LESSON 1 HUBSPOT INBOUND MARKETING FUNDAMENTALS - VISIONARY ...
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Lesson 1 HubSpot Inbound Marketing
Fundamentals
Overview: Buying behavior continues to evolve, as the technology that
consumers use advances. Learn how to match your marketing efforts to the
new buying behaviors.
WHY INBOUND MARKETING?
• Don’t force ppl to engage with you
o Focus time and effort on sustainably attracting the right visitors and encouraging
interactions with the most potential impact
o Create content that educates and informs
• You can start to build trust and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry
• Your content exists to empower you customer’s growth
• The value and insight your content provides helps your visitors reach this conclusion and
positions you as a resource, one they can return to and recommend to others
• Inbound marketing is about creating one-to-one relationships that have a lasting impact
on your visitors and your brand
o How do you do this?
▪ You attract prospects and customers to your site through helpful content
▪ You engage with them using conversational tools like email and chat
• Must provide value once they land there
▪ You delight by continuing to act as an empathetic advisor and expert
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019
INBOUND METHODOLOGY
Attract
Delight Engage
HOW DOES THE INBOUND METHODOLOGY APPLY TO MARKETING?
Before you can initiate any relationship, you need to understand who you’re trying to
connect with
• You need to understand what their path through they buyers’ journey looks like
• Create content that aligns with every visitor
•
Creating buyer personas helps you develop a trait that’s at the heart of inbound:
empathy
• Step into the shoes of you audience
o Understand their goals
• You start to gain their trust by creating content that best aligns with them as people
o To do so: you’ll need to know where your ideal audience is currently finding and
engaging with new concepts and ideas
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019
o This will tell you where to put your contextualized content
• How are you leveraging ads, engagement and business pages on platforms like LinkedIn,
FB and Twitter?
o Are the prospects going to search engines for research? How are you ranked?
Are you doing paid search? What are your keywords? Are they aligned with your
customers’ searches?
▪ Use paid search to get your strongest content that is most beneficial to a
buyer in front of them when they search
Consider your content strategy → how’s your content being broken down, how you rank on
pillar pages and video content
Understand the problems they face, even if they don’t know what those problems are →
remove any possible roadblocks that could prevent them from getting to their goal
Use Social Media demographics to target your buyer personas
Avoid interruption/distraction advertising → tricks your consumers → clickbait
Use ads that are targeted, relevant and helpful
Once your customer starts interacting with your content, you’re in the “ENGAGE” phase
Must answer 2 important questions:
1) What is the underlying problem, that produced the initial roadblock that caused them to
seek you out?
2) How can you continue to help them solve for that problem?
a. Crucial to have helpful and human web design
As your prospects start to trust you, you must use that trust
As you get feedback from your audience, use that feedback to align your content to match their
needs → live chat, messaging apps and bots to get feedback
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019
By the time you reach the “DELIGHT” phase, you’ve added enough value and removed enough
roadblocks to cement your 1-to-1 relationship with the prospect
The goal of this phase is to empower people to think beyond their immediate roadblocks and
grow with your business
Consistently act as their go-to for solutions
WHAT ARE THE FUNDAMENTALS OF INBOUND MARKETING?
Prospects don’t want to be sold to; they want to be educated!
1) Contacts
a. Anybody your company markets to, sells to, partners with engages with, or
employees. An individual who you’re creating a relationship with.
b. Not a group of random people, but individuals you are building relationships
with
c. Strong database is instrumental in allowing your business to grow
d. The more information you gather about your contacts, the easier it is to identify
which contacts your business can successfully help and ultimately delight
2) Buyer personas
a. Inbound marketing is buyer-centric, you need to know who you’re trying to
reach
b. You don’t just want any traffic → you want targeted leads
c. Definition: Semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer based on real
data and some select educated speculation about demographics, behaviors,
motivations and goals
3) Buyer’s journey
a. Not enough to know who you have to reach, you also need to know what they
want to see
b. Every interaction should be tailored to where they are in the buyer’s journey
c. Definition: the active research process someone goes through leading up to a
purchase
d. Key to creating best content possible
e. 3 phases of Buyer’s Journey:
i. Awareness
1. Experiencing signs of a problem or opportunity
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019
2. They’re doing educational research to put a name to their
problem
ii. Consideration
1. Has clearly defined and given a name to their problem or need
2. They are open to all methods that can help them solve their
problem
iii. Decision
1. They have decided on their solution method
2. Compiling a list of all competitors to make final purchasing
decision
4) Content
a. You need to have content prepared for each buyer persona at each phase of the
buyer’s journey
b. Inbound can’t exist with content
c. Inbound marketing = content + context
5) Goals
a. If you don’t set goals, you won’t know if your inbound marketing is successful
b. What do you need to optimize for the next time?
c. When setting out with your inbound marketing efforts, start from a place where
you know what you want to achieve
Connect with us!
Web Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019
Lesson 2: Planning a Long-Term Content
Strategy
Overview: Developing a long-term plan will determine what content needs to
be generated to support future campaigns. Further, having a plan in place will
facilitate consistent content creation. You will learn how to set realistic goals
for your buyer personas aka your audience, you’ll be introduced to the content
audit and to your content compass.
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?
Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019
Content delivers the message of your inbound marketing strategy Content is what you are trying to deliver to your visitors, leads, customers and promoters Without a message, you have nothing to deliver Content pulls leads from one stage of the inbound methodology to another Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019
Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019
HOW DO YOU BUILD A LONGTERM CONTENT PLAN?
Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
MQL → marketing qualified lead
SQL → sales qualified lead
3 steps to creating a long-term content plan:
1) Setting marketing goals
a. Develop long-term visions and short-term motivation
b. SMART
i. Specific
ii. Measurable
iii. Attainable
iv. Relevant
v. Timely
2) Auditing or assessing your organization’s initiatives and assets
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019
a. Content audit
i. Identify all of the marketing assets you have at your disposal
ii. Identify gaps or opportunities
b. Event-based audit
Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
3) Identifying the buyer’s journey for your buyer personas
a. You’re creating content that’s meant to attract and pull your buyer personas
through every stage of the buyer’s journey
b. Buyer persona below
i. Awareness stage → provide an eBook
ii. Consideration stage → questionnaire
1. Free workshop
iii. Decision stage → free 1-hour strategy session to discuss the process
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
WHAT SHOULD A LONG-TERM CONTENT PLAN LOOK LIKE?
Content compass → a worksheet that organizes the direction of your content creation
1) Needs to be in real time
2) Needs to allow for multiple contributors to access and collaborate
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
Connect with us!
Web Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Lesson 3: Creating a Blog Post
Overview: Blogging is an invaluable content format that can help promote
new content related to your business and industry. You will learn how to build
an optimized blog post.
WHY DOES BLOGGING HELP GROW YOUR BUSINESS?
Blogging helps you ATTRACT new visitors and it helps you convert those visitors into leads
Your blog post can strategically promote offers, converting visitors into leads
HOW DO YOU CREATE A SUCCESSFUL BLOG POST?
• Write educational content
o Answer the questions or problems that people are searching for answers to
o Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas
• White about your industry → not yourself
• Brainstorm a list of specific topics that you can blog about
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
• Pick a topic
o General topic
▪ “running shoes”
o Narrow topic
▪ “best running shoes for marathons”
o When picking your topic, do keyword research
▪ Use the keywords in the blog post
▪ Use one long-tail keyword to focus on per post
o Don’t try to solve every problem in one fell swoop
• Make a list of topics that support a specific conversion
o This will create a longer-term blogging strategy
• Picking a title
o Create a working title
o Include the long-tail keyword in the title
▪ Be sure that the keyword fits as a description of what the page is all
about
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
• What is the reader going to get out of the post? Title needs to be clear to the reader.
• Ideal blog posts
o 60 characters
o Headlines between 8-12 words are shared more often on Twitter
o Headlines between 12-14 words are liked more often on Facebook
o Headlines ending with a bracketed clarification performed 38% better than titles
without a clarification
o If your headline is longer than ~60 characters, make sure your keyword is at the
beginning of the headline so it shows
• Format the blog post
o Both people and search engines must easily read and understand it
o Keep it captivating
o Grab their attention
o Use humor
o Be empathetic
o Include an interesting fact or statistic
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019o Whitespace is your friend
▪ It allows visitors to focus on the content, not the clutter
• Promote offers on your blog to increase lead generation
o Use your blog to strategically promote your current offers
o Insert a CTA after the first few paragraphs
▪ Can’t bet on the reader reading the entire blog post
▪ Hyperlink CTA a few paragraphs into blog is most effective
o Include a CTA at the end of each post
▪ Offer should be relevant to the content that a visitor has just read
o Add a pop-up that the reader sees as they scroll down the page
o Optimize your blog post around the long-tail keyword
▪ Title
▪ Body
▪ URL
▪ Alt-text
• Need to add this to improve SEO for the blog
▪ Meta description
• Gives search engines and readers information about your blog
post content
• 300 characters
• Include long-tail keyword
▪ Include relevant internal and external links within posts
Connect with us!
Web Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Lesson 4: Creating Topic Clusters and Pillar
Pages
Overview: With more and more content going online, search engines like
Google are finding new ways of presenting the content to searchers. The goal
is to provide the most-relevant content. Knowing key formats that resonate
with Google’s search will bring opportunity for content marketers to connect
with their idea audience.
Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019WHY ARE TOPIC CLUSTERS IMPORTANT?
Google’s first major update to the page rank was “Hummingbird” in 2013
• Focused on parsing out phrases rather than focusing on specific search queries
•
Next major update was RankBrain in 2015
• Machine-learning AI system
• It’s able to better connect what people want to find and what search terms they’re using
• Someone searching for something may have difficulty qualifying search terms, which is why they
must search a few times and try different search terms to eventually find what they’re looking
for
Change brings opportunity for content marketers to be found → it’s not just about SEO → search
engines aren’t your customers; humans are → must create a helpful, positive user experience
Content Pillar aka Pillar Page → a website page that covers a broad topic in depth and is linked to from a
cluster of related content
HOW DO YOU CREATE AN EFFECTIVE TOPIC CLUSTER AND PILLAR PAGE?
1) Need a core topic → 2-3 words → can be dug into and explained on a deep level
a. “Sales qualification” is a good core topic
b. Core topic is also what you’re trying to rank for on search engines
2) Identify your topic cluster
a. Should be comprised of subtopics that are strong enough to stand on their own
b. When combined with other relevant subtopics, it should support your core topic
c. “What is a qualified prospect” and “What is BANT” are good topic cluster subtopics
3) Hyperlinks
a. Each subtopic from the Topic Cluster links to the Pillar Page
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 20197 Steps to Creating a 10X Content Pillar Page
1) Choose a core topic
a. Performed research on keywords their buyer persona would use
2) Identify a topic cluster
a. Don’t reinvent the wheel – if you have owned media that could support a pillar page,
reuse it
b. 6 subtopics
3) Create blog posts for needed subtopic content
a. Create blog posts for subtopics
4) Repurpose subtopic content in a downloadable offer
5) Deconstruct downloadable offer into a 10X content pillar page
a. Took the PDF guide from step 4 and made it its own pillar page
6) Link relevant owned media to 10X content pillar page
7) Create a conversion path for people to access your 10x content pillar page on your website
a. Pillar page on the top navigation
Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Source: HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification
WHAT’S AN EXAMPLE OF A SUCCESSFUL PILLAR PAGE?
Your Pillar Page must always be under construction → you need to maintain it so your competitors don’t
come and outperform you
Connect with us!
Web Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Lesson 5: Understanding Social Media
Promotion
Overview: Learn about why you need a social media strategy, the main social
media channels, the importance of social listening, social media content basics
– including conducting of a content audit – and digital marketing.
WHY YOU NEED A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
1) It helps you expand your other marketing efforts
2) It will help you build brand awareness
3) It is one of the most powerful drivers for word of mouth
4) You can use social media to attract buyers
To build your Social Media Strategy, you’ll need:
1) To be able to explain each social media channel
2) To understand the impact of social listening and engagement
3) To develop a content strategy for your social media plan
4) To be able to identify ways that metrics are crucial to your success
5) To integrate social media into your other inbound efforts
THE SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS EXPLAINED
Facebook
• If it were a country, it would have the largest population on earth
o 2.2 billion users
o More than 67% of Americans use FB as a primary source of news
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019YouTube
• 2nd largest network with 1.2 billion users
• 2nd largest search engine in the world
• 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute
• 5 billion videos watched daily
o High conversion rates
Instagram
• 3rd largest social platform and the fastest growing
• 90% of the audience is under 35 years of age
• Deep engagement
o 80% of users follow at least 1 brand
▪ Engagement is 10X higher than Facebook
▪ 54X higher than Pinterest
▪ 84X higher than Twitter
Twitter
• 500 million tweets daily
• See what’s trending
• Share more frequently than other platforms
o 80% of their advertisers’ inbound social customer service requests happen on Twitter
o Frequently express pleasure and dissatisfaction
o Organic networking is one of the best uses of Twitter
o Engage in conversations with your audience to build trust
LinkedIn
• B2B
• Look up individuals you are meeting with
o Build thought leadership
o Share content to drive traffic to your websites
Pinterest
• Shared bulletin boards
• Average life of a pin is 3 months
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019o Much longer than Twitter and Facebook
▪ Create a board
Snapchat
• Strong user base
o Lost a lot after Instagram employed Stories
• 12-24 years is the largest demographic
THE POWER OF SOCIAL LISTENING
The power of 1-to-1 relationships
• The power to directly reach your customers and prospects
o They yield more power
Social listening is how you track, analyze and respond to conversations across the Internet
8 key benefits of Social Listening
1) It gives you the opportunity to measure the performance of your social media, web,
conversations and content strategy
2) It helps you manage reputation
a. Crowdculture baby!
3) It helps you identify your biggest fans and influencers
a. Once you’ve identified your super fans, engage with them and reward them for their
support
4) It can help you discover new product ideas or enhancements
a. Look for gaps or weaknesses in your competitors’ products
5) You can watch the competition
6) It can lead to new business opportunities
7) It can help you find leads
8) It can help you set strategic benchmarks for your future
a. Volume of engagement, sentiment, etc. helps you set better goals for the future
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 20192 modes of Social Listening
1) Monitoring
a. The method of actively looking for mentions of your brand, products, hashtags,
employees, competitors and customers
2) Engagement
a. Is having conversations with individuals about your industry, brand, products and
services
Make sure you’re adequately directing your audience in all channels to the best way they can have a
conversation with you
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT: THE BASICS
82% of all consumer IP traffic will be video by 2021
You can make gif at giphy.com or on Photoshop
Stories are more conversational and casual, started in 2017 on Snapchat then copied by IG and FB →
250 million people per day are watching Instagram stories → average viewing time is 24-32 minutes
4 times as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product vs reading about it
25% of consumers lose interest in a company if it doesn’t have video → video can be used on every
social platform previously mentioned
Video is not always cheap or easy to create, but you may be surprised how easy it actually is. In the age
of influencer marketing losing a lot of credibility, why don’t you build your brand’s audience organically
so YOU can become your own influencer? You will get much more content and reach out of this
approach → the difference between giving someone fish and teaching them to fish. Check out this short
video by Tara Hunt on getting started with video https://youtu.be/qlB3m5fKxPA
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Quizzes, surveys and polls
• Engage your audience directly
• Helps build brand awareness
o Affinity and valuable insights into your audience
Realtime marketing
• Builds brand recognition and engagement
• “News jacking”
• The equivalent of “ripped from the headlines” shows like SVU, etc.
• You can anticipate some of these events like sporting events, national pancake day, etc.
Influencer marketing
• influencers have huge audiences
o Social influencers can be bloggers that built an audience by putting out good content
o Brands are realizing working with social influencers may be better than working with
celebrities from a cost and benefit perspective
User generated content (UGC)
• Blog posts, tweets, reviews, etc.
o Developed by a fan of your company that is shared on a social channel
o It’s the best kind of social content
▪ 76% of people trust content shared by an “average” person more than by brand
▪ Get creative with hashtags like Redbull’s #putacanonit to encourage fun social
sharing of UGC
METRICS: THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS
Conducting a social media audit helps you:
• Develop or adjust a social media strategy that aligns to specific, actionable business objectives
and goals
• Discover trends you can use to create or modify social media campaigns
• Receive valuable insight into customer sentiment and perception of your brand
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019• Provide executives and your team a look into what is or is not working so you can amange and
justify social media spend
o Helps you see the ebb and flow of audience engagement, content performance and
what’s working/not working
o Look at a lot of data
o Develop a spreadsheet with multiple tabs in Excel
Analytics – what to track in your social media audit
• Your owned social channels
• Internal owners of those channels
o Keep track of who has access to your social media accounts
• Number of followers
• Non-owned channels for legal usage
o Is anyone co-opting your brand visuals, you can report them to the network for removal
• Profile consistency
o Similar look and feel across all channels?
• Content performance
o Analyze each channel individually
o Each social channel has metrics and analytics tools
o More Metrics to track:
▪ Best and worst performing posts
▪ Posts with the most engagement
• Comments, likes, shares
▪ Post frequency
▪ Content with the best and worst performance
▪ Publish times of posts with the best engagement
▪ Video views
▪ Click-through to content
▪ Post reach and impressions
▪ Number of Twitter mentions
▪ Effective keywords
▪ Response rate
▪ Sentiment
• Advertising
o If you are conducting a lot of ad campaigns, consider a separate in-depth audit of ads
o Track similar metrics as above, but also budget, A/B test results, etc.
• Analyze your competition
o Go to your competitors’ social media channels
o How are they using social media
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019o How is their content performing
o How do they engage with their followers
o Understand where you have gaps to close
▪ Audit from last semester
A Social Media Audit will help you:
• Develop new benchmarks and KPIs
• Determine the best mix of content on the right channels at the right times
• Identify opportunities tto better engage with customers
• Adjust budgets and calculate ROI
• Identify how you need to make resource changes to boost social media efforts
o Conduct an audit every 12-18 months
TAKING YOUR INBOUND STRATEGY TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH DIGITAL
MARKETING
Add social icons and links to:
• Email signatures
• Presentation templates
• Business cards
• Printed collateral
• Website footer
• Email newsletters
On your website, consider:
• Adding links into your header and footer
• Social sharing links on blog articles or product descriptions
• Adding “pin this” Pinterest links to product pages
• Embed YouTube or Facebook Live videos on your site
• Enabling single-sign-on
Include social media in your ads to gain followers across different channels.
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019In your next email newsletter, ask your followers to share content with a tag back
Ensure your salespeople have tools to connect prospects with your social channels
Ask your followers directly to follow you on a different social network
Connect with us!
Web Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Lesson 6: Developing a Conversational
Growth Strategy
Overview: This lesson will cover why conversational growth is important to
inbound marketing, the elements of a strong conversational growth strategy,
steps to implementing such a strategy, what to consider when comparing
messaging channels and how to select the right conversational channel.
WHAT IS A CONVERSATION?
Conversation (traditional definition): An oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or
ideas between two or more parties
Today, conversations happen over a variety of channels → social media platforms, chat,
messenger, etc.
Conversation (updated definition): An interactive communication between two or more parties
A majority of communication methods today involve technology
• 1-to-1 messaging is becoming a preferred way to communicate across generations,
according to Facebook research
• 56% of people would rather message than call customer service
What does this mean for your inbound marketing strategy?
• Deliver your content in a consistent and relationship-based way
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019• Your relationships with visitors will build over time
o Make sure you’re gathering your visitors’ information progressively in a non-
interruptive way
o Break down info collection in a series of conversations so they don’t feel like
they’re being mined for data
o Customers need to feel like they’re getting more value from the exchange
• Think of the content on your site as a present for someone you care about
o You’ve spent a lot of thought, time and resources to make sure it’s just right
o Now, think about the best way to deliver that present to the right person at the
right time
• Enable all website visitors to have the experience they want
“Content strategy is the long-term planning, creation and management of
content marketing efforts.”
– Justin Champion
WHAT ARE THE ELEMENTS OF A STRONG CONVERSATIONAL GROWTH
STRATEGY?
Begin with the concept of Shared Knowledge
• This is the info or data that is accessible by all tools and participants in conversations
o CRMs and knowledge bases
• Deliver the right message, at the right time, with the right information, on the right
conversational channel, every single time
o Access info that you already know to tailor the conversational experience
o As much about the tools you’re using, as it is the content
• Time to live (TTL)
o The perceived amount of time that is acceptable from the time the message is
sent to the response is received
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019o Different conversational tools have different TTLs
o You must change your approach to messaging → as you move from snail mail to
live chat, you have less time to have the right answer within the TTL expected
SCOPE
• Standardize
o When delivering content informationally, it must be consistent across all of your
channels every time
• Contextualize
o Understand where the buyer is in the Buyer’s Journey
o This ensures you’re delivering the right information when they need it
o Delight prospects/customers with a personalized experience
• Optimize
o Always want to improve the customer experience and not add complexity
o This requires continuous, incremental improvement
o Identify what you visitors are trying to accomplish, or their “jobs to be done”
▪ Study buyer personas and analytics data to understand
▪ Use this info to start crafting a conversational experience that delights
your visitors by delivering the right information when they need it most
▪ Offer them the opportunity to ask more questions and provide more
answer
• Personalize
o Conversations are about building 1-to-1 relationships with people
o People don’t want to feel like they’re nothing more than a number to your
company
o Speaking directly to each and every visitor with what information you’ve
progressively gathered is a great first step to doing just that
• Empathize
o Acknowledge the emotional tone of the conversation
o Response must fit on both an emotional and factual level
o Without empathy, we may not get a clear understanding of the problem from
the user’s perspective, thus we cannot fix the underlying cause, leading to more
upset users, etc.
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Conversations are data-driven
• Need to think about:
o What information you have on your prospect already and what information you
could collect right now
o This enables creating a 1-to-1 personal relationship
Conversations are a cycle of data in and data out
• Data in
o The data you collect, either by asking for it explicitly, or gathering it through
analytics implicitly
• Data out
o How you use your data to further optimize and personalize the conversational
experience for your website visitor
• It’s all just messaging
WHAT ARE THE STEPS FOR IMPLEMENTING A CONVERSATIONAL
GROWTH STRATEGY?
3 steps to help you identify the conversations that will have the biggest impact to your
users and business:
1) Think
a. Think about the most-impactful conversation your company has with your
website visitors
b. Sit and write down every way your business interacts with people
c. Each conversation should meet these criteria:
i. Repeatable
1. Frequent and popular interaction
ii. Predictable
1. Defined start, middle and end
iii. Impactful
1. Every conversation should add some tangible benefit to your
business
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 20192) Plan
a. As you design your conversation, plan ahead for all the places that users may
stray away from the ideal path
b. Find ways to steer your visitor back on track
3) Grow
a. You need to iterate and optimize conversations over time
b. Customers will tell you in their own words what they want out of a conversation
with you
i. The more people you can chat with, the quicker you can adapt the
conversation to meet their needs
c. A great conversational growth strategy is about taking this skill and applying it to
your website experience
WHAT SHOULD YOU CONSIDER WHEN COMPARING DIFFERENT
MESSAGING CHANNELS?
Consider 3 things:
1) Where your prospects are
a. Which of your channels are generating the most website traffic
i. Add interactivity to those channels to improve the experience through
messaging apps
b. Ask your prospects where they prefer to communicate
2) How your prospects prefer to communicate
a. Coincides with the buyer’s journey and what a visitor is trying to accomplish
when they come to your website
b. They’re looking for educational resources in the awareness stage
i. A chatbot might be the best tool to consider as it may speed up helping a
visitor find the info they’re looking for
c. Visitors in the consideration stage
i. consider using an “always-on” channel, like messenger or WhatsApp
d. Visitors in the decision stage
i. Access to a live chat option may be useful
e. Should coincide with the needs of your buyer personas
3) What channels work best for your team
a. Play to your strengths and avoid weaknesses
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019HOW DO YOU SELECT THE RIGHT CONVERSATIONAL CHANNEL?
Having the right conversation with your buyer personas means selecting the right channel to
have that conversation
There isn’t anything more frustrating than having the wrong conversation on the wrong channel
Delivering the right information at the right time on the right channel is where youa re
providing the most human and helpful experience
Buyer persona: semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on real data and
some select educated speculation about customer demographics, behavior patterns,
motivations and goals
Inbound marketing is focused on attracting your customers through relevant and helpful
content
How do you make sure you choose the right conversation for the right buyers’ persona.
3 conversational channels to consider
1) Email
2) Messenger
3) Live Chat
Millennials will consume more video data than other generations, which could be better suited
for Messenger delivery
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Baby boomers communicate more via email → 33% prefer email vs. only 17% of Millennials
that prefer email communication
Everyone is changing, and just because your audience didn’t like video two years ago doesn’t
meant they won’t be interested in it today. Changing preferences does not mean abandoning
channels.
Top channel to learn about what a brand does is the brand’s website
Must bring content and context together. A great conversation provides information to your
buyer persona with the right context.
Connect with us!
Web Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Lesson 7: Understanding Conversions
Overview: In this lesson, you will learn the definition of a conversion, why
conversions are important to inbound marketing, how to build an effective
conversion path and how to calculate your conversion rate.
DEFINING A CONVERSION
Conversion is a moment when a website visitor takes a desired action
Conversions are checkpoints for your content → that ultimately aid in changing the lifecycle
stage of a visitor
Your conversions will be a gauge of your content and website’s success
Call-To-Action (CTA) → Any element on your website or blog that prompts visitors to take
action
CTAs are the rocket fuel that powers the conversions on your site
Conversion path
• (standard definition) the process by which an anonymous visitor becomes a new lead
• (enhanced definition) the method by which you encourage someone on your site to
move down your funnel
o Done via a combination of CTAs and offers
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019If you have an Ebook you want to give away in exchange for user contact information, you can
have a CTA on your website with a button that says “click here for free Ebook”, which takes
them to a landing page where they can input their contact info, which can take them to a
“Thank You” page with a link to download.
WHY IS CONVERSION IMPORTANT TO THE INBOUND MARKETING
PROCESS?
Inbound Marketers wear a lot of hats
Conversions are the mechanism that ties all of your efforts together, as the buyer personas
move down their buyer’s journey through the funnel
Inbound Marketing strategy is about adding value at every stage of the buyer’s journey
Understanding who you’re talking to allows you to continue to supplement their online and
buying experience in a human, helpful and holistic way
Why is it important to keep an eye on your conversions?
• The answer is data
o Conversions are intrinsically tied to data
o Think of conversion data as a way to incrementally check on the health of your
strategy, informing if/when changes are needed
o Is there anything I can do to improve this process?
Conversions allow you to start thinking outside the box when you’re interacting with your
visitors
56% of people would rather message than call customer service
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019HOW TO BUILD AN EFFECTIVE CONVERSION PATH?
Steps carefully crafted to lead your website visitor through your site and to help them consume
content and their disposal
Steps to building a Conversion Path:
1) Create awareness
a. Need an element to attract visitors to your offer
b. Need to show them you have value to add to their experience
2) Determine your endpoint
a. Work backwards from there
3) Chart your course
a. What’s the best flow between elements on your site that really ties the
experience together?
b. Experiment
4) Analyze
a. After 4 weeks, check on reports to see how your conversion path is performing
b. Does your conversion rate meet expectations?
c. If not, experiment ways to optimize and improve the conversion path setup
Consider the following areas:
• Value proposition
o Need to create the kind of content your buyer personas are looking for
o Set SMART goals
▪ Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely
o You don’t want to invest a lot of effort into a piece that ultimately doesn’t have a
place in the larger picture of what your company is doing
o Think about what the content is worth to your user
▪ This will help you determine how much information you can reasonably
ask
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019• Relevance
o Ask yourself the following questions:
▪ Who are you trying to target with this offer?
▪ What are you trying to accomplish?
▪ When should the offer expire?
▪ Where should it live on your site?
▪ Why would your personas want to engage with this offer?
▪ Where does this specific conversion path sit in the buyer’s journey?
• Urgency
o How compelled your visitor feels to take a desired action
o Buttons can add urgency
o Urgency is about taking a step into your visitor’s shoes and seeing how you’re
currently framing the offer
• Clarity
• Anxiety
o Asking for contact info can cause anxiety
o Best to link to the Privacy page to help quell that anxiety
• Distraction
o What might be preventing people from taking that action
o Don’t add too many buttons of pop-ups
o Conversion points need to stand out from the rest
• Optimization strategy
o Having a data collection plan will be key to improving your content strategy
Conversions can take a variety of formats:
• Buttons
• Landing pages
• Blog posts with buttons
• Forms
• Pop-ups
• Live messaging
• Meetings links
• Chatbots
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019A tried and true conversion path is the landing page conversion path:
1) CTA
a. Redirects to a Landing Page
2) Landing Page
a. Tailored to the website visitor has a form to complete
b. Once the form is complete, they are redirected to a Thank You Page
3) Thank You Page
a. Allows the user to download the information and get back to the rest of the site
4) This method is typically used as top-of-the-funnel lead generation
a. If you only use one conversion path, you’re only harnessing a portion of the
possible traffic
HOW TO CALCULATE YOUR CONVERSION RATE?
Conversion Rate → the percentage of visitors who took a desired action or converted
How do you calculate conversion rate?
• Divide the number of people who converted on your CTA, form, etc., but the total
number of people who viewed it
o Multiply the decimal by 100 to get your conversion rate
• Conversion rate isn’t the only metric you should look at
o Context is key
o Conversion rate shows how content is performing
▪ Content performance can then help you make educated decisions on the
best next steps
Connect with us!
Web Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Lesson 8: Creating a Conversion
Optimization Strategy
Overview: In this lesson, you will learn why conversion optimization is
important to your inbound strategy, how to implement conversion
optimization and what roles reporting and analytics play in conversion
optimization.
WHY IS CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION IMPORTANT TO YOUR INBOUND
STRATEGY?
Conversion (rate) optimization
• the process of testing hypotheses on elements of your site with the ultimate goal of
increasing the percentage of visitors who take the desired action
• It’s about data and experimentation
• Your website is not a static resource, but rather an organic ecosystem for your buyer
personas to interact with your resources
• Optimization helps you evolve with the ebbs and flows of traffic to your site
• Adopting the mentality to always be growing as the needs of your buyers personas
change
• You can always find ways to improve your website experience
• Takes speculation out of your decision-making by utilizing data
• Always be learning
• Conversion optimization fits into each phase of the Inbound Methodology
o Attract
o Engage
o Delight
o “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring”
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019How can conversion optimization affect your ROI?
• No matter how many steps you have or what you call them, the overall shape remains
the same
o Funnel is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom
o With each stage, you experience a bit of drop off
▪ Some aren’t ready to convert, buy, etc. and don’t continue on the buyer’s
journey
o This is why optimization is so important
▪ The fewer leads you can lose in the buyer’s journey, the more ROI
• If you’re considering your company’s bottom line, you have 2 approaches
o Invest more time and resources
▪ Drive up traffic and people in the funnel
▪ Long-term, this could negatively impact your Cost-To-Acquire-A-
Customer (CAC)
• Reduce ROI
o Increase the chances of your current traffic choosing to convert
▪ Has the potential to drastically reduce CAC and increase ROI
HOW TO IMPLEMENT CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION
Conversion optimization is an iterative and replicable process with 5 steps:
1) Define your objective
a. Often an overlooked step
b. 3-pronged approach
i. Define your goal
1. Where does this fit into your long-term and short-term goals?
2. What KPIs is this attempting to influence?
ii. Step into the shoes of your buyer persona
1. Why is your buyer persona turning to your content?
2. Send a survey to users to understand why they converted
iii. Narrow down the page element you want to experiment on first
1. Don’t experiment on multiple elements at once
2) Establish your baseline
a. What is the current performance of your conversion?
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019b. What is your data telling you?
3) Form a testable hypothesis
a. Is the traffic coming to the page the right kind of traffic?
b. In clear, simple language, write a hypothesis statement about what you think will
happen
i. “By making X changes, the conversion rate will increase by Y because it
fixes Z problem.”
c. Example hypothesis:
i. “by adding testimonials, the conversion rate will increase because it gives
social credibility to our work and makes us seem more genuine to cold
prospects coming to our website to sign up for a consultation.”
4) Designing your tests
a. 6 factors typically affect conversions:
i. Value proposition
ii. Relevance
iii. Urgency
iv. Clarity
v. Anxiety
vi. Distraction
b. You only want to test one element at a time
c. Establish a schedule to benchmark your experiment
d. Let your test run for at least 4 weeks
5) Analyze your data
a. Now is the time to determine if the prediction and hypothesis you made is
correct
b. If your hypothesis turns out to be correct, great
c. If not, that’s okay, too
d. Conversion optimization is a continuous process
e. You don’t have to stop at just one experiment
Conversion optimization:
• Is the consistent, structured, ongoing process of improving your website over time
• Is about identifying what factors you can control in your visitors’ experience with your
website
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019WHAT ROLES DO REPORTING AND ANALYTICS PLAY IN CONVERSION
OPTIMIZATION?
Reporting
• A written or spoken description of a situation, event, etc.
• 2 aspects to think about
o What a report is
o What a report does
• Reporting tells you what is happening and can help you transform the raw data your
business is collecting in a readable format
Analytics
• (standard definition) The process of using analysis
o Definition might seem obvious
• (detailed definition) The detailed examination of anything complex in order to
understand its nature or to determine its essential features
• Unlike reporting, which focuses on compiling data you’ve been collecting, analytics
focuses on exploring and interpreting data or reports in order to glean valuable insights
into why certain trends happened the way they did
Why does understanding this fundamental difference between reporting and analytics
matter?
• Ensures you’re using the potential of both without missing out on key features of either
• Reporting is the rocket fuel that powers the entire optimization experiment
o Without the data showing whether or not your hypothesis is correct, the
experiment in process quickly falls apart
• Analysis on the other hand, helps you determine your next steps
o Ask yourself questions like:
▪ Does the data support or answer my hypothesis?
▪ If so, how?
▪ If not, why?
• You’re building a critical foundation for the conversion optimization process
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Connect with us!
Web Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Lesson 9: Understanding Lead Nurturing
Overview: In this lesson, you will learn why lead nurturing is important, the
fundamentals of lead nurturing and what an effective lead nurturing
campaign looks like.
WHY IS LEAD NURTURING IMPORTANT?
It’s your opportunity to provide value to your leads and customers and help them grow with
your business.
Question: “How do I connect with my prospects and turn them into customers in the most
helpful way?”
Lead nurturing:
• (definition) the process of building relationships with your prospects with the goal of
earning their business when they’re ready
o Timely, efficient and targeted approach to connecting with your contacts
• Primarily in the Engage phase of the Inbound Methodology
• Helps you focus on providing value to your leads by offering them information they
need, at the right time
• Each lead in your database should be nurtured, according to their interests and lifecycle
stages
• Good nurturing adapts the messaging
• Helps you continue to connect after they become customers
• Success with lead nurturing – the best of both worlds
o Growth for your leads and growth for you
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Lead nurturing
• Timely
o One problem Inbound Marketers have is finding the right time to connect with
leads, when they’re most interested
o One problem your leads face is being contacted at the wrong time
o Lead nurturing is delivered through Marketing Automation
▪ Software that exist with the goal of automating your marketing actions
o If a contact downloads a piece of content on “The Best Ways to Create Subject
Lines for Email Newsletters,” you’ll be able to send a follow-up piece of content
that builds off that subject
• Efficient
o The odds of an inbound lead becoming qualified are 21x greater when they’re
contacted within 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes
o Automate tasks
o Reduce time a salesperson needs to spend on qualifying or warming up a lead
o Being human, helpful and holistic
o Marketing automation helps you scale your efforts and increase the value you
provide your contacts in a more efficient way
• Targeted
o Being human is what builds trust
o Your lead nurturing campaigns provide contextual messages to your contacts,
which is key to building trust
WHAT ARE THE FUNDAMENTALS OF A LEAD NURTURING STRATEGY?
It takes around 6-8 touches to generate a viable sales lead
Your marketing automation software and your conversations – which include things like emails,
live chat, Facebook Messenger, and social – will work together to fuel your lead nurturing
strategy
Remember: a goal without a plan is just a wish
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 20193 elements of a lead nurturing strategy
1) Contact management
a. A strategy that focuses on using a software program (like HubSpot) to easily
store and source a contact’s information, including their name, contact history,
email information, and so much more
b. There is no use in learning about contacts if you don’t have a good plan in place
for where to store the information
c. Relies on a healthy database that is consistently updated
d. Must continuously clean your database to ensure only the right contacts are
there
2) Segmentation
a. Lead nurturing is the happy marriage between content and context
b. Segmentation is how you provide context
c. Segmentation is breaking up your contacts into similar groups of people
i. This allows you to look at a similar group of people who are going to
receive similar information
d. Segments can be divided in an endless number of ways
i. Demographics
ii. Industry
iii. Company size
iv. Number of emails opened
v. Etc.
e. Pro tip: segmentation is an important part of having great conversations. And
having great conversations is an important part of lead nurturing
f. Keeping contact properties organized, clear and concise will help you create
effective segments
g. Regularly review the contact properties to ensure they are clean and updated
3) The buyer’s journey
a. Where you define the different audiences, you send emails to
b. When defining audiences, look at 2 things:
i. Buyer personas
ii. Buyer’s journey
c. Who are the key people I should be sending to?
d. Where are they in the buyer’s journey?
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019WHAT DOES AN EFFECTIVE LEAD NURTURING CAMPAIGN LOOK LIKE?
Creating a lead nurturing campaign will help you provide the most contextual content to your
leads while staying highly productive
Before starting a campaign, you need to determine which tools you will use
• Lead nurturing uses automation tools that help you take specific actions, guiding your
marketing efforts toward a specific goal
5 Steps to Creating an Effective Lead Nurturing Campaign
1) Setting goals
a. Determining what you want to accomplish is the first step, because without a
goal, how do you know if you’re successful or not?
b. What actions are my contacts taking that I need to target?
c. Define a SMART goal
2) Selecting personas
a. “I’d like 15 of my unengaged leads to click a link to a resource article by the end
of my month-long workflow”
b. Buyer persona
i. A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on real data
and some select educated speculation about customer demographics,
behavior patterns, motivations and goals
ii. Key to helping you create the most contextual content for your
campaigns and understanding who will be consuming it
3) Creating content
a. The idea is to nurture leads through the funnel to ensure they’re more educated
and ready to buy
b. Instead of pitching your product or service as the greatest thing ever, you should
first offer value
i. Videos, webinars, blog posts, etc.
4) Identifying the timeline
a. One of the most beneficial aspects of lead nurturing is timeliness
b. 75% of leads buy within 18-24 months
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019c. Patience is a virtue
d. Don’t push a lead into a sale
e. Let it take its natural course
5) Measuring and improving
a. You need to ensure the accurate tracking of your conversations
b. You need to know what’s working and what’s not
c. Set metrics that measure your goals
How do you know when to nurture your leads versus your customers?
Nurturing Your Leads
• After the first conversion
• After they download a content offer
• After they subscribe to a blog
• After they request a trial or demo
• Or for re-engagement
Nurture a new customer
• During onboarding
• Product/service education
• New product
• Support resources
• Pro-services recommendations
Nurture an existing customer
• Asking for a referral
• Re-engagement
• Feedback
• Renewals
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Connect with us!
Web Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019Lesson 10: Aligning Your Marketing With
Sales
Overview: In this lesson, you will learn what sales establishment is and how
marketing can align with sales.
WHAT IS SALES ESTABLISHMENT?
Sales enablement definition
• Sales enablement is the processes, content and technology that empower sales teams
to sell efficiently at a higher velocity
HOW MARKETING CAN ALIGN WITH SALES
1) Have an agreed-upon definition of a sales-ready lead
a. What are the signals to look out for if someone is moving further along their
buyer’s journey
b. Lead qualification matrix – redo and insert here
c. Filling this in is a team-wide effort
Inbound Marketing Certification Proprietary to HubSpot, Inc. Document by Gabor Szendrei Copyright © 2019You can also read
