Actionable Steps to Better Inbound Marketing Success by Brian Halligan, Hubspot

Brian Halligan, CEO and Founder of Hubspot, was the first presenter at yesterday’s inaugural “What’s Next DC – Your Marketing Communications Roadmap” Conference. Brian opened in one of the two long time slots of the day (45 minutes) but gave a fantastic presentation on actionable steps businesses can use to take advantage of modern inbound marketing techniques by optimizing their websites to get found by more prospects and convert a higher percentage of those prospects into paying customers. (Photo by Nakeva Corothers) View Brian’s Slidedeck. Takeaways included:

• The current playbook is fundamentally busted. Everything we’ve learned as PR Marketers over the last 10 years (renting email lists, hiring sales people to make cold calls, google ad words, etc) is broken. Traditional marketing is dead and doesn’t work anymore. We are sick and tired of being sold to. We are sick and tired of being marketed to. We have trained ourselves to block it out, to ignore ads and spam. Example: When did you last read the spam email you get? Do you answer the phone when you see its a marketer or someone you don’t know? Do you read your physical junk mail?
• People are no longer subscribing to the paper they are subscribing to their fav blog. They are consuming info in a radically new way. (People are getting their news in real time, wherever they are, from a variety of sources.)
• Instead of spamming your way into peoples lives through email blasts and cold calls and advertisements, pull them in through the natural way people are shopping and living now. Instead of outbound interruption-based marketing, do inbound modern marketing.
• With Modern Marketing, your success is a function of the width of your brain, not the width of your wallet. You don’t need a lot of money to be a successful marketer today. But you have to be interesting.
• Marketers rent email lists, or adwords, or space on websites – temporary keywords that go to the highest bidder. Modern marketing is more about an ownership model than a rental model. Modern Marketers are really asset managers: Twitter followers, Facebook fans, back-links. You want to grow these assets.
• Google Adwords was genius 3 or 4 years ago, but now too many people are buying compared to those who are searching.
• Create lots of content!! Blogs, videos, slide presentations, anything! Content is the magnet that draws customers in, that boosts you in search rankings. And content lasts forever!
• Social Media Optimization: People are scanning- content must be catchy, and have a brilliant title optimized for social media to get their attention and have a shot at being re-shared by them.
• 6 Steps to Marketing Success: 1. Create good content. 2. Optimize it. 3. Pimp it out everywhere. 4. Have strong call to action on website. 5. Nurture your leads. 6. Analytics.
• Contribute unique, interesting content, and share it with everyone.
• 99% of websites don’t have a strong call to action. Its not a beauty contest, its about the quality of the content.
• Websites have 2 purposes: to  draw people in and to convert them in an efficient way.
• Nurture your leads!
• Measure! Conduct simple analytics, look at your funnel by channel to best optimize it.
• Hubspot has the brochure site sure, but they really focus on landing pages/properties that they pull people in to. Transforming the top of the funnel will grow all other parts of it.
• “Get found and convert.”
• Video Content: You can’t create a viral video. You can create a video, and hope it goes viral. Maybe 1 of 10 videos you create will go viral and work – but that’s worth it for the people they attract.
• Modern marketing is publishing, creating content, and pulling people in.
• Social media policy at @hubspot – use common sense. Get everyone involved blogging & tweeting! It brings people in!
• “Let 1000 flowers bloom.” Having more bloggers on your site, means you will have more reach! Make it competitive & get everyone involved in content creation!
• Eliminate comment approval/moderation on your blogs! People want to/need to be able to comment in real time. If they post a mean comment, leave it! Respond to it publicly and professionally.
• In the ’90s the sales rep had all the power, customers had to go through them to get info. Today, all that leverage is gone, the customer can find all that info online. No marketing is all powerful!
• Don’t measure quarterly – you should be measuring daily. Measure often, so that you can evolve fast. No more annual planning. You should have monthly or weekly meetings to plot out new ideas and initiatives. Look at whats working and whats not. Have monthly sprint meeting and daily standup meeting to keep everyone up to date.
• Experimentation is key in marketing! Marketing is non-linear and you need to take risks and try new things. Monthly cycle, fast iterations.
• Are you still putting out press releases? Generation Y says “F*%$ That!” to press releases. They want to read a CEOs twitter or blog. They want to talk to you directly, no more barriers. Be more transparent! Be more authentic! Speak like a human, don’t use “marketing speak”.
• If you want to be successful, commit. You have to jump in, not just dip your toe.

You can follow Brian on Twitter at @bhalligan

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Tags: #whatsnextdc, advice, brian halligan, Corrie Davidson, hubspot, inbound, Marketing, presentation, slides, success, takeaways, whats next dc

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 25th, 2011 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Events, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.