HubSpot generates over 25 million website visits per month. Read that again: over 25 million website visits a month. For any site that is not social media, that figure is beyond impressive. So, what do the rest of us do? We take a step back and observe exactly what it is that HubSpot is doing that makes it so successful, and use those lessons to up our own game when it comes to pulling in the crowds.
A little background
Anyone who has spent some amount of time on the internet in the last few years has heard about HubSpot, but what exactly does HubSpot do? HubSpot develops and markets software products that are geared towards inbound marketing, sales and customer service. It’s a B2B business that helps companies increase their customer base. They have been wildly successful in growing their own customer base. The excellent quality of their products is indeed a huge plus point, but it is their marketing strategy that has put their products in direct view of potential customers.
Getting down to business
HubSpot receives an impressive response to their content marketing strategy by employing these simple yet brilliant tactics:
Informative blog posts: One of the most common ways people find out about HubSpot is when they are googling for something else. Looking for how to generate more leads for your business; you will see a blog post by HubSpot. You research how to write a blog post, there’s an article on HubSpot for that too. But, it’s not just the topics they cover, it’s also the way in which they present the information. HubSpot makes it a point to provide detailed, and useful information with actionable steps for the user. It should come as no surprise then that their audience keeps growing and they have built a substantial fan following of regular blog readers.
Content upgrades: Now here’s a neat little trick that HubSpot makes use of; they give their audience something more. The best time to present something new to someone is when you already have their attention and interest. So, once HubSpot has a reader engaged with one of their articles, they offer a content upgrade. Content upgrades can be anything from a master list of resources, a PDF download of all blog posts related to the topic of interest, an audio or video presentation, and so on. These are simple to create which allows you to offer it to your audience for free. All they have to do is sign up for daily updates. Of course, when you sign up, you are helping them build their mailing list which is the first step on the path to lead generation. As you can imagine, HubSpot’s mailing list runs into the thousands.
Free tools: Among HubSpot’s offerings is a very popular Website Grading Tool. The tool does exactly what its name says and grades your website on various parameters. But it also goes a step further and tells you how you can make improvements like your search engine ranking, load time, reduce bounce rate and so on. This is just one of the free tools that HubSpot offers to its audience. To a bystander HubSpot might look like Santa who just loves to give away stuff for free. But when you look more closely, you see what happens next. HubSpot offers you a free tool that you can use and then go about doing the work of improving your website or, you could just buy their services and they will do it for you. People/businesses will and do spend good money on services which will ultimately benefit them in the long run.
Community marketing: HubSpot has established itself as a leader in inbound marketing strategies. They are in the business of helping other businesses improve their own inbound marketing. To this effect, HubSpot has created a community where marketers can connect with each other, find jobs, and learn new skills. With top class quality control of shared information and authentic workshops conducted by experts, HubSpot has succeeded in keeping the community engaged and loyal. When these marketers become a part of another company, their loyalties remain with HubSpot. If given the chance their first choice for acquiring marketing tools will be the parent company of the community that nurtured them and set them on their career path. While not all busine3sses have the resources to create and maintain a community like HubSpot has, even small gestures of goodwill like offering internships and mentoring could help build a loyal community.
Growth hacking: Sure, HubSpot is well-established now in the marketing and lead generation world, but how did they know what to do to get them here? The answer to that is growth hacking. Growth hacking focusses on a rapid process of experimentation. A strategy is conceived and implemented in a short span of time and the results are observed. The strategies concentrate on marketing and promotional tactics and if they work, they stay, if they don’t, they are discarded and the process starts over. But because it all happens to quickly; multiple strategies can be experimented with within a year and there’s a good chance that something will stick.
What can we learn for HubSpot’s marketing strategy? They’ve experimented with a lot of formats, kept what works and put all their efforts into that. They take the time and trouble to maintain excellent quality whether in their products or in their communities, and they have done the homework and brought their audience useful tools and actionable solutions. There is no secret formula, just some really smart thinking.
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