We renewed our annual contract with HubSpot. It’s been 12 months since we started using HubSpot and I liked to share our results thus far.
Traffic
We hit our traffic goal of 600 visits during month 9, and as we had hoped for, the vast majority of our traffic has been organic. In March of 2015 we had 232 organic visits. In March of 2016 we had 795 organic visits. That is a growth of almost 350%. We are very happy about this.
Contacts
Our monthly contact goals was 15 new contacts. In February of 2016 we generated 13 new contacts. Unfortunately February is shy a few calendar days but I’m confident we’ll reach this goal in the near future.
Out of the 101 contacts, 65 were organic search, 27 were direct traffic and the rest were referrals, social media and email marketing efforts.
Clients
We brought on our second HubSpot Inbound account on month 12. As our sales pipeline continues to grow, the conversation of agency growth is showing up once again.
How Did We Achieve This
The best results came after we started to truly understand what persona was right for our agency. This became more and more apparent to us as time went on.
The biggest change for us during this process has been our network. Before starting using HubSpot we did a lot of face to face networking. By bringing our focus to our own marketing, we started to do a lot less networking. This resulted in a big shift in the types of prospects that were coming in to meet with us.
Our most successful campaigns were hyper focused
We had the opportunity to speak at an event for a very specific vertical. We decided to turn our talk into an offer as well. We followed up with everyone at the event via email and gave them the opportunity to download our free eBook. Out of 106 attendees that were sent the email, 47 opened it and 16 converted into leads. This strategy was a complete success.
We also created a blog topic for this list that shared the outcome of a project we did for a very similar organization. Inside this blog was our own UX research, which gave these contacts real insight around a problem they are most likely having. Basically, we researched their audience for them and gave them the results. Not only did we get great results from this post, but it was really fun to create as well.
Where Are We Going to Make Improvements
The struggle we’re facing is keeping up with our own marketing efforts now. I personally have dedicated most of my time with sales activities rather than marketing activities. We simply need to make the time to share information that brings value to our audience. It’s easy to just write about a topic that’s already out there. But the real time and energy comes when you are creating something that will make an impact–and the reward comes then, too.
Actions do speak louder then words. The commitment to gathering data, researching and writing is what has showed us growth. Mark your calendar and just do it. As I type this, I’m really telling myself this.
Internal Improvements
Since we’re a small hands-on agency we really need to optimize our time in order to hit our goals. When projects start coming in, the team gets hyped up, ideas and inspirations start flowing and the next thing you know, the project goes live. In the meantime, what happens to those leads that are coming in? Have they been attended properly and have they been qualified? Unfortunately, when we’re wrapped up in a project, the ball sometimes stops rolling. This is something we’ll need to solve as clients come on board and we’ll need to have a game plan set in place. The solution to this is managing our team efficiently.
We’re excited to see what we’ve accomplished after 12 months. Inbound marketing does take time and money. And yes, there were many frustrating moments but at the end of the day, using HubSpot for inbound marketing works. Now we know that it’s a perfect fit for how we’d like to do business, and with our experience we can help new clients get results quicker.
