About eCoast Sales

eCoast Salesprovides a full-suite ofappointment setting, marketing outsourcing, and channel sales solutions to companies in the technology industry. They have been in business for eight years, serving clients like IBM and Cisco with lead generation and creative marketing solutions.

Challenge

In 2007 Will Gibney, eCoast's vice president of sales and marketing, began looking for help with online marketing. "Our marketing strategy was not on the web," he explained. "We were struggling to get new people to our website. The way we've grown our business is through word of mouth."

eCoast knew its clients were on the web, and they wanted to show up when potential customers searched Google and other search engines, but they didn't have the expertise to do it in house. He considered many traditional search engine optimization consultants, but was turned off by their high prices and black-box tactics

Solution

In January 2008, eCoast engaged with HubSpot and focused more of their marketing strategy on content-driveninboundtactics.

The eCoast team setup a blog and began producing content related to their field,demand generation. Working with HubSpot internet marketing consultant Brian Rogers, eCoast used the blog to position their company as a thought leader. "We wanted to do a blog but we wanted to do it smart. He gave us the direction."

Once they had the blog up and running, Will and his team used HubSpot'ssearch engine optimization toolsto refine the content and improve its traffic- and lead-generating power. HubSpot'sKeyword Graderto enabled them to determine which keywords they should optimize for by showing them the tradeoffs between traffic, relevance and competitiveness in keywords. As soon as they decided which keywords to optimize for, they were able to restructure their website pages and content production around these goals.

eCoast also took advantage of HubSpot'scompetitive tracking tools. By following search engine metrics for their competitors, they were able to keep ahead of the competition and refocus their energy on areas where competitors were catching up in search engine rankings.

In addition to optimizing their content with HubSpot's search engine optimization tools, eCoast used HubSpot'smarketing analyticspackage to track its use. Since the analytics tools were designed specifically for marketers, eCoast found it easy to see how people were finding their content -- and, thus, which marketing campaigns and content distribution strategies were working.

The Results

eCoast's results with HubSpot have been impressive. Over the past year they've seen significant growth in website traffic, google search referrals and web leads. Specifically:

• Over the last six months, website visitors are up 78% over the previous six months (monthly average was 556 for Dec 2007 - May 2008; 992 for June - Nov 2008)
• Over the last six months, Google search referrals are up 51% over the previous six month (monthly average was 145 for Dec 2007 - May 2008; 219 for June - Nov 2008)
• They have accumulated over 430 inbound links, from over 168 domains.
• Page-One Google Ranking for terms such as:
• • "marketing outsourcing"
  • "outsourced sales"
  • "attendance generation"
  • "appointment setting experts"
  • "call blitzs"

Beyond the raw improvements in traffic and leads, Will says HubSpot has made it simple for eCoast to continuously update and improve its online marketing strategy. "HubSpot has enabled us to keep up with the trends."