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Dan Gallagher of Hubspot joined the ATDC to give 60-minutes tour of turning your website into a lead gen machine.
Below is the transcript. All typos are the fault of the A.I.
[00:00:00] Setup up my screen share. Make sure you all can see that you see the HubSpot. Ok, awesome.
[00:00:07] So and that's the other thing, yeah, please feel free to jump off of mute or put something in the chat, Adam. If you see something in the chat like a question, please interrupt me because I can't keep my eye on everything here, so I appreciate that.
[00:00:18] So yeah. So before we dive in, as Adam was mentioning, for those that are portfolio companies, you have access to free software like the CRM, which is free. And then you also have some free introductory tools on the sales and marketing side, service side, CMS side and operations hubs. All of those were built natively off of that CRM, and they all communicate. So that's sort of the first element. And then you also have discounting pricing.
[00:00:44] So I'll show you a little bit here education resources through the program as well that we're tapping into right now. Hubspot integrates with now its five hundred software integrations.
[00:00:54] And then on the discounting side, if you have fundraised under two million, then you're eligible for 90 percent off as well as these other services. And then if you fundraise two million or more but have not yet fundraised a Series A or a Series B, then you'd be eligible for 50 percent off the first year. Twenty five percent off on going. So you would access that through this link. You can ping me or Adam for for more information there.
[00:01:18] So, all right, well, before we get too far in, let me introduce myself. So my name is Dan G. I'm the head of partnerships for the Southeast, for HubSpot, for startups. So basically what my job is, I partner with VCs, accelerators, different entrepreneurial organizations to help their startups succeed. To do that is by providing those resources. I highlighted above just a little bit more background. I've previously led the Community Partnerships team over at Capital Factory, which is the largest venture group in Texas. And I've also been in your shoes as a founder as well and have learned a lot and made a lot of mistakes. So hopefully we can shorten your learning curve through the mistakes that I've already made on that front. So, all right, let us dive into it.
[00:02:00] So what are we talking about today?
[00:02:03] So we're going to cover a few things. We're going to cover the new playbook. So how has marketing and sales changed? There has been a fundamental shift, so we'll cover that fundamental shift. We're going to talk about the new strategies through the lens of attract, engage and delight your customers and prospects. And then we're going to cover the actual play. So how do you actually go out and implement and execute? And that was just for some context. I've attended a lot of webinars like this, and that's one thing that I've always really harping on.
[00:02:29] Getting across is like after we attend a session, what do we do? What is next? How do I actually action on that? So we're going to have some actionable items there.
[00:02:39] All right. So before we can talk about the new playbook, let's talk about the old playbook.
[00:02:43] So the old playbook? What was what has marketing look like historically? We're talking things like mailers, huge and personalized mailing list outreach, broadcast TV ads, door to door sales. And some of those old methods may still work, but their efficacy is certainly dwindling, and it can't be your main play anymore. Ninety one percent of folks are unsubscribing from just bulk email lists. No one opens direct mail anymore, and I'm sure most of you all are on Do Not Disturb or Do Not Call List as well. So interruptive sales techniques and interruptive marketing techniques are not really working anymore because customers are getting more savvy and prospects are getting better at blocking out those attempts. So we have to shift our strategy accordingly. So this applies to both B2C as well as B2B, because your potential customers, regardless of who they are, they're not going to want to be bombarded by ads or interruptions to their day.
[00:03:38] So given that let's talk a little bit about the how buyers are in control. And so here's a quote from Seth Godin here.
[00:03:46] So, yeah, so buyers are in control. And so just to give an example, who here has bought a car before or at least bought a car in the last 20 years? Right? You'd need a car. You'd see an ad on TV or on a billboard. You'd go down to the dealership. And in the old scenario, the seller had all of the information so that car salesman knew inventory. They knew what fair price was. They had feedback on brands and models and whatnot, and buyers really didn't know much of anything. There is very much an information asymmetry there, but that asymmetry has disappeared. Now, 80 percent of buyers are conducting some form of research before making a purchase decision. So they're getting information on price, they're getting information on inventory, they're much more informed. And just to extend out that car example, we have things like Carfax. Now you can buy cars, touch us through nirvana. I think Tesla has even taken it to the next level where you can customize exactly what features you want and then they'll deliver the car to your doorway or your driveway, right? So the process is fundamentally changed. And then the second piece here is the blocking out of interrupted marketing techniques like what we were talking about. So a perfect example here is like an ad blocker. I'm sure most of you all have ad blockers. I know I have one as well, and that's like blocking out some of those interruptive techniques. And then there's even cooking. Blockers now, so marketing is getting email, marketing is getting a little bit tougher. And then the third piece here is now the landscape has changed in the sense that buyers just have heightened expectations. Companies like Amazon have made very fast delivery, very easy returns, kind of the normal. And so depending on what market were, and we're having to adapt to that. And that's just the new standard fast shipping, excellent customer service. So they've gotten accustomed to this. Buyers have and now we all need to adjust to that new normal.
[00:05:34] So, all right, let's talk about the new playbook.
[00:05:37] So how are we doing it differently? So the way to engage the modern buyer and what I'm saying, modern I'm talking about probably the last 10 years is something called HubSpot calls inbound marketing. And really, what inbound marketing is is it's the switch from knocking on people's doors to getting people to knock on your door. And so how do we do that right? We do that through creating helpful, relevant and timely content and delivering tailored experiences to that particular buyer. And so when we're talking about content creation, we always want it to be through that helpful lens right away that's attracting people to you through helpful information in a non interruptive way. So it's about getting the right information to the right person at the right time, and we're going to dive a lot more into this in a little bit. So and then the last thing I'll mention on that as well is that your target audience is human, right? So they want to be interacted with in a human way. So making sure that you are tailoring that experience to another human and being empathetic on their buyer's journey.
[00:06:40] So the real goal here is that you're forming relationships and connections with your prospect and you're meeting your prospect where they are and helping them solve the problem and giving them the information they need along their journey. So before we can even kind of dive into the strategy, we have to go and talk about buyer's persona. So actually, let me scoot back here in the chat real quick, who is heard of a buyer's persona? And if you have heard of a buyer's persona, do you have a well-established buyer's persona for your company currently? So let's see some. Let's see some responses in the chat room. Click. You see. Sorry, I'm loading up the chat. Yes and yes. Awesome, Aaron, anyone else? Everyone know what a buyer's persona is. Do you have your buyer's persona fleshed out? Matthew? Yes and no. Or Matthew? Yes and yes. One Yes and no. Ok. Working on yours? Awesome. Well, I'm going to have some tools for you. For those of you who do know. Thank you, Tyler. Paolo, J. Awesome. So we'll go over it quickly and then I'll give you some tools for how to set that up.
[00:07:39] And we'll go from there. So for those of you who don't know just a high level overview, a buyer's persona is a semi-fictional generalized human representation of your buyer. So it's really just a it's an aggregate set of characteristics, both demographic and psychographic that will help you inform who it is. You're actually trying to target who it is. You're actually trying to sell to, right? It's very easy to get distracted. So if you create this sort of persona, it will very much help you hone in on your messaging. It's also going to inform you how they like to be communicated with. How do they absorb information and where are they getting those information sources from? So like I said, it's broken down into demographic information and psychographic information, and just a quick highlight as to the differences, demographic information, things like age, location, employment status and then psychographic is more things like pain points, challenges, motivations, et cetera. So once again, like why do we even create this buyer persona? It's really to help us create the targeted content based on that individual or that profile. So that is very crucial to get started with. So as you are building that out, if you or if you're just revisiting your buyers persona in general, here are some questions that you can ask yourself. And then HubSpot has created a very helpful free tool called Make My Persona, where it's like type form where you just type in one piece, you enter all the characteristics of your buyer, and then it will split up kind of a nice graphic that is tailored to your buyer's persona. So especially in the beginning, it's helpful to list out everything about this person.
[00:09:15] We're going to quickly walk through a sample buyer persona. This is actually a HubSpot for startups buyer persona. So at our team, we use growth, Gary. So and you can see some general characteristics about him. He's aspires to be an entrepreneur like even things like has read and loved the four hour work week, right? That's a pretty granular. I see something in the chat. We have a question here. Are we getting this presentation? Yes, I will follow up with this presentation afterwards. So we'll have the presentation, the links. I'll have the office hours, links as well. So thank you for asking your time. So, yeah, and if we dive in here, you can see this. This information will help us inform how we want to target this person. So, for example, trying and buying tools responds well to free and freemium. So if that is our buyer's persona at HubSpot, so now turning it over to HubSpot, we do have the free CRM. So in order to get that familiarity, our buyers generally like to touch play with the software first. So we created a business model around that, and how we target and communicate with our prospects is also going to be informed by this.
[00:10:22] Here we go. And so, yeah, I mean, the key here really is to understand as you're creating that buyer's persona, to understand who is getting the most value from your product or service and then framing that in a way, how are you targeting them, right? So at that company, finding out who exactly would be the person who's going to value, get the most value from your service and then build out a target persona around that individual?
[00:10:45] So quick question again for the chat. So do you think when you're targeting your prospects, who do you think is getting the most value out of it? So here you go. A yes, our target personas are well defined and know we already kind of answered this. Not really sure. And then d all prospects with money are interesting for me, so. Another quick question for you is how many people here have multiple buyer's personas? And is anyone fall into the category of where if anyone has money, they're interested in working with them? Especially one thing I will warn that we see what we got in the chat here multiple personas, multiple personas. Ok. Multiple awesome. So the only thing that I will warn against for multiple personas is especially as you're starting out, it's important to be focused. And one thing that sometimes when folks will select D, one thing to keep in mind, there's no problem with having multiple personas in it in the beginning. But one thing to keep in mind is just because somebody has money and is a prospect does not mean they're a good fit for your business. And who you're looking for is for good fits for your business. So it can be very distracting, especially if you're going on the more institutional side or B to B to B side. If someone says, Oh, I would love to test a pilot, I've got x amount of money that can also be a trap too. Just because they have money, there may be a lot of customizations there. It's taking you away from your core product fit, right? So those are things to keep in mind as you're building that out and don't really stay focused in on who that buyer persona should be.
[00:12:18] I see something in a chat and see if there's a question, but also well defined. Exactly. That's the key. And as I mean, we have multiple buyers personas that HubSpot as well, right? Like as we grow as a business, there's going to be multiple channels and targets that we're going to be focusing on. So but in the beginning, it's important to stay focused. So now we were talking about the buyer's journey. So once we've outlined the buyer's persona, so now we know who we're targeting now, let's talk about the journey that they're going through in order to do that. I see some action in the chat.
[00:12:47] Let's see. Erin asked the question Would you say longer sales cycles equals more personas? Not necessarily, I would say. I mean, you could have just one persona for a long sales cycle. The sales cycle is more indicative of sort of like, is it a transactional kind of sale or is it more like B2B is generally going to be a little bit of a longer sales cycle? Then maybe a B to C because B to C is a little bit more transactional, right? So that's more determinant of the long sales cycle. On the persona side, it's really what what is your product or service solving for? So if there's multiple channels you're solving for, that's great, but you have limited resources. So how are you focusing that resources? And in those early days, that's I mean, that's always the balance, but it's especially important on the front end. So does that answer the question here? It does. Thanks. Awesome. Cool. Yeah, thank you for the question. So, yeah, so now let's let's switch gears and let's talk about the buyer's journey here. So like I said, we've covered who the ideal buyer is. You have the tools to go out and flesh that out or build that out. So now the other thing we want to think about is what is the aggregate set of interactions that our prospects are going through. So every touchpoint with our company is a part of that buyer's journey.
[00:14:00] So one thing that's hugely important that a lot of people forget is not every buyer is at the same stage in the buyer's journey. And this is incredibly important as you're thinking about content marketing and thinking about building out assets. You want to have that asset match the stage that they're in in the buyer's journey, right? So, for example, some people are just getting started, they're just becoming familiar that they have a problem. So they would be more in the awareness awareness stage, right? Then they would shift along so they know they have a problem. They're looking at how they can solve this problem. So what is my opportunity set? That's not necessarily determining between vendors yet. That's just considering what are the choices that I have to solve this problem. And then the next stage is the decision stage. That's where they're then selecting. This is the manner in which I want to solve my problem. Who are the providers or what are the solutions that would then solve that problem? So this is a little bit of a silly example, but just using like I'm going to new shoes, for example. So if I'm moving from San Diego to to Atlanta and it's wintertime in San Diego, I've only ever had Sandals. So now in the wintertime, Atlanta is going to get cold. And so it's like, OK, well, now I need some shoes, so I'm aware that I have a problem. I have cold feet. At that point, I can do a whole bunch of things. I can get shoes, I can buy boots. I could wear just a lot more socks with my sandals, and Adam would make fun of me for that. I could wrap my feet in. I mean, there's some there's a bunch of silly ideas on that front, but I'm aware that I have a problem. Then at that point, like I said, consideration stage is like, Do I want to just wear a lot of socks? Do I want to get boots, et cetera? Then the decision stage is if I've said, OK, I know that I need to get boots. What? What brand of boots do I want? What features do I want from that boot? So if that's a little bit helpful as to delineate those stages?
[00:15:54] Any questions on that so far? Good. Ok. So I think this comes to a little bit of the crux of the presentation, especially what you guys were looking for, which is matching the content or assets to each one of those stages. So as I'm going along on my buyer's journey, what the job of marketers are is to be able to create assets that will match and inform them in that stage, right. So if I'm just looking for more general information, I'm trying to learn more about my problem. I may not even know how to vocalize this problem. I just am feeling some pain point. I want to learn more about it. So how can I do that and how can we create assets for them? Well, we can write white papers about the problem. We could have free guides, tip sheets, e-books, checklists, videos. A common example and this is something I'm going through right now actually is like pods. They have a moving checklist so I can tap into that and that's going to help me with my move. And so that's an asset that they've created for that stage. So on the consideration stage, we've got things like webinars we've got and that's where you're demonstrating your expertise, you're imparting knowledge. We've got case studies. So this is where you're building off of previous examples of success that you have had. For others to consider proof points with customers, you can do free samples. That's another example. And then on the decision stage would be things like trials or demos, some sort of consultation, a quote or a coupon if you're on the B2C side. So those are assets that you can create along the way.
[00:17:30] And the most important thing to understand in this journey is really that most of your competitors may go back here. Most of your competitors have a lot of information for the decision stage assets, right? So you see a lot on the price. There's always pricing pages, or there may be free trials and demos. How you can really differentiate, differentiate yourself from your competition is going to be creating more assets in this awareness and consideration stage. And the other big advantage to that is you're building the relationship earlier, right? And that's what marketing is, is nurturing leads, building relationships. So if you're getting in front and providing value on the front end, that's going to be a huge competitive advantage versus most of your competitors. Usually what we see and we're working with about twenty five thousand startups, we're seeing that about only five percent of people who go to your website are actually in the decision stage, most of them. That means the majority of the people who are visiting your website are not ready to make a purchase. So keeping that in mind is going to be incredibly helpful. I see a question here. You know, the problem exists, but let me read that. How do you categorize those who don't even know a problem exists, but you begin to talk to them, they see the value of your product and quickly get interested. So I would say if they don't know that they have a problem that exists, that would be them becoming aware of it. So you're saying that and honestly, if I said that right, apologies. If I didn't. You're saying like, you talk to them and you realize that there's a solution that they didn't even realize they had a pain point. And then they talk to you and they realize that they do have a pain point. Is that correct? Yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah, so I would still put them in the consideration in the awareness stage, you basically helped them become aware that they have a problem. So the value piece once again like decision stage is just them determining whether they want to go with you or one of your competitors. Consideration stages. How do they solve that problem? An awareness stage is that there's a way to do it better, or they have a pain point. So does that answer your question? It does. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. All right, so let us oh, I see one more question in the chat. What is the best method? What is the best method for this type of customer? Well, we're going to dive into the strategies of that. So if you just hang in there with me for 10 more minutes, and if I don't answer your question, please ask it that again. So. And perfect segue. Thank you, Jay. Now we're going to talk about these strategies for that.
[00:20:12] So now that we've, you know, at HubSpot, we've identified basically three main strategies associated with scaling growth. And when we say growth that includes marketing, sales and service because really you need to view all of those as just a buyer's journey along that way. So the real scaling happens when you are tying marketing, sales and service together. So we just call this growth in the growth strategies we've got, attracting strategies, engaging strategies and delighting strategies. And so attracting is really, how do you draw people in? How are you attracting people or get people to want to engage with you or want to learn more about you? Engaging is really like once they're ready to engage with you, how are you providing value? And then the third is delighting. So really like, how are you making this whole process of delight from start to finish? And very importantly, after they become customers, how are you keeping them engaged? Are you still providing value to them?
[00:21:08] So once again, three elements here we've got attract engage in the light, and here are just some of the assets that kind of correlate to those that you can use and strategies to. So you've got you can create ads. That's a that's a smaller portion and it's a little bit less important, but still important nonetheless. You can create video assets as well. That's something that we've seen have great success, and HubSpot uses that quite a bit. And actually in that link that I had sent you previously for the office hours, if you notice at the top of that, we have product demos and those are videos. See, and the great thing about that, and this is starting to lean into sales a little bit. One of the great things about video assets is they're evergreen and they're repeatable and scalable. Like, if I wanted to do a demo with you one on one that's going to take, let's call it half an hour. And I only touch one person if I have a video that could touch hundreds or thousands. And all I had to do was film at one time. Other tools and strategies, blogging, social media content strategy. We're going to cover all of this in a little bit.
[00:22:07] So quick question, where do you think you should be focusing your marketing efforts and assets today? So just going back, should should we be talking about attracting tools, engaging tools, delighting tools? What do you think we should be focusing? Where do you think most startups should be focusing? All three. Ok. Any other answers? Attracting engaging A.. Ok. Appreciate it. Yeah, so generally, I mean, certain generally the attracting and engaging most, it really depends on your businesses. The short answer. So wherever you feel like there's a shortcoming, so are people coming to your website or are you having problems bringing people to your website? Then you want to focus on attracting strategies if they come to your website, but they don't really convert. So they're still an anonymous viewer, but you don't actually have any sort of contact information or a lead that you can build off of. Then you want to focus on engaging strategies. And if really the weakness of your company is more so on the delighting side or really like the customer engagement or the service side, then you'd want to focus on underlying strategies. Make sure there's no other questions here.
[00:23:12] Depending on your stage. Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Ok, so now let's go in. We're going to focus a little bit more on the attracting and engaging, because that's where there's probably the most ground to cover. So let's go over the actual plays like how to do this?
[00:23:27] So for attracting its SEO, right? So Google, it's huge. Everyone's heard of Google by far the most common way to get to search information and to conduct research. I'm sure everyone here has used Google before. And so what we want to do is we want to use the power of Google to our advantage. And so the question here is how do we know our buyer's persona knowing the buyer's journey and knowing kind of like how people are engaging online every day, how are we going to find ways to draw them in? We're going to do this through SEO. We're going to do this through blogging and we're going to do this through social media. And just before I dive in a little bit further, we're going to cover these ideas at a high level and the strategy is at a high level. There is so much more in depth we can go on. And if there is interest in any of these topics and going a little bit deeper, let Adam know we could always set up another education session on any of the topics we're covering today.
[00:24:20] So first off, on understanding SEO optimization, is everyone familiar with SEO or that term search engine optimization? Ok, so SEO, let's dive into that.
[00:24:34] There's really two main elements of SEO. So we've got on page SEO, and that's what most people are pretty decent at on page SEO. There's a lot of software out there, including HubSpot, to optimize your page for SEO or your landing page. And it's really the foundational elements of like having the content, you create those marketing assets that you're creating. Having them having a good chance to show up highly ranked on a search, right? So that's what on page. And then off page SEO is where I think there's probably more opportunity to learn and that's really getting recognized as an authority. And we're going to talk about kind of how Google has changed. But Google basically is constantly trying to figure out if you're an authority on a subject. And so like, for example, I'm going to give you an example. So I'm a tennis coach on the side. And so if I write a blog post about tennis, Google doesn't view me as an authority on test. So I'm not going to show up within the first five pages. It's going to get buried somewhere. But if Rafael Nadal or Wimbledon decided to write a blog on tennis, then it would absolutely show up on the first page because they are recognized as an authority. So even though I have relevant content on page, I don't have that authority and so I'm not really going to show up and authority is really the key to winning the CEO game, if you will.
[00:25:51] And so we're going to talk about that in a second. It's like we got question. How would Rihanna? I'm reading, Jane, I'm reading your question, how would we handle SEO for waste wiser versus waste wiser, our company with which many people spell with s OK, yeah, we can. I would say, let's cover that a little bit more in the office hours. We might have some relevant tips for you specifically for y'all, so we can cover that. Excellent. Yeah. I think you guys are really going to benefit from those office hours. You have a lot of good questions. So OK, so real quick. Just shifting back to on page SEO once again, it's about optimizing when someone searches for that topic and having the best chance of showing up. So some of the things that we've learned at HubSpot in the last five years, that's a bit unique and different about how others do. Seo is we're not targeting keywords. There's a lot of software out there that targets keywords and does keyword analysis. But because of the way that Google is changing, keyword analysis is no longer nearly as effective. In the past decade, Google has shifted from towards understanding more natural language, the meaning and the content behind what you're typing in, not just the actual keywords. And so I think it's easiest to give an example about this. So if me Dan writes the word Italian in a search bar, that's going to give me one set of information. Maybe it's going to be on Italian food. It's going to take in factors like my past history. It's going to take in my location, taken into context the time of day, any other sort of contextual information that Google has about us. And to be honest. They have a lot of contextual information about us so that my search is going to be different than if I than an Italian in Italy typing in the word Italian. They may see whatever the political news is of the day, or very likely they're going to see probably like what the soccer game results are or something like that. So even though we're typing in the same keyword, different results, different people, different places. I see something in the chat here. Yes, we're going to talk about pillar pages in a second.
[00:27:57] Erin, thank you for that. It's coming up right now. So here you go. So anyway, so yeah, so context matters. Keywords less effective. We want to optimize around topics. And so as Erin is alluding to, how we're going to do that is we're going to build out something called a topic cluster. And so what we're doing is we're building a high value, extensive piece of content on a topic. I'm going to give you an example in a second. And then what we're doing is we're writing cluster content or different blog posts or articles that are addressing sub topics of the broader topic.
[00:28:33] So let me give you a HubSpot for startups example. So we want to own or be knowledgeable and recognize as an authority in entrepreneurship. So we're going to write some sort of base article on entrepreneurship. Maybe know everything you need to know about entrepreneurship. And then these these topic clusters on the sides are going to be things like should I consider forming an LLC or how do I finance my company and what not? And they all relate back to that broader topic. So in this way, it's not me. I don't have to write one hundred articles that are trying to target one hundred different keywords, right? Because if someone's searching entrepreneurship, there's a million different ways that Google can interpret that, right? So if I'm building that one pillar page and then I'm writing topic cluster articles around it, that's a way that I'm going to get authority on all of these pieces of or relevant sorry on all of these topics within the broader topic of entrepreneurship. So basically, what I'm doing is I'm giving Google a signal that I'm writing about this topic and that it's relevant. And now with about like five or six pieces of other content, what I'm doing and some targeting thousands of variations of keywords, right? And so that's a lot more efficient than trying to just target a keyword of entrepreneurship or or a small business or something like that when a lot of other people are competing at that.
[00:29:54] So that's sort of the first part of the SEO game. So now what we're going to do is how do we actually differentiate ourselves from others? And what we're going to do is we're going to dive into off page SEO. And the first piece of that is backlinks. So just by a show of, well, not a show of hands in the chat who here has heard of off page SEO or more specifically, as heard of backlinks. And if so, are you back linking right now? No. Ok. That's OK, Tyler. Awesome. Thank you, Juan. Appreciate that. Okay. I'm sorry. Got a little something out there. Yes, you think, OK, well, you'll know at the end of here. All right. Heard about backlinks, great, so for those of you who haven't. We're going to cover what a backlink is real quick. So back linking is when you're reading an article just for simplicity sake. If you're reading an article, there's a hyperlink somewhere somewhere else, and it's to a different website. So for example, like if I'm on ESPN and then I click a link and it takes me to, this is a terrible example. It takes me to something like fantasy football or something like that, and it's to a different provider or someone else who is running that site, right? So, yeah, that was a terrible example. Apologies for that. But basically, like if like a better example would be if you see like a review site and it's saying like five ways to improve your home decor or something like that, and then they're linking to this article was written by whoever at. And then they list the domain or the page that that person hosts. That would be an example. Backlink some other website bringing you back to your website. So that's going to help route traffic back to your pages, and it's also going to build you as an authority because the more what Google is seeing is, the more people that are routing back to your page. They're saying, OK, this person must be an authority and is recognized, so it's lending you credibility back. Linking is lending you credibility there. And so what we see with startups is that most startups are not back linking. They're putting out content, but there's no real links there. And so really, what we want to see and what is a little bit more effective is heavy back linking in the beginning. And then as you become more and more of an authority, it becomes a little less relevant because you have your own credibility in that space.
[00:32:14] So, you know, we can dive into a little bit as to like the strategy, some of you all may be thinking like, well, how do I get other people to post links to my page that is just going to ultimately lead traffic away from their website to my website? There are strategies around that. We have plenty of articles on how to do that. Just to give you a couple quick examples would be like if you have your blog connecting with somebody else who has a blog writing a guest blog post or creating a case study where it sits on your client's page and then it routes back to you. Creating some sort of like free tool is another way or a shareable template. Writing press releases on interesting company news or getting written about as a press release and then asking them to include your link back to your page. So those are all tips. Like I said, we can dive into a little bit more of the strategy of that, or you can just type that in for a full list of how to do that.
[00:33:09] So, all right, the second strategy is on blogging, so now that we've talked about kind of how to create backlinks and SEO on page and off page, let's talk about blogging. So you might be saying like, why should a startup even spend time writing blog content? Is that the best, especially when your resource constrained?
[00:33:28] And if you're just a founder, why would you spend your time there? So there's a few reasons. Let me pull these all up real quick. So first off, it costs less. It's less it's less expensive to get your message out there than for paid advertising. As you see, content marketing generates three times more leads. The other beautiful thing is that it's evergreen content once again, so once you create a blog, it doesn't go away. If you stop paying for paid search, you're not showing up anymore. Your traffic drops to zero, whereas like once again, blog content is evergreen. You can keep using it and it can. It can keep serving as a lead generator on a recurring basis. The second thing is it also helps you close deals because you're starting the relationship off on the right foot with prospects, right? You're not interrupting their day. They're coming to you to learn. So that's a much better relationship to have with a prospect. So that's the second reason. And then the third and fourth reason is it's driving long term value. Once again, it's much more scalable and it can keep producing leads for you. And it just in general drives more traffic. It's less interrupted, et cetera.
[00:34:39] And then three, we're going to touch on social media.
[00:34:43] So a couple of questions to ask yourself before even diving in. First off, B to B or B to C social media is relevant even if you're working for like your your client is a manufacturing company. Those buyers, whoever the buyer is at that manufacturing company, is still using Facebook, whether for the company or on the personal side, they're still using Twitter, LinkedIn, et cetera. And really, what social media is is it's just more channels for you to connect with prospects and build relationships on. So even if they're not using every single channel, it's still helpful to have some sort of a social media strategy. So as you're beginning your social media strategy, it's important to ask yourself a few questions that are going to shape your strategy. So one, what is your goal? Is it awareness? Is it branding? Is it lead generation? What is what is the purpose here? Second thing is, what platforms do you want to focus on? And this once again is going to tie back to your buyer persona that we were talking about earlier. Where is your prospect absorbing information? Where are they spending time for HubSpot? It's on LinkedIn, so we focus on LinkedIn. It's less if you're B to see, it may be more so on the Instagram side and whatnot. So you'd want to produce content where your buyers are absorbing information. And then lastly, it would be what type of content do you want to share? What format is most relevant? What way is your audience digesting content? Let's see some questions in the chat verbal. Awesome. Very cool, well, yeah, thank you for the share. All right, so there we go.
[00:36:14] And so really social media, how can you be successful at this? There's a few general tips, and social media certainly is an art. But a couple just general principles that everyone should be following. And one is be genuine, right? You need to have genuine content. The goal is absolutely not to trick people into reading something. That's not what you want. You want to be helpful again. You've started a company, which is a big risk. It takes a lot of time, takes a lot of energy. I've been there as well, and it's probably because you have passion with what you're doing. And so let that really shine through in your content. You are experts. You are professional. So establish that the second thing is to use visuals so people like pictures. Most folks are visual learners, so including some element of visuals, is going to be helpful. Second thing is, or third thing is to post multiple times a day post often. It's a it's a fine line. Once again, you don't want to be spammy, but at the same time you want to stay top of mind and you want to be able to provide value when there's an opportunity to provide value. And then the fourth thing is to analyze the performance data, and a lot of folks don't focus on this as much as they should. So you want to look at the data, what channels are working, what ad spend is paying dividends, and which one is not being thoughtful and intentional about what channels and what content in particular is performing well versus not performing well.
[00:37:36] So. There you go. And then, you know, I know we've talked about adds a little bit add should not be the core element of your strategy, but what ads can really do is they can help amplify the attract strategy. So once again, if you have an awesome blog post that's been doing really well or you have a video that's gotten a lot of interactions, you can boost that through ads. So I would use ads more as a targeted spend for the content that is already working for you and once again like data is going to help you help inform that. And this is not a HubSpot, you know, a HubSpot word-Of-Mouth promotion, I guess. Sorry for the blank. There you can use HubSpot for this to track where your how your ads are performing, how many clicks, how many impressions, et cetera. All the way we have an ROI tracker. Other software can do it too. Very important that you're using at least one of those to measure that. So as.
[00:38:33] I was mentioning, this is actually what HubSpot interface would look like. So you're measuring impressions, clicks, and you can see the conversion percentages along the way. And since it's all built off of a CRM, it actually can track it from anonymous viewer to stranger to prospect to customer. And so you can actually see a true ROI flow through by channel, and this is for across your social media. The reason why this is not only important just for your social media strategy, but one other component that's really helpful is as you go are going out and fundraising, which is top of mind all of the time, right? You can go to VCs or prospective investors and say, like, Look, I have hard data here. If I spend a thousand dollars on Facebook ads, it leads to x number of clicks. Y number of new leads. Z number of customers. And if I spend a thousand, I'm going to get a return of twelve hundred dollars, right? That is very compelling for them to see. And so if you can present that data and allows them for like an apples to apples comparison, that is going to very much help you in your fundraising as well. And then on your side, too, you can see which channels what's the cost, the customer acquisition costs or CAC across all of the channels. Let's see here. Got a question. Maybe. Ok, cool, thank you, Matt, appreciate that. Yeah, so that is that any questions on ROI ad social media, anything so far? I know I'm throwing a lot at, y'all. We still good as everyone asleep. We got something in the chat here, so let me check that out. Yes, fully awake, that's what I'm talking about, Juan. Ok, awesome.
[00:40:19] All right, let us power through and continue.
[00:40:21] So we have covered attraction strategies. Now we're going to shift over to engagement strategies. I didn't touch on these earlier, so I'm going to just touch on these very quickly. A couple engaging tools that you have would be things like chat bots, and I know we were talking about that a little bit earlier. Hubspot also has a chat bot as well. Super easy to build and create other sites, and providers can do that, too. One interesting thing I'll talk about chat bots in a second is it's actually two x. People would rather interact with a chat bot during the sales process than an actual live chat, and we're not exactly sure why. But we think that the logic is that chat bots guide you to resources and live people are more on the sales side, and when they're in that information, gather. Remember, only five percent of the people visiting your website are ready to make a decision. Everyone else is either in the awareness stage or in the consideration stage, and so chat bots perform a little bit better. The second tool for engaging is building lead magnets. We'll talk about that and then we're also going to talk about email and automation there. There we go.
[00:41:26] So live chat and chat bots.
[00:41:31] So you want to once again like it's very easy to set up a chat bot and really the goal is just to increase conversion while Leeds are hot. And so once again, like, you know, one of the big fundamental shifts as well and this is with sales and with marketing is just since buyers are now in control, they also want to access information when they can. You know, most people are busy nine to five, especially if you're a service provider, you're providing some some sort of products as well, especially in the B2B space. You know, they may be busy doing their full time jobs nine to five, and they may want to research this information at 11 p.m. on a Sunday. Your salespeople aren't going to be ready there, but that is a lead. They're ready to be connected with. They're ready to be engaged with. So you want to be able to create that, and that's something that a chat bot can help with as well. You can. You can get more information to. Chat bots are super helpful at converting people from strangers into prospects, and the way that you do that is by learning information about them, their name, their email, so you have something to go off of.
[00:42:32] So chat bots super helpful. And also the positioning one thing to mention, as well as the positioning of the chat bot on what pages they appear is going to be relevant as well. So we at HubSpot, we don't have any live chats on any pages except for decision making pages. So that's on the pricing pages or the demo pages everywhere else. We have chat bots. Looks like I got a question here. How low should the script for the interaction for chat bots pretend to be live interactions? That's a great question, and that really depends, I guess in some ways on your buyer's persona and by your industry. I would say once again, you want to be genuine, you don't want to be fooling them into thinking that and then think about like, what is that chat bot or live interaction? Serving a purpose of is if it's information, it can be frustrating as a prospect to think that you're talking to somebody real when it just ends up being a bot or they're not able to assist you further. So I would just be clear with it, whether it's a chat bot or whether it's a live person and a lot of times like it will say that as kind of like the first line, whether it's a bot or whether it's a live interaction. In the software itself, if that wasn't clear. So great question, by the way. Yeah, thank you.
[00:43:53] So here we are now on lead magnet. So you're providing these great resources to attract folks. People are now starting to come to your website, but what kind of comes next? Like I was alluding to just a moment ago, you need to turn these anonymous visitors into prospects and you need something for your internal teams, whether that's marketing or sales, to work off of an action on something to build the relationship off of. And so really, there's a golden rule, right? So and the golden rule at HubSpot and in general is to add value before you're extracting value. And once again, you're doing this. This is really the essence of inbound marketing, and you're doing this by creating valuable content and by providing help to them before they're ready to make that purchase decision. And you're guiding them towards that. So always add value first.
[00:44:42] Let me see here other things to do, like here's an example of a use case, and this is once again like an asset for HubSpot in that awareness stage. So right now, they're aware of the problem. They're not going to care about a killer use case, right? So this is not an awareness stage asset because if you're just trying to get a sense of what your problem is, getting a use case of how HubSpot is going to solve your problem is not is not the information, it's not where they are in the buyer's journey. So it's not helpful. So this would be more of a decision or consideration. Stage asset.
[00:45:15] Value calculator is a late consideration stage asset, so there are you aware that they have a problem and now they're starting to consider what those solutions are? And here's an example of a tool here tools help.
[00:45:29] Decision makers are why this is another example of a tool. This is a consideration stage asset that we have at HubSpot.
[00:45:37] And then here this is going to be more on the awareness side, and this is once again this is the trade, the giving value first and the way that we're giving value is through this free download. But what do I want in return for that free download? I want to get their email and usually I want to get their name. One thing I will highlight here you see that phone number is a required element to gathering information on this page. That can be a bit tricky depending on your industry and how people like to connect. Usually, people are a little bit more reluctant to give phone numbers than they are to give email. So just keeping that in mind as to what information you're requiring that your prospects or your strangers provide in order to get the content.
[00:46:18] So and just to quickly summarize the types of lead magnets once again and that can go across the different stages. So awareness consideration decision would be things like e-books, white papers, case studies, checklists, templates, templates or webinars or tools. So here's a few more. Here's a helpful link as well if you want a little bit more insight into email marketing and how to use lead magnets. Here's a really helpful blog article for that.
[00:46:44] So any questions so far before we dive into email, marketing and automation? So good. Ok. All right. Let's talk about email marketing as an engaged strategy. So we've covered ways to bring people to your website by attracting them.
[00:47:06] So once again, that was SEO, that was blogging, that was social media. We've started to convert them through forms through chat box, through lead magnets and other engaging plays. So now that we have that information and this is now a prospect, they're not a stranger anymore. How do we build on that? How do we nurture that lead? So how do we get someone to download who downloaded that awareness stage content? How do we get them to have a phone call with our sales team or go through a product details page?
[00:47:33] And basically, how do we keep them flowing through the buyer's journey? So let me scoot back here real quick acceleration too fast. So we do we can do that through email marketing. That's how we can nurture leads. So when it comes to customer acquisition. Email is still 10 times more effective for reaching those prospects than Facebook and Twitter combined. So we know that email marketing is not dead. Just by looking at your inbox right now, right? I'm sure you have received emails from others who want to sell you something or want to connect with you in some way, so it's still happening. It is still alive, but there are strategies to be more effective. There's things to do and there's things not to do. So I'm going to keep harping on this. I'm going to say a little more time. The absolute key for email marketing and any sort of attracting or engaging strategies is making sure that you are meeting that prospect or buyer where they are. So that means that you're sending the right message to the right person at the right time. And if that message is through content, you're sending the right content to the right person at the right time. So you know, you might be asking yourself, Well, how do I know if I'm sending the right message to the right person at the right time? The way to your got your North Star here? Always come back to that buyer's persona and come back to that buyer's journey and then just think, think to yourself, like what is the piece of information and what is the right delivery method given where if I were my prospect or buyer, like, what would I be thinking about at this stage? What information would I want to have? You know? So that's really important. A couple other things to touch on. For optimization, we'll cover this quickly. Basically, you want to optimize your emails as well. No one wants to receive a mass blast email regardless of what industry it is. You want to feel like that person reached out to you. And so you can do that through different tools and functionalities like personalization tokens, at least when it comes to HubSpot, to where you're starting to incorporate elements of their buyer's experience and ways that you can do that, as well as through technology and through software. A couple of quick examples would be with HubSpot. I can tell anytime Adam opens my email or doesn't open my email, I can see when he opens it. I can see when he doesn't open it for all buyers. I can see how long someone who visited the page for at HubSpot, I can see which landing page they landed on. I can see if they downloaded something I could see if they clicked on a link or not in my email or on my website. So all of that information is information you can use, right? And that will also help you. This is a little bit off topic, but that will also help you qualify leads and prioritize leads, right? Not all leads are created the same. If I have somebody who has been on my landing page five or six times in the last couple of days, they've downloaded several pieces of content. They attended a webinar. That person is much more engaged and is a much better lead than somebody who, you know, maybe went on one of my pages for five seconds and then clicked out, right, so you want to work or your sales team would want to work that other lead. So that's that's where the optimization comes in. And then the personalization is once again with those tokens and making sure that you're customizing it their buyer's journey to them via email and marketing.
[00:50:45] So a couple of ways, couple of things to touch on for how to personalize at scale. You can do a couple of things. So one, you could set up sequences or timed outreach around their unique experience. So here's an example of like a sequence that you can set up so you can set up where basically you send off the first email and what a sequence is just at a really high level is. It's almost like if they did this then trigger this action, if they didn't do this, then trigger this action. And so, for example, I send the first email if they clicked on the link, then unenrolled them from the sequence. If they didn't, click on the link or respond to this email, then in three days, send them the second email. And so you can see I'm building in call to actions right here. So download your SEO template. There's always something relevant to them. This is helpful to where they are on their buyer's journey.
[00:51:33] So just a quick look at like, what does this actually look like behind the curtains? This is the kind of the if then that I'm talking about, and this is really easy to build. You do not need to be a programmer to do this. I don't know how to code whatsoever. I could build this out very quickly. So this is buildable, customizable and you can set this up as a non-technical founder. As well, so it's kind of like what that would look like.
[00:51:56] And not only that, you can also do things like add tasks, you can add them to different lists, but once again, that's a little bit more in depth than what we're covering right now. So. So, yeah, so like I said, pain point. Now that I've noticed from presenting, what do we do? What's the next step? How do I action on this?
[00:52:14] So very first thing, depending on where you are. For some of you, I think this starts with step one is take a look. Go back. Look at your buyer's persona. Really hone in on that and see what sort of insights you can glean from that buyer's persona if you have an existing one. Does it include factors of where they like to download information or were they like to learn about things or do research? You know, am I creating the right types of assets? Then second, take a look. Excuse me? Take a look at that buyer's journey. So do I have assets for each of those stages? Do I especially have assets for the track stage and the engage stage? If so, once again, take a look at that. That will then lead to number two. It's going to help you focus on where should I be creating those assets? Should it be in the attract stage, engage or delight, depending on my company? And then three. Take a look at this. Go back to the presentation and say, All right, which plays do I want to do if I'm in a track, I want to focus on ads. Don't focus on some of those other attractive features like content do. I want to build out ebooks? What makes the most sense? Then once you have those plays, you're creating those assets, then you're starting to measure and automate. So once again, what is working, what channels are working, what, what pieces of content are working, et cetera. And then you're going to build for scale. And then one other thing, I'll leave you with this. Y'all are all founders you are building out. And if you're not a founder, you're still early stage company. One important thing is you're always scaling for growth and building with growth in mind. So as you're building this out, think down the road like if I'm going to teach this to somebody else in six months or if I'm going to hand this over, did I build a scalable process? Is this repeatable building with that sense that, OK, right now I may be an army of one, or maybe an army of five, but when I'm an army of 50, did I set my company up for success by creating automation for scale?
[00:54:05] So I know we have covered a lot and we are one minute ahead of schedule, which is great, but we made it so thank you all for bearing with me. Hopefully this was helpful and I really appreciate the time. Let me ask real quick any last minute questions.