A Super-Hero Success Story From the Trenches of Inbound Marketing

When we created our Small Business Super Hero campaign, we had three goals: to recognize National Small Business Week; to get the word out about our new  SuperTags  feature (a powerful way to add custom fields to BatchBook,  our small business CRM ); and to allow small business owners to celebrate their varied successes and talents.

Because we're BatchBlue, it also had to be fun. So one morning over highly-caffeinated beverages, BatchBlue Software's designer Adam Darowski and I dreamed up the idea of the Small Business Super Hero: an average man/woman who was out there, every day, trying to do a little good in the world. We secured a few modest, super hero-themed prizes, wrote some comic-inspired copy, built a  groovy landing page  and sent our little contest soaring out into the world via our blog, a press release, our monthly newsletter, Facebook and Twitter.

A few of our blogger buddies picked up the story. We saw some international interest: entries came in from as far away as Barcelona, Spain! During the week of the contest, we saw an increase in site traffic of almost 200%, and a nice spike in new accounts. People were coming for the contest, but they were also checking out our product and seeming to like what they saw.

Super Hero stories came in steadily over the next few days and our team read each one with great excitement. Like small businesses themselves, they were wildly, entertainingly different. After much debate, we picked three winners and an honorable mention.

One of the prizes was a snazzy Super Hero badge, which we gave to the winners to display on their websites. This badge linked back to our Winners' page, which displayed the winner's entries and photos. The  winning Small Business Super Hero , a doula from Vermont, was so proud of her award that she published a press release about winning in her local paper. Then, we were thrilled to learn that this campaign had won Hubspot's first annual  Inbound Marketing Award , which was presented at their Inbound Marketing Summit earlier this month. This was one contest that really had legs (or should I say, a cape?)

So what else do we have up Inbound Marketing sleeve? We just got back from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, where we put together a  video about how real estate professionals are using social media . Our Blue Papers (on  Social Media for Small Business ,  Running a Virtual Office , and  Social Marketing for Real Estate ) continue to drive traffic to the site. And our Resource Center, especially the  tech Glossary  has been the inbound sleeper hit of the year.

The success of the Small Business Super Hero campaign has got us scheming up another similar contest, perhaps to do with social media and perhaps with a business partner whom you just might recognize. Check the BatchBook blog for upcoming details on that, or follow us on Twitter @ batchblue

We very much subscribe to the  Chris Brogan  school of "have fun, be nice". We figure if we can make people happy by giving them good, interesting stuff they can really use as well as providing excellent tools to help them manage their business, then we'll be in good shape. So far, it's been just super.