

Say what now? For those of you who are not measuring qualified leads (MQLs), or have not defined what a marketing qualified lead is for your business, here’s the short answer: a marketing qualified lead is a lead that is ready to be rotated to Sales. There could be many ways to determine which leads are MQLs. Your company might decide a lead is marketing qualified after it takes a certain combination of actions — like filling out a form, visiting your website five times, and visiting your product page. Or you might decide that a lead is an MQL once it requests a demo. It’s up to you. The purpose is to know what leads are the most sales-ready so you are passing on the hottest ones to your sales team. Now let’s measure them. 

12) Total MQLs Per Month

Now that we understand what MQLs are, this is easy! How many of these MQLs are you generating month over month? Is it increasing? (That’d be nice.) This is a good metric to know if you’re helping your leads get to the “marketing qualified” stage via nurturing and more sales-driven content. You could also look at this metric more closely by evaluating average MQLs per business day.

13) MQLs Per Channel

It would also be great to know if a particular channel is a strong source of MQLs for your business. How many MQLs do you get from your blog versus email marketing? Maybe you’ll learn that one channel is a better source for generating newer leads who are still getting to know your business, but another is great for nurturing to the MQL stage. This metric would help you determine that.

14) Percent Leads That Are MQLs

Are more leads being nurtured into MQLs over time? Or is your business struggling to nurture your leads into MQLS? By monitoring what percentage of your leads are MQLs over any given time, you’ll be able to understand how well MQL generation is working compared to lead generation. This is another great metric to track month over month. Ideally, the MQL percentage would grow over time while overall lead volume is increasing. That’s the dream, baby!

15) MQL Conversion Rate Per Offer

This metric is your tool to measure both MQL conversion and content effectiveness. Say what? Let’s back up. Ideally, after someone converts on an offer’s landing page, you’d then guide that person through the steps that would (hopefully) turn them into an MQL. So in the event that anyone who requests, say, a free demo is an MQL for your business, you’d want to guide your new lead to a form that lets them request a free demo.

Now that we understand that, let’s dig into this “MQL conversion rate per offer” metric. This metric tells you at what rate a person becomes an MQL, per offer. So if 20% of leads became an MQL after attending your webinar, but 10% of leads became an MQL after downloading your ebook, you would say the webinar has a higher MQL conversion rate. How is this helpful? Over time, you can learn what content is the best tee-up for a strong MQL opportunity. 

Metrics make the marketing world go round, and there are more excellent ones to look at outside of the ones presented on this list. So share what metrics you measure in the comments, and keep sharpening your analytical chops so you can make the smartest decisions possible for your business.

Love marketing analytics yourself? What are your favorite marketing metrics to follow?

Image credit: Blue Diamond Photography

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It’s almost here — the turn of the new year. And you know what that means … This is your chance to reboot and decide what changes you’ll make in 2013. Are there specific skills you haven’t quite mastered yet? Do you have a particular goal in mind that you weren’t quite able to hit in 2012? Of course, these goals could pertain to your personal life, but what about some career and marketing-related goals, too? Why not improve some critical skills and habits that could advance your marketing career and make you an even stronger contributor to your company’s success? What marketing resolutions do you want to make?

If you’re not sure where to begin, for starters, HubSpot would love to help! We’re offering our marketing community members a free consultation to chat with a HubSpot expert about 2013 goal planning. (Not too shabby!) It’s worth the investment to take some time to figure out what will be different for you and your marketing in 2013. So consider chatting with us, and take some time to reflect on your challenges and goals by setting some strong marketing resolutions for 2013. Here are 16 great ideas to get you started, chock full of with links to more in-depth tips and resources to help you become a better marketer in 2013 …

“I want to become a stronger, more multifaceted content creator.”

1) I will blog at least twice a week. Did you know that, according to HubSpot’s 2012 Marketing Benchmarketing Report, companies that blog 6-8 times per month generate over 2X more leads than companies that blog just twice a month? Valuable content is the meat that attracts visitors and leads to your company. Making the commitment to an increased blogging frequency should significantly increase your lead flow. Considering adding this to your list of resolutions? Here are 10 ways to never run out of blog ideas again.

2) I will produce at least one video in Q1, and post it on YouTube. Video content can communicate a story or emotion better than almost any other form of content. A lot of marketers have a mental block that keeps them from creating video content due to a lack of technical savvy or resources. Kick those excuses to the curb and use this goal to tell one of your customers’ success stories — it could become the strongest selling tool in your sales reps’ tool belt. 

3) I will become an active contributor to social media by posting articles to my company’s social channels. Maintaining an active, helpful social presence is a great tool for growing a reach that can be used to promote your best content. If this is a current weakness of yours, start by making a commitment to sharing others’ content so you can grow that valuable following. Need help planning your social media updates? Check out our free social media publishing schedule template.

4) I will work to enhance my and/or my team’s design skills. This resolution is especially relevant for 2013. A recent HubSpot study found that photos on Facebook generate 53% more Likes than text, and the trend toward visual content is only growing in importance. In 2013, investing in design skill development will be crucial for creating effective content for social media and other marketing channels. Purchase Photoshop for your team, ask a designer to host a short design tutorial, spruce up your PowerPoint skills, and download our 35 free email design templates — or check out these awesome, free design tools — if you’re a marketer on a budget. There are a lot of ways to become a better designer. Take advantage of them!

“I want to better optimize my marketing to drive stronger results.”

5) I will take the time to conduct a website audit in 2013. When’s the last time your website got a checkup? If it’s been a while, there could be plenty of missed optimization opportunities you never even knew existed. Does your website rank for certain terms that you didn’t know about? Conduct an SEO audit. Are there certain pages on your site that aren’t optimized at all — for search and for conversion? A website audit is a great thing to do early in the year so you reap the benefits throughout 2013. Check out our 25 website must-haves for driving traffic, leads, and sales, so you can start the new year off right with an optimized website.

6) I will take the time to educate myself and my team about the basics of SEO. Speaking of search engine optimization, every inbound marketer should know the basics of SEO. Especially with recent Google algorithm changes, there are some ways you can improve your search engine optimization through improved social performance (that’s right — they’re connected), and more! Download our free on-page SEO template, brush up on link-building best practices, and make sure everyone who creates content on your team keeps SEO best practices in the backs of their minds. 

7) I will conduct one landing page A/B test per month to optimize my landing pages. When it comes to lead generation and reconversion, the difference between a 15% landing page conversion rate and a 25% conversion rate can be HUGE. Imagine if you could automatically generate more leads without changing your promotion strategy or generating more traffic — but rather just by optimizing your landing pages themselves? By making a habit of testing your landing pages on a regular basis to get more bang for your buck, you may be able to significantly scale your lead generation without having to scale your team! Check out this guide to landing page A/B testing to learn more — or download our complete ebook on A/B testing.

8) I will get into the habit of doing email A/B tests prior to emailing my list. Similar to the point above, optimizing an email before hitting send could increase open or clickthrough rates immensely. Who knows — maybe the first CTA headline you think of won’t resonate with your email list. But how the heck would you know if you didn’t test it first? Make this a normal practice in your marketing, and check out these various types of email tests you can try with your next email send. And while we’re on the subject of email optimization, you’re segmenting your email list too … right?

“I want to become a more data-driven marketer.”

9) I promise to set specific, numerical goals for every project I do. Goal setting is an important habit for every marketer in order to both evaluate and communicate their successes. Starting a new video series? What number of views, shares, website visits, or leads do you need to attract to make this initiative worth it? Make this step number one for all your work moving forward, and check out this free template to help you determine your 2013 marketing goals. 

10) I will start tracking my analytics every week — if not every day. This is just plain good housekeeping. By keeping a pulse on how your marketing is performing on a regular basis, you can keep yourself from falling behind. A great way to do this is to use a waterfall chart to track your progress toward an end goal. If you get behind early in the month, you’ll know that you need to go full-steam ahead to fix the problem fast so you can still finish strong. Here are some other reports you should set up with your marketing analytics to keep your marketing — and sales — teams accountable.

11) I will commit to tracking my leads to sales, so I truly know what marketing channels work best. “Smarketing” is a beautiful thing. Very easily, we marketers get caught up in measuring success by marketing numbers exclusively, but what works for us might not be what’s best for the business. For example, a marketer at a software company could get 10,000 people to download a flip-book of cute kitty images (Hey, I’d download that!), but it doesn’t mean those 10,000 people are going to be good fits as customers. Using closed-loop marketing analytics and aligning your marketing goals with sales goals to understand if your content is attracting the right people will help you understand what’s best for the business. 

12) I will encourage my team to independently measure their work, and report back to me. Measuring progress doesn’t need to live at the management level exclusively. In fact, it may work to your benefit to encourage data-driven habits at every level as a tool to keep your marketing team accountable. Empower your employees by cultivating a data-driven culture. Help your team understand how they can track their progress, and ask them for updates periodically so it’s always top of mind.

“I want to become a better overall inbound marketer.”

13) I will pick an organization I love and learn from them. Is there a company out there that you admire because of a particular way they do marketing? For instance, maybe you love Oreo’s content in social media. Or maybe you aspire to be as creative as Disney. Dissect WHY you love that organization, and learn from their marketing choices. Even if that company is in a completely different industry, there will likely still be key, valuable takeaways that can help to inspire your own marketing promotions. Start by checking our list of 10 of the most memorable marketing campaigns in 2012.

14) I will further my own education as a marketer by attending conferences and reading smart content every day. Never be too busy to keep learning. Consider attending a couple of top-notch marketing conferences this year. Print marketing ebooks and read them before bed, or read through an RSS reader of your favorite blogs while you sip coffee in your slippers. (Are you subscribed to this one yet, by the way?) You can always make the time. Find ways to keep your brain active and learning, and do the same for your team. Help them find educational resources they enjoy and can read every day, and set a good example by being a lifelong learner yourself. 

15) I will accept feedback from my boss, teammates, customers, and community. A closed mind is a stagnant mind. Always be open to feedback when it’s given to you, and request it regularly even when it’s not. Survey your customers and clients to gut check their happiness. You may learn simple ways to make their lives better that make all the difference, yet takes no additional time from you. And, you’ll be improving the impact of your marketing along the way!

16) I will make a commitment to creating marketing that people love. The true path to successful marketing is making sure all the content you make, information you provide, and emails you send make your target market love you. When you create lovable marketing, it will also get clicked on, shared, downloaded, linked to, and promoted more often by your audience. And if you can build rapport and trust in the marketing stages, you’ll be teeing up a relationship that could lead to a lifelong, happy customer. To learn more about creating marketing that people love, check out our step-by-step ebook on lovable marketing here.

What are some of your marketing goals for yourself, your team, and your company in 2013? Add to our list by sharing them with the rest of us in the comments below, or let us help you figure them out by signing up for a free marketing consultation.

Image Credit: simplyla

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There’s no doubt that we’re moving toward a more visual marketing world. As users, we often prefer consuming visual content to reading blocks of text. In fact, Facebook users are uploading approximately 300 million photos to Facebook per day, up 20% from earlier this year. Even usage of the photo-sharing tool Instagram, purchased by Facebook in April of 2012, has increased 1,179% in six months. 

But as a business, will catering to this new trend in visual content have a positive impact on crucial engagement metrics, including Facebook Likes, comments, and potentially even link clicks? 

The Impact of Photos on Generating Facebook Engagement

To learn if using visuals in social content has an impact on social media engagement, HubSpot evaluated 8,800 Facebook posts from B2B and B2C companies’ Facebook Pages in October 2012 by comparing each businesses’ average Likes-per-photo to their overall average Likes-per-post. As a result, our study revealed that photos on Facebook Pages received 53% more Likes than the average post. We also compared each businesses’ average comments-per-photo to their overall average comments-per-post and found that photo posts attracted 104% more comments than the average post, too.

(Note: In our study, “the average post” included text, link, and photo posts. Text and link posts are those published through the “Status” option on a page’s composer. They can take the form of text-only posts or link-based posts that pull in an image thumbnail.) 

 

This percentage difference is substantial, and it emphasizes a huge opportunity for businesses to use photos and images as a means to increase Likes and comments, and thus EdgeRank. EdgeRank is Facebook’s visibility algorithm based on users’ interaction with your Facebook Page content. Boosts in Likes helps increase EdgeRank, which can then cause a page’s content to appear in News Feeds more often, increasing visibility.

Just take a look at how much more prominently photo posts are displayed on a Facebook Page compared to a link-based post that pulls in just a small thumbnail image. And as you can see, you can include links in photo posts, too:

 

 

 

The Impact of Photos on Driving Website Traffic

It’s no wonder photo posts garner more attention from Facebook users! But at the end of the day, marketers care more about how their social network usage is affecting specific business goals (as they should!), such as generating website traffic. So, can visuals be used to increase website traffic as well, even if the link accompanying a photo/image only lives in the image description?

Our next logical step was to analyze how using Facebook photos impacts link clicks, but we came to a staggering hault when we discovered that 60% of the photo/image posts in our sample didn’t include a link. This discovery not only reduced our sample size immensly — making accurate clickthrough analysis impossible — but it also highlighted a huge missed opportunity for marketers.

In order to shed some light on the subject, we looked at HubSpot’s own Facebook posts from October 2012 and found that our photo posts received 84% more link clicks than our text and link posts. That’s right — even posts in which the featured item *is* a link. Pretty incredible, right? This shows that marketers who are using interesting images to their advantage can increase traffic to their websites — just as long as they remember to include links!

What These Findings Mean for Marketers  

So, what does this mean for marketers? For one, it might challenge some initial theories that using text-only posts could be a better Facebook strategy for businesses. (The contradicting argument is that Facebook surfaces text-only posts in News Feeds more often than photos.) While this specific HubSpot study does not discredit that theory, it could proove that it is irrelevant. Even *if* photos were appearing in News Feeds less often via Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm, using photos to generate more Likes and potentially clicks would justify an increased focus on images.

Now on to your action items …

1) If you haven’t yet, it’s time to increase the amount of visuals in your Facebook posts. 

This means that you should be making a conscious effort to use high-quality, engaging images in the content you end up sharing on Facebook, including blog posts, landing pages, etc. And feel free to get creative. For example, we posted a photo of a HubSpot employee from his days in the Navy band as a tribute to Veterans Day, and it was one of our top-performing post in November. Don’t be afraid to have fun with your photos!

2) Consider hiring a designer or visual content creator.

Do you have budget to hire a new marketer in 2013? Visual skills are becoming incredibly crucial in the social world. If a new hire isn’t in your immediate future, perhaps invest in some design training for your team. 

3) Don’t forget to include relevant links with your images.

Do you have a blog post, ebook, whitepaper, case study, or landing page that is related to an image you’re posting to Facebook? Include a link to it in the image description. This will help ensure you’re driving solid traffic back to your website from your visual content efforts in social media.

Have you increased the amount of visual content you post to Facebook and other social networks? Have you noticed that your most visual content performs better than other types of social updates?

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This week, Inc.com announced the 2012 Inc. 5000, its list of fastest-growing businesses determined by their three year revenue growth percentage. HubSpot is honored to have been included for the past two years, and this year our CEO Brian Halligan will be highlighted as a speaker at the Inc. 500|5000 Conference on “How to Grow by Leaps and Inbound.” Needless to say, we’re pretty pumped.

To shed light on the impact inbound marketing has had on the growth of these companies overall, we took a look at the marketing effectiveness of all 5,000 companies via our free marketing evaluation tool, Marketing Grader, and the results were fascinating! This blog post will pull out some of the highlights (and yes, the lowlights, too) from these stellar companies’ marketing presences.

The goal here is not only to learn how a company grows through excellent inbound marketing, but also learn how to examine a company’s website — whether it’s your own, or an industry competitor’s — to see what opportunities exist for improvement. Let’s dive in!

First, a Word on the Tools of the Trade

To perform this analysis, we used a tool called Marketing Grader. It’s is a free tool — that means you can use it, too! — that measures your entire marketing funnel … not just surface level stuff like how optimized your homepage is. It also gives you actionable advice on how to get more out of your marketing, so you come out of the analysis with some things to do to make your next grade higher. It has run over five million reports since it launched in December 2011 (and a million reports in September alone!) giving feedback on top of the funnel marketing like blogging and social media, middle of the funnel marketing like marketing automation and email, and finally, analytics to close the loop. In fact, you get a specific score for each marketing stage.

HubSpot wanted to find the marketing rock stars within the top ranking companies in the Inc. 5000, so we used this as our tool to evaluate them, and we’ll highlight the key lessons of these successful companies below. Below are the top ten marketers on the Inc. 5000 based on their combined Marketing Grader Score and Inc. 5000 rank. 

Top 10 Marketers from the Inc. 5000 

	Company	Inc. Rank	Marketing Grade	Marketing Grader Report
	1. Acquia	8	92	view report →
	2. AdRoll	7	88	view report →
	3. Nasty Gal	11	91	view report →
	4. UTest	16	89	view report →
	5. WebiMax	37	91	view report →
	6. Gold & Silver Buyers	5	73	view report →
	7. Vitals	47	88	view report →
	8. Gemvara	48	88	view report →
	9. Red Frog Events	9	77	view report →
	10. Datto	38	85	view report →

Congrats, top 10! Now let’s dive into some of the high points of the analyses.

Gold & Silver Buyers – Inc. Rank 5, Marketing Grader Score 73

Let’s start with Gold & Silver Buyers, one of the highest ranked on the Inc. 5000 list. Their Marketing Grader Score is respectable at 73, but that means there’s tons of room for improvement … especially when you compare it to the scores of some of the other companies in our top 10 list. Let’s dive in to what they’re doing well, and what they could improve upon.

 

 

When it comes to things like social media and SEO, this company is doing everything they should, just not at the volume or frequency they should be for maximum results. For example, they have a blog … sweet! But they’re not blogging that frequently, only every 19 days on average … bummer. They have a Twitter account and Facebook page … yay! But their content isn’t getting shared on social media that often … Hmmm. Know why that is? Because it’s not that easy to share their content, as there are no social sharing buttons. That’s a huge miss, because blog posts that are shared on Twitter have 113% more inbound links than those that aren’t shared on social media. Upping the frequency of their blogging, and then making it really easy for people to share that content, would result in some serious TOFU wins for this company.

Let’s move on to the opportunities they have in the middle of the funnel, too — because there’s one glaring missed opportunity that we love to talk about. And that’s marketing automation. And for Gold & Silver Buyers, it doesn’t appear they’re making use of any marketing automation software. Now, we know not every company is ready for marketing automation software. But we also know how much easier our lives are when we use it — it’s fast, efficient, targeted — it is, in a word, awesome. So without knowing everything about the state of the MOFU marketing, I’ll just say … consider it 🙂

Nasty Gal – Inc. Rank 11, Marketing Grader Score 91

Let’s take a look at someone who could value from some improvement with their Analytics. Nasty Gal (awesome name, no?) already has a fantastic Marketing Grade at 91, but just look at that 50% in their Analytics section! If they picked that score up, their marketing would totally skyrocket.

 

 

So, what is it they can do, and why is it important they do it? Well, it doesn’t look like they’re using any software to measure the performance of their website. That doesn’t mean they need to invest in closed-loop marketing software necessarily; not yet, at least. It just means something free, like Google Analytics, would help them get some insight into basic metrics that every marketer should know, like whether they’re trending upward in site traffic month over month, what keywords they’re getting visits for, and what pages on their site are most popular. Without knowing basic information like this, it’s hard to know whether your marketing activities are having any impact at all — negative or positive.

Red Frog Events – Inc. Rank 9, Marketing Grader Score 77

Red Frog Events is a spectacular company that can shine even brighter with a little TOFU — or Top of the Funnel — love. This refers to the kinds of marketing activities that will bring more traffic to your website that you can convert into leads, typically with a strong focus on things like SEO, content creation, and social media marketing. But we’d like to focus just on what Red Frog Events can do to improve their SEO, because we talked a bit about the other two items with Gold & Silver Buyers.

 

 

First and foremost, there are some technical SEO issues present on their site — specifically, there are some 301 redirects missing. If you’re not familiar with the concept, 301 redirects are a way to set up permanent redirects from one page on your website to another. For instance, www.yoursite.com is read different to search engines than yoursite.com. Same thing to us, totally different to a crawler.

There are also some really easy on-page SEO things Red Frog Events can do to be found better in the SERPs. First of all, there are 80 images on their home page … but none of them have alt tags! Without alt tags, search engines can’t read the image content, and as such, Red Frog Events misses the chance to not only rank for images, but give crawlers more context on what their site is about.

Finally, there are also several pages on their site that are missing unique page descriptions — great for conversions when readers find your page in the SERPS — as well as a few page titles that start with their company name. We’d recommend changing those page title that contain their company name because, well, it’s not that hard to rank for your brand name! Use that real estate for some keywords, instead.

Vitals – Inc. Rank 47, Marketing Grader Score 88

Now that you have an idea of what TOFU optimization opportunities some of these great companies have, let’s take a look at a company that’s doing some excellent marketing, but could improve a bit with their middle-of-the-funnel marketing.

 

 

We already talked about marketing automation earlier in this post. So, what else can companies like Vitals do to improve their MOFU? Marketing Grader gives a few tips related to social media automation and nurturing, but I’d like to focus on one of the littlest, easiest things to do: add an email subscription to their blog. Think about it … every time you publish a blog post, subscribers get pinged with an email. That’s a huge opportunity for you to drive traffic to your blog, especially as your subscriber list gets bigger and bigger, without lifting a finger. Plus, you don’t have to rely on people remembering to check back on your blog for new content, or look at their RSS to find your content. That’s quite the big win.

Webimax – Inc. Rank 37, Marketing Grader Score 91

For our last Marketing Grader breakdown of seriously awesome companies, I thought it’d be nice to take a look at someone who is doing just awesome all around. Webimax, of course, has some action items to improve their marketing to get up to a full 100%. We all do! But what are they doing that’s making them so successful?

 

 

First of all, as a blogger, I get pretty pumped to see a company like this that is blogging a ton. Like, every day. Plus they make their blog content really easy to find and share with RSS feed and social sharing buttons front and center. And it’s helping, too! Their Marketing Grader Report says their posts are being tweeted, on average, 35 times. That’s awesome! And it’s all paying off for their SEO, too, because they have nearly 1000 inbound links from extremely authoritative sites.

They’ve also done a really good job at something we haven’t talked about yet in this post — mobile optimization. They have a mobile version of their site, Apple icons, and a meta viewport tag that lets mobile devices know how to orient their site on the screen. Way to be ahead of the game, guys.

When it comes to their MOFU marketing, they’re doing something that, befuddlingly, not a lot of businesses are doing enough of — creating landing pages. I mean, how else are you going to convert visitors into leads? They’re also linking to those landing pages in blog posts, tying together their TOFU and MOFU nicely. To top it all off, they’re using marketing automation software to make nurturing those leads really simple. (Note: The fact that they’re using HubSpot for their marketing automation software did not influence my inclusion of them in this post!)

And of course, they’re using analytics software to track the success of all of these efforts. I mean … how else could they bask in the glory of their marketing awesomeness?

Have you run a Marketing Grader report on your website? Or better yet, your competitor’s?

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Everyone wants to market their product like Apple. No surprise there.

But last week, Salesforce.com celebrated the 10th year of it’s annual user conference, Dreamforce. And you know what? We learned a thing or two about product marketing there, too. (And lots of other things, of course — grab our top 10 takeaways here in case you missed the conference. It’ll catch you up in a jiffy so you sound smart at the watercooler.)

So, what was so cool about the product marketing learnings? It was that it addressed a common refrain we hear from customers all the time — how can I incorporate mentions of my product and still be an inbound marketer? I mean, I don’t want to shove it in my leads’ faces, you know?

Makes sense. We’ve often advised companies to stop talking about their products and focus on offering helpful content instead. However, product marketing is not inherently bad, nor should it be removed entirely from the inbound marketing process. In fact, it’s crucial to make sure you’re successfully educating the market on what value your business has to offer — in other words, how you help solve their problems. The key to doing it in an “inbound” way is figuring out how to display the value your product has to your leads. And this post is going to show you exactly how to do that!

Ready to learn how to inject product mentions into your inbound marketing with all the finesse of an Apple product marketer? Me too. Let’s get started!

Position your product in your leads’ terms.

So your product’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Okay, whatever, anyone can say that. Why? What does it do for me?

With inbound marketing, it’s not about you. It’s about your leads. That means you talk about your product in a way that resonates with your leads. How do you do that? A couple ways. First, get to know your buyer personas. If you don’t know who your buyer persona is yet, reference this blog post that tells you exactly how to research and compile your buyer personas.

Once you know more about who your target audience is, you can write in the proper tone, and more important, describe your product in terms of how it will help your customers. What problems will your product solve? How will your product make a prospective customer’s life easier? Don’t get locked up in talking about your product’s amazing, shiny, and glittery features. Content like that will start sounding self-serving, and that’s a turn off. Not to mention totally uninteresting.

Use your product to help explain concepts in blog content.

But wait … isn’t your blog content was supposed to be educational, not promotional? Well yes, it should be. But that doesn’t mean your product can’t help you explain concepts! Let’s use an example from a recent blog post to help demonstrate the fine line here. Take a look at this excerpt from our blog post, “A Marketer’s Guide to Nailing the Timing and Frequency of Social Media Updates.”

 

 

This excerpt explains how to figure out the right day and time to publish your social media updates based on number of clicks. And to be thorough, it helps to actually show readers how to do that, right? Well, the author couldn’t possibly cover how to do that in every single social media publishing tool out there on the marketing. That would be insane. So instead, she says, “Sort them by number of clicks in whatever social media publishing tool you use.” Then, she notes one possible tool is HubSpot’s, and if you use it, this is how that step would work. The concept is demonstrated, and it’s done through our social media tool. See how non-invasive that product mention was?

Include product calls-to-action in your lead generation offers.

If you have at any point during your time engaging with HubSpot downloaded and read one of our ebooks, you’ve most likely seen this tip in action. We have a short one-pager in all our ebooks to teach people about our all-in-one marketing software if they’re curious to learn, as well as an opportunity to grab a demo. To do this in an “inboundy” way, ensure your CTA related back to the content of the lead generation offer. For example, our email ebooks will include highlights of our email marketing tools throughout — much like the blog content includes contextual, educational references to our software when appropriate. And when it comes to the CTA, we edit the copy to reflect how our software helps solve email marketing problems … because that’s the subject of the ebook!

Some folks will be interested. Some won’t. Just like any other CTA. No biggie!

Promote product content based on funnel stage.

Timing is everything. It doesn’t upset people to learn a lot about your product … when they want to hear a lot about your product. This, however, requires a good understanding of your company’s marketing and sales funnel. If you can figure out what stage of the funnel your leads are in based on their behaviors, however, then you’ll be able to map out the content you expose them to! It should look something like this:

See that blue circle in the middle? When they fall into that part of the buying cycle, it’s not “non-inboundy” to expose product content to your leads. They’re ready to start research actual solutions to their problem, and that includes your product!

Our latest software release is helping make this easier for marketers, too, with the use of dynamic, or “smart,” CTAs. The tool lets marketers set different CTA options to appear based on where the person viewing the CTA exists in your funnel. For example, someone in that orange circle above that visits, say, your blog would see a more educational, content-focused CTA. A repeat visitor that’s downloaded tons of your content and viewed your case study page, however, would automatically get exposed to a free trial CTA. This type of targeting helps your product content appear to the right people at the right time.

Help existing customers get more value out of your product.

Yes, it’s great for your business when you get more revenue from your existing customers. But it’s also good for those customers you’re upselling … if they can truly benefit from the upsell. Approach marketing to your current customers as a way to expose them to features of your product that might make them more successful. If you’re being transparent and helpful — entering them into a email workflow that educates them on an add-on that could help them be more of a power user, for instance — it isn’t obnoxious and overly salesey. It’s a really good tip, and you’re a good business for giving it.

Make your product content easy to find when people are looking for it.

This tip, friends, is honestly the one HubSpot through the years has struggled with the most. (Sorry, prospective customers!) Make your product content easily available and obvious to those who want it. The worst thing you can do is make it challenging for someone who is investigating your product to find helpful information on the value and features of your product. So this pointer is a good reminder to our content-focused brethren — ourselves included. Content is key to inbound marketing, so treat your product-focused content with equal pride and don’t keep it hidden so nobody can learn more about how awesome you are. Because you are, indeed, totally awesome 🙂

What do you think? How have you made your product content inbound-y?

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Do you know your best customer? Seriously — do you really, really understand your best customer? For example, do they live in the big city or the suburbs? Watch Jeopardy or Modern Family? Use their iPhone nonstop, or get nervous about new technology? If you don’t know the answer, it’s time to do some research. Asking these types of questions will help you paint a clearer picture of your target customer — what marketers like to call their “buyer persona” — which will help you make smarter marketing decisions that always cater to the needs of your target customer.

The key to successful marketing is making marketing people love. And the first step to making marketing people love is understanding *what* your best customer loves. Once you understand your buyers’ loves, needs, and interests, you can use this information to guide all of your marketing moving forward. Not only will you be successful, you’ll make your buyers happy! So here are 11 ways for you to start using those buyer personas you created to make smarter marketing decisions that make your target audience love you a whole lot more.

11 Ways to Use Personas to Be a Better Marketer

1) Write blog content that reads like their favorite how-to magazine.

Have you ever read an article that was so relevant to your life — right at that moment — that you thought it must have been written just for you? That should be the goal of ALL your content for your potential buyers, particularly your blog content. By knowing what your buyers want to read and then writing it in educational and how-to blog posts, you’ll generate avid, loyal readers and subscribers.

2) Post social updates that speak their language.

HEYYY! we bet u wouldnt follow @HubSpot 4long if we twtd like this ALL TH3 TIME!!!!! Alternatively, choosing superfluous and ostentatious terminology for your social interactions may alienate your network … ahem. Be relatable to your buyer persona by using the language your buyer persona uses. That way your network will be able to relate to your brand, and your marketing will flourish!

3) Hang out where your buyer persona hangs out.

Does your network live for LinkedIn, but hate Twitter? Is there a specific niche social website that your persona can’t live without? That’s where your business should be most active! Hint: Look for trends in your web traffic from social networks. The channel that has the highest visit-to-lead conversion rate will most likely be the network that works best for you. 

4) Customize your SEO strategy to target the phrasing your persona uses.

This can get interesting! Say you sell electronics and you’re optimizing your website for the term “tv remotes.” But wait … what if your target audience actually calls those gadgets clickers? That’s a major difference! Be sure to optimize your website content based on the way your buyer persona speaks, and by extension, the way they search.

5) Use humor that your buyer persona finds funny.

Injecting humor into your marketing content is a great way to humanize your brand, but you have to make sure it’s actually funny to your target audience. Even more important, you have to make sure it’s not insulting to your target audience. The tastes of a 21-year-old man might be a bit different than a gentleman in his 50s, after all. Truly know what your buyer persona finds entertaining. It’d be a shame to accidentally upset one of your prospects when you were just trying to make your brand a little more relatable, and your content a little more engaging.

6) Create an offer that solves your persona’s problems.

What does your buyer persona want help with? Is there often a problem that most of your best customers have? Or had when they were your leads, at least? If you can create a document that helps your target audience solve that problem — and put it behind a form to help with your lead generation, of course — you’ll have a true win-win on your hands. Your target audience gets the help they need, and you generate some seriously high-quality leads!

7) Optimize your landing pages for your buyer persona.

Don’t talk about why you think your offer is important. Describe your offer in terms of what it will do for your prospective customer. That type of content is appealing and compelling, and you should see a higher conversion rate after optimization. Not sure what words will resonate best? A/B test your landing page copy to see what resonates best with your target audience!

8) Use technology that caters to their technical level.

Don’t ask your customer base to use a technology type that they aren’t comfortable using to interact with your website or content. For example, forcing your customer to download a mobile app when they don’t have a smartphone might not be the best call. Make sure you understand what type of technology your buyer persona knows, has, and is comfortable using so your marketing content is easily accessibly.

9) Collaborate with partners that excite your persona.

Co-marketing is an amazing way to make your marketing soar — after all, two heads (and resource sets) are better than one! When choosing your co-marketing partners, try to think of companies that your buyer idolizes, whether they’re small or big, and consider if a partnership might be beneficial. You could do anything from launching co-marketing webinars to simply making a donation to a non-profit your persona cares a lot about. You’ll develop your brand’s authority and thought leadership position, and earn some major likability points with your target audience.

10) Align your campaign timing with your persona’s lifestyle.

Does your buyer persona go on vacation every August? Stop work at noon? Live in a different time zone? Read emails from her iPhone when waking up at five in the morning? Cater your campaign launches around these lifestyle nuances. So if your target audience is, say, a night owl, you’ll probably want to schedule the majority of your social content around 9:00 to 11:00pm in your target’s timezone. Right? Right.

11) Mold your sales process to your persona’s decision making process.

This might be the most important tip. Different people need different types of information to make key buying decisions … and at different stages in the buying cycle, to boot. Make sure you understand what type of details and information your buyer will require before they sign on the line that is dotted, and when the best time is to divulge that information.

What else do you use your buyer persona for in your marketing? How has developing a buyer persona helped you?

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With the new school year just around the corner, companies are actively recruiting and reviewing candidates to build a new troupe of interns for the fall semester. And for good reason! Intern programs — when built right — are a great way to get additional support for your marketing team, and teach your interns the ins and outs of contributing to a business. 

I started building HubSpot’s intern training program two years ago, and since, we’ve hired approximately 33% of our interns as full-time employees! I’m very passionate about mentoring talent and setting young marketers up for success, so to help you build a top-notch marketing internship program, check out the following guidelines HubSpot uses for our own intern program.

What does a good marketing internship program look like?

Good intern managers see each semester as a lifecycle with a solid beginning, middle, and end. With that, the following steps will detail how you can set your intern up for success in the beginning, grow and develop new skills in the middle, and feel satisfied and accomplished at the end. Let’s begin!

Start With Training

Set up a learning environment in the beginning. A lot of companies, especially startups (guilty!), want to rush interns into kicking off projects right away. It makes sense why that’s the initial urge; you only have your interns for three or so months! Instead, give all new interns a solid introduction to your company, culture, goals, and tools before digging into work. The goal of your training should be to give as much information and context at the beginning so your interns can understand your company’s mission and how your department makes decisions. The more context an intern can gain in the very beginning, the faster he or she will get up to speed when working on a project. Yes, that’s right — your interns will be more productive in the long-run if you invest in learning early! 

So what should you cover in training? In the very least, your company’s basics: company goals, departmental goals, organizational structure, how your intern fits into the organization, tools used, how to best ask questions (and get help), and where to get lunch. The latter is more important than you think. 😉

Create a buddy system. In HubSpot land, each intern is asked to find a “marketing buddy” who will be that intern’s mentor and go-to for “stupid questions” and social support. It’s nice for an intern to have a person to lean on who’s not his or her boss. This has been a tradition for years now, and it has worked well! Marketing buddies will grab lunch, talk marketing, and ask and give advice. Also, if the buddy is from a different department — your intern could learn from an additional perspective into the marketing team! That’s valuable, too. 

Assign Starter Projects to Get Your Interns’ Feet Wet

Training is over. Now it’s time to start setting some smaller goals and develop initial projects. This is key; giving your interns small projects in the beginning gives them the opportunity to claim some small wins early. At the same time, you’re testing how independent your intern can be with less risk. So what are some good marketing starter projects appropriate for the first two weeks?

Conduct a Research Project: These are great first projects. Not only can you have your intern dive into a subject you want your team to know more about, but your intern will also learn loads along the way. Perhaps an intern could research data for a new blog post, look for trends within your customer base, or dig into some raw data to present to your team. These independent projects also generally require minimal assistance and also strengthen analytical skills, which are important skills to have when looking to get hired in a professional inbound marketing setting.

Create a Small Content Piece: Writing a blog article is something an intern can easily create and “ship” in the first week. Anticipate going through one or two rounds of revisions with your intern, and make sure you offer the time to review in person. When you review (get ready, we’re going old-school!), consider printing out the article and walking thorough what changes you made and why. That way your intern can learn why you changed what you did and develop his or her own writing judgment. To take it a step further, ask your intern to check back to learn how much traffic her blog post drove! That’s a great early win.

Proof Someone Else’s Work: If you’re grooming your intern to be a content creator, this is another great project to help them read and learn while completing a task. You can give your intern a variety of things to proof, too: email copy, blog articles, landing page writing, CTA copy. Subconsciously, your intern will be learning about the different content items that complete inbound marketing while reviewing the information.

Shadow a Bigger Project and Help With a Small Piece: This is a great opportunity to teach your intern to think like you and see how you make decisions. Walk your intern through something you’re working on, and ask for assistance on a specific piece. Better, see if he or she can suggest how to help! Set a deadline, and go from there. Note, this might make the overall completion of your project take a bit longer, but the intern’s learning experience should be worth it. 

Help Your Intern Develop Ownership With Bigger Projects

After your intern has had some early wins and understands at a high level how your marketing team jives (generally at week 2 or 3), it’s time to give your intern something to own and manage on their own. Truly managing an entire project helps interns develop a sense of pride and accountability.

Tackle a Major Analytical Project: At HubSpot, having analytical chops is a highly valued skill. In fact, all marketers should make it a goal to learn how to analyze, interpret, and communicate data. Have your intern think of a major question or problem and do some deep data analysis to answer that question. In the marketing world, that data could come from Facebook Insights, HootSuite, HubSpot Sources, Google Analytics, or anything else. 

Design and Execute an Independent Campaign: This is a great independent project that brings direct results to your company and gives your intern true, hands-on experience. Have your intern choose a goal that is important to your marketing organization. Then have him or her create and execute an original plan, most likely allowing your intern to interact with other parts of your organization and build each part of the campaign. For example, perhaps the intern would want to generate more leads from your business blog. He or she first could create a landing page you will only promote via your blog, and then write the blog content to promote the offer on that landing page. Their next step would be to coordinate with marketers on your team who manage email and social media marketing to plan additional promotion for the blog article. Voilà! Then, make sure your intern tracks and collects the results from this project and documents it in his or her portfolio, too.

Write and Publish a Major Piece of Content: Need a new ebook or whitepaper? Ask your intern to step up to the challenge! Have your intern create a full, ready-to-publish piece of content. Your intern should research, write, add images, lay out, and design the entire ebook. By managing each piece of the process, your intern will understand all the steps necessary to create the content and feel true ownership of what he or she made! 

Create and Give a Presentation: Presentation skills are crucial in the working world, and every intern should have an opportunity to practice in front of an audience. As either a midway or final project, have your intern create a presentation from scratch on either something they learned at your company or something interesting that could help your entire team. Did your intern learn how to use a new tool? Did they uncover some interesting takeaways from a research project they tackled? Ask your intern to teach everyone else what they discovered.

What NOT to Do With Your Interns

Don’t give difficult, independent projects right off the bat. Unless your intern has experience doing a similar major project from a previous job, you might be setting your intern up for failure and thus driving low morale. However, if completing a major project early is absolutely necessary and there is no one in the company to teach your intern how to do it, set that expectation early. Tell your intern it will be hard, provide examples of resources or tutorials that can help, and suggest how your intern can request feedback or assistance during the process. Now everyone is on the same page.

Don’t make it difficult for your intern to ask for help. Especially at busy companies, as an intern, asking questions and potentially interrupting your manager can be incredibly intimidating. However, there will be many situations where hesitating to ask will lower that intern’s productivity immensely. The best way to solve this is set a precedent in the beginning: tell your intern how you would prefer to receive questions. Is it by email? Corporate chat? A daily meeting? By agreeing on a system in the beginning, your intern will know it’s safe to request help, and it will be on the terms that are least disruptive to you.

Don’t ignore mistakes and shy away from giving feedback. Often, when an intern does something wrong, it’s because he or she doesn’t know what is right! Giving consistent feedback is key to helping your interns improve and take on a greater learning curve. At HubSpot, we give all interns midway and final reviews. The midway review serves two purposes: to give an intern feedback that he or she can act on right away to improve the second half of their internship, and to make the final review less daunting. The second point is key to an intern’s growth and transition into a fulltime employee, whether it’s at your company or somewhere else. Getting a review in a “safer” intern environment will make it easier for him or her to handle a review in the professional working world.

Don’t cloister your intern to your specific department. Internships are great opportunities to learn about how a business works as a whole and explore all the cogs that go into the machine. We’ve had a few interns investigate the sales team and develop an interest in selling software. Encourage interns to meet employees from other departments, invite people out to lunch, and learn about other jobs within your company. 

These points should help you build your own internship program and set your interns up for success. By helping to develop happier, more productive interns, you will get more value from them, and they’ll become external cheerleaders who will rave about working for your company. You’ll be growing your employee base before you know it!

What tips do you have for running an effective internship program?

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People expect different type of content on each social media network. Not only does that mean the content you post to each network needs to be unique; it might also mean that you shouldn’t be hopping on every single social network out there to meet your company’s business goals.

But how do you even make that decision if you’re new to the social media game? The best way is to get to know the different “personalities” of each network so you can understand how to leverage it best for your business. Using this article as your guide, you’ll get to know some of the most popular social networks, learn what their super powers are, and determine whether they’re a good fit for your brand. So let’s analyze the key players in the social space, and talk about each of their strengths and weaknesses to help you decide who you should be hanging out with!

Getting to Know Twitter, The Buzz Generator

Twitter hit its 500 millionth user this past February, and the network is active and abuzz with links, chatter, one line self reflections, and just plain content. To inbound marketers, all of this content probably seems pretty great — but it also means it takes a lot of work to get your  content to stand out in the crowd. Just look at how often HubSpot posts on Twitter to get our content some visibility in the news feed!

 

 

Twitter’s Superpower

Twitter brings a viral, buzz-generating component to your marketing. For example, when a business has a massive group of people either sharing content or using a hashtag all at once, that has a big, very visible impact. Twitter is right for you if you are looking for a network where you can build a large audience that you can incite to action — potentially all at once to create a viral effect. Mind you, that type of audience growth takes time … but the value of creating such a large network sure pays off!

Getting to Know Facebook, The Humanizer

Facebook is most-used social networking site around the world. In fact, a recent study found it to be the top-visited social media site in 126 of the 137 countries studied. Still think your audience isn’t using social media? Think again.

People use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, view their grandkid’s baby pictures, discover content their friends are sharing, and more. It’s a truly powerful connector. But how do companies fit into this social network that focuses so heavily on the human connection? Users expect companies on Facebook to act more like friends, and less like, well, companies. This means your updates should be friendlier, and show personality through photos and videos that make your brand seem more relatable. That’s why we use Facebook to share things like important milestones in our company’s life, just like you would with your friends and family!

 

 

Facebook’s Superpower

Getting to Know Quora, The Authority Builder

Quora boasts a slightly smaller user base than Twitter and Facebook with 1.1 million monthly users. But even though the network is smaller doesn’t mean you should balk at its marketing potential. If you’ve ever participated in Quora’s Q&A, you’ll know that the quality of questions asked and answers provided is extremely high. While Quora might not be the right network for your business as a major traffic driver considering the lower usage volume, it could be a great place to build your company’s authority and thought leadership, generating much higher quality leads (albeit at a lower volume) in the long run.

 

 

Quora’s Superpower

Use Quora to build the authority of specific employees. For example, you could encourage your sales and marketing employees to search for questions your leads commonly ask, and provide insightful answers to which you can point future leads. What a great way to build trust and rapport!

Getting to Know Google+, The Search Optimizer

Google+ launched business pages in fall of 2011, at which point Google+ usage picked up as brands started creating their own pages and building their following. But since then, its been reported that usage has significantly decreased — eMarketer reported that users only spend an average of 3.3 minutes on Google+ in a single session, down from 5.1 minutes in November 2011. Yikes. Looks like it’s not incredibly active as a social network … so what’s the value? The value comes from its SEO support.

 

 

Google+’s Superpower

When you post your content to Google+, you’re making it more likely your company’s content will rank well in Google’s SERPs. That’s because, much to the dismay of many other social networks, Google is considering factors such as +1’s of content when deciding how high to rank a piece of content. Google also started to index and feature Google+ status updates, author names, and ‘Add to Circles’ buttons in search results, making your activity on Google+ even more important for a strong organic search presence.

Getting to Know Pinterest, The Artist

Pinterest, the “newest” social network on the block, has actually been around since 2008! Gaining some serious popularity earlier this year, the network is an excellent tool for sharing and spreading a company’s visual content. After all, images can often tell a far more profound story or give insight into a feeling in a more powerful way than mere text. If you’re producing more visual content, you can easily share that content through channels like Pinterest by “pinning” it to a board. 

 

 

Pinterest’s Superpower

Pinterest is easy to maintain and grow if you’re more reliant on visuals than text in your industry. We do, however, recommend writing descriptions for every image you pin to provide further explanation for those looking to learn more about your pin. And before you go saying Pinterest is just for wedding planners and hairdressers, remember that your visuals could include anything from photos, to graphs, to infographics! They key with Pinterest is, when someone clicks your image to see the source, you’re directing them to your website so you can convert all that Pinterest traffic. So go on, have a little fun with your social media marketing!

Getting to Know LinkedIn, The Professional

LinkedIn has a very distinct personality. It’s the most suited-up network, generally rather conservative, and reserved for business-focused conversations. For B2B companies, LinkedIn is an incredibly valuable channel. In a HubSpot study last year, in fact, we found that LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than Facebook and Twitter. Since LinkedIn users are generally in a business-focused mindset, lead generation content that’s extremely valuable and provides a solution to a common problem in your industry can work incredibly well.

 

 

LinkedIn’s Superpower

Use LinkedIn to target other businesses — if that’s your goal, of course. Use your content to provide solutions to business-related problems, and people will naturally share your content in an attempt to boost their own clout, not to mention click your content so you can generate more leads. Don’t be afraid of posting white papers and reports here, either — this is the type of content that typically performs quite well on LinkedIn.

Getting to Know YouTube, The Story Teller

YouTube is different from the rest of the bunch for obvious reasons — it’s geared specifically towards video! And it has a lot of video. In fact, YouTube reports that 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on the social network. Video is a powerful story-telling mechanism, so it’s no wonder marketers are using video to celebrate customer success, get customers excited about an event, or use music to teach someone something new. 

YouTube’s Superpower

Use YouTube to tell important stories about your company, to entertain your audience, and even to educate them (ever thought of creating a how-to video?) As with most visual content, sometimes it’s easier to get your message across with something a bit more interactive; and that’s when YouTube comes in handy! You can also embed your videos in your blog or on other social networks so the videos can get more reach. Plus, YouTube is owned by Google … you can bet those videos will be indexed in organic search!

After you understand the different personalities of each of these social networks, you’re better equipped to determine which ones match the personality and needs of your brand. If you’re just starting out in social media, it should help you approach these networks with less of a blind eye, and create content that better matches the tone of the content already on that platform.

Based on your brand, which social network do you think is the best fit for you? How does your use of each social network differ?

Image credit: JD Hancock

 

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The news is out, and we’re excited to announce that HubSpot and HootSuite are teaming up to make the world of marketing an even better place. Team HS & HS are launching a new product integration, a record-breaking webinar, multiple ebooks, and more, all centered around a single idea: we should make it easier for marketers to generate, nurture, and manage leads via social media, so they can finally “close the loop” on their social media marketing efforts (what we’re calling ‘closed-loop social’ for short).

The partnership will directly connect social media to generating, managing, and nurturing leads for the first time, and we think it’s a match made in heaven. Social media is a growing channel, and the average budget spent on social media has increased 133% in just 3 years. However, during those 3 years, social was primarily used as a promotion and engagement tool, and we believe that social as a lead nurturing and closing tool has only just scratched the surface.

The HubSpot HootSuite integration will make it easier for customers to use social media to better work their leads and make the close. Via a new beta app, users of both products can monitor their leads’ tweets in HootSuite to identify opportunities to follow up with their leads with a tweet. Users can also use the app to monitor their best-performing keywords in HubSpot for relevant conversations that could lead to prospecting opportunities. While the app is in beta, only HootSuite Pro and Enterprise users are eligable to apply for the app. However, when the app leaves beta in late June, it will be available to all HootSuite users! Not too shabby!

We’re also venturing to break the 2011 record for world’s largest webinar with our joint webinar, The Science of Inbound Marketing, co-presented by HubSpot Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella and HootSuite VP of Marketing Ben Watson. With a record to beat of 10,899 live attendees, we invite you and the rest of the marketing community to be a part of this memorable event taking place on July 12th at 1 PM EST, so sign up for the webinar now.

HootSuite will also serve as the presenting sponsor at HubSpot’s Inbound 2012, a 3-day blow-out marketing conference happening August 27th through the 30th in Boston. HootSuite’s presence at the event will be fun, educational, and topped off by a killer party in true HootSuite style. We’re looking forward to hosting this major event, which will help marketing professionals, business owners, and agency executives improve marketing effectiveness.

So what does this social partnership mean for marketers? How can you take advantage of closed-loop social to use social media as a middle-of-the-funnel marketing tool? Let’s explain …

4 Ways to Use Closed-Loop Social Media to Improve Your Marketing

1. Monitor key terms in social media as proactive prospecting.

With closed-loop social, you can monitor the keywords and phrases that your best leads are using in social media. This enables you to identify opportunities to jump into the conversation and interact with your potential customers. The key here is to avoid being overly forward or “salesy.” Rather, be natural and add value where it makes sense. Offer your best content, be helpful, and eventually the people you’re tweeting with could convert into customers.

2. Consider using social media instead of the typical email follow up.

Traditionally, the playbook has been to exclusively nurture leads further down the sales funnel using email. But you don’t have to limit lead nurturing to email. There are certainly other ways to connect and communicate with leads one-on-one, and social media is one of them. Why not send a tweet to leads asking how they enjoyed their product trial or a recent demo they attended? They just might appreciate the follow up.

3. Increase the likelihood for sales by nurturing leads through multiple channels.

Some folks prefer certain forms of communication over others, so consider the fact that your leads might rather receive a tweet from your business than an email. Nurturing your leads via multiple channels lets your leads choose how they want to interact with you. By monitoring your leads’ behaviors, you’ll be able to engage with your prospects through their channels of choice, making for a much more personalized lead nurturing experience.

4. Create advanced filters to catch “buying signals” from your leads.

Imagine this: You’re monitoring social media and you see one of your recent leads tweeting, “I’m considering buying X product. Anyone have any experience with it?” Here’s your golden opportunity to say thank you for considering your product, and perhaps even forward one of your company’s customer success stories! To do this using closed-loop social, all you’d have to do when you start monitoring social posts from your leads is to set up specific filters for keywords like your company name, product name, industry keywords, etc. This way, you’re much more likely to catch a sales opportunity like this and follow up in a timely manner.

Are you using social media to close the loop with your leads today? What tips can you share?

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Good marketers live by their data. Why? Metrics help us set goals and track progress, and numbers confirm we did a good job. Marketers should have control of their own data, as well as determine what metrics they might need to track before starting any new campaign. By digging into results, we can understand what worked well, what didn’t work well, and then learn from it.

Now be strong, you data-driven marketer, you! Jump into this, the most comprehensive metrics and analytics glossary we’ve ever written. After reading this article, you will have earned your own data geek super hero cape.

Content

1) Blog Traffic – We all want to know how many people are visiting our blog day-to-day or month-to-month. This metric is the total number of people who are viewing your blog content. Is that number changing over time? What is the month-to-month growth rate? That’s a great measurement to gauge content success!

2) Blog Subscribers – The number of people who are subscribing to your blog (via RSS or email) is an indicator of the value of your content. If they appreciate what you’re writing, they will subscribe to get more. Watch how this number grows over time.

 

3) Views per Post – How many views does a particular blog post earn? Use this metric to compare posts. Does one post type get more views than others — list posts, for example? Learn from your successes, and use this metric to create more content that your readers enjoy.

4) Post Views per Contributor – Nothing like stirring up a little competition among your employees, right? If there is a certain author who receives more views on average than other authors, dig in to learn why. Is it because he has a larger social media following to promote his blog post to? Is it because she wrote about a topic that garners more attention? Use this metric to generate some friendly rivalry that helps increase content quality.

5) Blog Post Comments – Comments are a good sign of how engaging your blog post is. You can also encourage conversation by asking an intriguing question at the end of your posts to help stir up debate.

6) Links per Post – Blogging is a critical component of any SEO strategy. Companies who blog get substantially more inbound links than those that do not. Look at which posts generate more inbound links, learn, and repeat.

Social Media

7) Followers & Reach – Some marketers think of their social database like their email database. What is the total count of individuals that your business can reach through social channels? How does that reach change over time? Hopefully that graph is up and to the right.

 

 

8) Social Clicks – Measure the number of clicks you receive for the links you’re posting in your social media updates. This is a good way to gauge how interesting your network finds your content, how well it’s positioned, and how engaged your audience is.

9) Retweets & Shares – When people really love your content, they share it with their own networks. Is your content being shared socially throughout the web? Track it through retweets and shares.

10) Like & +1 Count – Everyone likes to be liked! This metric tells you how many people like your content by clicking a “Like” button on Facebook, or “+1” button on Google+.

11) Percent Engaged – Time to get geeky. Of your entire possible network (your friends, and your friends’ friends), what percent is engaging with (meaning clicking, commenting on, or liking) your content? This is a good metric to understand whether people are paying attention to your content.

 

 

SEO

12) Keyword Rankings – These rankings tell you for which keywords you rank very well, poorly, or somewhere in between. You can also watch how your rankings change for these keywords over time to ensure you don’t slip on important keywords. But be careful not to get caught in the weeds — measure the traffic and leads generated by those ranking keywords, too!

 

13) Visits per Keyword – This metrics tells you how much traffic a keyword drives to your website from organic search. This will be a symptom of how often people search for that keyword and how well you rank for the keyword.

14) Leads per Keyword – This number tells you how well the traffic you generate from a given keyword converts into leads for your business. If a specific keyword and page is driving a lot of visits but not leads, perhaps you need to optimize the CTAs on that page to increase lead conversions.

15) Links per Page – A specific web page that has a high quantity of inbound links has a better likelihood of ranking in search. Is there a specific page or blog post that’s generated a lot of links? Perhaps you should make more content of that type!

Landing Pages and Lead Conversion

16) CTA Conversion Rate – CTA stands for call-to-action, of course. Track the percentage of people who visited a particular page who also clicked a CTA on that page. It indicates the appeal of the offer, whether the CTA is well-crafted and written, and if it has good placement on the page.

 

17) Offer Redemption – Offers come in the form of webinars, ebooks, buyers’ guides, and the like. When you launch a new offer, how many people download it? Or if it’s a webinar, how many people register?

18) Landing Page Conversion Rate – This metric is extremely important and determines your effectiveness at converting visitors into leads. Track the percentage of people who land on your page and then fill out the form. If it’s low, you have an opportunity to do some A/B testing to increase conversions.

 

 

19) Landing Page Bounce Rate – Think of this number as the flip side to your landing page conversion rate — it describes the percentage of people that visit your landing page and then immediately leave. If your bounce rate is high, you might need to better align the offer on the page with the language on the landing page, or come up with a more enticing offer.

Email & Lead Nurturing

20) Database Size – This is the number of email addresses in your database that you can email. It is incredibly important that you work at increasing this number over time, as your email database expires at a rate of about 25% per year. So if your database size is staying flat, it’s actually shrinking.

21) Email Opt-Out Rate – Your email opt-out rate, also known as your email unsubscribe rate, is the rate at which people select to not receive your emails anymore by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link in your emails. If this number is relatively high, meaning over >5%, take steps to better segment your email list by things like demographic information, company size, pain points — whatever is appropriate for your business. This allows you to execute smaller, more targeted email sends that offer more value to subscribers.

22) Delivery Rate – This tells you the percentage of your database that actually received your email in their inbox. A low delivery rate could be a sign that you have a low Sender Score.

 

23) Email Open Rate – This metric tells you what percentage of the people who received your email opened it. If you had a strong subject line and the receiver recognizes your company (or the person who sent the email), you should see a higher open rate. Yipee!

24) Click-Through Rate – Your email CTR tracks the percentage of people who received your email, and clicked a link within that email. Use this metric to understand how valuable the offer you sent was, or how well your link was positioned.

25) Campaign Conversion Rate – This metric indicates the rate at which people who received your email converted into a lead. You can use it to gauge the success of your email campaign compared to past sends. A high campaign conversion rate is the result of a targeted send with a great offer.

Public Relations & Branding

26) Direct Traffic – Direct traffic is the amount of traffic coming to your site as a result of people typing in www.yourcompany.com into their browser. Measuring how much traffic comes to your site in this manner helps you gauge the effectiveness of your PR efforts.

 

27) Branded Search Traffic – Very similar to direct traffic, branded search traffic is the amount of traffic that came to your site as a result of a visitor Googling your company’s name, most likely because they recently “heard” of you and wanted to learn more.

 

28) Visits From Guest Blog Posts and Media Placements – Was a killer guest article written by your company recently placed on a business or online trade publication? How many visitors did it send to your website? Use that as your metric for success!

Overall Funnel Metrics

29) Site Visits – Measure overall visitors to your website from all channels — email marketing, social media, organic search, the works. This metric tells you how good your marketing team is at driving traffic to your website.

31) Leads Generated – Are you meeting your leads goal? Are your sales reps’ funnels nice and full? Track leads generated month-to-month, as well as number of leads generated per channel, like you see below.

 

32) Customers Generated – Ahh, the bottom line. If you aren’t tracking customers earned, how do you know how valuable your leads are? Use closed-loop analytics to determine which channels generate leads that turn into customers.

33) Sales Cycle Length – Do you know how long it takes for a new lead to turn into a customer? Track this and monitor how it changes over time so your sales team can prioritize their funnel, and marketing can generate more leads that convert in a shorter time span.

This mega list should be helpful when determining how all the different facets of your marketing are performing. When creating a data-driven marketing team, consider using tools to manage your reporting. Ultimately, you’ll be making smart, data-driven decisions and your marketing will be better for it.

What other helpful metrics do you look at that aren’t mentioned here?

Image credit: Horia Varlan

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