Want to Grow Your SaaS Company? Track These 12 Marketing Metrics

November 10, 2015 at 06:00PM

Clearly defined and closely monitored marketing metrics are critical to the success of any SaaS company. Not only do they help measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, but they also help diagnose risk and identify opportunities to accelerate growth.

How do I know? I’ve spent the last six years of my professional life tracking a small list of SaaS marketing metrics very closely -- maybe even somewhat obsessively at times. 

In doing so, I've found that these metrics function much like a scorecard for marketing. By highlighting the performance of particular tasks or initiatives, these metrics hold the keys to what almost every growth oriented-marketer wants: bigger budgets, accelerated growth, and bigger opportunities.

Below I've detailed 12 of the most important metrics I've kept my eye on over the years. While these metrics have helped fuel the SaaS companies I've worked with, it's important to keep in mind that all businesses are a bit different. To help move your company forward, pull from this list as you see fit.

12 SaaS Marketing Metrics That Matter

1) Unique Visitors

Unique visitors are simply the amount of unique individuals coming to your website. To be honest, this is the closest thing to a “vanity metric” on this list because unique visitors gives you no sense of the quality of the visitors to your website.

That said, it’s a helpful measure of how accessible your website is, and it’s worth keeping tabs on the mix of visitors that come to your site organically, directly, and from paid programs.

2) Leads

It's critical that sales and marketing teams hash out and agree on the difference between “leads” and “qualified leads.”

In the vain of keeping this simple, I like to refer to “leads” as any lead that’s closer to the top of the funnel. In other words, maybe they've expressed interest in a topic related to your product by reading a blog, but they are yet to show direct interest in the product itself. 

To help you gain a better understanding of how to weed out leads that aren't a great fit, check out this post.

3) Qualified Leads

When I say “qualified leads,” I’m generally speaking about leads that I’d classify as living in the middle of the funnel -- commonly product demos or free trials.

A prospect that requests a demo has signaled a desire to see how your product works. Even better, a free trial is interested in kicking the tires on the product to see how it works for their business.

These types of leads are frequently referred to as “marketing qualified leads,” and I like to report on them as such.

4) New Customers

This one’s as straightforward as it gets: How many new customers signed up for your product this month? This quarter? This year?

While revenue typically trumps new customer sign-ups in terms of importance, it’s still useful to know how often you’re winning and how much of the addressable market you are capturing.

5) Revenue

Cash on the books means a great deal to the success of your business. By tracking monthly recurring revenue (MRR), annual recurring revenue (ARR) and average revenue per account (ARPA) you'll be able to strengthen your understanding of how much money is actually coming in. 

6) Qualified Lead to Customer Rate

If you’re interested in “growth hacking,” there’s no better place to start than trying to improve the rate at which you convert qualified leads into paying customers.

What percentage of free trial sign-ups end up buying your product? What percentage of prospects who request a demo buy?

7) Unique Visitor to Qualified Lead Rate

So you have thousands of unique visitors coming to your website every month ... that’s great. But what percentage of them actually interact with your site and become a qualified lead?

Once you know this number, you can use A/B testing software to run experiments that can influence your conversion rate. For guidelines on how to run an effective A/B test, check out this resource.

8) Churn

Churn can be expressed in terms of either revenue or customers, and it’s absolutely one of the most important metrics for any SaaS company. In essence, churn tells you how much business you are losing over a given period of time.

While many argue that churn is a product or customer service metric, I’d argue that it’s an "everybody metric," including marketing. There is not a more sure-fire way to increase your churn rate than to market and sell your product to people who don’t truly need it.

To measure customer churn, take the number of customers you had at the beginning of the month, say 500. Once you have this number, subtract the number of customers you lost in that month, say 50. Your customer churn rate (expressed monthly) would be 50/500 = 10%.

9) Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value (CLTV) refers to the amount of money your average customer pays over the course of their relationship with your company.

To calculate CLTV, you must first calculate your average customer lifetime. To do so, use this formula: 1/customer churn rate (expressed in months or years). For example, if you have a 10% monthly churn rate your customer lifetime is 1/.10 = 10 months.

Once you know your average customer lifetime, you must then multiply it by your average revenue per account (ARPA) over a given time period. To do so, use this formula: Total revenue/total number of customers. For example, say your business made $5,000,000 in revenue last month off of 5,000 total customers. $5,000,000/5,000 = $1,000 in revenue per account.

Finally, to determine customer lifetime value, you'll simply multiply customer lifetime (CL) by your average revenue per account (ARPA). In the example above that would be 10 months*$1,000 = $10,000 in customer lifetime value.

10) Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) divides your total sales and marketing spending by the number of new customers you add in a given period. For example, if you spent $250,000 in sales and marketing expenditures last month and added 250 customers, then your CAC would be $1,000.

It’s important to note that CAC calculations should include personnel-related expenses -- the cost of your sales and marketing teams (both salaries and benefits).

As your company scales and spends more money on marketing expenses not as tightly correlated with customer acquisition (think PR), you may want to filter some of these expenses out of your calculation of CAC. However, for earlier stage start-ups, I’d recommend that all sales and marketing related expenses be folded into your CAC calculation.

11) CLTV:CAC Ratio

The relationship between the lifetime value of your customers and the amount you spend to acquire them is the single metric I rely on most to measure the health and growth potential of customer acquisition programs within any SaaS company.

A general rule of thumb is that your company must have a CLTV three times greater than your CAC in order to be a “healthy” business. If your CLTV:CAC ratio is greater than 3:1, then you have a customer acquisition engine that is working and likely warrants additional spending in sales and marketing. (Depending on the nature of your product, you may fall slightly outside of this baseline.)

Pour money into the machine, and favorable returns will be spit out.

12) Gross Margin

Gross margin is commonly considered a financial metric, but I think it’s an important marketing metric because marketing should play a role in pricing your products and services -- which contributes significantly to your gross margin.

Quite simply, gross margin looks at the percentage of sales revenue that a company retains after it subtracts the costs associated with delivering their products and services. (Gross Margin (%) = Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold/Revenue.)

For example, if a company made $10,000,000 in revenue and it cost them $2,000,000 to deliver their products and services, then the company’s gross margin would be ($10,000,000-$2,000,000)/$10,000,000 = .80 or 80%.

Keeping Tabs on Measurement

While tracking these metrics well is critically important for any SaaS company, it’s worth mentioning that doing so isn’t always so easy.

Issues with data integrity and simply defining what measurement systems you’ll use are not always so straightforward. To ensure you're reporting on factual numbers, here are two pieces of advice: 

• Declare “systems of record” for each metric. This ensures that your measurements will be consistent. It also makes it easy for everyone to understand where you’re getting your data from each month. When determining which system to use, take the time to understand how each option calculates the number you're looking for so that it can be easily explained to others. 
• Use a business intelligence tool that pulls data from multiple sources into one dashboard. There are many tools on the market today that pull together your data from CRMs, spreadsheets, marketing automation systems, and other data sources into a single repository. This typically allows data from different sources to be used in the same calculation if necessary.

Metrics Don’t Matter If Nobody Cares

While it's typically the responsibility of your company’s marketing leadership to track these metrics and be able to explain the relative importance of each of them, it's also important that they are drawing connections between the numbers and the people on the team. 

This starts with making your data accessible, and then hinges on making your data easy to understand. Everybody on your marketing team should know very clearly that success for them means influencing one of these metrics in a positive direction. 

In other words, if you want to move numbers in the right direction, you need to get people to care about them. 

What metrics to you track? Let us know in the comment section below.

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There is No Such Thing As an Offline Business Anymore

November 10, 2015 at 05:00PM

Consumer behavior, from the city to the country, has changed. All of our consumer research begins online. Companies who fail to realize this are losing a lot of business.

Over the last decade, there has been a massive shift in consumer behavior. Rather than reading ads, calling information lines, or speaking to sales reps, Google has become the research tool of choice. Before a customer calls your number or walks in your store, you can bet 99% of them already know what they want, and the pros and cons of that choice.

The buying journey begins and ends on the Internet. And smart companies are the ones who are facilitating the buyer's journey before those customers ever reach their competitors marketing. In short, if you are not actively pursuing customers on the Internet, you are losing business.

'Brick and Mortar' Businesses are Relics of the Past

I'm from a small town in rural Oklahoma. We have one traffic light, and it hasn't worked since I was a little kid. It wasn't until I moved to the Pacific Northwest and claimed Seattle as my hometown that I became curious as to how the internet was affecting businesses in smaller communities.

I did some research and was surprised at what I found. Let me show you why I believe there are no such thing as offline businesses anymore.

How Do We Solve Our Problems?

Some old-school businessmen might say the Yellow Pages or the newspaper; but that's no longer true. We ask our questions on Google, and spend a few minutes checking out the results before we start evaluating solutions to our problem.

For instance, as I was preparing to write this article, I saw this question from a friend on Facebook: "Who is the best dentist in Douglasville?" 

Now Douglasville, Georgia is a town of about 31,000 people. It's not tiny, and I'm sure they have more traffic lights than my hometown. But it's not huge either. I have lived in a city that size and everybody still knows everybody. 

So, I wondered how many people are asking that same question to search engines. I went to Google Keyword Planner and started looking up some statistics. What I found should make business owners sit up and take notice. 

Over 320 people are searching for "dentist in douglasville ga" every single month. Not only that, but there are a ton of related searches as well. A conservative ballpark would be 500 searches a month.

People don't search for dentists if they don't need a dentist. 

Traditional "Local" Businesses vs. The Internet

I took my research to the next level by looking up some business traditionally known around town. These are the bread and butter businesses every single township in the united states probably has; like plumbers and auto mechanics.

It was not a surprise to learn well over 200 people are searching for a plumber in Douglasville every month on Google. It's worth noting; no one looks for a plumber until they need a plumber. 

Need someone to fix your car in Douglasville? There are hundreds of people who share your problem and are looking for someone to solve that problem in Google.

I don't know about you, but I rarely search out mechanics for the fun of it. But when my car started smoking a month ago, I wanted to know who could fix it right at the best price. 

Where do you think I started my research? 

Hint: I didn't drive around looking for ads on those expensive billboards, nor did I listen to the radio hoping to hear an ad. 

But you can keep spending money on those things if you want.

None of these are warm leads; they are hot leads! And because they are local, the competition is non-existent online. The first company to discover inbound marketing is going to have as much business as they want.

How to Take Your Business Online

The more I talk to companies the more I hear that they understand the need for online marketing, but they just don't know how or where to start. Let's take a high-level view of what you should do, and how.

Step 1) Get a Good Website

For a carpenter who needs a straight screwdriver, the prettiest Phillips head isn't going to be attractive. Good doesn't mean pretty; it means useful. It gets the job done.

For companies just getting started online, your website should accomplish three things:

Communicate Your Unique Value

It should communicate your unique value proposition (UVP). What is it you provide your customers they can't get from your competitors? That's your unique value, and your website should communicate it clearly and directly.

Learn More: 25 Companies Who Absolutely Nailed Their UVP 

Be Lead Generation Ready

The purpose of your website is not to broadcast your service to the world. It's to introduce yourself and ask for information in return. A website should be a dialogue, not a monologue. 

Make sure your website is ready to generate leads with an offer you will create in Step 3. This means you need a landing page design with a form that will capture information from your leads like name, address, phone number, and email address.

For some getting started, services like Unbounce or LeadPages can make landing page design easy and fast.

Feature a Blog or Learning Center

Regardless of what you call it, your blog is going to be the backbone of your online marketing strategies. It's the place where you post fresh, interesting content your potential customers will find interesting, which we will talk about in step 4.

Marcus Sheridan explains the difference in a traditional blog and a newer "learning center" approach. A traditional blog works for most companies. However, for those who need an extensive lead nurturing and customer education system, a learning center may make more sense.

For websites built on WordPress or Drupal, having a blog attached is simple. For other's, you may have to get a developer to attach a content management system to your website.  We use HubSpot, which makes adding must-have features like this super easy.

How to Get a Good Website

There are a few ways you can get your company a good website. You can hire a freelance designer from services like UpWork. If you do this, you will have to closely manage the project and give your freelancer very detailed instructions. It's a lot of work, but if executed right, you can get great quality development at a lower price.

For companies who want the best, you could hire an agency to develop your website. There are benefits of having an agency develop your website, but the price will be more expensive than freelancer or web development moonlighters. However, for that price you will get access to skills from designers, web developers, and marketing professionals to make sure your website isn't just good, but remarkable.

Another option is to hire a full-time developer on your team or learn how to put together a website yourself. A full-time employee is normally the most expensive route to developing a website for your company. But for some companies, depending on what they want to do with their website, it's the best choice.

Learn More: 7 Tips for Finding and Managing Amazing Freelancers

Step 2) Do Keyword Research

Keyword research is done to discover how your target personas are doing their research online. You need to find what they are searching for, and then provide the content that will satisfy that need.

Using the example above, the keyword "dentistry for children in Douglasville, GA" shows me a parent is looking for a good dentist for their kid. The driving desire or pain from that search shows me they don't want to go to any dentist, they want to go to one who will be great with children. 

The winning question is, Why?

What kind of content would address that person's pain points? If you're a dentist's office, you should create content (blog article, video, etc.) that addresses that question.  Keyword research reveals what you create in Step 4.

How to Do Keyword Research

This is a huge topic in itself, and there are a lot of ways to do keyword research. Whichever methods you choose, you should create a spreadsheet or list of all of the keywords, long and short-tail, that you can focus on ranking for in Step 4.

We will limit this article to talking about the best two ways to do keyword research:

Tool #1 The Google Suggest Tool

Go to google, and type in "Dentists in Douglasville."

The suggested searches, both in the drop-down and at the bottom of the search page show common search terms others are using. These are usually long-tail keyword phrases, which are much easier to rank for.

For instance, it's easier to rank high in the search engines for "Dentists in Douglasville That Accept Medicaid" than it would be for "dentists" or even "dentists in Douglasville."

To explode these suggestions out even further, you can use a tool called UberSuggest, which brings you an enormous list of phrases pulled from the Google suggest tool. Not all of them are valuable, but you'll be able to come up with a ton of ideas for valuable keywords.

Tool #2 The Google Keyword Planner

The Keyword Planner is hidden inside a Google Adwords account. It's primary purpose is for keyword research for paid advertising. But the search amount data for keywords is a great way to find high-value keywords to target in your marketing.

This is where you can get hard numbers on search terms. Most likely, these will be root keywords or short tail keywords. Meaning, keywords with a lot of SEO competition. But when you find a keyword with a lot of search results, it also means that root keyword is going to be in multiplied times that in long-tail phrases.

When I use Keyword Planner, I export all the keywords I feel are most valuable to target. And then, I run them through the keyword suggest tool to see what kind of long-tails I can find that I should target.

Learn More: How to Find and Target High Value Keywords for Your Business

Step 3) Create a Lead Generation Content Offer

In this step, we need to create the free product your ideal customers will want to download. This is what you offer them in the landing pages from step 1.

There are many possibilities for content offers, the most popular being an eBook of some kind. If you're just getting started, try to create an offer that relates to all of your target personas, and one that fits at the top of the buyers journey.

Carrying on the dentist example, a great offer might be, "X Signs a Dentist is Great With Children," or "The Scared Patient's Guide to Finding a Gentle Dentist." These are only ideas, but you should create an eBook or Case Study, or some other premium content your ideal customers would want to read.

Then, you put it into PDF format and offer it as a download to everyone who will submit the form on the landing page. 

This is where you capture your leads and start the nurturing process.

Learn More: How to Create Marketing Offers That Don't Fall Flat

Step 4) Provide Fresh, Interesting Content On Your Blog

This is where you attract your ideal customers to your website. The goal is not to write about your service or product. The goal is to write about the things that interest them and make their life better in some way.

Always remember, it's not about you, it's about them. Don't use your blog for sales pitches. Use it to solve their problems and answer their questions. 

The problem most companies face is writer's block; they don't know what content will be attractive to their customers. This article will show you how to come up with 100 blog topics your customers will be very interested in.

Consult your keyword research. Use the questions your customers are posing to Google (Google Suggest Results) and produce content that addresses those concerns exactly.

Create great, free content (blogs, videos, slide share) that make your target audience's life better.

Step 5) Join the Social Media World

Who are your ideal customers, and where do they go for content? 

• If you're a B2B company, LinkedIn is probably your best network. 
• If you're B2C, Facebook or Pinterest might bring you the best return.
• If you're a SaaS company, Twitter might be where you find the most engagement.

As a rule of thumb, don't try to be omnipresent. It's a waste of time. 

Find out where your ideal customers hang out online, go there and mix it up with them. This is a great place to share your content from step 4. But, a word of warning, don't just spam your channel with your blog posts. This is a place to have fun and be social. Share things that interest you and them, even things that have nothing to do with your business.

Step 6) Measure, Learn, and Adapt.

Marketing online is not a campaign. This is something we, as a marketing agency, face with customers all the time. Doing inbound marketing is not something you will push this year, then move on. It's a way of life; it's the way it's going to be moving forward.

For your first 12 months, you will be learning a lot, most of what not to do. Having negative results is frustrating when you're just trying something out. But when you are truly an inbound marketing company, negative results teach you how to be better going forward.

Whatever you try, be it paid ads or premium content offers, test and see how they perform. Measure their effectiveness against your goals. And then figure out how to make them work better moving forward.

Test. Try new things. Try different content. Try videos instead of slide decks. Try long "deep dive" articles, instead of short, simple ones. Test, test, test. Then, find something that works and focus on it. Then, test some more to improve it even more.

Offline-Only Business Goes Extinct

Online marketing is not a fad, and it's not a one-time test. It's the way businesses will be for the foreseeable future.

In times past, the most important thing to success was location, location, location. If a store was on the main road and had a big, noticeable sign; life was good.

Today, if you're not actively marketing online, someone eventually will. And they will take your customers quickly.

Jump out in front, and find success. There is no such thing as an offline business anymore. They are going the way of the dinosaurs, very quickly.

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12 Critical Elements Every Website Homepage Must Have [Infographic]

November 10, 2015 at 02:00PM

If you’re considering a website redesign or are wondering how to generate more leads from your website, it's a good idea to start with your homepage. 

Serving as your company's virtual front door, this page is generally responsible for drawing in a majority of your website's traffic. And despite its prominence, many businesses struggle to optimize it properly. 

You see, your homepage needs to wear a lot of hats. Rather than treating it like a dedicated landing page built around one particular action, it should be designed to serve different audiences, from different origins.

To inspire action, your homepage should be built with purpose. In other words, you'll need to incorporate elements that attract traffic, educate visitors, and invite conversions. To improve the performance of your homepage, check out the following infographic detailing 12 critical elements every homepage must have.

Download our collection of website homepage design examples here to see how these elements come together.

12 Critical Elements Every Website Homepage Must Have

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What You Should Include in Your Website Homepage Design

1) Headline

Within three seconds, a website needs to tell visitors what the business has to offer. That's where your headline comes in. It may only be a few words, but it's one of the most important piece of copy on your website.

Many different types of people might visitor your website, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a few words that hit home for everyone. Instead, the folks at KISSmetrics recommend writing your headline to target the 20–35% of those people that are most likely to be happy with your product.

Keep the headline itself clear and simple. Dropbox's headline is a great example: "Securely share, sync, and collaborate." It's simple, yet powerful -- no need to decode jargon to figure out what Dropbox really does. Plus, the word "securely" touches on a pain point for people looking for file managers. Notice how they repeat that word again in the sub-headline to really drive the point home.

2) Sub-headline

Your sub-headline should supplement the headline by offering a brief description of what you do or what you offer. This can be done effectively by zeroing in on a common pain point that your product or service solves. 

To optimize your headlines and text for mobile, use larger fonts to give visitors a better experience. Small fonts could force mobile visitors to pinch and zoom in order to read and interact with the content on your site. Our advice? Make your headlines and sub-headlines at least 22 px, and body copy at least 14 px.

Here's an example of a great sub-headline from Podio: "Try the customisable work management solution leaders trust and employees love working on." It hones in on a few common pain points for work management solutions by assuring visitors it's customisable, trustworthy, and enjoyable to work with.

3) Primary Calls-to-Action

The goal of your homepage is to compel visitors to dig deeper into your website and move them further down the funnel. Include two to three calls-to-action above the fold that direct people to different stages of the buying cycle -- and place them in spots that are easy to find.

These CTAs should be visually striking, ideally in a color that contrasts from the color scheme of your homepage, while still fitting in with the overall design. Keep the copy brief -- no more than five words -- and action-oriented, so it compels visitors to click whatever you're offering. Examples of CTA copy are "Sign up," "Make an appointment," or "Try it for free."

To optimize your CTAs for mobile users, make sure it's big enough to easily touch with a finger.  If you're using a button, make it a minimum size of 44 px by 44 px so it's big enough for people to press with their finger. Consider adding whitespace around your CTA, too, so mobile visitors can easily tap it without accidentally clicking on something they didn't mean to.

Uber has a few great Primary CTAs on their homepage that are geared toward different personas: "Become a Driver" for potential drivers, and "Sign Up" for potential riders. Notice how starkly the bright blue CTAs contrast with the dark background.

4) Supporting Image

Most people are visual. Make sure to use an image (or even a short video) that clearly indicates what you offer. Use images that capture emotion and cause action, and avoid cheesy stock photos. (Here's a list of 17 great places to find free stock photos online.)

To optimize your images for mobile users, use high-quality images that have a reduced file size. (HubSpot customers don't need to worry about this, as images uploaded to HubSpot's software are automatically compressed. Otherwise, tools like TinyPNG will do the trick.) Also, add alt text to your images in case mobile devices block any images by default.

The 4 Rivers Smokehouse homepage is a great example of emotional imagery: It features a series of short, high definition, and mouthwatering videos that play on a loop behind a simple headline, sub-headline, and primary CTA:

5) Benefits

It's not only important to describe what you do, but also why what you do matters. Prospects want to know about the benefits of buying from you because that's what'll compel them to stick around.

Keep the copy lightweight and easy to read, and speak the language of your customers. Evernote does a great job of listing features on their homepage in a way that's compelling, visually pleasing, and easy to understand:

6) Social Proof

Social proof is a powerful indicator of trust. Your product or service could be the best in the world, and it's okay to lay that claim -- it's just that people may not believe you unless they hear it from other people, too. And that's exactly what social proof does.

Include just a few of your best (short) quotes on the homepage, and link to case studies if applicable. Adding a name and photo gives these testimonials more credibility. Codecademy nails this on their homepage, and you can click into any one story to read the whole case study:

7) Navigation

The design and content in your homepage navigation could mean the difference between a website conversion and a bounce. To decrease bounce rate, give your visitors a clear path into your site from the homepage. Make the navigation menu visible at the top of the page, and organize the links in a hierarchical structure.

No one knows your website better than those who helped design it, so be sure to conduct user tests to make sure it's simple and intuitive for visitors to find what they're looking for on your site. Include a search box if you can. (Read this blog post for more helpful website navigation tips.)

Here's an example of clear, well structured navigation design from Geek Squad's homepage:

8) Content Offer

To generate even more leads from your homepage, feature a really great content offer, such as a whitepaper, ebook, or guide. Folks who may not be ready to buy might rather download an offer that gives them more information about a topic they're interested in. If you need inspiration, here are 23 different content types to pick from.

Below is an excerpt from IMPACT's homepage. Below the fold, they offer four free ebooks on their own growth hacking secrets:

9) Secondary Calls-to-Action

Include secondary CTAs on your homepage to offer additional conversion opportunities for prospects who aren't interested in your primary objective. Think of them like the contingency plan: They offer another path for visitors who are not yet ready for something as high-commitment as you're asking. 

While your primary CTAs should be above the fold, place secondary CTAs below the fold to give visitors things to click on when they scroll down. For example, below the fold on Trustev's homepage, you'll find three, clearly labeled calls-to-action that give folks who've scrolled that far more options to click on. These secondary CTAs target three different categories -- retailers, virtual goods, and financial -- that appeal to three different buyer personas.

10) Features

In addition to benefits, list some of your key features. This gives people more of an understanding of what's provided by your products and services. Again, keep the copy light and easy to ready. Dropbox for Business, for example, doesn't shy away from showing off a features matrix right on their homepage below the fold.

11) Resources

Again, most visitors to your website won't be ready to buy ... yet. For folks who are looking for more information, offer a link to a resource center where they can browse relevant information. Not only does this keep them on your webpage for longer, but it also helps you establish your credibility as a thought leader in your industry.

KnowledgeVision makes a resources link one of their secondary CTAs below the fold. Notice how each of these secondary CTAs cover multiple stages in the buying cycle: a demo for people close to buying, examples for people who are interested but want more information, and resources for folks closer to the top of the funnel.

12) Success Indicators

In addition to customer success stories, both awards and recognition can also help inspire a good first impression. Is your company a critically acclaimed restaurant? Were you voted best new app this year? Let your homepage visitors know of your accomplishments. Like social proof, it'll give your business more credibility to those who don't know you.

On Cleanify's homepage, for example, you'll find the names of famous publications that have written about them, like The New York Times and TechCrunch:

Don't Forget to Optimize For Mobile

Whether you're tweaking your homepage or redesigning it completely, be sure that it is fully optimized for mobile. Not only are mobile-friendly websites better for SEO thanks to Google's algorithm change in April 2015, but they also make for a much better user experience for the increasing number of people browsing the web on their mobile devices.

Making your homepage mobile-friendly includes optimizing your headlines, sub-headlines, and body text copy, your calls-to-action, your images, and more. Here are some mobile optimization tips to get you started.

Does your website's homepage have all or most of these elements? Are there any we missed? Share with us in the comments.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in January 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

 

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SWOT Analysis: Is Instagram Right for Your Media Brand?

November 10, 2015 at 01:00PM

Seemingly out of nowhere, Instagram took the world by storm and became a social media hub for hundreds of millions of people. As of October 2015, there are 400M+ daily active users, 80M+ photos per day, and 3.5B daily likes.

For publishers looking to build an audience, the opportunity on Instagram is massive—publishers like Mashable, National Geographic, and Vogue have all had success in growing their follower counts from zero, to hundreds of thousands, and even millions. The reason? Instagram is a powerful storytelling medium, and with just one photo, brands can capture their audience’s attention, inspire dialogue, and build their companies’ narratives.

The power of Instagram is undisputed, but is it right for your media company? This question is a tough one to answer. For your Instagram strategy to take off, you need to do more than start posting photos. You need to come up with a visual style guide, figure out what types of images to share, and figure out how your efforts fit into your circulation strategy. Not to mention, you’re likely present on other social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest already.

If you’re present in too many social media channels, without the people-power, you’ll risk spreading your efforts too thin. If you’re considering being present on Instagram, you need to be ready to double-down and invest in the right resources.

If you’re on the fence about whether to take the jump and develop an Instagram presence, the following SWOT analysis will help. Let’s get to it.

Strengths

 The biggest strength of Instagram is its community and value proposition. People on the platform are sharing beautiful, inspiring photos for others to appreciate. By being a part of this ecosystem, your media company will find new touch points for reaching and communicating with your audiences. Not to mention, Instagram is low-touch and extremely efficient on the user side: how many photos could you swipe through in an hour when you’re taking a brain break? Most likely, you can digest more photos than blog posts or ebooks.

There are several other strengths to consider:

• Massive audience reach
• High engagement levels
• A way to engage with audiences that adds value and isn’t salesy
• Hashtags to capitalize on real-time trends
• A way to engage with readers and prospective readers in a channel that they love 

Weaknesses 

From a publisher’s perspective, Instagram’s biggest weakness is that its web traffic is self-contained. Currently, there is no way to link to your site or drive traffic from the platform. If you build an audience on Instagram, you’re going to need to engage with them on the platform.

As a publisher, web traffic is the  bread and butter of your company. Not to mention, publishers are always in a crunch for more eyeballs. If you’re looking for a low-hanging burst in website traffic, Instagram probably won’t help: your best option here is likely a focus on SEO or paid channel advertising.

What’s important to keep in mind, however, is that web traffic market share is getting more difficult to attain. You can’t just compel people into clicking your links: you need to provide information or an offer that delivers a strong value proposition. That being said, Instagram can help you reinforce your media company’s brand identity. 

Instead of thinking about Instagram as a way to drive traffic, think about it as a top-of-funnel marketing investment. With this perspective, some companies will want to delay their decisions to join Instagram: for instance, you may want to wait until you’ve already developed a steady, repeatable traffic stream and have the resources to invest in more top-of-funnel activities. The right path forward depends on the stage of your company.

Opportunities

As a relatively new social media platform—compared to Facebook and Twitter, which are both more established—Instagram is a space that is still being defined: the company is still testing monetization and traffic circulation features. Joining the platform now will have its advantages because you can study engagement patterns and set your own trends. There’s a strong window of opportunity for your media company to establish itself and build a presence.

Eventually, there will likely be algorithms to fight and competition through paid channel advertising networks. By getting into the ground floor early, however, you’ll be in a great position to explore new opportunities as Instagram as they arise. WIth an established following, investment in PPC will go further. Not to mention, you can also test the company’s up and coming monetization channels to carve out new revenue streams for your advertiser partners.

It’s a story in the making, and your brand can become a core part of it.

Threats 

Just like any other social media platform, the Instagram ecosystem is changing. Over time, it’s going to become competitive—especially now that the company has an open ads API that allows for tasks including scheduling and publishing content.

This technology will give established players and big, resource-driven organizations a competitive advantage. But here’s the thing: the ecosystem is still early enough that any company could become a dominant player.

You shouldn’t let future competition scare you. You’re a competitive player right now.

Final thoughts

Instagram is a platform with immense potential. It’s also an ecosystem with an early market opportunity for building an audience. Before you take the jump and invest in building an Instagram presence, however, you need to make sure that the social media network is the right fit for your needs. Do your due diligence, and commit to the marketing channels that are right for you.

 

 

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Which Marketing Tactics Are The Most Overrated? [New Data]

November 10, 2015 at 12:00PM

If you were to ask a room full of marketers from all over the world which marketing tactics they think are least worth the investment, you'd probably get a flurry of strong opinions.

But what if you asked them to name the most overrated marketing tactic? Would their answers vary that much?

We surveyed 4,000 marketers and salespeople around the globe for our 2015 State of Inbound report and found that, no matter where they came from, marketers agreed on the #1 most overrated marketing tactic.

Specifically, we asked our survey respondents to rate the following marketing tactics on how overrated they think they are: blogging, social media, sales enablement, collateral development, SEO, email marketing, traditional paid advertising, online paid advertising, and PR.

Here's what we found.

What's the Most Overrated Marketing Tactic?

According to our research, marketers around the globe agree that traditional paid advertising is the #1 most overrated marketing tactic.

Click to Enlarge

Even outbound marketers think so: We found that 32% of outbound marketers said outbound marketing tactics, like traditional paid advertising, are overrated.

Interestingly, while agencies and vendors agreed traditional paid channels are the most overrated, nonprofit marketers cited social media as the most overrated tactic.

When we segmented these results by region, here's what we found:

In Australia and New Zealand (ANZ): More people (42%) cited traditional outbound marketing tactics -- like print ads, outdoor ads, and broadcasts -- as the most overrated marketing tactic than anywhere else in the world. According to folks in Australia and New Zealand, the second most overrated marketing tactic was social media (14%), followed by online paid advertising (11%). The least overrated marketing tactics were blogging (1%) and collateral development (2%).

In Asia-Pacific (APAC): Most people (28%) cited traditional outbound marketing tactics as the most overrated marketing tactic. The next most overrated marketing tactic, according to people in Asia-Pacific, was online paid advertising tactics (15%), followed by social media (14%). The least overrated marketing tactics were sales enablement (4%) and blogging (5%).

In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA): Just over one-third of people (34%) cited traditional outbound marketing tactics as the most overrated marketing tactic. The next most overrated marketing tactic, according to folks in this region, was online paid advertising (13%), followed by social media (11%). The least overrated marketing tactics were collateral development (4%) and sales enablement (4%).

In Latin America (LATAM): Just over one-third of people (34%) cited traditional outbound marketing tactics as the most overrated marketing tactic. The next most overrated marketing tactic, according to folks in this region, was social media (15%), followed by online paid advertising (14%). The least overrated marketing tactics were collateral development (3%) and sales enablement (3%).

In North America (NORTHAM): Most people (41%) cited traditional outbound marketing tactics as the most overrated marketing tactic. According to people in North America, the next most overrated marketing tactic was online paid advertising (16%), followed by social media (11%). The least overrated marketing tactics were sales enablement (2%) and SEO (3%). 

A Few Observations

Even outbound marketers think outbound marketing is overrated.

When it comes to generating leads and filling the top of your sales funnel, traditional outbound marketing tactics -- where marketers push their message out far and wide in the hopes that it'll resonate -- isn't as effective as it used to be.

It comes as no surprise that more marketers year-over-year are universally embracing inbound marketing tactics (where marketers help themselves "get found" by people already learning about and shopping in their industry) over outbound marketing tactics. Our data shows that in most regions of the world, content marketing tactics like blogging and collateral development were cited as the least overrated marketing tactics.

But, according to our data, it's not just inbound marketers who rate outbound marketing tactics as overrated -- even those who identify as outbound marketers think so. Roughly 32% of survey respondents whose companies identify as primarily outbound organizations called paid advertising the most overrated marketing tactic -- the number one answer by a wide margin.

Image Credit: HubSpot's State of Inbound 2015 Report

While this could be explained by large companies (200+ employees) dedicating money to paid as a sort of diversification of their marketing portfolio, it's worth repeating that the smart money is on inbound.

But outbound efforts can be great supplements to your inbound efforts.

Although marketers across the board rated outbound tactics as the most overrated of all marketing tactics, that doesn't mean marketers should cut them out of their strategy completely.

If it's in your budget, online outbound marketing tactics like social media advertising and PPC are actually great supplements to those more effective inbound marketing efforts.

When done right, ads can play an important role in giving proven content a more prominent stage, whether it’s in maximizing reach to an existing audience or launching campaigns in a new market. For example, users who are retargeted to are 70% more likely to convert. And native ads that include rich media boost conversion rates by up to 60%.

And because these tactics are done online, it's easier to measure their ROI -- especially if you have the right tools. One reason online outbound tactics were rated as one of the most overrated marketing tactics under offline outbound tactics is likely because many marketers still haven't been able to measure their efforts -- though current tools can help you do that much better. (HubSpot customers: Read this post on our customer blog for tips on measuring the ROI of social using HubSpot.)

That being said, each social network comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. Read this blog post to learn more about the pros and cons of advertising on each platform. If you want a more comprehensive guide to social media advertising, download and read our free ebook, The Essential Guide to Social Media Advertising.

Are we seeing signs of social media fatigue?

Finally, you'll notice social media was the one inbound marketing tactic that was considered overrated in several regions of the world. For instance, although folks in Latin America have broadly adopted social media, 15% of marketers in that region said social media was overrated. In Australia and New Zealand, 14% cited social media as overrated. Not to mention, social media was the third most overrated marketing tactic in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and North America.

What does this say about the state of social media marketing? Where is the fatigue coming from?

After all, social media activity actually has potential to help increase website traffic and sales. It impacts your organic search presence, helping your content rank higher in search engines. It's also a way for businesses to speak directly with their customers, which helps build customer loyalty. For example, a company called Coffee Groundz started using Twitter as a direct order channel with customers and increased sales and market share via Twitter by 20-30%.

Marketers experiencing social media fatigue are likely having trouble strategizing and picking the right tools to achieve the results they're looking for.

• For some, it could be an efficiency issue -- which is why we recommend streamlining your efforts by using a social media content calendar.
• For others, it's a lack of a solid social strategy. According to data analysis from SOBCon Founder and CEO Liz Strauss, a significant number of marketers “are using social channels in a non-useful manner: posting randomly, without a goal and without a true understanding of what can be accomplished on any particular social channel.” According to her analysis, consistency (even more than frequency) is the key to making an impact with your social media activity. When, how often, and which types of content to post will depend on a combination of research and your own testing.
• For others, finding relevant conversations in a sea of irrelevant ones can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. This is where it helps for social media posting to become a contextualized part of your marketing, sales, and customer service strategies. (HubSpot customers: Social Inbox plugs your social media accounts into your contact database so you can see which folks engaging with your content are strangers, leads, and customers.)

What observations do you have from the results of our survey on overrated marketing tactics? Do you agree/disagree with our survey respondents? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

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Survey: Are You Spending Too Much Time On Routine Marketing Tasks?

November 09, 2015 at 06:00PM

It’s after five o'clock, and what was suppose to only take a few minutes is edging closer to a few hours. You're hungry, tired, and just about ready to throw in the towel. Sound familiar?

We've all sat by and helplessly watched as free time slips through our fingers and productivity hits rock bottom. When you finally craft that tweet, build that perfect list, or set up that landing page, the joy of accomplishment doesn't even taste that sweet. At that point, you're simply too worn out to care.

In order to be more productive, it’s incredibly helpful to understand when you have crossed that line from working hard to over-working. And despite thousands of marketers carrying out roughly the same set of tasks every week, it’s hard to find valid estimates of how much time you should be spending on these routine tasks. 

To help marketers everywhere better plan their days, we invite you to fill out the following survey on how much time you spend on certain tasks. We'll use the data to create content that will give us all a better sense of how to allocate out time and be more productive. 

Create your own user feedback survey
http://bit.ly/1SDF2B2

How to Overcome Objections to Get Your Company to Invest in B2B Inbound Marketing

November 09, 2015 at 05:00PM

A lot of marketing budget rejection can feel demoralizing. You may start to wonder if your company even believes in the power of marketing. The truth is that they may not.

A 2014 study by The Fournaise Group found that 90% of marketers are not trained in marketing performance and marketing ROI. The same study says that 80% of marketers struggle to demonstrate the business effectiveness of their marketing activities to their top management. 

How can marketers win the budgets they need to attract customers if they can't prove to management that inbound marketing spend will result in a measurable return?  

Here are some common CEO objections to inbound marketing and our recommendations on how to overcome them. 

Objection #1 - Our marketing doesn't focus on our customer needs.

Objection #2 - We're not seeing a return on our marketing investment.

Objection #3 - Outbound delivers results, so we're going to put more money there.

By taking the following recommendations, you'll be able to build inbound marketing campaigns that your leadership will fall over themselves to fund. If you don't already have much of a budget, then you may have to start small, but this should get you going in the right direction.

Overcoming Objection #1 - Focus on Your B2B Customer

Build Customer-centric Content

Your inbound marketing may not be focused on your customers’ needs. As a result, you're not generating the kind of activity and return you set out to achieve. It's time to embrace customer-centric marketing.

As marketing grows more customer-centric, digital content marketing becomes increasingly important as a means of developing customer relationships that lead to sales. The B2B marketing world is flooded with content marketing that is overly promotional and speaks to individual prospects as if they're a company, not a person. 

Customers and prospects don't want to be inundated with messages about the things you want to sell them. When you focus on your B2B customer, you find out what their needs are and you cater your marketing to them. As you build up trust through brand engagement, your customers will be more willing to listen to your sales pitches – but this shouldn't be the focus of your inbound efforts.

Ask yourself this: Are you building inbound content that you want your customer to see or are you building content that your B2B customers want to see? 

Buyer Personas Are Key to Customer-centric Marketing

A focus on the customer means understanding your buyer personas and building content catered toward the individuals who purchase from you. When you key-in on your target audience this way, then your inbound marketing content starts to stand out as a result of driving more engagement.

Customer-centricity will benefit your brand. When done right, you'll develop not only trust, but also customer advocates. Your inbound marketing budgets for blogs articles, website work, social media, video, and SEO may not be expanded overnight. Once your leadership team sees the benefits customer-centric marketing brings, they should be more willing to invest in marketing.

How to Make Your Case:

Many B2B companies build content that speaks from the voice of one business to another. Let your team know that the point of inbound marketing is to attract PEOPLE. To do this, you have to build inbound content that speaks to the individual customer and their challenges, not just the overall business pains.

Start showing your team that your inbound marketing is customer-focused by building out your buyer personas. Next, lay out a plan for your team that charts out your personas and makes suggestions for compelling content that potential customers would engage with at various stages in the buyer's journey.

To help show that your customer-centric marketing is making a difference, you need to be a master of your marketing metrics. Online marketing results are quantifiable. Decision makers can obtain real-time results about the number of visitors, subscribers, and conversion rates. These results helps decision makers adjust their strategies at any time to maximize results.

If you can show your CEO and leadership team that your inbound efforts are starting to attract more targeted visitors who are engaging with your persona-focused content, then you can start to have the BIG discussion: Inbound marketing ROI.

Overcoming Objection #2 - ROI of B2B Inbound Marketing

Your CEO is focused on the bottom line, so it's important to emphasize the return on investment from inbound marketing efforts. According to Hubspot's State of Inbound 2015, you need to make the business case and show that your marketing plans make financial sense. A solid 43% of marketers with budgets under $25,000 received a budget increase in 2015, and for 31%, the level of funding held steady. And if you were one of the 8% whose budget was slashed? Poor ROI tracking could be to blame.

Why aren't marketers able to show ROI?

• They don't have access to marketing analytics.
• They do have access to marketing analytics, but don't know how to interpret the numbers.
• They're not setting up campaign tracking and attribution models to source leads.
• Without tracking and attribution, they don't know which campaigns are most effective.
• They lose sight of leads when they're passed to sales.

How to Make Your Case:

According to BusinessBolts, 62% of small companies reported spending less than $100 a month on content marketing and 45% said content has lowered advertising costs. Pointing out studies like this that make the case for the economics of content creation will help you. Proving it with your own numbers will be the way to get those additional marketing dollars.

Showing how inbound increases brand engagement may help warm up your CEO to these ideas, but you ultimately need to make a clear connection between your inbound marketing efforts and increased sales. If you can show that inbound creates true value for the organization, you can start to justify your marketing expenses for tactics like blogging, SEO, social media, and content creation.

Get started by becoming a master of your analytics dashboards. Make sure you're using campaign tagging within your marketing tools and fight to make sure that marketing-generated leads are tagged and tracked in your CRM. 

This may take some self-education, but it'll be worth it when you can point to closed sales and show which ones came in from specific inbound activities.

Overcoming Objection #3 - Combining the Power of Marketing and Sales

Why wouldn't your company spend money on outbound if that's where revenue was coming from? It's your job to make the case that inbound and outbound aren't forces in opposition.

The relationship between your sales teams and marketing teams should be symbiotic. By integrating the efforts of your inbound and outbound marketing, you can start to improve the ROI for both. This helps make the marketing return on investment crystal clear to leadership. Inbound and outbound marketing can be used in conjunction to improve the lead generation process and shorten the sales cycle. 

How to Make Your Case:

Marketing Profs’ Sales and Marketing Alignment Benchmark Report shows that a partnership between sales and marketing leads to a 36% higher customer-retention rate and a 38% higher sales-close rate. With proper marketing and sales alignment, there is a shared definition of, and appropriate path for, your inbound responders, MQLs, and SQLs. Marketing understands when leads should be passed over to sales and can help guide sales on the best follow-up for inbound leads.

When working together optimally, marketing can equip sales both with inbound MQLs that become SQLs and provide the sales team with the content and sales collateral needed to help convert leads to wins. Your sales team will appreciate this and your CEO and leadership team will take notice when sales starts to take more marketing leads to close.

Conclusion

Remember that your inbound marketing success can be proven through your marketing analytics numbers. With proper tracking links and analytics attribution models, you can directly track the origins of your leads and wins back to your marketing activities. Marketing automation tools can play a big role in helping to show your CEO and leadership teams the true value of your marketing efforts.

By making your marketing more customer-centric, using better methods to measure your marketing ROI, and better aligning your sales and marketing efforts, you're likely to have an easier time getting your CEO to invest in inbound marketing.

What are you doing to promote inbound marketing to your leadership? What are you doing to combine the powers of inbound and outbound marketing? Get your eBook and start on your path toward a more robust inbound marketing budget.

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