In episode #672, Eric and Neil gush about HubSpot’s stellar marketing. Tune in to hear how you can be more successful like HubSpot.
TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:
- [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Genius of HubSpot’s Marketing
- [00:35] HubSpot is a CRM and they are a large, publicly traded company who coined the term “inbound marketing”.
- [01:00] HubSpot’s marketing is so good, because they aggressively use content marketing; they looked at the data and saw what moved the needle.
- [01:20] They check what ranks for their competitors and copies that topic/style.
- [01:45] HubSpot also hires the best.
- [01:57] In order to maximize their content marketing, they have two full-time employees who repurpose all their content.
- [02:08] They call them ’historical content managers”.
- [02:20] HubSpot also finds ways to offer free tools that are similar to successful paid versions.
- [02:30] They are ruthless.
- [02:52] Website Grader was a great resource and helped HubSpot get backlinks and traction.
- [03:20] They have created a large community by creating a conference series. Their own users throw HubSpot conferences around the world.
- [03:45] David Cancel says one of the biggest winners was creating the agency partner program.
- [04:05] They love creating symbiotic relationships.
- [04:36] HubSpot is getting 70% open rates using Facebook Messenger.
- [04:43] When they did this, chatbots were new.
- [05:00] Sales rep’s close ratios are the same from free tools as the ratios for content.
- [05:20] That’s all for today!
- [05:41] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway!
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The post The Genius of HubSpot’s Marketing | Ep. #672 appeared first on Marketing School Podcast.
Full Transcript of The Episode
Speaker 1: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Siu.
Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.
Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Siu: And today, we're going to talk about the genius of HubSpot's marketing. And before we do, maybe some context on who HubSpot is. HubSpot is a CRM. They're well-known for coining the term or being related to the term inbound marketing and they are publicly traded. They are a very large company. And Neil, why do you think they're marketing is so genius? Why is it so good?
Neil Patel: Yeah. Funny enough, they coined that term. That term is actually not that popular. I don't [inaudible 00:00:51]
Eric Siu: Really? Yeah, that's why they changed it at inbound.org to growth.org now, I think.
Neil Patel: Yeah. So they're playing on all that kind of stuff. But the reason HubSpot's marketing is, I think, really good, and it's not just me, is they've looked at the data and what moves the needle. So, they're really aggressive in content marketing, more so than anyone else in the space. They crank out more posts, and they just don't look at, "Hey, what posts are going to cause customers?" They look at what is every single thing that our competition's ranking for that's driving traffic using tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs, and they're just literally copying every single [inaudible 00:01:26] and doing it in quantity, and they're doing that globally as well, which is what most people aren't seeing right now.
Eric Siu: Yeah. I mean, I was just on a private webinar recently with one of their guys, Matthew Barby, who is their VP of Growth. I've talked with Brian Balfour before. Actually, we've had someone on the Single Grain team before that now is on the HubSpot team. So, they hire really, really, really smart people, and they know who the growth specialists are in the space. When I talked to Matt, he's like, "Yeah, you know, what we started doing," kind of to Neil's point, maximizing content, he's like, "Well, we've started talking about repurposing content." And, what they do now is, they have two full-time people focused on repurposing content, and they even named a job in such a genius way. It's historical content manager, which just means, well, they're repurposing content.
Neil Patel: In addition to that, if anyone in the space is getting traction through something, they just create copycats of it and release it for free. So like, if Sumo's growing in popularity, they create a copycat. David Cancel owns a company called Drift. I believe the HubSpot founder has even invested in it, noticed he's getting traction. They didn't give a shit. They copied it. They're ruthless, but that's also what caused them to grow super fast.
Eric Siu: And this actually goes back to our episode where we were talking about where we spend our marketing dollars or, well, kind of, instead of just starting a business, what you should do next. Well, actually, no. They build stuff from the ground up, so disregard what I just said.
But, also, looking at how they first grew in the beginning. They use this thing called Website Greater. People would just enter in their website and their email as well, and then they would get something emailed back to them and they were shown a result on how well their website is doing. That gave them a lot of traction, gave them a lot of backlinks and, from there, they're just like, you know what? I actually had David Cancel, to Neil's point, on the Growth Everywhere podcast. He's like, "Yeah. You know, we do the things where we will continue to build widgets, continue to build tools, because most people aren't willing to go that far. We will. We'll do whatever it takes."
Neil Patel: Another amazing thing that they've done, is they created a really large community. And the way they did this is HUGS. It's their conference series. So, their own users throw HubSpot conferences around the world. They help support it. They help fund it. It just makes more people love HubSpot, and they're just like, "Yeah, why wouldn't we pay for meetups and people coming around and supporting us?" Right? That's a really smart way to just build such a loyal fan base.
Eric Siu: Yeah, and talking about David Cancel, again, so I remember talking to him, and he was like, "Well, you know, one of the biggest winners for HubSpot was starting the agency partner program," because agencies already have relationships for people that they want to be working with. The agencies can do all the service work. They'll help sell into HubSpot. HubSpot will give them a cut of the commission. Agencies can take all the service revenue out there and then you have a really symbiotic relationship because the agencies love HubSpot for helping them get recurring revenue. And, I think, what he said was, their HubSpot's revenue was 50% off of agencies of that partner program.
Neil Patel: Yeah, and it's huge. But these guys are continually innovating, doing smart things. They're really fast at copying and the one thing I really love with them is, as Eric mentioned earlier is, they hire really smart people. One of their guys in marketing that I met in Australia, his name was Ryan. He ended up leaving and he was telling me stories on how they're getting seventy plus open percent open rates using Facebook Messenger. And, at that time, yes, you guys all know about Chatbox now, but at that time very few people were doing it.
He even told me about experiments they're running. He was just like, "Yeah, we spent all this money on content marketing. What we found is, you create a tool and, when you create a [inaudible 00:05:20] tool, just pop in some leads in there. You don't have to keep paying to maintain it and you're generating so many leads," and he's like, "our sales reps, their close ratio from the leads from the tools are the same as leads from the content." And he's like, "It's just much cheaper and there's a much higher ROI."
So they just go and see what's working for other people, copy, release it for free, click the lead, and their sales teams really good, where they can sell them on any product or service that they have within their ecosystem.
Eric Siu: That's all I've got from my side. Anything else from you?
Neil Patel: That's it.
Eric Siu: All right. So check out HubSpot, the genius of their marketing. There's a lot more from where this came from. But, actually, go through the rabbit hole, Google their stuff, you'll find a lot of their information. Their people, actually, write some of the best content around marketing. Their experience and everything is long [inaudible 00:05:37] stuff. Check out Brian Balfour's blog, as well. I think it's Co-Elevate.
But that's it for today. Go to singelgrain.com/giveaway to check out our marketing tools to grow your business, and we'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow, right here on Marketing School.
Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.
Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Siu: And today, we're going to talk about the genius of HubSpot's marketing. And before we do, maybe some context on who HubSpot is. HubSpot is a CRM. They're well-known for coining the term or being related to the term inbound marketing and they are publicly traded. They are a very large company. And Neil, why do you think they're marketing is so genius? Why is it so good?
Neil Patel: Yeah. Funny enough, they coined that term. That term is actually not that popular. I don't [inaudible 00:00:51]
Eric Siu: Really? Yeah, that's why they changed it at inbound.org to growth.org now, I think.
Neil Patel: Yeah. So they're playing on all that kind of stuff. But the reason HubSpot's marketing is, I think, really good, and it's not just me, is they've looked at the data and what moves the needle. So, they're really aggressive in content marketing, more so than anyone else in the space. They crank out more posts, and they just don't look at, "Hey, what posts are going to cause customers?" They look at what is every single thing that our competition's ranking for that's driving traffic using tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs, and they're just literally copying every single [inaudible 00:01:26] and doing it in quantity, and they're doing that globally as well, which is what most people aren't seeing right now.
Eric Siu: Yeah. I mean, I was just on a private webinar recently with one of their guys, Matthew Barby, who is their VP of Growth. I've talked with Brian Balfour before. Actually, we've had someone on the Single Grain team before that now is on the HubSpot team. So, they hire really, really, really smart people, and they know who the growth specialists are in the space. When I talked to Matt, he's like, "Yeah, you know, what we started doing," kind of to Neil's point, maximizing content, he's like, "Well, we've started talking about repurposing content." And, what they do now is, they have two full-time people focused on repurposing content, and they even named a job in such a genius way. It's historical content manager, which just means, well, they're repurposing content.
Neil Patel: In addition to that, if anyone in the space is getting traction through something, they just create copycats of it and release it for free. So like, if Sumo's growing in popularity, they create a copycat. David Cancel owns a company called Drift. I believe the HubSpot founder has even invested in it, noticed he's getting traction. They didn't give a shit. They copied it. They're ruthless, but that's also what caused them to grow super fast.
Eric Siu: And this actually goes back to our episode where we were talking about where we spend our marketing dollars or, well, kind of, instead of just starting a business, what you should do next. Well, actually, no. They build stuff from the ground up, so disregard what I just said.
But, also, looking at how they first grew in the beginning. They use this thing called Website Greater. People would just enter in their website and their email as well, and then they would get something emailed back to them and they were shown a result on how well their website is doing. That gave them a lot of traction, gave them a lot of backlinks and, from there, they're just like, you know what? I actually had David Cancel, to Neil's point, on the Growth Everywhere podcast. He's like, "Yeah. You know, we do the things where we will continue to build widgets, continue to build tools, because most people aren't willing to go that far. We will. We'll do whatever it takes."
Neil Patel: Another amazing thing that they've done, is they created a really large community. And the way they did this is HUGS. It's their conference series. So, their own users throw HubSpot conferences around the world. They help support it. They help fund it. It just makes more people love HubSpot, and they're just like, "Yeah, why wouldn't we pay for meetups and people coming around and supporting us?" Right? That's a really smart way to just build such a loyal fan base.
Eric Siu: Yeah, and talking about David Cancel, again, so I remember talking to him, and he was like, "Well, you know, one of the biggest winners for HubSpot was starting the agency partner program," because agencies already have relationships for people that they want to be working with. The agencies can do all the service work. They'll help sell into HubSpot. HubSpot will give them a cut of the commission. Agencies can take all the service revenue out there and then you have a really symbiotic relationship because the agencies love HubSpot for helping them get recurring revenue. And, I think, what he said was, their HubSpot's revenue was 50% off of agencies of that partner program.
Neil Patel: Yeah, and it's huge. But these guys are continually innovating, doing smart things. They're really fast at copying and the one thing I really love with them is, as Eric mentioned earlier is, they hire really smart people. One of their guys in marketing that I met in Australia, his name was Ryan. He ended up leaving and he was telling me stories on how they're getting seventy plus open percent open rates using Facebook Messenger. And, at that time, yes, you guys all know about Chatbox now, but at that time very few people were doing it.
He even told me about experiments they're running. He was just like, "Yeah, we spent all this money on content marketing. What we found is, you create a tool and, when you create a [inaudible 00:05:20] tool, just pop in some leads in there. You don't have to keep paying to maintain it and you're generating so many leads," and he's like, "our sales reps, their close ratio from the leads from the tools are the same as leads from the content." And he's like, "It's just much cheaper and there's a much higher ROI."
So they just go and see what's working for other people, copy, release it for free, click the lead, and their sales teams really good, where they can sell them on any product or service that they have within their ecosystem.
Eric Siu: That's all I've got from my side. Anything else from you?
Neil Patel: That's it.
Eric Siu: All right. So check out HubSpot, the genius of their marketing. There's a lot more from where this came from. But, actually, go through the rabbit hole, Google their stuff, you'll find a lot of their information. Their people, actually, write some of the best content around marketing. Their experience and everything is long [inaudible 00:05:37] stuff. Check out Brian Balfour's blog, as well. I think it's Co-Elevate.
But that's it for today. Go to singelgrain.com/giveaway to check out our marketing tools to grow your business, and we'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow, right here on Marketing School.