Top 5 Things We Learned at HUGS 2011

This past Friday RainCastle attended the HubSpot User Group Summit to advance our HubSpot skills and learn more about what the future of Inbound marketing holds.

And while we did have some fun learning about their censored unicorn marketing strategies and watching the CEOs detail a report card on the company’s improvements, the heart of it was a look at how Inbound marketing can greatly advance your company’s marketing success. Here are our top five takeaways from the event.

1. Marketers need to utilize the MOFU (Middle of the Funnel)

The sales funnel can be a complex system of communication based on your company, resources, and preferences. The middle of the funnel is where relationships are formed, and it depends heavily on creating relationships with potential clients. At HUGS, a big theme was how to utilize the MOFU so that our content and websites are geared toward personalization; creating a personalized experience for the visitor will be more effective in gaining him or her as a customer. HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan pinpointed Amazon.com as evidence of this: the more you visit and interact with the site, the more personalized the experience becomes as Amazon directs you to things you might like.

2. Don’t discount social media

Social media can generate leads in a number of ways; it’s all about direction. Ex: Tweet about a blog post that leads to an eBook offer that registers the visitor as a lead. Find what channels your leads use to navigate the decision-making process and what content brings in customers. When you maximize content discovery you make conversion potential pervasive, and this allows you to optimize for leads. Social media only increases the number of chances you have to reach out to your audience.

3. Test, measure, learn

A/B testing your landing pages, calls to actions, titles, photos, etc. will only lead to more concrete findings on what works for you. If a certain title on a call to action gets more views but fewer follow-throughs, re-think the title to optimize offer completion instead of views. Similarly, find out what offers are getting the most leads from Twitter and Facebook, and use this to tweak your marketing efforts for that offer (see? more social media integration). Learn what you can stop doing to specify what you can do more of.

4. 73% of CEOs don’t believe marketing drives revenue

This is a sad fact. Marketing is what fuels your website, brand messaging, and corporate identity. Advertising isn’t enough anymore; your company has to have an online presence and utilize Inbound marketing to build reputation, revenue, and clientele. More importantly, the analytics you have access to today in relaying information about your marketing efforts give you the ability to build on your efforts, and tailor your campaigns to success.

5. Set goals

Every campaign you launch should have a goal. This means creating massive amounts of personalized content that is valuable. Understand the customer: who they are, where they found you, what they’re looking for, and set goals around them. For example, email campaigns should be customized to different customer personas representing different goals; their goals influence yours. This is, generally, a best practice for any marketing effort, but becomes especially important considering the vast number of ways a modern potential customer can be reached and influenced.