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"