At HubSpot for Startups, our mission is to help startups grow. We want to change the way entrepreneurs execute inbound marketing and sales.
We work and align closely with the Accelerators, Incubators, Entrepreneurial Organizations and early stage VC companies to educate their startups and help them execute on growth-centric marketing and sales strategy.
HubSpot is a software platform to help you generate leads, close deals, and manage your pipeline. HubSpot offers a growth stack of products for customer relationship management, marketing, and sales: powerful alone, and even better when used together. HubSpot’s free CRM aligns sales and marketing with ease, HubSpot Marketing helps you grow your traffic and convert more visitors into customers, and HubSpot Sales helps you skyrocket your productivity and close more leads with less work.
1. A Crash Course in
Inbound Marketing
How your startup can use marketing to
get more customers
Kim Walsh,
Christian Mongillo &
Yoav Vilner
2. Global Director
@HubSpot for Startups
Kim Walsh Christian Mongillo
Business Development
@HubSpot for Startups
HubSpot is a software company that helps
businesses grow and scale their marketing and
sales.
4. In order to attract
customers,
marketers have
to provide them
with something
they love.
5. Definition
Inbound Marketing
Is a holistic, data-driven approach to
marketing that attracts individuals to
your brand and converts them into
lasting customers.
6. Cold Calling
Cold Emails (SPAM)
Interruptive Ads
Marketer - Centric
Traditional
SEO
Blogging
1:1 Messaging
Attraction
Customer - Centric
Inbound
VS
What Makes Inbound Different?
21. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot
GET IDEAS FROM
REAL, LIVE
HUMANS.
3.
Industry
podcasts
FAQs from
customers
(and those who didn’t
turn into customers)
Talk to
sales reps
Rants from
executives
Internal
documents
25. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot
LET’S SAY YOU’RE CREATING BLOG CONTENT
companies who
prioritise blogging are
13x more likely to
achieve a positive
ROI.
13x
56. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
What sources
are driving
your traffic?
57. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot
WHAT’S THE
ENGAGEMENT
ON YOUR
CAMPAIGNS?
Email:
Facebook:
Twitter:
Landing page:
Open rate, click through rate,
unsubscribe rate, deliverability
Views, shares, likes, comments
Impressions, retweets, favorites
Traffic, submissions rate
58. @cmongi02 | #HubspotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Attract VisitorsAttract Visitors
Convert Leads
Close Customers
HOW TO CONVERT WEB
VISITORS INTO LEADS
Convert Leads
60. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Leads
MQLs
Subscribers
HOW
DO YOU
CONVERT
TRAFFIC?
61. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Leads
MQLs
Subscribers
HOW
DO YOU
CONVERT
TRAFFIC?
To establish a relationship
and open communication.
For blog subscribers you
want email address and
first name.
What you want
62. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Leads
MQLs
Subscribers
HOW
DO YOU
CONVERT
TRAFFIC?
To get data about the
person to further refine
your communication
and begin to identify
if they are a fit.
Company name,
job title, employee
count etc.
What you want
63. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Leads
MQLs
Subscribers
HOW
DO YOU
CONVERT
TRAFFIC?
A potential customer to
signal they want to begin
a sales conversation.
Filling out a contact
sales form, demo or
starting a trial.
What you want
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HEADER
• Logo
• Phone number
• No navigation
73. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
TITLE
• Say what it is
• Begin with hook
• Don’t use fluff
85. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Compelling Subject Line
Sender Name
CHECKLIST
86. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Compelling Subject Line
Sender Name
Personalised Copy
CHECKLIST
87. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Compelling Subject Line
Sender Name
Personalised Copy
Call-To-Action
CHECKLIST
88. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Compelling Subject Line
Sender Name
Personalised Copy
Call-To-Action
Image
CHECKLIST
89. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Compelling Subject Line
Sender Name
Personalised Copy
Call-To-Action
Image
Unsubscribe Link
CHECKLIST
90. @cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Potential customer
visits your site
Later, customer surfs the
web and sees your ad
Customer goes
back to your site
Potential customers
become paying
customers
LEVERAGE
PAID RETARGETING
Ad was targeted
to only your
website visitors
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Subscriber to lead
ratio
METRICS
MQL to customer ratio,
cost per lead, length of
sales cycle
Lead to customer
ratio, cost per lead,
length of sales cycle
Leads
MQLs
Subscribers
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3
Reverse engineer
your funnel to
know the value
of your leads
1
Reduce
the friction
wherever
possible
2
Always
present
options to
progress down
the funnel
KEYTAKEAWAYS
94. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
HOW TO TURN
LEADS INTO CUSTOMERS
Convert Leads
Close Customers
Attract Visitors
95. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
All Sales Reps
are A**holes.
96. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Sales is
motivated
by more
than money.
97. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Marketers
sit around all
day doing arts
and crafts.
98. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Marketers are
all about data.
100. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
SALES REP
SCOTT
We don’t have
enough leads…
…and even
the ones we have
aren’t good.
101. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
MARKETING
MICHELLE
We give sales
plenty of leads.
They don’t put in
enough effort to
close deals.
103. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
Compared to a
for companies with poor alignment
decline
in annual
revenue
108. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
2.1. 3.
COMMON
LANGUAGE
SETTING UP
THE PROCESS
UTILISING
TOOLS
SMARKETING
STEPS TO SUCCESS
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DEFINE
YOUR
LIFECYCLE
STAGES
Prospect/Visitor
Lead
Customer
Prospect/Visitor
Opportunity
Lead
MQL
SQL
Prospect/Visitor
Opportunity
Customer
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SERVICE LEVEL
AGREEMENT
A contract between
a service provider
and the end user that
defines the level of
service expected
from the service
provider.
112. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot
MARKETING
TO SALES
SALES TO
MARKETING
Number and quality
of leads required to hit
company revenue goals
Speed and depth
of lead follow-up that
makes economic sense
113. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot
MARKETING
TO SALES
SALES TO
MARKETING
Number and quality
of leads required to hit
company revenue goals
Speed and depth
of lead follow-up that
makes economic sense
114. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
STEP
1
STEP
2
STEP
4
STEP
3
STEP
5
BUILDING
SMARKETING
ALIGNMENT
Calculate
the Marketing
Side
Determine
Business
Growth
Calculate
the Sales
Side
Set up
Marketing SLA
Reporting
Set up
Sales SLA
Reporting
115. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
=
NEW
REVENUE GOAL
AVERAGE
SALES PRICE
Determine Business Growth
1
BUILDING
SMARKETING
ALIGNMENT
# of Customers
116. @KatWarboys | #GrowWithHubSpot | @HubSpot@cmongi02 | #HubSpotforStartups | @HubSpotStartups
NEW
CUSTOMERS GOAL
LEAD TO
CUSTOMER CLOSE %
Calculate the Marketing Side
2
BUILDING
SMARKETING
ALIGNMENT
= LEADS GOAL
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Calculate the Sales Side.
3
BUILDING
SMARKETING
ALIGNMENT
The number of deals which
go to the vendor who responds first.
35% 50%
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How will you incentivize sales behavior?
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1
Inbound
is about
being
human
KEYTAKEAWAYS
2
Alignment
through
shared
language
3
Metrics
ensure we
are all kept
accountable
4
Tools &
platforms
enable all
of this
Outbound is great TV show interrupt it just enough
Inbound is that it’s more economically efficient to CREATE the experience that people are looking for instead of paying to INTERRUPT one.
The company that engages in deep understanding of their jobs-to-be-done wins. The company that solves for the customer better wins.
We’re going to start by talking about content creation, but before we all dive in and start planning our latest and greatest blog post, we need to take a step back and ask ourselves…
Who are you creating your content for? And the answer here isn’t ‘millienials’ — that’s far too broad.
The answer actually looks a little bit like this. CEO Tom, Human Resources Hannah, and Finance Frank might seem like a bit of fun, but they’re the people that represent your ideal customer. It takes them from a statistic to a living, growing human that you’re creating content for.
Now let’s dig a little deeper on what your personas should look like in practise. Here’s an example persona that we have at HubSpot. You can see we have a combination of demographic and psychographic information about our persona…
By understanding your persona’s goals and challenges, you’re able to write content that really speaks to their aspirations and pain points.
So to help attract people like agency adeline to our website, we need to start creating content like ‘how to prove marketing ROI to your clients to increase retention’
Once you nail down your buyer persona(s), you’ll have a better understanding of what content to create for them, when to give it to them, and where to do so.
if you want the traffic from your ideal customers, you need to give them the content they want to consume!
Said more simply: (read slide). Audience engagement - Now that sounds easy enough, but how many people aren't sure what their audience wants, or even where to start with their content development?
But knowing your persona doesn’t solve everything. You can have the best persona in the world and still scratch your head over what to create from time to time.
In times of need, ask yourself: what is my persona searching for?! What are they typing into Google hoping to find in a time of need?
You probably have an idea of what they’re searching for, but how can you validate that hunch and gather even more inspiration for your content?
This is something all content creators struggle with, so I’m going to share a few of the tricks I keep up my sleeve in the form of free tools.
If you need further inspiration… spy on other content creators! With Google Alerts you can set up alerts for your industry and get emailed when new articles are written about it. These handy little notifications may spark ideas for future content to create. GIVE EXAMPLE.
Google Trends is a free tool that comes in really handy if you have tons of ideas but very little time. You can compare topics over different time frames to determine whether something is really worth your time now vs. later.
Imagine you’re an online wine retailer…
And lastly… there are humans in your office, right? Why not talk to them?
While all of these tools are great, nothing replaces good ol’ fashioned conversations with real, live humans. Talk to your sales reps about the types of questions they get asked. Talk to your support team about the questions they get asked. Listen to rants from executives.
So once you’ve got your ideas, how do you make those ideas turn into a really compelling piece of content?
Depending on where someone is in their buyer’s journey, different types of content will be more appropriate.
Ok, so now we have a piece of content that gone though a strategic ‘ideas’ process. It might seem like we’ve done a lot so far, but we’re not done yet! We need to optimize that content for search engines, social media, and of course, our readers to create the best possible experience.
Let’s say the format we settled on was a blog post. HubSpot’s own State of Inbound Report actually found that companies who prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to see positive ROI — so if you’re new to content creation, a blog is a good place to start!
There are a few basic ‘must haves’ for a blog post…
Bring them in
Make them stay
The third is something SO many blogs don’t have. If someone lands on your blog post from social or Google, you want to direct them to the next action, not just leave once they get what they needed!
Compel them to convert to a subscriber or lead with something extra. E.g. if your blog post is about where to stay during backpacking trip around Europe, your CTA might be download your webinar or video series interviewing people who’ve already done it.
But we still need people to read the blog post in the first place, and there’s a few things we can do to make that happen…
One of my favorite tools for writing a killer headline or title. Gives you a score and suggests improvements to make it even more clickable.
Once you have your basic anatomy and headline set up, focus on getting your reader from start to finish by making it as easy to read as possible. And there’s good reason for this…
People rarely read webpages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. A study found that 79% of readers skim!
Breaking up your page with subheads and bullets will make it easier for those 79% to digest the copy—and ultimately take the desired action.
But there’s much more we can be doing with social to increase the performance of our content. So I’m going to walk through some additional ‘social optimisation’ best practices…
We have found that the longer the content, the more likely it is to get social shares. Not a hard and fast rule, but it’s something to consider when creating your content.
The way you write and format your content can actually have an impact on shareability…
That there’s a 19% increase in tweets when you include a quote in an article…
and there’s a 17% increase when you include a stat
Who’s ever seen those little ‘click to tweet’ links being used in a piece of content? You can create them in another free tool… Share link generator
And that brings us nicely to the third pillar of content strategy… distribution. SO many content creators fall down at this hurdle. But you really need to spend the same amount of time, if not more, on promoting and distributing your content as you do creating it.
Social media is probably the most obvious point of call when it comes to promoting your content. A lot of the objection around building a social media following and sharing your content with them is the time involved. But it doesn’t have to be such an uphill struggle if you’re smart about what channels you spend time on.
Here’s a representation of social media platform uses in b2b content marketing. LinkedIn is up there at the top, which I don’t think is too surprising.
The point I want to make here is that you don’t have to be on every channel — find where your audience is spending their time, and focus your efforts there.
The second point I want to make is that images are a MUST: 70% of all content shared on social is image-based.
Canna is a free design tool for non-designers. It has all your social media image sizes in there and makes it so easy to create professional looking images. We use this at HubSpot all the time.
This slide actually contains an image we created in Canva! But that’s not what I want to point out here…
Your social media shouldn’t give the game away — use it to tease interest. High level facts and stats are super sharable and help create intrigue.
If your social media channels only serve to bang on about how great your content is and promote it every other second, people are going to tire fast.
Use your social platforms to mix in other people’s content your audience will find useful and content that doesn’t serve to force your product or even industry down your audiences’ throats.
Don’t ‘spray and pray’ — where platforms allow it, get targeted! LinkedIn is great for this as you can get really quite targeted with no budget in terms of who in your existing audience gets served what.
If you’re trying to just get by with organic on Facebook, though… don’t. Thanks to the algorithm changes Facebook uses, businesses can’t reach more than a small fraction of their page’s fans without boosting posts. Even $20 per post can do the trick.
Social media scientist Dan Zarrella analyzed the length of 200K link-containing tweets and found the highest Click through Rates (CTR) on those that were between 120 and 130 characters long
I’m not sure who these people are in this study who manage to tweet 13 links per hour — tweets have a short lifecycle (they’re quickly push down someone’s timeline) so it’s ok to tweet more than you might post to Facebook.
But what was found is that as the speed of tweeting increased, the CTR decreased - so be careful and don’t spam your audience! Once an hour is ok if that’s realistic for you.
And beyond email… now more than ever we have SO many channels available to us as marketers.
You don’t have to use them all, but by experimenting, you might find one that works really well for you.
Instagram is huge, and isn’t just for b2c! We’ve really upped our focus on Instagram this year and are seeing some great results.
One of Instagram’s limitations has always been its traffic-driving capabilities, but with the new ‘swipe up’ feature in Stories, there’s now a way to actively drive traffic from the content you create on the channel.
Quora is a hidden gem… especially if you’re a small business with big competitors. Mine Quora for people asking questions relating to your businesses area of expertise, and get in there and answer them! Link to your blog posts and content that goes into more detail about what your saying as a way to drive traffic and klout.
Facebook are going big on adding features that make it easy for people to communicate with businesses via Messenger. You can use it for content delivery by getting people to subscribe as you can see in the example above, or even allow people to shop directly in the app! Services like Chatfuel make it really easy to create a bot.
If you’re building content tools (like our Website Grader you saw earlier) Product Hunt is the perfect platform for getting them in front of people who’ll appreciate both the utility and the tech that’s gone into building it.
Snapchat is gaining steam at an astronomical level, and is great for brand building, but admittedly it’s difficult to drive traffic from this channel. However, you can film videos relating to your content and add a shortened URL for people to type in should they want to check it out.
Promotion doesn’t stop a week after your content is launched. You should have a continuous promotional cycle to ensure you’re getting the highest possible return for all the effort you put in to create it!
After ALL that, you’re still going to have to measure performance. Otherwise, what’s the point?!
When we think about TOFU metrics, we’re really looking at traffic, traffic sources, and engagement (social, comments, etc).
Depending on your business, you might weight the importance of these differently.
As we mentioned earlier, we all have limited time and can’t put 100% in every single channel that exists. But what we can do is monitor what’s working and what’s not, so we know where to focus our time moving forward.
If I’m spending a ton of time on Facebook for example, but it’s not driving much traffic, I either need to improve my strategy there, or try out new channels that are looking more promising.
Different channels have different metrics too. So beyond traffic sources, you need to assess them on an individual basis.
I love working with Niti. She is awesome at her job. And that makes it much easier for me to do mine.
However as fun as traffic is, if it doesn't get converted into leads and customers then you won’t stay in business.
Now, not everyone in this room is a marketer. So I am going to broaden the concept of conversions beyond your website. I am going to show you the importance of conversion for my online dating.
First you need to generate subscribers
If someone is reading your content give them the opportunity to stay up to date. You should always have a subscriber box present on your blog.
*Low commitment - make a friend
Getting phone number - lead
meeting for coffee - MQL
In the marketing world this is what we do…
Subscriber - have matched with you
Lead - phone number
MQL - you’re going for dinner on Friday night
Key takeaways - 60 second analysis of Tinder profile
***I hope you learned some marketing AND dating tips
As a bare minimum, you have to have a subscriber.
EXPLAIN WHY LP? HOW DO THEY GET TO LP? WHEN TO USE LP (email it to them, use in paid etc.)
What about the people that want to know more about what they are subscribing to?
You can have a subscribe page.
This gives people an opportunity to find out more information about what they are subscribing to.
Another added benefit is that this page can be found via search.
So we have covered people that found content compelling and signed up straight away. We have covered people that needed more convincing. But what about time poor people who you could still convince.
As a last attempt to capture a subscriber you can use an exit pop up.
There are some great tools like whispers and Leadin
You can set rules around when it will appear, you can limit how many times someone will see it.
if someone is about to leave, there isn't a lot of downside trying to get their details.
Those were 3 great strategies to generate subscribers from your own channels. If you want to grow faster you can use paid channels.
Only doing on exit pop up if they’re about to leave. But don’t show exit pop up if they x’d it already
Once you have started generating subscribers your goal should then be on moving those people to become a lead.
If someone is reading a blog post on your site around a topic of interest you can have a related call to action with a ebook that is “gated” with a lead form.
*Landing page is relating back to the original intention. Plug the Ads Add-on tool
*Talk about Ads tool in paid retargeting session. Bring up especially if audience is super beginner
Put slide after Paid retargeting slide
You should have this offer presented on a landing page. This differs from a landing page in that it has a singular objective which is to persuade the visitor to fill out the form to access to the asset.
You will notice it is a similar to a webpage but we have removed the elements that could have distracted the visitor from filling out the form. We have removed the;
Top Navigation
Social Sharing buttons
Bottom navigation
To help you make your landing pages I am going to walk through the 6 major components that matter on a landing page.
Landing page vs. website
The visitor doesn’t want to read a novel. They want a few easy to digest bullet points that confirm what made them want to click through on the CTA in the first place.
Once you have designed your landing page you should continue to A/B test different components to see what generates the most conversions.
here is an example of a simple image test we ran.
Once you have designed your landing page you should continue to A/B test different components to see what generates the most conversions.
here is an example of a simple image test we ran.
LeadGnome 10/10 vs. 100/10 90% conversion rate on free trial
Don’t just think quantity, think quality.
Iron Mountain had an issue were they were generating a lot of leads, but most submissions contained incomplete or irrelevant information.
You need to be converting the types of leads that your sales team want to speak to.
A key area to control quality is at the form level.
In Iron Mountains case they :
changed the form’s headline from “Contact us today” to “Request a quote” to clarify the form’s purpose
Inserted validation functionality for each form field. For example, an error message was displayed if an incompatible phone number was entered, ensuring the prospective customer corrected the information before submitting.
The result of this?
A 140% improvement in lead quality.
What if they don’t become a MQL on the thank you page.
You need to provide them with more value.
Of the leads you generate only 25% of your leads are sales-ready.
A whopping 50% of your leads are qualified but not ready to buy from you.
Here are the first 3 nurturing emails from HubSpot.
The goal of new lead nurturing is to educate new leads about your brand and product while providing them with content that will help them do their job better.
But what are the comments of a email you need to pay special attention to?
Put in some asian people!
An not a
i love on the second line and though in a emoji
Do you know there are 2.4 million emails sent every second!
So how do you think people react when they get a email? Like this?
and when your email comes through they want to do this
So how do you cut through?
The first thing you have to get right is a compelling subject line.
You have 40-50 characters to convince someone your email is worth opening. You better make it compelling.
Make sure it is coming from a real person and include your photo too
By this stage you have a lot of information on this lead. You should use that to make the email more personal. If the email is more tailored to the person receiving it then by definition they will be more engaged.
You also should not be wasting this persons time without having a action in mind that you want them to take. You should have a CTA in the email and make it very clear what you want that action to be.
If it is relevant include an image that helps visual people see what the offer is.
and to comply with privacy legislation you will need to include a unsubscribe link
Retargeting is when you show paid ads on social media to people who have already visited your website.
*Put slide after that talks about the Ads Add-on tool
Subscribers: Look at:
Conversion rate,
Traffic,
Shares and comments.
Leads: Look at:
Lead to customer ratio,
Cost per lead,
Sales cycle,
MQL: Look at:
MQL to customer ratio,
Cost per lead,
Sales cycle,
For all of these areas you must please segment. one channel is up, one is down, nothing looks to have changed .. (Talk about inbound leads closing at a greater rate)
****Make text dark grey
add in the conversion of each within the funnel
Now that we have got our traffic flowing into a well designed conversion path we can now predict how much traffic we need to meet our business goals.
So if we now know that to get one customer we need 20,000 visits.
Reverse engineering - this is what we have to do (get 10 girls match before I go on a date)
I know what youre thinking – Sales Reps are all A-holes. We’re money-motivated. We only care about ourselves. We don’t listen or follow rules and just wait for our turn to talk.
If you ask Sales Reps what they’re making money for — they won’t say “because I love money.” They have a goal in mind — to buy a condo, to provide for a family. They have a greater purpose — for community, for helping others, taking care of people and giving help to those who need it.
You must think — marketers sit around all day doing arts and crafts. Writing pretty words and copy, designing graphics, without REAL bottom line metrics, just giving each other gold stars all day. “AWESOME! Amazing pitch! Great job! You’re a rock star!”
We’re more like Jonah Hill in Moneyball — DATA SCIENTISTS! We care about the bottom line of the business ($$$) we just reverse engineer the machine to understand the metrics we need to hit to enable sales to hit their revenue targets.
Celebrity references aside — when it comes down to it, we’re just suffering from a really bad case of MISCOMMUNICATION and MISCONCEPTIONS about one another. We *THINK* The other team is not on our side, that they don't understand our goals and that they don't look at the business the same way as the other team.
In practice, this is what miscommunication sounds like. Marketers in the room — have you ever heard a sales rep talk like this?
Marketers — Blink if you’ve ever felt this way or said something to this effect.
That sales is provided a bunch of leads but don’t work them quickly or thoroughly enough to see the results they want.
The reality is that strong marketing and sales alignment makes a material impact for businesses that harness it’s power.
And companies that ignore this evolutionary necessity, are hurting themselves.
4% may not seem like a lot, but it becomes detrimental when your competitors ARE doing it, and increasing their revenue by 20%. Essentially, taking money away from YOU.
So the question really becomes, how is poor alignment defined?
So, how do we stop the name calling? And go from this…
to all getting along?
Kanye & Taylor Feuds aside, the question is: how do we COLLABORATE? How do we give ourselves that UNFAIR ADVANTAGE of a 20% revenue increase y-o-y while other companies continue their misalignment?
The answer is marketing alignment. It’s both sales and marketing teams working together. And, being happy about it.
So how do we optimise TOFU? It’s all about content, and that’s what I’ll walk you through today. We’ll go over how to create good content, how to optimize it for search, sharing, and readability, how to distribute it to increase reach, and how to analyze its performance so you can make better, smarter decisions moving forward.
More than just talking often and having communication and a feedback loop, we need to establish some definitions. Some actual shared language.
A lot of sales people complain about leads because there is no clear definition about what a lead is…or they complain about quality
Most companies don’t even agree on what the word lead actually “means” – is it a site visitor, or an email address, or someone who’s expressed interest in speaking with your team?
Especially in middle sections-to have good agreement
All leads are not created equal — so lets define them.
Visitors / prospects = Someone who has come to your site, still hasn't given you any info / converted.
Leads / inquiries = they've filled out at least a short form, at least name and email. They exist in your database.
MQLs (leads that are deemed worthy to hand off to sales) = these people have raised their hand and taken some action that deems them worth of being handed off to sales. Marketing materials have qualified them as such. Many companies use LEAD SCORING to determine this handoff.
SAL or SQL = Sales has qualified these people as being worthy of having an actual conversation about buying. Many times an SDR/BDR will qualify here and pass to a rep.
Opps = somebody actively engaged in the sales process.
Customers
Once we define those terms, we need to agree upon / make a commitment from both teams to each other.
There are plenty of companies where it goes only one way…Marketing commits to drive X amount of leads, but Sales makes no commitment back. Or sales commits to sales leadership to follow up with leads in X amount of time, without a commitment of a certain quality of leads from Marketing.
The key is — this needs to be a bi-directional commitment, where both parties have agreed upon things and had conversations.
Once we define those terms, we need to agree upon / make a commitment from both teams to each other.
There are plenty of companies where it goes only one way…Marketing commits to drive X amount of leads, but Sales makes no commitment back. Or sales commits to sales leadership to follow up with leads in X amount of time, without a commitment of a certain quality of leads from Marketing.
The key is — this needs to be a bi-directional commitment, where both parties have agreed upon things and had conversations.
CHANGE ARROW TO INFINITY LOOP.
More importantly — this is not SET IT AND FORGET IT. It’s ongoing and evolving. Teams may decide on a certain number of leads to deliver or follow up on, and then find the team has enough bandwidth for a higher commitment, or that their buyers are becoming more educated and sales cycle is shorter so sales can follow up w/ more leads, etc. etc.
Before sales or marketing makes any commitments to each other, leadership must dictate the companies revenue goals, and from there determine the # of customers needed to generate that $$$.
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$100k —> 10 customers. Sales closes rate 50% —> 20 leads
Marketing X leads
Sales Y Z% = customers
z=
Source insidesales.com
http://www.getsidekick.com/blog/sales-statistics
What will sales get to / when — this is an agreement that benefits both sides — sales wins more deals if they follow up faster, marketing gets their leads worked.
Predictive lead scoring? HS lead scoring?
Based on the # of customers needed to close and the average lead to customer close rate, sales knows how many leads they need to generate.
Now the question may be — are these just any leads we need to generate? or leads of a certain quality? How do we
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PLS — sales reps know which are the best. Hard to know what signal is best or not. Do regression analysis bla bla who understood what i just said?
Human bias = I want leads that have done X or Y because they do this all the time. Possibly true, but we don't have to guess, we have software that can crunch data, analyze. Can play into the moneyball example.
SMB = HS
Ent = Infer
** Maybe visitors calc then.
$100k in revenue = 10 customers = how many leads do we need to hit that
Biz goal —> Sales goal —> Marketing goal
Now lets start with a stat here — from insidesales.com ..this is a compelling stat, it means reps should prioritize following up quickly. Now, how does sales commit to a # to Marketing? This is going to depend on the # of reps you have, the length of your sales cycle, the quality of leads that you consider MQLs to hand off to Sales, etc. etc. So I wont give you a calculation of what your sales team needs to commit, but you have to take all these factors into consideration, so your sales team can commit to: WE WILL FOLLOW UP IN X AMOUNT OF TIME WITH LEADS OF Y QUALITY.
PLS — sales reps know which are the best. Hard to know what signal is best or not. Do regression analysis bla bla who understood what i just said?
Human bias = I want leads that have done X or Y because they do this all the time. Possibly true, but we don't have to guess, we have software that can crunch data, analyze. Can play into the moneyball example.
SMB = HS
Ent = Infer
** Maybe visitors calc then.
$100k in revenue = 10 customers = how many leads do we need to hit that
Biz goal —> Sales goal —> Marketing goal
Lets take a look @ some sales hacks that can help us do just that…
Reverse engineering - this is what we have to do (get 10 girls match before I go on a date)