This is a guest blog post written David Kirkpatrick, B2B and consumer marketing beat reporter for MarketingSherpa. He is covering HubSpot's participation at Dreamforce '11 and offering insights on the various speakers and events.
I'm in San Francisco with 42,000+ attendees at Dreamforce '11 as a guest of HubSpot this week (thanks a million, guys!), and for some reason, I keep seeing unicorns everywhere. In fact, three are resting on the table in front of me right now as I type.
The first presentation I caught was HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan's "Killing It: How Inbound Marketing Can Help Your Company Crush the Competition." His opener? "The traditional marketing playbook is broken."
By that, he meant that you no longer need big money to be a successful marketer.
Brian said that at one point in time, you could buy your way to success with ads, lists, and more. Today, new marketing is about creativity and -- using a term Brian borrowed from Seth Godin -- "being remarkable."
The assets of new marketing are social assets such as Twitter followers and Facebook "Likes." The way to become successful is to increase those assets.
Top-of-the-Funnel Marketing
TOFU is Brian's term for top-of-the-funnel marketing activities, and TOFU can be broken down into three steps:
1. Create content. This includes blog posts, videos, and releasing presentation slide decks on SlideShare.
Brian pointed out that content can come from unexpected places. For example, at Dreamforce, HubSpot's event marketing team is using its free tool called Website Grader to provide competitive analyses of attendees' websites. Website Grader is actually a tiny snippet of HubSpot's paid software, and it's also part of HubSpot's content marketing.
"Each piece of content is a little mini magnet that draws people to you," Brian explained.
He added that inbound links are the currency of the internet.
2. Optimize content. SEO (search engine optimization) is of course important, but don't forget about SMO (social media optimization).
Brian offered two pieces of actionable advice: using great titles to drive social media sharing and adding "new blog post" and "please retweet" to Twitter posts to help drive viral tweets.
3. Promote content. Very simple actionable advice here: promote your original content across all social media platforms. Once that content is created, get the word out.
Middle-of-the-Funnel Marketing
As you might have guessed, this is middle-of-the-funnel activity. And as Brian put it, consumer marketers are MOFU geniuses. By that, he means B2C marketers do a great job of personalizing the online user experience, and he added that B2B marketers need to be more like consumer marketers in this regard.
He used Amazon and Netflix as examples of this personalization. For B2B marketers, the goal should be that the more often a visitor (or customer) comes to your website, the better their experience should become.
And increasing your total web users (and all that data that comes with them) should allow you to better refine the experience for each visitor. Essentially, your site should be collecting user data that allows you to continually optimize the overall user experience and personalize the visit for each individual visitor.
He presented a circular feedback loop to illustrate this point:
users > better personalization >
better value > better conversion >
back to users
Building a Killer Inbound Team
Don't hire by pedigree, particularly for those old marketing skills like experience in buying television ads, billboard ads, and even Google ads.
You want to hire people who are D.A.R.C.:
- Digital - You want marketers who speak the digital language.
- Analytical - There's a lot of data out there, and your marketers need to be able to make sense of that information.
- Reach - Rolodexes are now for chumps. Social media reach is what's important.
- Content - Hire stellar content creators.
Along with hiring content creators as marketers, allow your entire organization -- sales, IT, support, etc. -- to contribute to the company blog and be active in social networks.
Crushing the Competition
There are metrics to look at with new marketing:
For TOFU marketing activities, these metrics include number of web visitors and web traffic rank, number of Twitter followers, number of pages on your site, number of domains linking to your site, blog statistics, etc.
MOFU metrics include turning visitors into leads, conversion percentages, and the overall shape of your sales funnel. (Hint: trending up is good.)
Brian concluded his presentation by emphasizing that inbound marketing, social media reach, and incoming links help create a "moat" around your brand that makes you difficult to compete with. A killing inbound marketing strategy is a great way to create competitive advantage.
What do you think is needed to crush your competition?
Image credit: photosteve101
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Greg Linnemanstons 5:59 PM on August 31, 2011
Great stuff, David. Wish I was there! You did well at summarizing the basic principles of IM in a single post. Must be that Brian is a great presenter!
Anyway, thanks for the great summary, and enjoy the show.
Matt Langan 10:40 PM on August 31, 2011
Terrific article here. I especially like how you've come out and stated what might not be too obvious to most: content and conversations are the kings these days. The cycle needs to be: build the platform and then generate content, share, converse and repeat.
Sean McPheat 4:20 AM on September 01, 2011
Creating content and spreading it around the web is like leaving your "internet footprint" on the world!
It leaves breadcrumbs back to your website that creates traffic, it positions you as an authority in your field and it also creates brand awareness.
Hubspot are everwhere and so an awesome job at that.
But the bottom line is this...
The content has to be quality or it's never going to be passed around or followed up on!
Sean
Sean McPheat
Louise 4:25 AM on September 01, 2011
Completley agree with Sean, by having your content in various different mediums on the web is really putting your presence out there, as every business needs to be noticed!
Great Artcile HubSpot!
Bridgette 8:06 AM on September 01, 2011
Excellent article! Content is king and reach is the queen. I will definitely keep this article as a reference point.
Eric Goldman 8:49 PM on September 01, 2011
Great summary of Brian's speech - thanks for posting.
I know Inbound is Brian's and thus HubSpot's thing, but I'd like to respectively suggest that to kill the competition, you also need to add Marketing Automation to the mix. How else will you cope with the increased traffic and the demand for all that valuable content you've created?
We call the combination of Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation, Inbound Marketing Automation, or IMA.
We've found that it helps to think of IMA as a process with 4 major phases:
1) Attract - the "Get Found" part which uses SEO, SMM and PPC, if you need it, to bring the right visitors to your site.
2) Engage - The Content which Brian and your Post refer to. White Papers, Videos, Tools/Tips, Blogs, etc., Website copy, and, especially, Calls to Action (the buttons on the site which your visitors click to get at that precious content).
3) Convert - Change a faceless visitor into a named prospect by getting a valid email address. This is the purpose of your Landing Pages - where you persuade the visitor to exchange profile information in return for downloading some of your content.
4) Qualify/Nurture leads by scoring and grading them to separate out the chafe, and then nurture them with drip emails campaigns. And when they reach the target score/grade feed them to sales with all that you know about them (profile, social media, digital footsteps on your site).
Divide these activities into TOFU, Middle and Bottom if you wish, all that matters is that it's viewed as a process. And if you run this process according to the dictates of Continuous Process Improvements (CPI’s Think, Plan, Do, Measure and Repeat), you will get better and better at running it as time goes by.
The Metric to Measure in the process is Return On Investment, or ROI. By using the information in your Marketing and Sales automation systems, you can calculate your Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) for every campaign.
Our website has information on all of the above.
www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca
paul 2:49 PM on September 23, 2011
This is a great article. I found the information very insightful. The idea of utilizing the social media with the way technology is going is genius. It is the fastest way to get in contact with mass people these days. I like the idea of TOFU marketing and the 3 steps of it seem to break it down well. I like the description of the new age marketers you want to hire. DARC, its perfect for the way any new age company should look for. Overall this was a great article.
Andrew 9:23 PM on September 24, 2011
I completely agree with this concept. While the past media and advertising still reaches the Generation X and Y consumers, it is the multitasking and social media based generation that companies should be reaching out to as its consumers are coming to power in the marketplace.