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| Inbound Marketing Attracts Millions from Google, Salesforce and Sequoia Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:17 AM PST Posted by randfish Today, Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Salesforce.com made a massive investment - $32 million - into Hubspot, the company at the forefront of the Inbound Marketing movement. Hubspot's had impressive growth, reaching more than 4,000 customers in their 4 years on the market. The founders, Brian + Dharmesh, authored an NYTimes best-seller on Inbound Marketing, and the Grader series of tools have been used by millions. To see these three investors, particularly Google Ventures, put a big backing behind the power of SEO, social media and content marketing (the three cornerstones of Inbound Marketing) is inspiring. It suggests to me that we're moving beyond the era of these marketing practices existing only for early adopters toward a more mature market. That's a great thing for practitioners as it typically means many years of growth, employment, higher salaries and increasing adoption. It also, however, portends greater competition. What's Inbound Marketing?In case you're not familiar, here's a diagram illustrating the techniques that fit the Inbound Marketing paradigm:
Traditional marketing, and probably what Fred Wilson was talking about when he called out "marketing" as a poor investment is what we'd call "outbound." It relies on advertising, paid branding, salespeople, cold-calling, etc. Inbound marketing is what nearly everyone who reads this blog practices - it's about getting traffic from search engines, from content (blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, white papers and webinars) and from social media (Twitter, Facebook, the Blogosphere, forums and social news sites). Why are Google, Salesforce + Sequioa putting money into this field?Because "Inbound Marketing" is for real. Both Salesforce's CRM and Google (via a million sources) both have a ton of data about what drives traffic and conversions on the web, and I think both are seeing the signs all pointing to Inbound Marketing. Hubspot is the most natural choice, as very few companies at scale are reaching their numbers or penetration.
I have one, quick bone to pick with the upper-right-hand chart - the competitors chosen; Eloqua, Marketo, Genius, Pardot, Manticore, Neolane, etc. are all in the marketing automation, lead tracking or lead nurturing fields, which isn't really the space in which Hubspot's playing. Their product may have some overlap with these, but none of the other companies listed are philosophically into "inbound marketing," they're into helping customers track leads, however they come. Hubspot's trumpeting the power of these newer traffic sources and focusing their software on measuring and improving them. I'd say that a more accurate market players list would include firms like PostRank, Klout, Optify, Buddy Media, Hootsuite and, possibly, SEOmoz. The features don't match up, but the goal - to measure and improve inbound channels from search, social + content marketing - strikes me as more accurate. Can Google Invest in SEO Software?I wouldn't be surprised to see comments on some of the tech industry publications decrying an investment by Google in a software firm that helps sites rank better. However, I think this investment is about something much broader than climbing the rankings - it's about recognizing a shift in consumer and business buying behavior and wanting to play a part in that market. Salesforce is actually an excellent corollary and a smart choice as an investor. They disrupted the marketing software world the first time, when businesses switched from guessing about how to track+optimize a funnel to implementing software that made it work. Today, the CRM (Customer Relations Management) software field remains dominated by Salesforce (though up-and-comer Infusionsoft and traditional competitors like SAP, Inuit and Act all have nice chunks). There's a lot of parallels between what Salesforce did in CRM and what Hubspot is trying to do in marketing. The cognitive leap between Google Analytics and true recommendations is precisely what Hubspot wants to fill. To use the words of Google's own Avinash Kaushik "Google Analytics (is a) glorified data puker." How's HubSpot Doing?As the graphic above, not too shabby. I asked Dharmesh to share some additional data and he was able to provide some interesting data points:
And a chart showing that they're drinking their own Kool Aid (getting traffic primarily from Inbound Marketing):
Are there Other Signals Inbound Marketing is Growing?Here's some data from Google Insights:
And here's a chart from SimplyHired showing the trend of "inbound marketing" being included in job postings:
You can see from LinkedIn that Inbound Marketing job titles and open positions are substantive. Basically, I'm drawing the conclusion that this meme has legs. My view is that it's a good day for Hubspot (who's now raised $65 million!) and a good day for all of us in the Inbound Marketing ecosystem. Next time someone asks you whether all this SEO, social media + blogging stuff is for real, you can tell them it's real enough that Google Ventures, Salesforce and Sequoia put $32 million of their own investment dollars behind it.
Just watch out - as we pass into the early majority with Inbound Marketing, the competition's going to heat up and a lot more marketers are likely to find themselves backed by good software. p.s. Dharmesh wrote a great post at OnStartups about how they're going to use the funding, why they raised, etc. |
| Conversion-Oriented SEO: When SEO Marries UX Posted: 07 Mar 2011 02:18 PM PST Posted by renatatr This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. Hello Mozzers! I'm glad to be here for the first time! Well, as you all may know, SEO is conversion and conversion is money, baby! If you have a great SEO work on your website but a bad usability, you'll have bad ROI. If you have a great SEO work plus a great usability you'll definitively have faithful visitors and great ROI. Period. What everyone needs to understand is that SEO doesn't end on the click. There's always more than just that dreamed Google rank. And, in my humble opinion, the key is on the page and how users see it. So, let's take a look to see how we can marry SEO to good usability. SEO + UX. Let's get it started. The best to do is to start the project thinking about usability, but if you didn't, after doing all that great SEO stuff like on page, link building etc., and get a good rank in the SERPs, you'll need to start thinking about users clicking on your link. How are they going to act being on your site? Are they going just to click and leave? Are you able to hold them there? Are they really going to convert? When we think about conversion, lots of things can come to our minds: link building, PPC, content, colors, etc. But, before all of these stuff, the first thing you need to figure out is what your visitors want. 1. Questioning
Remember: if something is easy for you, it doesn't mean it is easy for everyone! So, you do need to research, run surveys (be personal! sell it like if you were selling your products!), usability tests, etc. 2. Know your Analytics Data You also need to know who your visitor is, where he is from, what kind of technology he is using, etc. To define goals and funnels will definitively make your life easier! 3. Gather your data After doing your detailed research with your visitors and analytics data, it's time to put everything together and have fun! My first tip here is to create a word cloud with the main terms you got in your research. A great tool is wordle.net. 4. Prepare your landing pages In SEO, any page on your website can be a landing page. You must be prepared for it. Scott Brinker has a really good concept about landing pages and I think it can be applied for our reality here. It's the R.E.A.D.Y. framework:
It really summarizes how the perfect landing page is! 4.1. Design
According to the Kiss Metrics Color Psychology Study, 42% of users base their opinion about the website on overall design alone and 52% don't return because of overall aesthetics. 4.2. Website Speed 4.3. Message 4.4. Call to Action The design of your CTA button needs some "treatment" as well! Abuse of white spaces to make it clear and noticeable. And the button color... oh, the button color... there's always many viewpoints regarding it! Some people say green is better, some say orange... But my opinion is: use contrasting colors and you'll get a #win! lol Some tools to help you start Remote Usability Tests:
Surveys: Analytics:
Conclusion The big secret is: there's no rule or tricks! You must test everything on your website and, when finished, start over again! Hope you like it! =) |
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