Business Blog Marketing: Tips and Case Studies

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Business Blogging: Tips and Case Studies - presentation from Marketing Profs Digital Mixer #MPDM - www.MikeVolpe.com/mpdm

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Business Blogging:Tips and Case Studies

Mike Volpe

Twitter: @mvolpe

Charlie KingTwitter: @CharlieKingGolf

Ilya MirmanTwitter: @IlyaMirman

Marketing is Changing

1950 - 2000 2000 - 2050

Outbound Marketing

More Bad News…

The Good News…

www.HubSpot.com/ROI

Inbound Gives Leverage

Budget vs. Brains

Flickr: Refracted Moments Flickr: Gaetoan Lee

Advice for the road ahead

Stop thinking like amarketer or advertiser.

Start thinking like apublisher and

socializer.

Some Ideas and Case Studies

Flickr: Gaetoan Lee

Target Content to Your Personas

Kadient photo by: David Meerman Scott

What Gets Shared?

Rarely Shared

FrequentlyShared

• Product info• Free trials• Software documentation

• New market data• Educational content• Top-notch blog posts

Content Makes You Interesting

Case Study: HubSpot Blog

• Top 3 source of leads• ~10% visit company website• ~10-20% lead conversion rate

SEO and Social Help Blog Results

25-30% of visitors from SEO• Google is 90% of our SEO traffic

20-25% of visitors from social media• Stumbleupon• Twitter• Facebook• Reddit• Delicious• Digg• LinkedIn• Friendfeed

Blog Article Performance Metrics

Traffic, Leads and Sales

…By Channel or Source

Visitors Leads Sales

SEO

SocialMedia

Case Study: Reynolds Golf Academy

Charlie KingDirector of InstructionReynolds PlantationTwitter: @CharlieKingGolf

Reynolds Golf Academy

• Golf school near Atlanta / Augusta led by GOLF MAGAZINE Top 100 Instructor Charlie King

• Golf lessons / schools and corporate outings on a 16-acre campus w/6,550 sq-ft indoor teaching center and state-of-the-art technology

• Marketing: magazine ads and direct mail

GOAL:• More website traffic and leads• More cost effective marketing & business growth

What We Did

• Blog • 4-6 articles a month• SEO optimized, keyword rich

• Video• 23 videos, include in blog articles

• eBook• “New Rules of Golf Instruction”

Results

• 50 times more web leads• Over 600 blog subscribers• Thousands of eBook downloads

Tips and Takeaways

• Content is King - you can be your own media mogul

• Get started before your competition to get ahead

• Make SEO part of your blogging strategy

• Even non-technology businesses can benefit from a blog

Case Study: Cilk Arts

Ilya MirmanVP MarketingCilk ArtsTwitter: @IlyaMirman

Cilk Arts, Inc.

Mission: To provide the easiest, quickest, and most reliable way to optimize application performance on multicore processors.

Our Goal: Own a multicore programming standard • Cilk++ Runtime on every

processor• Cilk++ used by all C/C++

multi-coders

[Update: Cilk Arts acquired by Intel in July]

Go To Market Approach

• Open source business model• “You share / we share” public license• Low-touch, low-cost sales model• Broad awareness, trial, adoption

• Big bet on Inbound Marketing• No sales people• Hired 1 marketer (me) 8 months before shipping

product to implement Inbound Marketing approach

• Blog as primary marketing vehicle• Entire team contributed (~1 post per week)• Helped us engage with the developers we hoped to

serve; understand what content they’re interested in

Results

• Reached over 100,000 developers• Traffic and awareness matched or exceeded competitors• Adoption at >250 universities worldwide• >6,200 inbound links• >3,000 leads

• Blog posts boosted search engine rankings for key terms

Don’t know ahead of time which topics will strike a chord

Get the whole team engagedDon’t obsess over

# of comments

Links drove our search engine rank

Metrics: Visits, Sources, Links

Inbound Links

Do…

• Get your whole organization engaged in contributing content• A small, dedicated team can drive some real

traffic and interest• If no serious commitment, blog will fail

• Be real, be genuine• Let your personality come out

• Build an editorial calendar with a broad set of interesting, valuable content• Target the key personas you care about• You’ll discover which topics are worth investing

more in• Invite guests to contribute

• Leverage content in many ways• Blog, e-Books, Tutorials, etc.• Consumable via YouTube, SlideShare, social

media sites, etc.

Don’t…

• …be a blatant, self-centered commercial• …focus on just one topic• …make your blog your only social media

effort; instead, spend time on other blogs, community sites, and contribute

• …worry about # of comments• …worry about slow periods (# of visitors,

subscribers, comments)

Summary

SEO

Social

Content

Additional Resources

• Facebook Marketing eBook• http://www.hubspot.com/facebook-for-business-marketing-hub/

• Twitter Marketing eBook• http://www.hubspot.com/twitter-marketing-hub/

• Social Media Marketing Kit• http://www.hubspot.com/twitter-marketing-hub/

• Blog: http://Blog.HubSpot.com

Q&A

Free Trial of HubSpot: www.HubSpot.com/free-trial

Mike Volpe

Twitter: @mvolpe

Charlie KingTwitter: @CharlieKingGolf

Ilya MirmanTwitter: @IlyaMirman

Appendix

What’s HubSpot?

• Marketing software for SMBs• Over 1,800 customers in 2 years• 100+ employees, lots of MIT grads

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yCB7AvvAk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-lGe5MnBlY

Case Study: Website Grader

• Free interactive tool• 1.5 million URLs• 40,000 inbound links• 5,000 websites w/ badge & link• 4,500 Del.icio.us bookmarks• Great PR coverage (TechCrunch, RWW)• 50,000+ visitors from StumbleUpon• 100,000+ opt-in emails & leads

Case Study: HubSpot TV

• Weekly video podcast• 80-100 live viewers• 1-2K views / episode• Top 10 marketing podcast in iTunes• 70,000 views in first year• Guests: MC Hammer, Biz Stone, David

Meerman Scott, Chris Brogan