Copia Marketing, LLC

How to Launch a Lead-Gen Campaign on a Tiny Budget: 7 Steps for Using Blogs & Social Media

December 14, 2007

SUMMARY: If your company has big plans for a product launch but a tiny marketing budget, Web 2.0 can come to the rescue.

Worried about the high cost of direct mail, email and telemarketing, a marketer turned to social networking, blogs and a four-figure search budget to debut a complimentary SEO tool to find leads. Includes seven strategies and results that surpassed all goals.

CHALLENGE
Startup company HubSpot began 2007 with very few customers for its new, Web-based online marketing optimization system. With those tools coming out of beta, Mike Volpe, VP Marketing, needed a promotional strategy to rapidly spread the company’s message and identify qualified prospects for the sales team.

Volpe worried that the high cost of traditional methods, such as direct mail, telemarketing and even email, wouldn’t deliver the best ROI for his small budget. Those methods also didn’t match the company’s emphasis on using search, social media and other online channels to attract potential customers.

“The whole premise of HubSpot is that the way people search for, evaluate and purchase products has changed,” Volpe says. “We focus on inbound marketing, and were trying to come up with a campaign to embrace that as a concept.”

Volpe and his team wanted to test a viral campaign that relied on blogs, social networking sites and searches to help prospects find and approach the company. But they knew they didn’t want to rely on a funny online video or some other typical marketing creative element to attract qualified leads interested in improving their online marketing.

CAMPAIGN
Volpe and his team created a new, online SEO tool called Website Grader, which automatically analyzes the marketing effectiveness of any URL and generates a free report. With Website Grader, the team hoped to create a pool of prospects for the company’s paid services, which are designed to improve the performance of websites.

First, though, Volpe needed to generate tons of traffic for the Website Grader website and then convince users to run a report on their URLs.

Here are the seven steps they followed to spread the word:

-> Step #1. Give bloggers advance peek

Volpe’s team focused their early efforts on making Website Grader an effective centerpiece of the viral marketing campaign. They needed to ensure that the tool was useful, easy to use and compelling enough for bloggers to share it with friends.

They turned to bloggers with expertise in online marketing and search engine optimization to help evaluate Website Grader and recommend improvements.

- Volpe’s team had spent several months monitoring the appropriate bloggers to keep on top of trends in the industry. Using Technorati, Google’s blog search and other tools, they identified and kept tabs on hundreds of industry bloggers.

- During their product-development period, they formed relationships with several of these bloggers by adding comments to their posts and participating in ongoing dialogues.

- When preparing to launch Website Grader, they contacted 100 bloggers, including those with whom they had formed relationships. They asked them to use the tool to run a report on a website and provide feedback on the process and results.

They specifically avoided the biggest, most popular blogs in the space. “They get a lot of inbound inquiries, and we didn’t feel like we had great relationships with them.”

- At this point, they did not ask bloggers to write a post about the tool — they only solicited feedback.

-> Step #2. Launch with blog mentions

After receiving mostly positive feedback from bloggers, they incorporated changes recommended by them. Volpe’s team was then ready to launch Website Grader.

- They replied to the bloggers who had responded to their initial requests for feedback, noting that their requested changes had been made and inviting them to write about the tool.

- They included links to Website Grader in relevant posts on their own company blog, such as a post analyzing the SEO performance of top venture capital firm sites.

-> Step #3. Promote tool through social networking

Big believers in the value of social media, the team submitted the Website Grader link to several social media sites.

- Volpe’s team sent the link to StumbleUpon, which allows members of the community to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on sites submitted. The more approval votes a site receives, the more it is forwarded to other members of the community who have expressed interest in that type of content. The process helps sites develop an overall approval rating and determine how prominently it is displayed on the StumbleUpon site.

- They bookmarked and tagged the site at Del.icio.us, where bookmarked sites are shared among members with similar interests and preferences.

-> Step #4. Post messages on discussion forums

Next, the team looked for opportunities to post messages about Website Grader on search marketing discussion forums, such as the Digital Point Forums.

They were careful not to create new threads or post blatantly promotional messages in these forums. Instead, they looked for places where they could include a mention of the tool as an answer to a member’s question, or as a relevant addition to an ongoing discussion.

“You wouldn’t walk into networking party and say, ‘Hey, let me tell you how awesome my company is.’ It’s the same thing online. You don’t cram your sales pitch down their throats.”

-> Step #5. Test paid promotions

As traffic to the site began to build with the blog mentions, social media exposure and links to message boards, Volpe and his team tested whether limited paid promotion would further boost traffic.

With a budget of approximately $5,000, they tested:

- Pay-per-click campaigns. Because search engine marketing is a competitive space in the pay-per-click universe, the team tested a series of low-priced, long-tail type keywords to attract Web users interested in site optimization.

For example, rather than bidding on broad terms, like “Internet marketing,” they bid on long phrases, such as “website marketing, search engine optimization, free report.” In addition to the click rate, they tracked how many of those clicks actually used the tool to generate a report.

- Paid promotion on StumbleUpon. The service allows sites that are already ranked by the community to pay for additional promotion through the service’s “Stumble” feature. It’s a button that lets members see a new piece of content relevant to their areas of interest.

When an advertiser pays for promotion, StumbleUpon delivers the link to interested users who click the “Stumble” button. Advertisers pay per visitor who lands on the site.

-> Step #6. Issue press releases highlighting data

To further raise awareness for Website Grader, Volpe’s team prepared two reports based on data generated by the online tool:

- The first report reviewed the SEO tactics employed by the top 20 blogs as ranked by Technorati. The report highlighted whether these sites were using important SEO techniques, such as description metadata and keyword metadata.

- The second report analyzed the SEO performance of presidential candidates’ websites.

They promoted these reports with press releases distributed through MarketWire, and by having their PR team approach a select group of bloggers and media outlets.

-> Step #7. Follow up with prospects who ran site reports

When users ran a Website Grader report on a URL, Volpe’s team used three techniques to qualify them as leads and follow-up to discuss additional services.

- Automatic email response. Website Grader visitors could enter their email address to receive a copy of their report. The outbound message that delivered results also contained a personalized note from the company’s VP of Sales. The VP invited the prospect to set up a time for a telephone call to discuss the results and potential improvements.

- Online registration. For users who chose to read their report results online, Volpe’s team included an offer on the bottom of the screen that invited users to receive a personalized expert review of their site.

The call-to-action featured the headline: “Need to improve?” It included a link to a registration page, where the prospect could enter contact information for follow-up.

- Sales team follow-up. Volpe’s team periodically reviewed all the sites being evaluated on Website Grader to find companies that seemed the best fit for HubSpot’s paid services, based on company size and other qualifying factors. Those sites were assigned to a sales rep, who followed up with an email and a phone call to see if they were interested in learning more about the company’s inbound marketing services.

RESULTS
Since launching Website Grader less than a year ago, the tool has become Volpe’s best source of leads and sales. “It has far surpassed any of the goals we had,” Volpe says, with the site so far generating reports for more than 150,000 URLs.

Volpe’s team has converted about 1,000 Website Grader users into leads for HubSpot’s paid services, and has already signed more than 30 new customers to contracts with a lifetime value of more than $250,000. At least 60 more opportunities sit in the pipeline.

Volpe’s sales team also uses Website Grader as a demonstration tool in all its sales presentations. After showing prospects how well their sites are optimized for search marketing, sales reps discuss ways their paid marketing services can help improve lead generation.

Carefully seeding the viral campaign through blogs and social media sites was the key to generating prospect interest. About 20 of the bloggers initially contacted wrote reviews of the tool, and interest from the blogosphere resulted in dozens more small sites each week including a link to the site. To date, that activity has generated more than 34,000 inbound links to the Website Grader website, boosting the site’s overall search engine ranking.

StumbleUpon members continue to rank the page highly, with the site receiving an 81% approval rating from the community. And at Del.icio.us, the site has been bookmarked more than 2,000 times, further boosting traffic and interest.

Paid promotions also proved a valuable component of the team’s marketing efforts: About 60% of users who clicked on a search advertisement used the tool to run a website report.

Creating reports based on the tool’s data also kept the campaign’s momentum going. Thanks to their two press releases, the team garnered write-ups from high-profile sources, such as Guy Kawasaki’s blog and PC Magazine.

Most importantly, they’ve created a viral campaign that’s relevant to the services the company provides, helping demonstrate the problem the company can solve for its customers.

“This campaign isn’t over, and I’m not sure it’s ever going to end. We’re constantly thinking about ways to enhance the reports generated by Website Grader,” says Volpe. “Three years from now, we may be talking about how we got to 1 million unique URLs, which is a response you’re definitely not going to get if you put up one funny video on YouTube.”

Useful links related to this article

Creative samples from HubSpot’s Social Media campaign:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/hubspot/study.html

Del.icio.us:
http://del.icio.us/

Digital Point Forums:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

StumbleUpon:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Guy Kawasaki’s blog:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

Website Grader:
http://www.websitegrader.com/

HubSpot:
http://www.hubspot.com/

From Marketing Sherpa

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30261

Posted by copiasolaris under Case Studies | Comments (0)

10 Things You Should Know About Improving Your Agency’s Relationship - Tips & Horror Stories

December 12, 2007

SUMMARY: When you outsource marketing to an agency, you expect them to handle most of the work. But that doesn’t let you off the hook in your marketing. Far from it.

You remain a key partner with the agency, which means you have to be a great communicator … and that takes effort. See what the head of one marketing agency says they need from their clients to work effectively. Plus, tips on how to help your marketing by helping your agency.

Communication between your company and your marketing agency is critical. You need to tell them what’s working, what’s not and how your customers react so they can create the best possible marketing plan for you. And you need to heed your agency’s counsel.

You might say: “Why wouldn’t I listen to my agency’s advice? After all, I hired them.” You would think that’s always the case, but ego and stubbornness often interfere.

Rich Carr, Founder and CEO, Carr Knowledge, for instance, has had clients refuse his advice on many occasions. “You know, it’s almost as obvious as you know you have to drive on the right-hand side of the road and when the lights are red you need to stop. They were saying, ‘Well, you don’t necessarily have to drive on the right, and we don’t see lights.’ And it’s like, do you want to be in the car with them? Well, hell no. Go crash.”

To avoid accidents, Carr has 10 strategies and suggestions on how clients can communicate better with their agencies:

Give Your Agency Lots of Information
When you first hire a marketing agency, you must provide a great deal information. The more you provide, the more the agency can help you:

->Tip #1. Have a goal

The first question Carr asks every new client is: “What are we celebrating this time next year?” This goal serves as the focal point around which an agency builds a marketing effort. It could be anything, including:
o Increase sales
o Boost market share
o Sell a certain product
o Sell through a certain channel
o Other

If your goal is one of the above, make sure it’s tied to an exact percentage. Without that benchmark, your goal will be too vague to be targeted and met. “If you have no idea of where you’re going, you’re not going to get there. And if all the people that work for you don’t know what that goal is, then they’re just showing up at work and waiting until 5 o’clock to go home. Everybody has to be working for this goal,” Carr says.

-> Tip #2. Hand over all your sales and marketing information

Before you meet with the agency, have enough information to answer any questions they might have; it needs it to give you a thorough investigation. “To use an analogy, it’s as if you’re a high school athlete and I’m going to give you a physical,” Carr says. “I mean I’m going to know everything about your business.”

This includes:
o Prior marketing efforts, including duration, cost and ROI
o Sales information broken down by source, location and item
o Know what types of marketing work for you and what don’t

“Most businesses have their P&L [profit and loss statement], they live by their P&L,” Carr says. “And we can go through that and ask questions like, ‘What happened when you did this?’ ‘What are your best sales months?’ ‘What do you do during those months?’ ‘What do you say you’re doing during those months?’ I mean literally dissect everything that works.”

When asking these questions, Carr and his clients often stumble into things that work better.

->Tip #3. Leave your ego at home

By hiring an agency, you’ve admitted that your marketing needs help. Keep your ego out of the relationship. Don’t withhold information that makes your earlier marketing look better or stronger. Provide accurate information and numbers. The more honest information you can provide, the more the agency can help.

Offer Feedback
After your marketing plan is up and running, continue to provide feedback. This will help the agency discover new tactics and learn which campaigns are working and which aren’t.

“Generally, they’re just discussions. Think of your doctor. You go in there, ‘How are you feeling.’ ‘Well, everything’s great, except when I do this, it hurts.’ It’s the same thing with marketing. We talk a lot, just like, ‘How are things going? How are you feeling about stuff? How’s this location?’ ” says Carr.

Types of information an agency wants includes:

- Sales
Your sales figures are usually the first numbers most agencies want after your new marketing campaigns begin, Carr says. “We want to see what happens right away with the till, because, again, what we’re here to do is sell more stuff.”

Keep track of your change in sales. Whether the change is positive, negative or flat, provide the information so the agency can adjust your marketing plan accordingly.

- Company and customer buzz
Many agencies involve every type of employee in a marketing campaign. For example, some of Carr’s restaurant clients have their wait staff collecting email addresses from customers. That’s a change in the customers’ and the employees’ experience, and it will cause a reaction.

Whatever the reactions, pass them along to the agency. The information will help it implement future campaigns.

- Ideas
Typically, an agency is not in your office or in your stores, so it’s not in your environment. You have to be the eyes and ears for the agency.

If there’s an event in your area that could be incorporated into marketing, for instance, pass the idea along. Is your competition doing something that you’re interested in? Send a quick email. Tell the agency about any ideas you have.

“For example, Seattle is putting in this new street car, it’s like a trolley. It’s a big deal for Seattle, it’s nice. It ends up, one of our [restaurant] clients happens to be right toward the end of the line of the proposed street car route. He originally pinged us saying, ‘Hey, did you know they’re putting in a street car, and, you know, we should find out some information about it,’ because he’s in touch with that … [Now,] when the street car makes its first run here next week, it does not only end up right in front of his particular business, but he’s advertising in the street car, he’s on the street car maps, which are all over Seattle, and there’s an offer that once they get off the street car and come and eat at his place … they get a free appetizer. It’s little, but it just started with a ‘Hey, did you know.’ ”

Send Ideas & Concerns
To get into quick contact with your agency, the best way is to send an email.

“I would say email is probably our primary communication tool. Clients say ‘Hey, I was thinking about this. … Take a look at this. … I think we should do this.’ ” Get some interchanges going back and forth. Schedule a conference call. If the conference call goes well, schedule a meeting. If the meeting goes well, implement the strategy and make it happen.

“If you’re driving home and you’re stuck in rush-hour traffic, you look at a billboard for root beer — and all of a sudden you’re thinking of a great way to sell. The greatest thing you can do with that little flash is call or email me what just happened and say, ‘You know, is there anything we can do with that?’ ”

Listen to Your Agency
Agencies are hired usually because they know more about marketing than their clients – so, listen to your agency’s advice. Many marketers ignore common sense; they have a hard time letting go of favorite tactics.

With one client, “it was one element of their email marketing campaign, where they wanted emails to go out [in a certain way]. Well, we know how to get an email delivered to an inbox. There are certain things you have to do. There are best practices. … [They started] getting bad flags from IPs because they’re sending out these giant images and PDFs … and their opt-out rates would increase every time an email went out. Eventually, we just said we’re done,” says Carr.

“We found it much easier to, rather than fight with a client like that … just get rid of them and spend that time and resource on somebody who does want to improve.”

Useful links related to this article

Carr Knowledge LLC:
http://www.carrknowledge.com/

From Marketing Sherpa

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30250

Posted by copiasolaris under Interviews | Comments (0)