HubSpot Internet Marketing Case Studies

Current Articles | RSS Feed RSS Feed

LA Architect Sees 6x Increase in Traffic & Leads With HubSpot

Posted by Magdalena Georgieva on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 @ 12:59 PM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

 

Derek Leavitt is a partner at Modative, a Los Angeles-based modern architecture firm. Founded in 2006, his company specializes in contemporary residential and commercial projects. With no IT staff and no previous "experience with anything Internet-related," Derek uses HubSpot to turn his website into a lead generation machine. "I saw the results quickly, so it motivated me to engage it more and use it more," said Derek in a video interview.

Challenge

In the past, Modative relied on word of mouth and existing contacts to get its message out to its target audience. "We did have a website but we weren't bringing really much traffic to that website," said Derek. His main marketing source remained business cards.

In order to grow Modative's traffic, Derek invested in Google and Yahoo ads. He soon realized, however, that these marketing tools weren't helping in the long term.

Blogging didn't work for Derek, either. He used the Google's Blogger, which didn't effectively transfer leads or SEO credit to his company's site. "It felt like people would go to it and then leave it," he said about his past blog.

Solution

Derek was looking for a solution to expand online traffic and prompt site visitors to convert into leads and customers. HubSpot's Owner product was the solution he was looking for.

HubSpot transferred Modative's marketing efforts from paid advertising to organic search traffic. Only 15 percent of the company's incoming traffic in May was brought in by advertising (compared to over 80 percent in the past). The other 85 percent of referrals in May came from organic search. "Our traffic is very diverse now, which is what we would like to see," said Derek. HubSpot's search engine optimization tools enabled this change. Modative has now optimized all of its photos and Google Images leads to 18% of the site's traffic.

HubSpot Analytics gave Modative access to measurement tools to track traffic and its sources. "That is something I check several times a day," said Derek. He finds especially useful the keyword analytics, which enable him to monitor the keyword performance of his company as well as that of his competitors.

Modative has also used the HubSpot methodology to improve its lead generation. The company site now has a Resources page from which people can download guidebooks, whitepapers and other valuable information. In exchange for each piece of offered data, Modative asks visitors to fill out a specific form. That helps the company gather contact information of targeted readership. It is a lead generator that the company didn't have before.

Another HubSpot solution Derek finds especially useful is the Website Editor that enables him to easily make changes. "One of the big things is having our website available anywhere. I can be at home on the weekends, I will have an idea and then I will change the site instantly," he said.

Results

"It is pretty staggering, actually," said Derek about the results he has been getting. "We had almost zero search traffic when we started," he said. But only after a month with HubSpot, they attracted 257 referrers from Google only. This number has now expanded to 711.


Google referrers

(Image Above: monthly Google search referrals, Jan - June 2009)

Modative has increased its traffic from 639 visitors in January to 3,670 in June. 

Traffic

 (Image Above: monthly traffic and leads, Jan - June 2009)

Derek's blog has increased its performance significantly, attracting 1,063 visitors just in the last 30 days. It has 45 blog subscribers who engage with one another and leave comments. In optimizing his blog content, Derek uses social media sites like Twitter, StumpleUpon and LinkedIn. "People will find an article that we blogged on and then, they will promote it," he said.

Blog

 (Image Above: blog subscribers, Jan - June 2009)


"I really can't say enough good things about what it has done for us in the short-term and, more importantly, in the long term," said Derek. The HubSpot product pieces have helped Modative successfully optimize search results and generate qualified leads. "We get to do all of that ourselves, which is really empowering," he said. "Things are being done the way you want them to be done."

Local Banking Consultant Sees 430% Growth in Leads With HubSpot

Posted by Magdalena Georgieva on Wed, Jun 24, 2009 @ 08:45 AM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

 

Banking consultant Wendell Brock, president of De Novo Strategy, is good at running a business on a shoestring budget. His company has three consultants and one assistant who help start-up organizations in the process of buying and starting banks. Accustomed to using his resources wisely, Wendell shared an important piece of advice, "If you cannot bring in the marketing, you are dead. This is a scenario that you don't skimp on."

Challenge

Wendell has been involved in the bank consulting industry for almost ten years, since his first project in July 1999. He launched De Novo Strategy and targeted people with interest in business expansion. In order to generate leads he relied on word of mouth and networking with former business partners.

Wendell also had a website with a company brochure on it. He soon discovered this didn't bring him any traffic or phone calls. He attributed the website's low performance to the nature of his industry. There were not that many people who wanted to buy banks, he thought. But then again, maybe, the reason was that his website, as he put it, "was virtually nowhere to be found."

Internet marketing, he concluded, wasn't effective for him because he didn't understand it. "I knew I needed to do something to enhance the traffic to the site but I didn't know exactly what to do and how to do it," he said.

Solution

One day De Novo Strategy's marketing associate, Andrew Anson, suggested Wendell attend a free HubSpot webinar. After Wendell attended the webinar, he decided to request a demo with Mike Volpe. He, then, decided to purchase the HubSpot Owner product.

After HubSpot consultants walked Wendell through the implementation process, he got comfortable with the idea of Internet marketing. "I have been able to get my arms around it," said Wendell. It wasn't too long after he grasped the implementation process of Internet marketing that his lead generation increased.

A HubSpot product piece that Wendell found especially effective was the keyword research tool. He now accurately measures the keyword performance of his website and it has allowed him to compete with thousands of other companies. Through the HubSpot Marketing Analytics he knows the exact number of website visits, leads and customers per keyword. This empowers him to adjust his strategy accordingly and get the upper hand in search engine optimization.

In addition, De Novo has been using HubSpot's link analysis tool to manage the process of building inbound links. It has now reached 234 valid links from domains referring to its website. Such statistics allow the company to monitor online conversations, identify new industry trends and focus on niches already interested in De Novo's services.

Results

Wendell is now happy to see his website appear on the first pages of Google searches. The HubSpot referral source analytics indicate 4,627 visitors and 140 leads for De Novo Strategy in the last six months. "Despite the banking crisis, I still get leads, get people calling me," Wendell said.

De Novo referral
These referrals positively impact the online traffic De Novo Strategy draws. The company has maintained a steady stream of visitors, a large percentage of whom convert to leads and customers. HubSpot's website traffic tool, for instance, indicates 6, 528 new visitors and 183 leads from January to May.

website traffic

Now that Wendell has his arms around Internet marketing, he also sees the importance of creating content regularly. That is why De Novo Strategy's blog has also had great success. HubSpot's blog analytics report 422 blog subscribers, 408 email subscribers, and 337 first-time visitors just in the last 30 days.
De Novo blog analytics

Copy Craft Increases Conversion Rate with Targeted Keywords

Posted by Magdalena Georgieva on Thu, Jun 18, 2009 @ 08:42 AM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

 

For five years Cory Rogers worked in sales at Copy Craft Printers, an online printing company specializing in offset and digital printing. Soon after his company started using HubSpot, Copy Craft Printers created a new position for Cory and he became the online marketing director. "We saw that this is what it is going to take to do social media and development," he said in an interview.

Challenge

Copy Craft Printers wanted to use Internet marketing and compete with bigger companies that spent enormous amounts of time and money on outbound marketing campaigns. Yet they "weren't sure how to get there."

The company realized the marketing potential of social media tools and started using Twitter and LinkedIn. This online buzz prompted it to enhance its website's appearance and performance. "That made us say, 'we want to go out and optimize it,'" Cory explained.

Solution

Copy Craft discovered HubSpot when it first used the company's free Website Grader tool. Soon afterwards Copy Craft purchased the HubSpot Marketer product and learned the fundamentals of where, how and when to compete with other industry leaders in order to obtain maximum business results.

Using HubSpot's search-engine optimization tools, CopyCraft significantly enhanced its keyword targeting. Copy Craft gained the tools to target long-tail keywords that weren't part of their strategy before. While in the past the company targeted, for instance, "brochure printing," now it could experiment with "full-color brochure printing." In this learning process Cory realized the importance of producing valuable content and optimizing it accordingly.

HubSpot offers Copy Craft the opportunity to measure its website performance and marketing metrics in relation to other industry competitors. Copy Craft uses up-to-date rankings in traffic volume, organic search and number of inbound links to focus on successul marketing campaigns.

Results

Better targeted keywords helped Copy Craft drive more qualified traffic to its website. Now Copy Craft is generating leads and customers rather than just site visitors.

The company was able to increase its customer retention rate, and now looks at marketing, as Cory said, "from an analytical point of view." More specifically, he has seen the following results:

  • Accumulated over 592 leads
  • Attracted 1,739 inbound links from 422 domains
  • Improved the website's traffic rank to 382,512
  • Increased conversion rate for top 20 industry-specific keyword searches including "presentation folders," "booklet printing" and "custom posters."

HubSpot Partner, PR 20/20's Paul Roetzer, Explains How Inbound Marketing is Changing the PR Industry

Posted by Mike Norman on Wed, Jun 10, 2009 @ 04:20 PM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

Inbound Marketing Helps PR Companies Deliver More Value

HubSpot Partner, PR 20/20's Paul Roetzer explains Inbound Marketing is changing the PR industry.

"PR firms historically have not been able to show a strong return on investment. Everything we do is now highly measurable which to me has always been the holy grail of the PR industry, if you can figure out a way to provide measureable services you can retain clients. Retention becomes easy if you can always show a return."

 "Demand is extremely high for inbound marketing services, the mass market acceptance of inbound marketing as a business philosphy will make room for more agencies like ours to build stable profitable business models."

HubSpot's Software Helps PR 20/20 Deliver More Value to Clients

HubSpot partner Paul Roetzer shows how HubSpot helps him provide more value to clients.

"Our goal is to consistently grow our clients businesses and the only way to do that is to have access to the data that lets us know if what we're doing is working. By having everything done through HubSpot we know in real time if what we're doing is working so we can adapt campaigns at all times."

 "We use HubSpot's tools and free tools through google to do all the education people aren't getting through school or other agencies."

 "I dont know if we could build a profitable model around inbound marketing services without it [HubSpot]."

HubSpot's Partner Program Has Helped PR 20/20 Grow

HubSpot Partner, PR 20/20's Paul Roetzer explains how the parter program is helping him grow his business 130%-150% this year.

"There is a lot of support coming from HubSpot to us as a partner and other potential partners. We love seeing HubSpot succeed and HubSpot does a lot to make us succeed."

"Our agency is on pace to grow 130%-150% this year when a lot of agencies have been cutting staff, we're actually adding staff. We are seeing rather steady growth and no sign of it plateauing. Obviously there is demand in the market for these services. I think its only going to increase as HubSpot's profile gets larger this year."

Georgia Golf Academy Grows Inbound Leads 50x

Posted by Rick Burnes on Tue, May 26, 2009 @ 02:19 PM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

 

Reynolds Golf Academy is a golf school located at Reynolds Plantation, a residential golf community in Greensboro, Georgia. Reynolds Golf Academy offers golf lessons and corporate outings and is run by six employees, including four golf instructors, an administrative assistant and a corporate salesperson.

Challenge

Charlie King, golf professional and director of instruction at Reynolds Golf Academy, knew it was time to expand the organization's online marketing program. He and his small staff had been relying mainly on traditional marketing methods to reach their target audience. But magazine advertisements and direct mail were expensive and difficult to measure. And in a down economy, with many consumers cutting back on luxury expenditures, the pressure was on to make Reynolds Golf Academy stand out from its competitors.

Charlie first encountered Hubspot's tools at a seminar led by David Meerman Scott, marketing strategist and author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. After evaluating the Golf Academy's website using Hubspot's Website Grader, a free search engine optimization (SEO) tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of websites, Charlie was convinced that there was more he could do to improve the organization's web presence.

Charlie knew he wanted to employ an "inbound" approach to marketing -- one that focused on creating useful, relevant content to attract qualified customers who want to be found. He just needed the tools to implement that strategy quickly, effectively and affordably.

Solution

In August 2008, Charlie began using Hubspot's inbound marketing software and was assigned an inbound marketing specialist to provide him with advice and help him utilize the powerful tools available to him.

Having a website that was more than an "online brochure" was important to Charlie. He wanted the Golf Academy's website to be an interactive destination where web visitors could learn about his "New Rules" of golf instruction through YouTube videos and his free downloadable e-books.

Charlie began publishing a blog on the website using HubSpot's blogging software and learned how to optimize the website's pages using search engine optimization tools. To get acquainted with Hubspot's methodology, Charlie and his team extensively used success.hubspot.com, an active online marketing forum where Hubspot customers and employees share ideas and strategies about online marketing and Hubspot tools.

Charlie now monitors traffic to the website using marketing analytics and uses keyword analysis tools to see which keywords are bringing in qualified sales leads. Using HubSpot's competitor analysis tool, he can see how the golf academy's website is performing against its competitors.

When visitors to the website sign up for the newsletter or download one of Charlie's three e-books on golf instruction, Charlie uses Hubspot's lead management system to track where the inbound links are coming from and determine which strategies are working. He finds that Reynolds Golf Academy now gets most of its customers via the web or word-of-mouth.

"Hubspot has helped me execute my online marketing strategy," said Charlie. "I feel like I'm on the cutting edge of where marketing is going to be into the future. I'm getting a jump on my competitors."

Results

Charlie's results since signing up with HubSpot have been impressive. "We built a website that has increased in traffic, that has increased in inbound links," said Charlie. In search engine results, "The number of keywords that we show up on has gone up dramatically."

More specifically, he has seen the following results:

  • Increased traffic and lead volume by over 50x
  • Accumulated over 300 blog subscribers
  • Attracted 4,191 inbound links from over 230 domains
  • The website's traffic rank has improved from 5.9 million to between 1 million and 2 million

Website Visitors

visitors

Blog Subscribers

blog subscribers

 


Chapel Hill Realtor Builds Traffic 246%, Google Referrals 307% With HubSpot Software

Posted by Rick Burnes on Mon, Mar 02, 2009 @ 08:30 AM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

 

Team Jodi is a real estate brokerage firm run by Jodi Bakst. The firm is based in Chapel Hill, NC, and serves the surrounding communities. It focuses on Durham homes and Chapel Hill homes.

 

Challenge

Jodi has been using online marketing for years, but until recently it was not a central part of her business. When the real estate market was strong, she had a business website and was running paid campaigns on Google, but never had time to make these channels efficient, cost-effective parts of her business. When the market turned downward in late 2008, Jodi realized that she would finally have time to figure out how to do online marketing the right way.

"I decided that from the $1,500 to $2,000 I was spending a month on pay-per-click, I really needed to dig into that and see if it was worth it. I also knew that business was slowing down and people were going to sit at their computers and click away, and I didn't want to pay for it. It was time to start focusing on organic placement."

Jodi's offline marketing strategy had long included a focus on providing valuable content to her customers, including market-data reports. With this background, she gravitated towards HubSpot's inbound marketing system -- software that helps business owners use content, search engine optimization and social media to get found by customers instead of using intrusive tactics to find customers.

 

Solution

Jodi signed up for HubSpot in September 2008 and, with the help of HubSpot partner PageTender, LLC, began doing the work she needed to do in order to replace her pay-per-click campaigns with organic search traffic.

Her first step was to focus on keywords. Using HubSpot's keyword analysis tool, she determined which keywords she should try to rank for -- the ones that gave her the right balance of traffic, relevance and difficulty. She also began focusing on content creation, including blogging.

Over the last five months, a series of other HubSpot tools have become a part of her daily routine. She uses Website Grader to keep track of her site's overall search engine optimization as she builds links for off-page seo and tweaks, headings keywords and meta-data for on-page SEO improvements.

HubSpot's competitor analysis tool is also very valuable to Jodi. She uses it to check which keywords her competition is ranking for, then to figure out how to rank for those keywords herself. She uses HubSpot's link analysis tool to find out who is talking about her business, and she uses HubSpot's marketing analytics package to determine which of her content and marketing campaigns are most successful.

Jodi also continues to pay close attention to HubSpot's keyword analysis tool. She keeps track of several high-traffic keywords that bring in significant qualified traffic. She says the tool's graphs of specific keyword rank over time are particularlly rewarding.

 

Results

Jodi's results have been remarkable since she signed up for HubSpot. She says that while the HubSpot methodology requires a significant amount of hard work -- analyzing your keywords regularly, optimizing your site and constantly creating great content -- it's work that's paying off for her.

 Specifically, since she started with HubSpot:

  • Monthly website traffic has increased over 246% 
  • Google search traffic has grown over 300% 
  • She has accumulated over 2,184 inbound links from over 230 domains
  • She has moved to the first page of Google search results for keywords like:
    • "homes chapel hill"
    • "homes realtors"
    • "durham realtors"
    • "chapel hill realty"
    • "durham real estate"
    • "durham homes"

"Could I have achieved the results I've achieved without HubSpot?" she asks. "I think the answer is yes. Would I have ever done it? I doubt it. I doubt it ... I don't think I would have been able to put it together the way HubSpot has put it together."

 

Website Visitors (Sept. 2008 - Feb. 2009) 

real estate website traffic

 

 Organic Google Search Referrals (Sept 2008 - Feb. 2009)

real estate google referrals 

Referral Key Sees 230% Increase in Traffic, Leads With HubSpot

Posted by Rick Burnes on Fri, Feb 27, 2009 @ 08:56 AM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

 

Referral Key is an online referral network. Their headquarters is in Boston, MA. The company helps users strengthen their existing relationships with an emphasis on driving referrals to one another. The company targets single practitioners and small businesses with 1-5 employees.

 

The Challenge

As a referral marketing engine, much of Referral Key's growth has been through referrals. (They eat their own dogfood!) However, referrals are based on existing networks, and Referral Key also needed a way to encourage customers to establish their own referral networks. They needed to do this efficiently at large volumes.

Referral Key's founder and CEO, Lewis Weinstein, had tried traditional outbound techniques like print advertising in the past, and he wasn't confident these techniques could deliver for his new company. He preferred to focus on marketing that helped Referral Key get found by customers (as opposed to marketing that helped Referral Key find customers), and he knew that search engines are the place to get found on the web.

Lewis had been approached by SEO consultants in the past and was dissatisfied with their services. When a friend suggested HubSpot's software, he investigated and eventually signed up.

 

Solution

Working with HubSpot and HubSpot partner Susan Churchill, Referral Key performed a thorough review of the keywords the company wanted to rank for.

"What we first did was analyze from a keyword standpoint how best people would find us on the major search engines. It was really an exercise in sitting down and asking what do we do and how do we solve problems for people," Lewis explained.

The Referral Key team plugged hundreds of keywords into HubSpot's keyword analysis tool, then used the tool to narrow their list down to a series of keywords that they wanted to focus on ranking for.

"Once we determined which words were most applicable, the HubSpot tool allowed us to really get a realistic sense of what our possibility was to get a high ranking on the major search engines. It became clear to us that as a startup it was going to take us quite some time to get the major keywords like 'business networking" or 'referral marketing,'" Lewis explained. "We determined that we had some niche markets that were most apt to use the service. They may not yield 500 to 1000 searches a day, but could certainly yield us 50 to 70. And if we were getting targeted searches on those keywords, we had a very high likelihood of capturing those people as customers."

Once Referral Key identified the keywords they wanted to target, they did a careful analysis of all their website's pages, including their headers, page descriptions and meta tags. They made sure all of these pages were optimized for the right keywords, then they began focusing on building links into these pages. 

To manage the constant process of building links into their site, Referral Key uses the HubSpot link analysis tool. "It allows you to see who's talking about you. What website are linking to you. What bloggers are talking about you. And if you know that information, you can identify trends, and go after those particular niches to find other people that might be interested in talking about you," Lewis said.

Referral Key is also using Keyword Grader to help inform its blogging strategy. This includes a broad multi-media effort including interviews, podcasts and YouTube videos. 

Referral Key also uses Hubspot's marketing analytics package. Since it's designed for marketers and focuses on inbound links and traffic referrals, it helps them compare different types of marketing efforts. "You can see which marketing campaigns are working for you."

Finally, Referral Key has used Hubspot's Press Release Grader to optimize its releases -- most notably the recent release announcing its partnership with Constant Contact which drove significant new traffic to the site.

Results

Referral Key's results with HubSpot have been exceptional.

Beyond enormous increases in traffic, leads and Google search referrals, Lewis says the tools provide his team a unique perspective on their business.

"When I use HubSpot I'm getting knowledge. It empowers me to know more about the product we're offering ... and it allows me to track, and our team to track, how effective we are in our search engine optimization."

Here are some of the specific results Referral Key has achieved:

  • 230% growth in traffic in the last six months over the previous six months 

  • 231% growth in lead volume in the last six month over the previous six months
  • 75% increase in referrals from Google
  • Top Google ranking for terms including:
    • "business referral"
    • "business referral network"
    • "grow referrals"
    • "referrals for business"
    • "business referrals"
    • "referrals"

 

BatchBlue Sees Over 30% Increase in Traffic, Google Referrals With HubSpot

Posted by Rick Burnes on Mon, Feb 02, 2009 @ 11:47 AM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

 

About BatchBlue 

BatchBlue is a web-based software provider based in Providence, RI. The company's main product, BatchBook, is a small business crm (customer relationship manager). The company is two-and-a-half years old and employs a team of eight people.

 

Challenge

A startup, BatchBlue needed to introduce their product to lots of people without spending tons of money. With this constraint, they couldn't use traditional b-to-b advertising campaigns -- they had to focus on creating content and getting found by customers.

The BatchBlue team wanted to do things to help their site get found in search engines, but they were skeptical of high-priced search engine optimization firms with opaque methods and uncertain results. They were also wary of creating a site and product around a set of keywords for search engines.

 

Solution

BatchBlue decided to use HubSpot's inbound marketing software.

When they started with HubSpot, the BatchBlue team was convinced of the inbound marketing methodology, but they did not think that search engine optimization would have a significant impact on their business. After their first session with their HubSpot internet marketing consultant, they began to see that it would.

HubSpot's keyword analysis tool, Keyword Grader, had an immediate impact on BatchBlue's business. After studying Keyword Grader results, and discussing them with their HubSpot inbound marketing consultant, they realized that they could attract more qualified customers to their site if they positioned BatchBook as a small business CRM tool, as opposed to simply a contact management application.

Over the course of the last year, BatchBlue has expanded their use of Keyword Grader to many lower-level sections of their site. "Keyword grader has helped us go in and not only find the over-arching search terms, but also the niche ones for marketing, for real estate ... it's not just one set of keywords we're going after, we're segmenting it," explaines BatchBlue's user experience designer, Adam Darowski.

BatchBlue also uses HubSpot's link analysis tool, Link Grader, to stay abreast of new links into their site. While they were able to get some of this information from Google Alerts, they missed a lot when they relied only on Google Alerts. "Link Grader catches things that Google Alerts just doesn't."

To keep on top of the regular changes in their keyword rank, BatchBlue uses HubSpot's HubFeed marketing dashboard. A regular stream of updates on search rankings, social media activity and industry conversation, HubFeed makes it simple for the BatchBlue team to manage their flow of marketing data.

 

Results

Despite their initial hesitations about search engine optimization, BatchBlue has become "fanatical" about HubSpot, mainly because of the demonstrable impact it's had on their business.

Over the past year, search referrals have become a significant new source of traffic. Specifically:

  • Over the last four months, Google search referrals are up 35% over the previous four months
  • Over the last four months, website traffic is up 33% over the previous four months
  • They have accumulated over 2,582 inbound links, from over 394 domains
  • They have achieved top Google ranking for terms such as:
    • "small business crm"
    • "business crm"
    • "crm for designers"
    • "online address book"

Vico Software Doubles Google Search Referrals With HubSpot Inbound Marketing Software

Posted by Rick Burnes on Mon, Feb 02, 2009 @ 09:57 AM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

 

 

About Vico Software

Vico Software is a Boston-area startup that provides construction software and services to the building construction industry. Vico helps building owners, general contractors, and construction managers reduce risk, manage costs, and optimize schedules on complex building projects.

 


The Challenge

Vico's vice president of marketing, Holly Allison, faced a challenge common to many startups. Vico was a young company in an industry full of veteran players. She couldn't compete with the marketing budgets of bigger, established companies, so she couldn't generate leads and sales via traditional B2B marketing channels like trade shows and cold-calling.

 

The softening economic environment added an additional challenge. Although Vico's business was growing, economic conditions made the type of large-scale spending typical of traditional marketing campaigns imprudent.

Holly wanted to adopt a new approach to marketing -- an inbound approach based on producing content that attracts customers. But she needed a system to help her do this -- a system to track and optimize search engine performance as well as incoming leads.


The Solution

Holly chose HubSpot to provide the tools and data she needed to shift to an inbound approach to marketing.

 

To collect inbound leads, Vico used HubSpot's landing page generator. Once the leads were in Vico's system, they were able to manage and track them via HubSpot's powerful lead management system. "We like seeing how effective we're being driving website visitors to our forms online, so everyone looks at that every day."

In order to gain insight into the effectiveness of their various marketing channels, Vico integrated their HubSpot lead tracking system with Salesforce.com. This closed-loop marketing system gave their sales team insight into the history and interests of each lead, and it allowed the marketing team to compare the rates at which each of their marketing channels converted to sales.

Vico also used HubSpot's competitive web site tracking tools to compare their progress with that of their larger competitors. "Because we are a small company, and we are competing with businesses 10, 20, 30 times as large as we are, we need to look 30 times larger than we are. So it's nice to compare how a major compititor is doing as far as the number of keywords that they're ranking for in a Google search."

HubSpot's marketing analytics gave Vico access to data about their referrals and page-level data, becoming an important resource for tracking the business impact of events like media coverage that did not occur on their site.

Finally, HubSpot's keyword analysis tools helped Vico pick the best keywords to optimize their site, their content and their marketing content around.


The Results

With their inbound approach to marketing, an aggressive content production schedule and HubSpot inbound marketing tools, Vico has built their site into an online marketing machine. "Our website is about so much more than selling software. Our website is about being cutting edge for this particularly industry," Holly says.

 

Over the past six months, Vico has achieved stellar growth in Google search referrals, web site traffic and leads. Specifically:

 

  • 80% increase in website traffic
  • Google search referrals have more than doubled (from below 600/month to over 1200/month)
  • Accumulated over 399 inbound links, from over 4426 domains.
  • Page-One Google Ranking for terms such as:
    • "virtual construction software"
    • "bim estimating"
    • "5d estimating"
    • "5d bim"
Growth in Google Search Referrals:

 

 

Cilk Arts Increases Website Leads 6x With HubSpot Inbound Marketing Software

Posted by Rick Burnes on Thu, Jan 08, 2009 @ 10:08 AM
Submit to Digg digg it | Submit to Reddit reddit | Add to delicious delicious | Submit to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon | Share on Facebook Facebook | Share on Twitter Twitter 

 

About Cilk Arts

Cilk Arts is a startup software company based in Burlington, MA. Its software aims to ease the transition to multi-core computing for software developers and users. It is the product of 15 years of research at MIT. 

 

Challenge

Cilk's Vice President of marketing, Ilya Mirman, faced a unique challenge when he began work at Cilk: The company wanted to time its product launch slightly ahead of the mass market demand for multi-core computing. This made finding customers -- software developers -- "like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Moreover, Cilk was a startup and Ilya was the only employee focused on marketing. He needed a marketing platform that would bring him qualified customers, that he could manage on his own and that fit his startup budget.

 

Solution

Ilya chose HubSpot. He built his web site using the HubSpot content management system, he began publishing a blog using the HubSpot blogging software, he tracked his search engine performance using HubSpot's Search Engine Optimization tools, he used HubSpot's lead management tools (integrated with Salesforce.com), and he tracked his referrals and traffic with HubSpot marketing analytics.

Ilya's first step was to get the content management system up and running. He found the HubSpot content management tools easy to use and ideally suited for people like himself who are not web designers. "I'm an engineer by training, I'm not a good graphics guy ... I've done some HTML programming but it would be a disaster if I tried to program our website. With the HubSpot content management system -- both in terms of ease of use and the templates available -- it was very natural to get a website up and running."

Once he had the CMS up and running, Ilya turned his attention to keyword optimization. Cilk wanted to take an analytical approach to SEO. "We wanted to understand, what are the keywords that matter -- both in terms of relevancy and the ones that get traffic." Ilya used HubSpot's Keyword Grader to determine which keywords were relevant to Cilk's business, which ones drove traffic and which ones were not too difficult to obtain top rainkings for. Then, using HubSpot's blogging software and content management system, he created content rich with Cilk's target keywords. 

Cilk also implemented HubSpot's lead management system. Ilya used HubSpot's form builder to capture leads on their website, and lead tracking tools to see how many times potential customers visited the Cilk website, and what they were looking at. Since HubSpot was able to integrate Cilk's HubSpot account with Salesforce.com, Ilya was able to view all HubSpot's lead tracking data in Salesforce.com, allowing him to see which marketing campaigns were converting best. With this closed-loop marketing insight, Ilya was able to further refine his content development.

 

Results

With HubSpot software and an inbound marketing approach, Cilk has achieved remarkable results:
  • Inbound lead volume has gone up more than sixfold over the past 6 months (monthly lead volume has gone from ~20 in
    the summer, to over 120 in December)
  • Google search traffic has grown from 200 referrals a month to over 1,000, with page-one Google ranks for non-brand keywords such as:
    • Multicore Software
    • Multithread Matrix Multiplication
    • what is parallelism
    • pthread pool
  • 292 people have subscribed to the Cilk blog

In addition to steady growth in core marketing metrics, Ilya says HubSpot has created significant improvements in the efficiency of his marketing operation. Before HubSpot, he says, "there wasn't one holistic way that I could see what programs are working, what pages are getting traffic, and then act on it." With HubSpot, he's been able to do that.

 

Monthly lead volume has increased 6x:  

cilk leads 

292 people have subscribed to the company blog:


blog subscriptions


All Posts | Next Page