You're buying a new suitcase. What do you want to know about luggage? Ballistic strength? Capacity in cubic centimeters?
I didn't think so.
Hot off the Valentine's holiday weekend, we learned of a romance that unites unlikely bedfellows. PR, which HubSpot's CEO Brian Halligan claims may be dead , joined up with content-based inbound marketing to deliver the ultimate result: leads for Suitcase.com!
Inbound marketing rests on the assumption that people seek out and want to consume remark able content. PR, historically, has been about getting a message, remarkable or not, in front of an audience. In this case study, PR 20/20 ( a HubSpot certified partner ) and Suitcase.com combined the best of both worlds to deliver meaningful results.
As travelers, we are Suitcase.com's target market. For a spring campaign, Suitcase.com and its agency, PR 20/20 , wanted to get more qualified visitors, e.g. travelers, to its website to check out new luggage. Knowing that yet another luggage sale would deliver only a minor spike while eroding margins, they wanted to approach it differently.
Enter inbound marketing . A new promotion, sale or product announcement really wouldn't do much for long-term leads. But a valuable content asset that travelers care about could provide a spike and continue to drive meaningful traffic and leads over time. Because Suitcase.com has an email database of 20,000 travelers, they were able to survey customers to find out their top travel concerns. The resulting 2010 Consumer Luggage Report identified trends and behavior changes such as:
- 57% pack lighter
- 72% use carry-on bags for each trip
- Size & weight are the top two luggage purchase criteria
PR 20/20 helped craft the survey and content, then played a key role in sharing the outcomes with media outlets nationwide, securing coverage with ReadersDigest.com and the Taking off Travel blog . Building on the content created from the Suitcase.com study, an entire feature, " 10 Ways to Pack Lighter When You Travel " was created on Reader's Digest. There is some great advice there, but the real story is that the inbound links resulted in a spike in traffic to Suitcase.com and a surge in leads for downloads of the report. Suitcase.com measures inbound links, traffic and leads to monitor results after the release of its content-driven campaign.
To borrow a sports analogy ... this was a classic ally'oop. Content served up the ball and PR gave it a slam dunk. Perhaps a more romantic and Valentine's appropriate way to express this would be that content is your champagne and, when used appropriately, PR can pop the cork!
If nothing else, this story may provoke you to think about your industry with a bit of ingenuity. If you think your company doesn't lend itself to creating interesting content , you may be mistaken. Companies across various industries are blogging, reporting and creating remarkable content that matters to their target market. Why? Because it drives traffic and generates qualified leads .
Are you sitting on data that might be interesting to others? Did this story give you any ideas about how you can evolve your content and PR campaigns to embrace inbound marketing and drive new sales?
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Inbound Marketing Blog Feed
Merryl Rosenthal 2:03 PM on February 16, 2010
The suitcase.com campaign is further proof that you have to give to get, and that hard selling on social media sites won't work.
Thanks for a solid article that can be helpful to virtually any organizations.
Dan Tyre 3:42 PM on February 16, 2010
The owners of suitcase.com were leaders in luggage retail in the 1990s and have extended their leadersi in the on-line realm . This is a great example of brick and mortar company leveraging inbound marketing to extend their reach beyond their logical geographic reach and launching world wide. There is a valuable lesson here: optimized content is necessary for every company in 2010 regardless of the industry or targeted demographics.
Mark Kilens 9:56 AM on February 17, 2010
It's all about educational and functional content. It must be valuable and engage with your audience. Thanks for the examples!
Mark
Jane 6:07 PM on February 18, 2010
Fabulous! I'd love to contact suitcase.com to have them do a guest post on our Heli-Ski Blog to offer some packing advice to our guests. Who can I contact there?! Thanks!
Aaron Bean 11:31 AM on March 01, 2010
Thanks for another good article guys. I'm curious to know though, how is this campaign tracking against selling suitcases? Or when might suitcase.com be looking at that metric? Is there any preliminary data showing new sales? I completely realize this is not about direct sales and much more an investment in the long term to drive leads through content but I must assume that at some point they will be looking at sales numbers. Maybe a better question is this...in a content marketing program like this, at what point does it makes sense to start looking at net new customers acquired and resulting sales? Any rough guidelines? I'm guessing you might say it depends on industry, audience, etc I get that. But given any combination of those criteria what would you recommend? Just curious if you have any specific thoughts here. Thanks.
Kirsten Knipp 12:21 PM on March 01, 2010
@Aaron,
That is a great question - and you definitely get the fact that there are many subtleties that will make this unique based on your business. A few broad thoughts on where to start:
1) Evaluate results based on the timelines you know for your average sales cycle - so if it usually takes any lead 4 weeks to close, don't expect to see sales results in 2 weeks ... :)
2) Nurture leads that come in via a new campaign ... one conversion event might not be enough to get to 'close', but you can reinforce or even accelerate the cycle by staying engaged with them. Then measure your open & click through rates as compared to other programs
3) Keep reviewing the program for some time after the sales cycle would normally end. At HubSpot we use our software to measure conversions over time and we can still see deals closing on first conversions 6 months ago.
Hope that helps a little ... :))
Happy Measuring!
Aaron Bean 1:44 PM on March 01, 2010
Hey Kirsten,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. As soon as I hit send I was also thinking about sales cycle being a primary determining factor.
Another question for you...has HubSpot done any studies to look at cost per sale by inbound channel? So for example while I'm definitely a big proponent of content marketing, what I don't have is any comparison by industry that helps me understand the relative value of a lead by inbound channel, and the conversion to sale, by channel.
Just curious if you guys have studied that at all and have any benchmarks to share.
Thanks again,
Aaron