A Change of Focus Requires a Marketing Rethink
Mention is a SaaS company that changes the way its clients monitor the web. By late 2015, it had hundreds of thousands of users on its self-serve plan; the next step was to focus on its enterprise-level product. It hired Ben Twichell as head of marketing and tasked him with creating a system that could generate and nurture the high-quality leads it needed.
“Up until my arrival, all of our efforts revolved around getting people to our website, where they would sign up for our product in a self-serve way. Our enterprise product required a different approach. You can’t buy it on the website, you have to have a sales conversation about it first — these are deals ranging from €3,000 to €40,000.”
Ben believed that marketing automation software would be essential to the new enterprise strategy, and his first thought was HubSpot Marketing Hub. Having worked with it before in previous roles, he felt that it would be an ideal solution.
“While I was a fan, I wanted to double-check, so I did research into other platforms, including Marketo. It didn’t seem user-friendly enough; I wanted non-techies in the company to be able to jump right in. All the others I investigated simply weren’t all-in-one solutions. I needed something that would help me not only generate leads but manage them as well, and they didn’t do that. I came back to HubSpot really quickly.”
Mention signed up, and it started onboarding with HubSpot Marketing Hub in January 2016.
Targeting a New Type of Client
Ben immediately began working on leveraging the content that would attract potential enterprise clients – Mention has a remarkable repository of ebooks, webinars, checklists, and courses. He set each item up on a landing page, adding forms to collect user data.
“We then nurture these leads with workflows. When someone views a certain website page, opens an email, submits a certain form, or downloads an ebook, they are enrolled in a workflow. That triggers a future set of activities which allows us to nurture leads in a personalized, targeted way.”
Mention saw a massive increase in leads within six weeks, and Ben says he gives HubSpot “very strong credit” for this.
“The platform was crucial, as was HubSpot’s own content around the inbound methodology and the strategies that it suggests for maximizing impact. We applied a lot of the HubSpot philosophy to our own marketing and it’s worked really well.”
One of the key parts of Ben’s plan was to align the marketing and sales departments more closely. He set up lead scoring, so when prospects reach a certain level, they are automatically pushed through to sales. He has also integrated Salesforce with the HubSpot software, so the sales team can view every marketing interaction that has taken place before they make contact with a potential customer.
“The sales process for enterprise clients requires a lot of attention. The fact that we have already engaged with our leads with value-added content makes closing deals much easier.”
A Website That Became a Lead-Generating Machine
Since partnering with HubSpot, Mention has turned its website into a lead-generating machine. It gained 5,000 new leads within five months and it is currently hiring new salespeople to deal with the volume.
“Our conversion rates are really good,” explains Ben. “Our landing pages have an average 55% conversion rate, while our visitor-to-contact rate is amazing – 13% of all visitors to the website have either signed up for a trial or given us their information. Our closed deals have increased; we have a 5% conversion rate from contact to paying customer.”
Employee numbers are rising as well. This time last year, Mention had nine staff members; today, it has 40. Ben envisages that this number could grow to 150 by 2017. The company wants to continue this upward trajectory over the next two years and solidify its stronghold in the enterprise arena. It has already seen great success in capturing some big-name clients, including Adobe, BBDO, Microsoft, Doctor's Without Borders, Allianz, Deliveroo, and Hired, and Ben plans to use HubSpot Marketing Hub to gain more.
“HubSpot reduces the need for other tools. I invest a lot of time in it, because the more I invest, the more I get out of it. I want to continue to work on completely aligning our sales and marketing, so we’re working on optimizing our processes. The HubSpot software definitely has everything we need to make that happen.”
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