HubSpot Internet Marketing Case Studies

In this 5-minute "Marketing Minutes" segment, originally broadcasted on Career Life Balance Radio on June 13, 2008, Darcy Cook of Safety Trainers CPR Certification & First Aid Training talks about how inbound marketing, keyword research, and on-page search engine optimization (SEO) increased the traffic to her website and generated qualified leads for her online.

"It's like night and day. In the past three months, we've doubled our traffic and tripled our leads. All of our new business is coming through the web, thanks to HubSpot."

About Makana Solutions

Makana Solutions offers sales compensation solutions to small and medium sized businesses. Sales commissions and bonuses are often the second largest expense after salaries and Makana Solutions provides self-service online software to help businesses streamline the process of building more effective sales compensation plans to motivate the best sales behavior. Makana Solutions was founded in 2004 and Art Gehring joined in 2007 to oversee their marketing efforts.

Challenge

Makana Solutions offers a subscription to online software, so it was logical to find customers over the Internet. Their key goal was to generate more traffic and leads online and sign up more visitors for a free trial and then upgrade them to their paid product. I had found a lot of tools to help with different pieces of our Internet marketing strategy. "Before HubSpot, we were using a collection of tools to manage our search engine marketing. We had a keyword tool, we had a traffic measurement tool, we had an inbound link management tool, the list goes on and on. It was very inefficient in collecting all that information and with the small team that we have, it just wasn't effective."

Solution

"We found HubSpot on the Internet," Art described. "We noticed right away that this was the integrated tool that would enable us to execute successfully on our strategy. As a small marketing team, we really needed something that was fully integrated like HubSpot; it provided all the capabilities that we needed and then some." Art evaluated other products and services, but none of the others provided the education or the integration that HubSpot offered.

HubSpot is now the center of Makana Solutions' marketing strategy. Art uses every aspect of the software, from the content management tools to the integration with Salesforce.com included in HubSpot Professional. Art loves how HubSpot streamlines the process for managing the website: from the moment he wants to create a new page, he can do the keyword research to identify the best keywords to optimize around, easily edit the page content and metadata, and measure the effectiveness of his optimization. "I use the capabilities within the content management system to do all the key optimization, whether it be the title tag, the description tag, the keyword tag, it's all right there and I'm no longer dependent upon an outside resource or third party resource to do that for me." Art checks his HubSpot data every day to see the website traffic, leads, and sales they are getting from their website. HubSpot's event tracker also helps Art track which campaigns generate which results. "When we get a burst in traffic, we know what has caused that, so we can start to analyze which marketing vehicles and which marketing activities are most productive to us so we can repeat that and grow that business."

HubSpot also allows Art to monitor his competitors by allowing him to track their traffic rank, keyword rank, and other factors that contribute to their online presence, such as inbound links.

Art also frequently uses the landing page capability within HubSpot. "We're often creating very targeted campaigns that are based on a specific download document so HubSpot makes that process with their content management system very easy to create a new landing page. I can do that in less than an hour on my own without any outside help. The form builder is very intuitive... We're constantly tweaking the forms and I can modify the forms to request more important information really within minutes."

Art's HubSpot forms also automatically integrate with Salesforce.com, importing leads and lead intelligence data such as how the lead found the website, their browsing history, and more. "HubSpot has provided a lot of benefits to us in terms of not only providing targeted traffic much more cost-efficiently and effectively, but also it's helped us streamline our whole process since we are using the Salesforce integration. We now have the leads get directly delivered to our sales people within Salesforce. They have all the key information that they need to decide which of the leads they're going to call first. We're making our sales people much more productive." The Salesforce integration has also benefited his marketing efforts by allowing Art to leverage the HubSpot lead intelligence data within Salesforce to target campaigns to specific leads based on their activity. Art reports that their marketing campaigns have been far more effective. Art can easily analyze the effectiveness of his marketing campaigns within HubSpot. "One of the things that we're really excited about in the Salesforce integration is the fact that the sales that we do make will be reflected back in HubSpot so the marketing team can look at what campaigns and what activities were really effective and make sure that we repeat those because we can see not only the traffic and the leads, but also the actual sales that we made based on any specific activity."

Overall the implementation of HubSpot at Makana Solutions has been quick and easy for Gehring's small marketing department. "It's extremely easy to use," Art says. "I've basically been able to figure it all out by watching a few webinars and learning on my own. And when I can't figure something out, I find the HubSpot service excellent. They are never too busy to help me with a question. I never feel like I'm asking too many questions. They're a great team that really deliver."

Over the past 3 months, Makana Solutions doubled their website traffic and tripled their targeted leads. "It's like night and day," Art says. "Every month we're probably growing our traffic and leads by 20 or 30 percent." Art has also seen an increase in terms of organic search engine traffic, reporting that website visits from organic Google traffic has tripled in five months. "A good reason for that increase in Google traffic is that for the keywords that really matter to our audience and drive targeted leads for us - sales compensation plans, sales compensation plan, sales compensation planning - we're ranked in the top 10 in Google for all of those." HubSpot has really become the center of Makana Solutions' marketing, Art says that all of their new business is coming through the web, thanks to HubSpot.

Art's advice to those considering HubSpot: "Stop considering and start doing! HubSpot is the right tool for you so just get it because if marketing on the Internet is important to you, HubSpot will deliver the results that you need."

Results

• Increased website traffic by 200% in three months
• Organic search traffic tripled in five months
• Leads generated increased three-fold over the past three months, and percentage of website traffic that converts to leads has doubled in the same time
  
• Now ranking on the first page of organic Google search results for key search terms, including "sales compensation plan", "sales compensation planning", and "sales comp plans"

1to1 covers the Internet marketing success of HubSpot customer Matt Cutler of Visible Measures.  Read the full article: Something to Blog About: Visible Measures' Internet Marketing Plan

Article Highlights

• Visible Measures' blog has proved to be one of the most important elements of the company's Internet marketing plan. One benefit is that it provides a context for creating new content. "A regular website can become ossified, whereas with a blog there's always something new to write about," Cutler says.
• And sometimes, new, interesting keywords pop up unintentionally, as happened with the phrase "video engagement." The company has posted blog items with phrases that then rank as keywords on search engines-what Cutler calls an ancillary benefit.
• The company has increased organic searches as a percentage of overall site traffic, and Web leads have increased by a factor of 10.
  

"HubSpot has given me so much control over our website - we are all thrilled with the service itself and with the support we always receive from everyone at HubSpot. I've referred HubSpot to a number of my business connections because of all the value we're getting!"

- Rebecca Adell, Office Manager, Eck MacNeely Boston Architects

MarketingProfs covers the success of HubSpot customer Art Gehring of Makana Solutions.

Read the full article:

How an Online Software Biz Doubled Its Sales Leads, Increased Site Traffic 75%.

Article Highlights

• Some four months later, Makana says, its search engine marketing is far more effective, Web site traffic was up an impressive 75% in the first quarter of this year, and sales leads have doubled.

• Gehring said his job is much easier since he found HubSpot. "I've been doing search engine marketing for a while and know there [are] many that do pieces of what HubSpot does, but there are few companies that do everything HubSpot does."

"The first thing I did to begin driving website traffic and leads was Google Adwords. The keywords were helpful, but I wanted more, so I subscribed to Wordtracker and a whole bunch more keywords. Unfortunately, what I still lacked was a tool to effectively measure my keywords and help me optimize them, and so I came to HubSpot. HubSpot has website grading tools along with many ways to generate keywords, track your keyword success and your competition. In the past month with HubSpot, my website traffic rank has improved from 6,800,000 to my current rank of 1,780,000 and climbing. I can't say enough for all the tools HubSpot offers users to improve their sites... and blogs too!"

-Doug Sauerhaft, President, DCS Marketing Solutions LLC Buy Mailing List

"Since starting with HubSpot, website traffic has more than doubled from 500 visitors per month to over 1000, and I have already generated a number of leads that pay for HubSpot 30 times over."

About Vocio

Vocio is a telecom expense management software company that helps enterprises select "Best of Breed" voice, data, Internet and wireless services from the major providers and manage their telecom expenses. Vocio was founded in 2001 by Noel Huelsenbeck, a telecommunications sales professional with over 15 years of experience.

Challenge

When the company first got started, they focused mainly on traditional "outbound" techniques like cold calling and direct mail. "I just duplicated exactly what I had done prior to get business, which was getting on the phone, networking, calling printers and asking about direct marketing campaigns," Noel said. But what Noel found was that more and more people were screening their calls, mail, and emails, and it was increasingly difficult to reach his market. "It was a matter of working harder for less results," he explained. "And I knew that there had to be a better way."

Solution

Noel knew he needed an Internet marketing strategy. He attended an Internet marketing conference and realized there were untapped opportunities to effectively market to his target audience online, in the world of social networks and web 2.0. Noel's web designer referred him to HubSpot as a possible solution. Noel researched the company and reviewed the website, "and it was basically saying exactly what I had learned at the conference, in addition to my sales experience of reduced success with outbound techniques." He immediately called in and signed up. "Within a few days, I had created a website that was better than my old website, got the keywords situated, and within a few weeks, got my first lead." Each lead represents tens of thousands of dollars in revenue for Noel, immediately paying for his yearly HubSpot subscription three times over.

"HubSpot has become the center of my business," Noel says. He uses HubSpot to identify which keywords his market is using to search for his products and services and then crafts his website to target those keywords. He checks his HubSpot marketing analytics on a daily basis, checking on the status of his website traffic and leads generated. Noel has seen traffic more than double in a matter of a few months, from 500 in November to over 1000 in January, and that continues to increase. Noel has not only seen an increase in website traffic, but also an increase in quality leads actually searching for his products and services. The Vocio blog, set up with HubSpot, also helps drive qualified traffic and leads through organic search. Posting fresh, targeted content helps improve their website's search engine rank as well as communicate with their market. Vocio now has 4 months worth of articles averaging about 100 views per post.

It's not only the software but also the people and resources HubSpot offers that Noel appreciates, often receiving support and advice via phone, email, or in the customer forums, even after regular business hours. "You might post a question after business hours and then 15 minutes later, someone's already posted the answer to it," Noel recalls. "HubSpot's not one of those companies that's sitting around 8 to 5 and then you can't get a hold of them. Everyone that I've spoken with has contacted me after business hours, whether it was in sales, marketing, technical support, etcetera, they've been really helpful."

Noel sees HubSpot as clearing up some of the "black magic" in the world of Internet marketing and giving him real, actionable items to grow his business. Noel is completely on board with an inbound marketing strategy and utilizes HubSpot to achieve his inbound marketing goals. Noel in particular sees the benefit of inbound marketing for a small business like his own. "Marketing is a huge part of our success or failure," Noel says. Having the ability to leverage marketing dollars against highly capitalized competitors provides a huge competitive advantage for Vocio. With HubSpot, "this puts us on par with companies that can outspend us 100 fold in marketing," and Vocio succeeds by focusing on more effective marketing activities.

Results

• Website traffic more than doubled in two months, from 500 in November to over 1000 visitors in January
• Traffic from organic search results has increased exponentially and now accounts for about half of overall traffic
  
• Posted over a dozen blog articles, averaging about 100 views per post
  
• Improved search engine rankings for few dozen relevant keywords, including "telecom audit software", "telecom cost control", and "telecom expense management software" and received many visits and leads from searches on these terms
  

Website traffic and leads increased dramatically within a few months

Traffic from organic Google search has increased exponentially

Visit Vocio on the web at www.Vocio.com

Learn more about the HubSpot inbound marketing system at www.HubSpot.com

DMNews sits down with Peter Baron, President of AdmissionsQuest, an online resource for information on boarding schools, to discuss why and how he uses HubSpot to optimize his site for search engines.

Read the full article: DMNews spends a few minutes with Peter Baron, president, AdmissionsQuest

Article Highlights

• We worked on our URL structure and attempted to better optimize the pages. We started focusing more on long-tail keywords like "California boarding schools," "private girls school" and "East Coast board­ing schools." Additionally, we used HubSpot to build pages that speak directly to those selected keyword phrases.
• We also started to work very hard on getting the word out to a larger audience and, as a result, we've seen the number of links back to our site increase over the past three or four months.
  
• What we've seen is an increase from about 25,000 visitors a month to close to 40,000. And I attribute a good portion of that growth to our working with them for optimization, which we plan to continue doing.
  

MarketingProfs covers the success of HubSpot customer Brent Leary of Business Technology Radio and CRM Essentials.

Read the full article: How a Consultant's Internet Radio Show Led to New Business, New Sources of Revenue.

Article Highlights

• HubSpot proved particularly useful to Leary by letting him know which keywords users were entering into Google in order to find his radio show, businesstechnologyradio.com. That allowed him to tailor his content to make it as appealing as possible for a larger online audience.
• "It would take just one week for us to show up higher on Google searches. We would see traffic grow by 50% month on month," Leary said.
• Moreover, his two-person consulting company has received some assignments from large corporations that might not have come about without the exposure from the business radio program.

"I had been doing SEO (search engine optimization) all wrong when I came to HubSpot, trying to optimize my site for the wrong keywords. With HubSpot, I'm now able to see the words people are actually using to find my products and services. I'm able to see which words have the greatest search volume in search engines and how difficult it will be for me to get on the first page of search results for that term, helping me choose the right words to optimize my site around. Over time, I can track my current rank and how that changes and how many people visit my site after searching for that term. HubSpot has helped me be a lot smarter about how I optimize my site and track my progress."

-Steve Douglas, President & Creative Director, The Logo Factory Logo Design