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Predictable revenue guide to tripling your sales part 2 - marketing + nets

Aaron Ross
Aaron Ross

This document discusses inbound marketing and growth hacking strategies. It begins with an introduction to "Nets" lead generation, which refers to marketing leads generated through 1-to-many programs. It then provides an overview of an effective 4-step marketing framework focusing on management, market, messages, and methods. Common marketing fails are discussed, including unrealistic expectations and lack of focus. The importance of setting lead generation goals and quotas for marketing is emphasized. Finally, it introduces "lead velocity rate" as the most important growth metric for companies to track.

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PART%2% PART%2:%Inbound%Marke3ng%aka%“Nets”%
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37& If&You&Missed&Part&1& Welcome! This is Part 2 of the Predictable Revenue Guide To Tripling Your Sales. Part 1 covered “Seeds” lead generation, including… • The pros & cons of “Seeds” (word of mouth) leads, and the best way to systematize their growth • 6 keys to driving growth with Customer Success • 7 Customer Success triggers to watch • How Gild dropped customer churn from 3-4% to <1% per month • 5 Ways Topcon provides predictably excellent customer service • And much more… To download Part 1, CLICK HERE
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Chapter&2:&“Nets”&Lead&GeneraCon& (Inbound&MarkeCng,&Growth&Hacking)& 38&
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39& What&You’ll&Learn&In&This&SecCon& Marketing’s goal is to generate leads and revenue, not make you look pretty • Our “Triple” 4-Step Marketing Framework (Page 41) • Common Marketing Fails (Page 42) • The most important growth metric in marketing (Page 46) • The 15/85 Rule & Achieving “Market Escape Velocity” (Page 50) • How Marketing Geniuses Jon Miller (Marketo) and Neil Patel (QuickSprout / KISSMetrics) Create Content (Page 55) • How SalesLoft Grew Leads 5x In One Year (Page 59) • Growth Hacking Tips From The Man Who Coined The Term (Page 64)
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40& Gasoline&For&Growth:&“Nets”& Cast a wide “Net” & attract inbound prospects right to you In the prior chapter, we went into detail around the first type of leads, “Seeds” and how Customer Success Management helps systematize them. “Nets” is a general term for all your marketing leads and 1-to-many programs, such as internet marketing, events, webinars, white papers, advertising, etc. Because you’re casting a wide net, these leads are about “quantity over quality.” For example, if 50% of word-of-mouth (“seed”) leads may turn into customers, perhaps 5% of marketing-generated leads convert into customers…so you usually want a lot of them. Out of a trillion ways to market, two popular and growing approaches are: #1) “Inbound Marketing,” or “Content Marketing,” is still the most popular kid in school and focuses on creating marketing that customers love, and inspires them to want to learn more from you and buy your stuff. #2) “Growth Hacking” is a newer term, and refers to – in our busy world - making it easier for prospects to become quickly acquainted with and in love with your product; to get to “Wow!” faster…increasing adoption, sales and word-of-mouth referrals. Pros & Cons of Marketing Leads: Pros: Often easy to generate high volumes of leads; some kinds of marketing programs are scalable; content online can generate leads forever; highly measurable. Cons: The leads aren’t “free” – there can be high fixed costs to generate leads (mainly time & salaries); low conversion rates since most leads aren’t a fit; works best generally with small/medium businesses and smaller order sizes, not as well with enterprises.
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41& Gasoline&For&Growth:&“Nets”& How focused – or distracted – is your company & marketing? Kids aren’t the only entities subject to ADD / Attention Deficit Disorder. Companies suffer from it as well, but let’s call it MADD: Market Attention Deficit Disorder. When your marketing leads are frustrating you – either the quantity or quality - the most common problem is a lack of focus: usually by creating the right content for the wrong people, or the wrong content for the right ones. A “Triple” Framework For Growing Great Marketing Leads: 1. Management 2. Market 3. Messages 4. Methods #1) Management Do you have the right person leading marketing? Do they have a quota or the right kinds of specific goals? #2) Market Are you focused enough in your target market to cut through the clutter? Do you have a Needy Niche? Or are you trying to be all things to all people? #3) Messages What ideas, content or words matter to your people? Are you communicating to your targets in their language or in yours? #4) Methods Video, webinars, email newsletters, events, blogging, social media, landing pages, calls to action, marketing software, widgets and apps…there are infinite tactics & tools to choose from in creating & optimizing your marketing machine. Focus on doing fewer, better, rather than doing them all not-so-well.
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42& First&–&MarkeCng&Fails&(1/2)& “Build it & they will come”: great movie quote, bad marketing strategy Inbound Marketing has been a popular movement in b2b lead generation for the past 5+ years. There’s a 90% chance you’re either already doing it, thinking about doing it, or are feel guilty for not doing it. But - if you really haven’t heard of it, the gist of it is to create marketing that people love. So –publish educational or entertaining content online, then people will find it (and thus you), and they’ll want more and come register as leads and buy your stuff. (A great basics overview is here at Hubspot.) Because the practice is so common now, “inbound fails” are more interesting than ‘how to do it’… Fail #1: “Post and pray” “OK, we’re blogging! Why don’t people care?” You have to work at getting the word out through distribution. The simplest effective solution is finding complementary partners who will share your stuff with their own relevant audience. Action Tip: Make a list of relevant blogs/websites or complementary products, then reach out to get to know them & perhaps work together (help them first before expecting them to help you.) Fail #2: Being Corporate (Boring & Jargony) Do you feel compelled to write like… “this systemic ineffective activity obstructs sellers from achieving optimal close rates”? SNORE. People write this way because they are afraid of being rejected, or want to sound smart. But it just ends up being confusing and boring. Whether it’s a controversial opinion, visuals, stories, your ‘voice’ or anything else, bringing a personal touch to content makes it more interesting and engaging to readers, so the ‘facts’ will stick.
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43& First&–&MarkeCng&Fails&(2/2)& Action Tip: When writing a newsletter, pretend you’re emailing a single person, an “ideal reader.” This makes your message more personal and engaging. Fail #3: Thinking It’s Free While posting blogs is free, content marketing can be a lot more expensive than you expect. Whether it’s the founders’ time, or money to hire freelancers or a marketing team, there is a real cost. Even with 100% focus, building enough momentum to see returns takes more than six months (and often much longer). Fail #4: Unrealistic Lead Expectations As many companies learned through experience, most of your “inbound leads” aren’t from decision makers. 95% of the time they are from small companies or low-level people at bigger companies. This isn’t terrible, but be realistic about what you’ll get. You can target medium & large companies with inbound marketing can happen, but isn’t easy and often takes a lot longer than you want (often, years – if it even works). Action Tip: Outbound prospecting can be a great compliment to inbound marketing, especially when targeting big companies. Like peanut butter and chocolate, inbound and outbound taste great together. Fail #5: The One-Trick Pony Today too many companies assume inbound marketing is the end-all-be-all that will take them to the moon. But at some point, inbound plateaus. Combine inbound, different kinds of marketing methods, outbound prospecting or anything else that works to create a portfolio approach to growing your leads. Don’t make inbound your one-trick growth pony
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44& Management:&Your&MarkeCng& Leader&Needs&A&“Lead&Commit”&(1/2)& Your VP Sales has a quota; why doesn’t your VP Marketing? Your sales team has a quota. Your marketing team & leader has to have one too, as a “lead commit”. Everyone hires marketing folks that have squishy goals. Half of startups get this wrong, and don’t have any kind of lead commit at all. It’s the “We get what we get and we don’t get upset” approach. Lead Commit goals forces also force marketers to focus on sustainable marketing practices, instead of “get rich quick” methods that spike leads, but only for a short period of time. It’s not easy – especially when you’re creating it for the first time – but it is important. In the beginning, when you’re so early there’s little data, all you can do is start by taking your best estimate (aka “guess”). But having a guess is still better than nothing. Once you get the ball rolling, you can begin to set more confident future targets (just as with sales quotas).
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45& Management:&Your&MarkeCng& Leader&Needs&A&“Lead&Commit”&(2/2)& EchoSign’s 2009 lead commits, goals (blue) vs. actual (red)…
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46& Management:&Your&Key&Growth& Metric&(&“Lead&Velocity&Rate”&(1/2)& If you and the executive team watch only one metric, this is it One great thing about all the new ways to measure marketing and sales is being able to better See The Future (especially in SaaS businesses). You’re trying to gauge whether your revenue will keep growing in the future, but sales results vary a lot monthly or quarterly, and sales pipelines have big quality issues. And worse, sales numbers are a lagging indicator of all the hard growth work you’ve done (right or wrong) in the prior 12+ months…they can’t predict anything. And what about pipelines? It’s fun to list out every possible company who could buy, but a pipeline report is cr*p for predicting the future, since they are more often about hope than truth. Pipeline for this month is useful, but still dependent on how various reps estimate (guess) at probability and close dates. Next quarter’s pipeline is only slightly better than a guess, even once you get pretty big. But there’s a better metric, your Key Metric, you should track and score yourself to, and hold your VP Marketing and VP Demand Generation team(s) to… Your Key Metric: Qualified Lead Velocity Rate (LVR) LVR measures your growth in qualified leads & pipeline, measure month-over-month, every month. LVR is real-time, not lagging, and it clearly predicts your future revenues and growth - and - even better, your growth trend. So if you created $1 million in new qualified pipeline this month, and created $1.1 million in new qualified pipeline the following month, you are growing LVR at 10% month-over- month. So, your sales should grow 10% as well after a period of an average sales cycle length.
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47& Management:&Your&Key&Growth& Metric&(&“Lead&Velocity&Rate”&(2/2)& Sales (or a lack thereof) is a lagging indicator of what you’ve done right or wrong for the past 12 months – but tells you nothing of the future Once EchoSign hit $1 million in revenue run rate, we set a LVR growth target of 10 %per month. Once we hit about $3 million in run rate, we dropped it to 8% growth per month. The goal of 8% per month was to produce enough leads to grow the business at least 100% year-over-year. We hit the lead generation growth goals, the LVR goals, just about every month, and certainly every quarter, and every year. And by hook or crook, enhanced with an ever-improving sales team and an ever- improving product — the revenue growth followed. Not like clockwork every day. But clearly over time, ever quarter, every year. One great thing about LVR is while sales can vary a lot by month and quarter, there’s no reason leads can’t grow every single month like clockwork. Every. Single. Month. Follow other core business metrics of course — just understand they aren’t as good. Sales and pipeline lag. Monthly sales growth is important, but minor variations can lead to huge forecasting / modeling variances. Know You Will Grow As long as you are using Qualified Leads (not raw or unqualified leads) with a consistent formula and process to qualify them, you can then See The Future. Hit your LVR goal every month and you’re golden. And with practice, you’ll see the future of your business 12+ months out, clear as can be.
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48& Management:&How&To&Get&Blue& Logo&Pens&Instead&Of&Leads&(1/2)& Don’t get blinded by a marketer’s fancy resume So many tech companies have hired a head of marketing with a strong resume, from a strong tech leader. But they hired someone from Corporate Marketing, rather than Demand Generation. So that hire fails, and you’re left with nothing more to remember him/her by other than those nice blue pens with your logo on them that they ordered. Traditionally, Corporate Marketing is the sexier of the two. With branding, positioning, logos and press releases, it’s #1 at big companies. Demand Generation has been unappreciated, left to junior folks in the backroom slaving away. And because of this, you’ll find leading companies all spit out tons of senior Corporate Marketers. Corporate Marketing (like at Adobe, Google or Salesforce.com) is all about protecting and promoting the brand after you’re already big.
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49& Management:&How&To&Get&Blue& Logo&Pens&Instead&Of&Leads&(2/2)& In the Fortune 500, Demand Generation (“DemandGen”) folks are usually second-class citizens. But in growing tech companies, these folks are the Lords of Marketing. DemandGen folks are all about the numbers. Spend $Y, create Z leads, which should be worth 5 x $Y in revenue. Great DemandGen marketers can handle the “squishy stuff” (logos, branding, press releases) well enough until you’re ready to get corporate. Their blue pens may not be as pretty as the ones the Corporate Marketer gets you. But you’ll get leads. So, for companies that need leads, brand marketing is very expensive in the early days — and frustratingly, generates zero leads. For companies with > $50 million, corporate marketing is a ‘nice to have,’ after you’re already growing fast because of your kick-butt DemandGen person. You want someone who’s shown a passion for areas like inbound / web demand generation programs, lead nurturing and metrics - who will also work hand-in-hand with your sales team. And that’s not Corporate Marketing. DemandGen folks can figure out Corporate Marketing. Corporate Marketing cannot figure out Demand Gen. Ever.
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50& Market:+The&15/85&Rule&&&Achieving& “Market&Escape&Velocity”&(1/2)& While you want to benefit from things like referrals and risk-taking Early Adopters, you don’t want to be dependent on them for growth. No matter what kind of marketing you do – inbound / outbound / upside down… you need to pay special attention to a couple of key ideas if you fall into one of these scenarios: #1) You’re an early stage company trying to get to or past your first million in revenue. #2) You’re been growing through word of mouth and inbound marketing but now you want to get more aggressive in reaching out to colder prospects. #3) You’re starting a new marketing initiative – usually with a new product or target market. The 15/85 Rule & Early Adopters When growing a company, there’s a big milestone in getting your first 10-20 paying customers of a new product or target market. Usually these customers are part of the “15%” - the Early Adopters: the feedback from these Early Adopters and friends is more positive, and generally not reflective with the general masses (which is the other 85%). They’re more likely to think like you, be like you and buy like you. These people are willing to jump through more hoops, and tend to be more tech savvy or risk-friendly, which can give you false positives about the market's reaction to your product. Early Adopters aren’t like the rest of the (much bigger) market, that 85% of the world who doesn’t know you, aren’t like you and don’t like risk: the Regular Buyers. Those Early Adopters & word of mouth often can get you to $1-$10 million in revenue before you plateau; when realize you haven’t achieved Market Escape Velocity - which includes the ability to market & sell to Regular Buyers outside your networks. Has someone from Iowa bought your stuff yet?
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51&Market:+The&15/85&Rule&&&Achieving& “Market&Escape&Velocity”&(2/2)& When you’re selling-to-friends-of-friends or startups-selling-to-startups, you’re still part of the incestuous 15% club. You haven’t ‘crossed over’ until someone from Iowa buys your stuff. “Regular Buyers” Are Different The challenge: you’ve been selling to people who are extra-trusting in working with your new thing. Then, when you try marketing to Regular Buyers, it’s incredibly frustrating because they buy differently from how your first customers do. For example, most Regular Buyers don’t want to do a free trial or read all your blog posts to self-educate. “Just Show Me” They often will go to your website and three others, submit “Contact Me” inquiries, and sit back to have you and the other companies educate them about the space. They want you to explain things to them with a demo over the phone. They can’t or won’t unilaterally push a new project through – they want more approval and support from more people. They’re less risk-tolerant. They work at more complicated organizations. This isn’t bad, just different. Don’t fall into the ego trap of thinking, because they ‘don’t get it’ as quickly as you that they’re dumber or lazier – they aren’t. Stop Bitching. Start Learning. Rather than bemoaning “why don’t they get it?”, start learning how to speak their language and learn how to help them buy. Especially at bigger companies, where it can be hard to buy and implement new ideas. When you find ways to do this systematically, seeing 6 months of month-over-month growth in qualified leads (aka your “Lead Velocity Rate” keeps up) that’s Market Escape Velocity. You’ve found a niche in which customers need your products, and ways to systematically generate qualified leads with both Early Adopters & Regular Buyers.
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52& Market:+What’s&Your&Needy&Niche?&(1/2)& Don’t let the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) muddy your market & message When your company is struggling to generate quality leads, first ask yourself if you’ve found a Needy Niche. What’s A Needy Niche? Of all the kinds of companies who could use you…and all the kinds of buyers who should want you… which ones need & want you so much that they’re willing to expend their attention, energy & money to buy and use you? Finding a niche isn’t about thinking smaller – it’s focusing, making it possible to target & find the right people and more easily showing them how you can help. Example #1: LeadGenius LeadGenius started out as a company called Mobileworks, who did crowdsourcing. What’s that mean? Exactly – few people who weren’t friends-of-a-friend, or super Early Adopters, ‘got it’. They were burning cash like crazy when they narrowed their niche to “outsourced virtual assistance.” By narrowing (focusing) on a tighter market & service, they got to “cashflow neutral” in only 60 days. Then they narrowed (focused) even more, to on-demand prospecting & lead generation…and sales took off! It became easy for companies to understand how they could help.
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53& Market:+What’s&Your&Needy&Niche?&(2/2)& Don’t let the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) muddy your market & message Example #2: Carburetor Carburetor (Carb.io) started out as VoltageCRM, building sales forecasting tools for software companies. People were interested…but not enough to buy anything. So they pivoted, into “Outbound Sales Automation,” doing the outbound prospecting for companies (using the Predictable Revenue Cold Calling 2.0 methods & framework). They found a Needy Niche: companies who wanted to generate leads from outbound prospecting, but either didn’t want to do it themselves or struggled hiring & training prospectors. And… sales took off. As VoltageCRM, they struggled signing any customers after almost two year. As Carburetor, they signed two dozen customers in months, and expect to hit a $1 million run rate in less than a year. We’ll get into more detail on LeadGenius & Carburetor in the next chapter on “Spears” lead generation: outbound prospecting. For Bigger Companies Commonly, when a big company who’s done mostly inbound marketing starts outbound prospecting, or starts marketing a new product, they struggle. Usually it’s for the same reason – instead of focusing on 1-3 killer use cases, they’re trying to speak to too many types of buyers. That Fear Of Missing Out (a fear of leaving money on the table, of saying “no” to opportunities) has the opposite effect, by muddying your messaging so that no one understands what you can do for them. Learn To Say “No” It takes courage to seemingly give up a bigger market to narrow your niche. But in order to become an easily-understandable “need” to your market, you have to.
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54& Messages:+To&Create&Compelling& Content,&Know&Your&Buying&Stages& A beautifully simple way to think about what types of content buyers need When you’re creating content for marketing, make it useful to your ideal customers as they progress through their buying stages. For example, we spoke to Jon Miller (CMO Marketo) who uses three simple buying stages: Early, Middle and Late. Using them simplifies sorting out which content you need where, and to spot gaps. #1) Early Stage: “Why?” - These customers are actively learning, but not buying (yet). Why should they care about your category? Why change? Your content should be entertaining and useful whether people buy your stuff or not — don’t make it about you, your product or features. For example, Marketo created content that taught people how to become better marketers. #2) Middle Stage “How?” - Your audience wants to learn more about how to implement what you do in their business. Your content should help educate them on their options and how to deliver promised results. It should help people thinking about a purchase to make better decisions. Marketo created content such as “structured evaluations,” to help marketers learn more about a category and the space, multiple “Definitive Guides” (such as the Definitive Guide To Marketing Automation), and analyst reports. #3) Late Stage “Which?” - Your prospects are getting ready to buy, deciding “which path do we take?” Now your content should be heavily about you, why you’re better, different, how you can ensure results…including why you are better than the uber-competitor “do nothing.” Where Marketers Go Wrong By creating too much “me me me” content for these Middle Stage buyers, and little or no content for the Early Stage ones.
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55& Messages:+How&Neil&Patel,&& Boy&MarkeCng&Genius,&Creates&Content& More than ever, people want step-by-step, detailed guidance Neil Patel’s the youngin’ behind the QuickSprout internet marketing blog, and founder of KissMetrics, a marketing analytics company. Here are his content tips… #1) Write Content For Your Readers, Not For You Try to create content that solves their biggest problems. Don’t write to make your boss happy, write to make your audience happy. #2) Use Tools To Find Interests Tools like Qualaroo surveys and drip email campaigns can help you get smarter about tuning into what your audience cares about. #3) Add More Details To Create More Desirable Content The more helpful your content is, the better. Blog posts that lay out step by step instructions of how to do things like implement Salesforce.com, break down inbound marketing steps, create sales scripts, do growth hacking, etc. do really well. This may be why you’ve seen a growth in things like “The Ultimate Guide To ____” and “The Definitive Guide To ____” – they work. Speaking of which, to see an example check out Neil’s Definitive Guide To Growth Hacking #4) You Don’t Need To Blog Every Day Or Every Week Make a plan and stick with it, whether that’s posting daily, weekly or bimonthly. Start with less commitment and then increase as you go if it makes sense.
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56& Messages:+How&The&Founder&&&& CMO&of&Marketo&Creates&Content& “A lot of people think it must be easy for me because I create so much content, but it’s not.” Jon Miller is the Chief Marketing Officer and cofounder of the marketing automation tool Marketo. Started in 2006, Marketo went public in 2013 at a billion dollar valuation. He started blogging for Marketo before they began coding. Jon’s Creation Process “Slow and methodically” – he says - “my words don’t flow out quickly. I spend a lot of time reading and researching. I’ll copy and paste points I like into a big document with my notes. As I get my own ideas, I put them in there. It takes me time to think and organize my material into an outline. The process is a slow slog, like pushing through molasses My content is more of a synthesis than original content or thought leadership. Distilling ideas to be digestible is still very valuable content.” What helped Jon’s Writing After Marketo Had Money To Spend “It didn’t really get easier for me; we just got more budget for me to work with a writer. I take my detailed notes and send it to a writer I trust to turn it into a draft and then edit into my voice, which is how I wrote most of my Definitive Guides for Marketo. I found that works much better for me than just doing a call with a writer.” Don’t Fight Your Weaknesses It’s easy to avoid writing & creating content. Pay attention to your weakness, to find ways to work around them rather than fighting them.
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57& Messages:+Make&It&Personal&(1/2)' At least in business-to-business marketing, it’s still cool to make your newsletters very pretty with logos, images, colors and HTML. But while it’s fancy (like Blue Logo Pens), it’s not the most effective way to write to your audience. People respond better to other people – or what seems like another person. When newsletters look and feel more like an email coming from one person, your audience responds better. This is something the best internet marketers in the world have known for a long time, but it’s slowly trickling out to businesses. A Webinar Invitation A/B Test Monica Girolami’s the head of marketing for NewVoiceMedia, and she ran a test for a webinar. First she invited people with a fancy HTML email that read more like a mass update. Then she sent a newsletter that looked and read more like a personal email from her. It was in plain text. It came from Monica, and “reply-to” went to Monica. She wrote it as if she was writing to a friend. Sample screenshots of the email are on the next page. Monica Tripled Her Results HTML Email Invitation: • Open Rate: 13.2% • Click-through rate: 1.8% • New Registrants: 20 “Personal” Email Invitation: • Open Rate: 15.3% • Click-through rate: 4.1% • New Registrants: 60 Monica: “Even more astonishing were all the personal replies I received – ‘sorry I can’t make that time but let me know about the next webcast’.” People want to hear from people – not machines
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58& Messages:+Make&It&Personal&(2/2)& A/B test screenshots of “Personal Email” vs. “Mass Update” The&personal&email:& The&HTML&mass&update:&
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59& Methods:&Puqng&It&Together&(&How& SalesLor&Grew&Leads&5x&In&A&Year+(1/3)& The power of partner / influencer marketing SalesLoft was founded in fall 2011. They’re a company who isn’t falling victim to the common inbound marketing mistakes. In their first full year, 2012, they had 2,400 leads. The following year, 2013, SalesLoft grew inbound leads 5x, ending up with: 12,000+ inbound leads 191 sales opportunities 110 customers $400k+ in recurring revenue And in 2014… That was 2013. In the first six months of 2014, from inbound leads SalesLoft is already at a $2 million run rate. Lesson #1: Influencer Marketing SalesLoft promoted the messages of related thought leaders, through: - A Sales Leader Video Series (both Aaron & Jason interviewed for it) - Infographics - Book Reviews - Webinars SalesLoft gained credibility and sometimes experts promoted the content. Plus, SalesLoft builds relationships (how do you think they ended up here?) Lesson #2: Simple Lead Signups SalesLoft made the free product SUPER simple to sign up for. (More details in on page 65). Lessons #3: Live Events Matter Nothing beats ‘in-person’! SalesLoft invented the B2BCamp conference and Ultimate Sales Conference to build community (1300+ total attendees). Tip: Community events build recognition, loyalty, and helped solidify SalesLoft as a thought leader. Frequently, the outbound team gets VP responses like: “Oh, I've heard of you, you put on that event in December...”
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60& Methods:&Puqng&It&Together&(&How& SalesLor&Grew&Leads&5x&In&A&Year+(2/3)& Lesson #4: Maintain a Drumbeat of 3-4 Weekly Blog Posts – One of Kyle’s favorite blogging strategies: make a list out the top 10 questions your prospects have about their market (either take your best guess or go ask them). Then answer those questions yourself, or use them as questions when interviewing other experts. Action Tip: Use graphics and break up big paragraphs into small chunks to make it easier to scan or read. Many companies struggle to blog that often. It’s more important to be consistent in your posting –once a week is common - than to post a lot. Lesson #5: Use outbound techniques with inbound leads A common complaint about inbound leads is that many of them end up being low-level people without any authority. SalesLoft finds out who the boss(es) are for the leads coming in, and isn’t afraid to go after them with outbound prospecting. “Mr. VP, 15 members of your team are using our product, a handful have attended our events, and they've downloaded 6 white papers. Could we set up a short call to learn about what you want & share more?
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61& Methods:&Puqng&It&Together&(&How& SalesLor&Grew&Leads&5x&In&A&Year+(3/3)& You can build your own audience by tapping into other peoples’ audiences SalesLoft has done a lot of interviewing and writing about thought leaders, including ones with big audiences. Thought leaders & experts won’t always share your stuff with their audience, but when the right one does, with the right article, it can create a big impact. This article SalesLoft wrote about Tony Robbins got 5,000 shares, once Tony Robbins shared it with his network! The best marketing article for the original Predictable Revenue book was written by a popular Venture Capitalist blogger, David Skok. David wrote it up as a book review, calling it “Why Salespeople Shouldn’t Prospect” and shared it with his wide following, helping Predictable Revenue take off. Bonus: we’ve found that doing interviews and partnering with experts also makes creating content easier and more enjoyable (aka more sustainable).
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62& Methods:+Why&Viral&Videos&Won’t&Solve& Your&Content&MarkeCng&Problems&(1/2)&& Most of your videos should be for your existing audience Chris Savage is the CEO of Wistia. They help businesses host & analyze amazing videos to improve customer engagement & conversion rates. Chris’ video tips: #1) Sell Something Bigger Than Your Company or Product Want to create endless content & be really effective with video? Sell a mission or an idea instead of a product, such as how video can be powerful to your business. (Especially for early stage buyers - remember the Buying Stages on Page 57?) #2) Make Education Interesting Having experts from your company explain complicated things with white boards or visual aids works very well. #3) Don’t Try to Surprise Your Audience or They’ll Tune Out Put your most important information early in the video and make it part of your title. Because your viewers might not watch the whole video and could miss the point you’re trying to make. #4) Forget about “Going Viral” In many cases, viral videos are a PR stunt, and require big budgets. Spikes in viral traffic don’t last and are rarely repeatable. One time hits usually don’t grow your audience much; they’re just a small percentage in your total traffic. Focus on creating content that grows your existing audience. They’ll love it and share it. #5) Use the Magic of Lighting to Instantly Improve Your Videos The easiest way to dramatically improve your video quality is by paying attention to lighting. Wistia has a blog post on some simple ways to do this for less than $100.
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63& Methods:&How&WisCa&Got&2000&New& Subscribers&From&One&Video&(2/2)& Wistia ran a video campaign about teaching people how to choose the right video music. Here’s the video. They showed examples of the good, the bad, and how to think about it. They sent it to the 50,000 people on their email list. Results: 15,000 page views. 10,000 plays. 9800 unique visitors. 125 comments. 88% of people clicked play. 500 hours watched. Viewers watched the video on average 1.5 times. 2000 new email subscribers. Lesson #1: Even With Video, Have A Call To Action Most business videos don’t have a clear call to action. Wistia’s video had a link to get free music tracks to download for video music if you entered an email. About 1/3 of viewers got the track. That meant 2600 email registrations, and 2,000 (80%) were brand new to Wistia. Lesson #2: Build For Your Existing Audience Like we said on the prior page, don’t try to build viral videos for the entire internet. You should be creating the right video content for your existing list to deepen the connection with that audience. You can expand your audience through them. Lessons #3: Video-Specific Metrics * Engagement rate: How many people are watching & what are they responding to? Where in the video are they dropping off? * Re-watching areas: What parts of the video are getting watched more than once? These areas are either confusing or really interesting. * Play rate: Like subjects lines do for email open rate, this indicates how well your thumbnail & description are doing to get plays.
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64& Methods:&Growth&Hacking&Principles& with+Sean+Ellis+of+GrowthHackers.com+(1/3)& If your business is struggling to find growth through typical marketing channels like paid Google ads, email marketing, affiliate programs and SEO, perhaps it’s time to take a new tack with your marketing efforts. As the market gets more crowded & prospects’ attention spans shrink, companies are getting creative in making it easier for prospects to become quickly acquainted with and in love with your product – to get to “Wow!” faster. The term for this in Silicon Valley is “Growth Hacking,” coined by Sean Ellis, CEO of Qualaroo and founder of the neat site GrowthHackers.com. Sean says, “by far, one of the most neglected opportunities is creating a must-have experience with your product from the start.“ This must-have experience is what takes a product from being a “nice to have,” to “one that your customers absolutely can’t live without.” When products hit this point, suddenly, users “get” the value proposition; they’re excited to refer their friends, and happy to pay to keep using it. Only after you’ve identified a group of people who passionately care about your product can you really start to scale your growth. EXAMPLE: SalesLoft On Smart Signups “We made our free product SUPER simple to sign up for. And, when someone signs up we use oAuth (a tool that pings social networks like LinkedIn) to auto-populate their First & Last Names, so we only ask them to fill out two fields: 1) ‘Corporate Email Address’ (no gmail/yahoo/etc allowed), & 2) ‘What CRM they Use.’ Then, through oAuth we can also grab their Company, Title, Industry, social media URLs, geographic location, # of LinkedIn connections, etc (all behind the scenes without them having to do anything). This allows us to run sophisticated, automated, lead grading/scoring too because we have a lot of data about signups.”
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65& Methods:&Growth&Hacking&Principles& with+Sean+Ellis+of+GrowthHackers.com+(2/3)& #1) Triple Down on What’s Working—This may sound too obvious, but do you have a marketing activity that works well or better than the others? (You may not have any idea!) Start by analyzing what works and how you can improve your best program. #2) Stop Doing What’s Not Working—Marketers spread themselves too thin. You probably are spending too much money on stuff that’s just not working. Don’t be afraid to just cut them to zero, if they aren’t your top few programs. Have Facebook ads or Google AdWords that aren’t generating a positive ROI? Turn them off. Reinvest your time and money back into your best program. Example: While at Dropbox we abandoned Google AdWords because it cost us $300 each to acquire customers who only spent $99. The faster we grew, the more money we lost. So we shut off AdWords and built a customer referral program that gave existing users extra space (which cost us nothing) for inviting their friends. This hack helped Dropbox to grow to 4,000,000 users without spending any money on ads. #3) Identify the Customers that Love Your Product—Who are the top 1-10% of your customers that can’t live without what you sell? Get specific! Then invest heavily in going after just that particular mini-slice of customers. Going after a broad market is great for raising money, but terrible for getting customers to sign on the line that is dotted. Example: “Circle of Friends” was growing like a weed with viral Facebook invites, but saw a problem as usage started to wane. They discovered moms were their power users, with more frequent logins, writing longer and more engaging messages, and referring more friends. They pivoted & refocused the entire company to become “Circle of Moms,” which doubled their 2 million monthly active users to 4.5 million, and led to an acquisition by PopSugar.
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66& Methods:&Growth&Hacking&Principles& with+Sean+Ellis+of+GrowthHackers.com+(3/3)& #4) Slow Down Now To Speed Up Later — Growth hacking means coming up with hypotheses about what you think will improve your business and then testing them in reality. You must think & work like a scientist. It will slow you down to set up tests, run, measure & analyze them – but it’s worth it because you will get the insights you need to repeat results & scale. Example: Sean tells this story: “At a former company, we found that the visitors from a particular channel were signing up, but weren’t using the product. We ran a survey on the page to find out why. The answer floored us. The visitors didn’t believe our claims that the product was actually free. So we added a link to a paid product on the landing page and instantly saw a 3x improvement in conversions, and continuing to tweak the design, ended up improving that channel by 10 times. Fast-moving entrepreneurs often forget to just ask customers what they want.” #5) Get Creative — Yeah, Google Adwords worked like a charm for your cousin Benny and drinking buddy Tom, but that doesn’t mean they will for you. Your customers aren’t only found through Google Adwords, email or the AppExchange. They’re all over the place; reading blogs and forums, using services like eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook. Example: AirBnB took a creative approach with Craigslist. AirBnB tapped into Craigslist’s massive volume of traffic by developing a clever bit of code that allowed AirBnB users to cross-post to Craigslist. This increased visibility for AirBnB listings with people looking for vacation rentals, and resulted in both more bookings for current AirBnB users, as well as tons of new AirBnB users. Many credit this as the main hack that helped turn AirBnB into a company valued at more than $1 billion. For More: Sean Ellis’ GrowthHackers.com, plus he has an upcoming book: Unlocking Growth
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67& Methods:&How&Cirrus&Insight&& Tripled&Their&Demos&Per&Day& Cirrus Insight made demos much more efficient for Account Executives Cirrus Insight’s a useful app that integrates Salesforce.com and Gmail in a very neat way. They creatively changed their free trial system & saw: - Demos grow from 2-3 to 8-10 a day - Conversions of people who start a trial then buy grow from 50% to 65% (even after a price increase) - Churn dropped from 12% annually to less than 9% What They Did As users start a free trial, Cirrus Insight uses Pardot (a marketing tool) and Salesforce to auto-assign them an Account Executive (AE) based on company size. Cirrus sends a pre-defined series of ‘drip’ emails to the prospects; particularly personal emails from the salesperson that include invitations and links to schedule a demo on their calendar using ScheduleOnce. Based on past data, they know if a user attends a demo, it’s very likely that user will convert. If a user clicks on the link inviting them to schedule a demo, they are taken to a page with the AE's calendar embedded in it, and lets them pick an available time that works. The AE approves the meeting & drops GoToMeeting details in. Usually, the first time they speak to the customer is during the demo. This allows AEs to keep their daily schedules booked with demos with little effort on their part. Note: Normally we tell companies “don’t send leads straight to salespeople!” But this is a great example of an exception, because the leads Cirrus Insight auto-magically passes to AEs are pre-qualified (they have started a trial), and have a very high historical close rate.
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68& 2015& Watch for it! This ebook is being expanded & published in 2015… The expanded version of this ebook will be published (with Foundry Group Press / www.FGPress.com) in 2015. Extra marketing-related content will include topics such as… • Meaningful Messaging… simple ways to make your content and emails easier to understand and engaging with prospects • Social Media & marketing • More Case Studies on campaigns, finding your Needy Niche and metrics • How are these ideas different for Professional Services companies than for Product companies? • How do Aaron & Jason create content? • And more!
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Stay&Tuned&For&Part&3:&“Spears”& 69& Thanks for reading Part 2. Watch for Part 3, about “Spears” lead generation (outbound prospecting & Outbound Sales Automation). To automatically receive each free chapter as soon as we release them, and to get additional case studies and other private freebies, make sure you get on our mailing list here. This ebook series shares highlights from the forthcoming full book to be published, which will include even more case studies, more details, more apps, and more ideas.
PART%2% PART%2:%Inbound%Marke3ng%aka%“Nets”%
37& If&You&Missed&Part&1& Welcome! This is Part 2 of the Predictable Revenue Guide To Tripling Your Sales. Part 1 covered “Seeds” lead generation, including… • The pros & cons of “Seeds” (word of mouth) leads, and the best way to systematize their growth • 6 keys to driving growth with Customer Success • 7 Customer Success triggers to watch • How Gild dropped customer churn from 3-4% to <1% per month • 5 Ways Topcon provides predictably excellent customer service • And much more… To download Part 1, CLICK HERE
Chapter&2:&“Nets”&Lead&GeneraCon& (Inbound&MarkeCng,&Growth&Hacking)& 38&
39& What&You’ll&Learn&In&This&SecCon& Marketing’s goal is to generate leads and revenue, not make you look pretty • Our “Triple” 4-Step Marketing Framework (Page 41) • Common Marketing Fails (Page 42) • The most important growth metric in marketing (Page 46) • The 15/85 Rule & Achieving “Market Escape Velocity” (Page 50) • How Marketing Geniuses Jon Miller (Marketo) and Neil Patel (QuickSprout / KISSMetrics) Create Content (Page 55) • How SalesLoft Grew Leads 5x In One Year (Page 59) • Growth Hacking Tips From The Man Who Coined The Term (Page 64)
40& Gasoline&For&Growth:&“Nets”& Cast a wide “Net” & attract inbound prospects right to you In the prior chapter, we went into detail around the first type of leads, “Seeds” and how Customer Success Management helps systematize them. “Nets” is a general term for all your marketing leads and 1-to-many programs, such as internet marketing, events, webinars, white papers, advertising, etc. Because you’re casting a wide net, these leads are about “quantity over quality.” For example, if 50% of word-of-mouth (“seed”) leads may turn into customers, perhaps 5% of marketing-generated leads convert into customers…so you usually want a lot of them. Out of a trillion ways to market, two popular and growing approaches are: #1) “Inbound Marketing,” or “Content Marketing,” is still the most popular kid in school and focuses on creating marketing that customers love, and inspires them to want to learn more from you and buy your stuff. #2) “Growth Hacking” is a newer term, and refers to – in our busy world - making it easier for prospects to become quickly acquainted with and in love with your product; to get to “Wow!” faster…increasing adoption, sales and word-of-mouth referrals. Pros & Cons of Marketing Leads: Pros: Often easy to generate high volumes of leads; some kinds of marketing programs are scalable; content online can generate leads forever; highly measurable. Cons: The leads aren’t “free” – there can be high fixed costs to generate leads (mainly time & salaries); low conversion rates since most leads aren’t a fit; works best generally with small/medium businesses and smaller order sizes, not as well with enterprises.
41& Gasoline&For&Growth:&“Nets”& How focused – or distracted – is your company & marketing? Kids aren’t the only entities subject to ADD / Attention Deficit Disorder. Companies suffer from it as well, but let’s call it MADD: Market Attention Deficit Disorder. When your marketing leads are frustrating you – either the quantity or quality - the most common problem is a lack of focus: usually by creating the right content for the wrong people, or the wrong content for the right ones. A “Triple” Framework For Growing Great Marketing Leads: 1. Management 2. Market 3. Messages 4. Methods #1) Management Do you have the right person leading marketing? Do they have a quota or the right kinds of specific goals? #2) Market Are you focused enough in your target market to cut through the clutter? Do you have a Needy Niche? Or are you trying to be all things to all people? #3) Messages What ideas, content or words matter to your people? Are you communicating to your targets in their language or in yours? #4) Methods Video, webinars, email newsletters, events, blogging, social media, landing pages, calls to action, marketing software, widgets and apps…there are infinite tactics & tools to choose from in creating & optimizing your marketing machine. Focus on doing fewer, better, rather than doing them all not-so-well.
42& First&–&MarkeCng&Fails&(1/2)& “Build it & they will come”: great movie quote, bad marketing strategy Inbound Marketing has been a popular movement in b2b lead generation for the past 5+ years. There’s a 90% chance you’re either already doing it, thinking about doing it, or are feel guilty for not doing it. But - if you really haven’t heard of it, the gist of it is to create marketing that people love. So –publish educational or entertaining content online, then people will find it (and thus you), and they’ll want more and come register as leads and buy your stuff. (A great basics overview is here at Hubspot.) Because the practice is so common now, “inbound fails” are more interesting than ‘how to do it’… Fail #1: “Post and pray” “OK, we’re blogging! Why don’t people care?” You have to work at getting the word out through distribution. The simplest effective solution is finding complementary partners who will share your stuff with their own relevant audience. Action Tip: Make a list of relevant blogs/websites or complementary products, then reach out to get to know them & perhaps work together (help them first before expecting them to help you.) Fail #2: Being Corporate (Boring & Jargony) Do you feel compelled to write like… “this systemic ineffective activity obstructs sellers from achieving optimal close rates”? SNORE. People write this way because they are afraid of being rejected, or want to sound smart. But it just ends up being confusing and boring. Whether it’s a controversial opinion, visuals, stories, your ‘voice’ or anything else, bringing a personal touch to content makes it more interesting and engaging to readers, so the ‘facts’ will stick.
43& First&–&MarkeCng&Fails&(2/2)& Action Tip: When writing a newsletter, pretend you’re emailing a single person, an “ideal reader.” This makes your message more personal and engaging. Fail #3: Thinking It’s Free While posting blogs is free, content marketing can be a lot more expensive than you expect. Whether it’s the founders’ time, or money to hire freelancers or a marketing team, there is a real cost. Even with 100% focus, building enough momentum to see returns takes more than six months (and often much longer). Fail #4: Unrealistic Lead Expectations As many companies learned through experience, most of your “inbound leads” aren’t from decision makers. 95% of the time they are from small companies or low-level people at bigger companies. This isn’t terrible, but be realistic about what you’ll get. You can target medium & large companies with inbound marketing can happen, but isn’t easy and often takes a lot longer than you want (often, years – if it even works). Action Tip: Outbound prospecting can be a great compliment to inbound marketing, especially when targeting big companies. Like peanut butter and chocolate, inbound and outbound taste great together. Fail #5: The One-Trick Pony Today too many companies assume inbound marketing is the end-all-be-all that will take them to the moon. But at some point, inbound plateaus. Combine inbound, different kinds of marketing methods, outbound prospecting or anything else that works to create a portfolio approach to growing your leads. Don’t make inbound your one-trick growth pony
44& Management:&Your&MarkeCng& Leader&Needs&A&“Lead&Commit”&(1/2)& Your VP Sales has a quota; why doesn’t your VP Marketing? Your sales team has a quota. Your marketing team & leader has to have one too, as a “lead commit”. Everyone hires marketing folks that have squishy goals. Half of startups get this wrong, and don’t have any kind of lead commit at all. It’s the “We get what we get and we don’t get upset” approach. Lead Commit goals forces also force marketers to focus on sustainable marketing practices, instead of “get rich quick” methods that spike leads, but only for a short period of time. It’s not easy – especially when you’re creating it for the first time – but it is important. In the beginning, when you’re so early there’s little data, all you can do is start by taking your best estimate (aka “guess”). But having a guess is still better than nothing. Once you get the ball rolling, you can begin to set more confident future targets (just as with sales quotas).
45& Management:&Your&MarkeCng& Leader&Needs&A&“Lead&Commit”&(2/2)& EchoSign’s 2009 lead commits, goals (blue) vs. actual (red)…
46& Management:&Your&Key&Growth& Metric&(&“Lead&Velocity&Rate”&(1/2)& If you and the executive team watch only one metric, this is it One great thing about all the new ways to measure marketing and sales is being able to better See The Future (especially in SaaS businesses). You’re trying to gauge whether your revenue will keep growing in the future, but sales results vary a lot monthly or quarterly, and sales pipelines have big quality issues. And worse, sales numbers are a lagging indicator of all the hard growth work you’ve done (right or wrong) in the prior 12+ months…they can’t predict anything. And what about pipelines? It’s fun to list out every possible company who could buy, but a pipeline report is cr*p for predicting the future, since they are more often about hope than truth. Pipeline for this month is useful, but still dependent on how various reps estimate (guess) at probability and close dates. Next quarter’s pipeline is only slightly better than a guess, even once you get pretty big. But there’s a better metric, your Key Metric, you should track and score yourself to, and hold your VP Marketing and VP Demand Generation team(s) to… Your Key Metric: Qualified Lead Velocity Rate (LVR) LVR measures your growth in qualified leads & pipeline, measure month-over-month, every month. LVR is real-time, not lagging, and it clearly predicts your future revenues and growth - and - even better, your growth trend. So if you created $1 million in new qualified pipeline this month, and created $1.1 million in new qualified pipeline the following month, you are growing LVR at 10% month-over- month. So, your sales should grow 10% as well after a period of an average sales cycle length.
47& Management:&Your&Key&Growth& Metric&(&“Lead&Velocity&Rate”&(2/2)& Sales (or a lack thereof) is a lagging indicator of what you’ve done right or wrong for the past 12 months – but tells you nothing of the future Once EchoSign hit $1 million in revenue run rate, we set a LVR growth target of 10 %per month. Once we hit about $3 million in run rate, we dropped it to 8% growth per month. The goal of 8% per month was to produce enough leads to grow the business at least 100% year-over-year. We hit the lead generation growth goals, the LVR goals, just about every month, and certainly every quarter, and every year. And by hook or crook, enhanced with an ever-improving sales team and an ever- improving product — the revenue growth followed. Not like clockwork every day. But clearly over time, ever quarter, every year. One great thing about LVR is while sales can vary a lot by month and quarter, there’s no reason leads can’t grow every single month like clockwork. Every. Single. Month. Follow other core business metrics of course — just understand they aren’t as good. Sales and pipeline lag. Monthly sales growth is important, but minor variations can lead to huge forecasting / modeling variances. Know You Will Grow As long as you are using Qualified Leads (not raw or unqualified leads) with a consistent formula and process to qualify them, you can then See The Future. Hit your LVR goal every month and you’re golden. And with practice, you’ll see the future of your business 12+ months out, clear as can be.
48& Management:&How&To&Get&Blue& Logo&Pens&Instead&Of&Leads&(1/2)& Don’t get blinded by a marketer’s fancy resume So many tech companies have hired a head of marketing with a strong resume, from a strong tech leader. But they hired someone from Corporate Marketing, rather than Demand Generation. So that hire fails, and you’re left with nothing more to remember him/her by other than those nice blue pens with your logo on them that they ordered. Traditionally, Corporate Marketing is the sexier of the two. With branding, positioning, logos and press releases, it’s #1 at big companies. Demand Generation has been unappreciated, left to junior folks in the backroom slaving away. And because of this, you’ll find leading companies all spit out tons of senior Corporate Marketers. Corporate Marketing (like at Adobe, Google or Salesforce.com) is all about protecting and promoting the brand after you’re already big.
49& Management:&How&To&Get&Blue& Logo&Pens&Instead&Of&Leads&(2/2)& In the Fortune 500, Demand Generation (“DemandGen”) folks are usually second-class citizens. But in growing tech companies, these folks are the Lords of Marketing. DemandGen folks are all about the numbers. Spend $Y, create Z leads, which should be worth 5 x $Y in revenue. Great DemandGen marketers can handle the “squishy stuff” (logos, branding, press releases) well enough until you’re ready to get corporate. Their blue pens may not be as pretty as the ones the Corporate Marketer gets you. But you’ll get leads. So, for companies that need leads, brand marketing is very expensive in the early days — and frustratingly, generates zero leads. For companies with > $50 million, corporate marketing is a ‘nice to have,’ after you’re already growing fast because of your kick-butt DemandGen person. You want someone who’s shown a passion for areas like inbound / web demand generation programs, lead nurturing and metrics - who will also work hand-in-hand with your sales team. And that’s not Corporate Marketing. DemandGen folks can figure out Corporate Marketing. Corporate Marketing cannot figure out Demand Gen. Ever.
50& Market:+The&15/85&Rule&&&Achieving& “Market&Escape&Velocity”&(1/2)& While you want to benefit from things like referrals and risk-taking Early Adopters, you don’t want to be dependent on them for growth. No matter what kind of marketing you do – inbound / outbound / upside down… you need to pay special attention to a couple of key ideas if you fall into one of these scenarios: #1) You’re an early stage company trying to get to or past your first million in revenue. #2) You’re been growing through word of mouth and inbound marketing but now you want to get more aggressive in reaching out to colder prospects. #3) You’re starting a new marketing initiative – usually with a new product or target market. The 15/85 Rule & Early Adopters When growing a company, there’s a big milestone in getting your first 10-20 paying customers of a new product or target market. Usually these customers are part of the “15%” - the Early Adopters: the feedback from these Early Adopters and friends is more positive, and generally not reflective with the general masses (which is the other 85%). They’re more likely to think like you, be like you and buy like you. These people are willing to jump through more hoops, and tend to be more tech savvy or risk-friendly, which can give you false positives about the market's reaction to your product. Early Adopters aren’t like the rest of the (much bigger) market, that 85% of the world who doesn’t know you, aren’t like you and don’t like risk: the Regular Buyers. Those Early Adopters & word of mouth often can get you to $1-$10 million in revenue before you plateau; when realize you haven’t achieved Market Escape Velocity - which includes the ability to market & sell to Regular Buyers outside your networks. Has someone from Iowa bought your stuff yet?
51&Market:+The&15/85&Rule&&&Achieving& “Market&Escape&Velocity”&(2/2)& When you’re selling-to-friends-of-friends or startups-selling-to-startups, you’re still part of the incestuous 15% club. You haven’t ‘crossed over’ until someone from Iowa buys your stuff. “Regular Buyers” Are Different The challenge: you’ve been selling to people who are extra-trusting in working with your new thing. Then, when you try marketing to Regular Buyers, it’s incredibly frustrating because they buy differently from how your first customers do. For example, most Regular Buyers don’t want to do a free trial or read all your blog posts to self-educate. “Just Show Me” They often will go to your website and three others, submit “Contact Me” inquiries, and sit back to have you and the other companies educate them about the space. They want you to explain things to them with a demo over the phone. They can’t or won’t unilaterally push a new project through – they want more approval and support from more people. They’re less risk-tolerant. They work at more complicated organizations. This isn’t bad, just different. Don’t fall into the ego trap of thinking, because they ‘don’t get it’ as quickly as you that they’re dumber or lazier – they aren’t. Stop Bitching. Start Learning. Rather than bemoaning “why don’t they get it?”, start learning how to speak their language and learn how to help them buy. Especially at bigger companies, where it can be hard to buy and implement new ideas. When you find ways to do this systematically, seeing 6 months of month-over-month growth in qualified leads (aka your “Lead Velocity Rate” keeps up) that’s Market Escape Velocity. You’ve found a niche in which customers need your products, and ways to systematically generate qualified leads with both Early Adopters & Regular Buyers.
52& Market:+What’s&Your&Needy&Niche?&(1/2)& Don’t let the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) muddy your market & message When your company is struggling to generate quality leads, first ask yourself if you’ve found a Needy Niche. What’s A Needy Niche? Of all the kinds of companies who could use you…and all the kinds of buyers who should want you… which ones need & want you so much that they’re willing to expend their attention, energy & money to buy and use you? Finding a niche isn’t about thinking smaller – it’s focusing, making it possible to target & find the right people and more easily showing them how you can help. Example #1: LeadGenius LeadGenius started out as a company called Mobileworks, who did crowdsourcing. What’s that mean? Exactly – few people who weren’t friends-of-a-friend, or super Early Adopters, ‘got it’. They were burning cash like crazy when they narrowed their niche to “outsourced virtual assistance.” By narrowing (focusing) on a tighter market & service, they got to “cashflow neutral” in only 60 days. Then they narrowed (focused) even more, to on-demand prospecting & lead generation…and sales took off! It became easy for companies to understand how they could help.
53& Market:+What’s&Your&Needy&Niche?&(2/2)& Don’t let the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) muddy your market & message Example #2: Carburetor Carburetor (Carb.io) started out as VoltageCRM, building sales forecasting tools for software companies. People were interested…but not enough to buy anything. So they pivoted, into “Outbound Sales Automation,” doing the outbound prospecting for companies (using the Predictable Revenue Cold Calling 2.0 methods & framework). They found a Needy Niche: companies who wanted to generate leads from outbound prospecting, but either didn’t want to do it themselves or struggled hiring & training prospectors. And… sales took off. As VoltageCRM, they struggled signing any customers after almost two year. As Carburetor, they signed two dozen customers in months, and expect to hit a $1 million run rate in less than a year. We’ll get into more detail on LeadGenius & Carburetor in the next chapter on “Spears” lead generation: outbound prospecting. For Bigger Companies Commonly, when a big company who’s done mostly inbound marketing starts outbound prospecting, or starts marketing a new product, they struggle. Usually it’s for the same reason – instead of focusing on 1-3 killer use cases, they’re trying to speak to too many types of buyers. That Fear Of Missing Out (a fear of leaving money on the table, of saying “no” to opportunities) has the opposite effect, by muddying your messaging so that no one understands what you can do for them. Learn To Say “No” It takes courage to seemingly give up a bigger market to narrow your niche. But in order to become an easily-understandable “need” to your market, you have to.
54& Messages:+To&Create&Compelling& Content,&Know&Your&Buying&Stages& A beautifully simple way to think about what types of content buyers need When you’re creating content for marketing, make it useful to your ideal customers as they progress through their buying stages. For example, we spoke to Jon Miller (CMO Marketo) who uses three simple buying stages: Early, Middle and Late. Using them simplifies sorting out which content you need where, and to spot gaps. #1) Early Stage: “Why?” - These customers are actively learning, but not buying (yet). Why should they care about your category? Why change? Your content should be entertaining and useful whether people buy your stuff or not — don’t make it about you, your product or features. For example, Marketo created content that taught people how to become better marketers. #2) Middle Stage “How?” - Your audience wants to learn more about how to implement what you do in their business. Your content should help educate them on their options and how to deliver promised results. It should help people thinking about a purchase to make better decisions. Marketo created content such as “structured evaluations,” to help marketers learn more about a category and the space, multiple “Definitive Guides” (such as the Definitive Guide To Marketing Automation), and analyst reports. #3) Late Stage “Which?” - Your prospects are getting ready to buy, deciding “which path do we take?” Now your content should be heavily about you, why you’re better, different, how you can ensure results…including why you are better than the uber-competitor “do nothing.” Where Marketers Go Wrong By creating too much “me me me” content for these Middle Stage buyers, and little or no content for the Early Stage ones.
55& Messages:+How&Neil&Patel,&& Boy&MarkeCng&Genius,&Creates&Content& More than ever, people want step-by-step, detailed guidance Neil Patel’s the youngin’ behind the QuickSprout internet marketing blog, and founder of KissMetrics, a marketing analytics company. Here are his content tips… #1) Write Content For Your Readers, Not For You Try to create content that solves their biggest problems. Don’t write to make your boss happy, write to make your audience happy. #2) Use Tools To Find Interests Tools like Qualaroo surveys and drip email campaigns can help you get smarter about tuning into what your audience cares about. #3) Add More Details To Create More Desirable Content The more helpful your content is, the better. Blog posts that lay out step by step instructions of how to do things like implement Salesforce.com, break down inbound marketing steps, create sales scripts, do growth hacking, etc. do really well. This may be why you’ve seen a growth in things like “The Ultimate Guide To ____” and “The Definitive Guide To ____” – they work. Speaking of which, to see an example check out Neil’s Definitive Guide To Growth Hacking #4) You Don’t Need To Blog Every Day Or Every Week Make a plan and stick with it, whether that’s posting daily, weekly or bimonthly. Start with less commitment and then increase as you go if it makes sense.
56& Messages:+How&The&Founder&&&& CMO&of&Marketo&Creates&Content& “A lot of people think it must be easy for me because I create so much content, but it’s not.” Jon Miller is the Chief Marketing Officer and cofounder of the marketing automation tool Marketo. Started in 2006, Marketo went public in 2013 at a billion dollar valuation. He started blogging for Marketo before they began coding. Jon’s Creation Process “Slow and methodically” – he says - “my words don’t flow out quickly. I spend a lot of time reading and researching. I’ll copy and paste points I like into a big document with my notes. As I get my own ideas, I put them in there. It takes me time to think and organize my material into an outline. The process is a slow slog, like pushing through molasses My content is more of a synthesis than original content or thought leadership. Distilling ideas to be digestible is still very valuable content.” What helped Jon’s Writing After Marketo Had Money To Spend “It didn’t really get easier for me; we just got more budget for me to work with a writer. I take my detailed notes and send it to a writer I trust to turn it into a draft and then edit into my voice, which is how I wrote most of my Definitive Guides for Marketo. I found that works much better for me than just doing a call with a writer.” Don’t Fight Your Weaknesses It’s easy to avoid writing & creating content. Pay attention to your weakness, to find ways to work around them rather than fighting them.
57& Messages:+Make&It&Personal&(1/2)' At least in business-to-business marketing, it’s still cool to make your newsletters very pretty with logos, images, colors and HTML. But while it’s fancy (like Blue Logo Pens), it’s not the most effective way to write to your audience. People respond better to other people – or what seems like another person. When newsletters look and feel more like an email coming from one person, your audience responds better. This is something the best internet marketers in the world have known for a long time, but it’s slowly trickling out to businesses. A Webinar Invitation A/B Test Monica Girolami’s the head of marketing for NewVoiceMedia, and she ran a test for a webinar. First she invited people with a fancy HTML email that read more like a mass update. Then she sent a newsletter that looked and read more like a personal email from her. It was in plain text. It came from Monica, and “reply-to” went to Monica. She wrote it as if she was writing to a friend. Sample screenshots of the email are on the next page. Monica Tripled Her Results HTML Email Invitation: • Open Rate: 13.2% • Click-through rate: 1.8% • New Registrants: 20 “Personal” Email Invitation: • Open Rate: 15.3% • Click-through rate: 4.1% • New Registrants: 60 Monica: “Even more astonishing were all the personal replies I received – ‘sorry I can’t make that time but let me know about the next webcast’.” People want to hear from people – not machines
58& Messages:+Make&It&Personal&(2/2)& A/B test screenshots of “Personal Email” vs. “Mass Update” The&personal&email:& The&HTML&mass&update:&
59& Methods:&Puqng&It&Together&(&How& SalesLor&Grew&Leads&5x&In&A&Year+(1/3)& The power of partner / influencer marketing SalesLoft was founded in fall 2011. They’re a company who isn’t falling victim to the common inbound marketing mistakes. In their first full year, 2012, they had 2,400 leads. The following year, 2013, SalesLoft grew inbound leads 5x, ending up with: 12,000+ inbound leads 191 sales opportunities 110 customers $400k+ in recurring revenue And in 2014… That was 2013. In the first six months of 2014, from inbound leads SalesLoft is already at a $2 million run rate. Lesson #1: Influencer Marketing SalesLoft promoted the messages of related thought leaders, through: - A Sales Leader Video Series (both Aaron & Jason interviewed for it) - Infographics - Book Reviews - Webinars SalesLoft gained credibility and sometimes experts promoted the content. Plus, SalesLoft builds relationships (how do you think they ended up here?) Lesson #2: Simple Lead Signups SalesLoft made the free product SUPER simple to sign up for. (More details in on page 65). Lessons #3: Live Events Matter Nothing beats ‘in-person’! SalesLoft invented the B2BCamp conference and Ultimate Sales Conference to build community (1300+ total attendees). Tip: Community events build recognition, loyalty, and helped solidify SalesLoft as a thought leader. Frequently, the outbound team gets VP responses like: “Oh, I've heard of you, you put on that event in December...”
60& Methods:&Puqng&It&Together&(&How& SalesLor&Grew&Leads&5x&In&A&Year+(2/3)& Lesson #4: Maintain a Drumbeat of 3-4 Weekly Blog Posts – One of Kyle’s favorite blogging strategies: make a list out the top 10 questions your prospects have about their market (either take your best guess or go ask them). Then answer those questions yourself, or use them as questions when interviewing other experts. Action Tip: Use graphics and break up big paragraphs into small chunks to make it easier to scan or read. Many companies struggle to blog that often. It’s more important to be consistent in your posting –once a week is common - than to post a lot. Lesson #5: Use outbound techniques with inbound leads A common complaint about inbound leads is that many of them end up being low-level people without any authority. SalesLoft finds out who the boss(es) are for the leads coming in, and isn’t afraid to go after them with outbound prospecting. “Mr. VP, 15 members of your team are using our product, a handful have attended our events, and they've downloaded 6 white papers. Could we set up a short call to learn about what you want & share more?
61& Methods:&Puqng&It&Together&(&How& SalesLor&Grew&Leads&5x&In&A&Year+(3/3)& You can build your own audience by tapping into other peoples’ audiences SalesLoft has done a lot of interviewing and writing about thought leaders, including ones with big audiences. Thought leaders & experts won’t always share your stuff with their audience, but when the right one does, with the right article, it can create a big impact. This article SalesLoft wrote about Tony Robbins got 5,000 shares, once Tony Robbins shared it with his network! The best marketing article for the original Predictable Revenue book was written by a popular Venture Capitalist blogger, David Skok. David wrote it up as a book review, calling it “Why Salespeople Shouldn’t Prospect” and shared it with his wide following, helping Predictable Revenue take off. Bonus: we’ve found that doing interviews and partnering with experts also makes creating content easier and more enjoyable (aka more sustainable).
62& Methods:+Why&Viral&Videos&Won’t&Solve& Your&Content&MarkeCng&Problems&(1/2)&& Most of your videos should be for your existing audience Chris Savage is the CEO of Wistia. They help businesses host & analyze amazing videos to improve customer engagement & conversion rates. Chris’ video tips: #1) Sell Something Bigger Than Your Company or Product Want to create endless content & be really effective with video? Sell a mission or an idea instead of a product, such as how video can be powerful to your business. (Especially for early stage buyers - remember the Buying Stages on Page 57?) #2) Make Education Interesting Having experts from your company explain complicated things with white boards or visual aids works very well. #3) Don’t Try to Surprise Your Audience or They’ll Tune Out Put your most important information early in the video and make it part of your title. Because your viewers might not watch the whole video and could miss the point you’re trying to make. #4) Forget about “Going Viral” In many cases, viral videos are a PR stunt, and require big budgets. Spikes in viral traffic don’t last and are rarely repeatable. One time hits usually don’t grow your audience much; they’re just a small percentage in your total traffic. Focus on creating content that grows your existing audience. They’ll love it and share it. #5) Use the Magic of Lighting to Instantly Improve Your Videos The easiest way to dramatically improve your video quality is by paying attention to lighting. Wistia has a blog post on some simple ways to do this for less than $100.
63& Methods:&How&WisCa&Got&2000&New& Subscribers&From&One&Video&(2/2)& Wistia ran a video campaign about teaching people how to choose the right video music. Here’s the video. They showed examples of the good, the bad, and how to think about it. They sent it to the 50,000 people on their email list. Results: 15,000 page views. 10,000 plays. 9800 unique visitors. 125 comments. 88% of people clicked play. 500 hours watched. Viewers watched the video on average 1.5 times. 2000 new email subscribers. Lesson #1: Even With Video, Have A Call To Action Most business videos don’t have a clear call to action. Wistia’s video had a link to get free music tracks to download for video music if you entered an email. About 1/3 of viewers got the track. That meant 2600 email registrations, and 2,000 (80%) were brand new to Wistia. Lesson #2: Build For Your Existing Audience Like we said on the prior page, don’t try to build viral videos for the entire internet. You should be creating the right video content for your existing list to deepen the connection with that audience. You can expand your audience through them. Lessons #3: Video-Specific Metrics * Engagement rate: How many people are watching & what are they responding to? Where in the video are they dropping off? * Re-watching areas: What parts of the video are getting watched more than once? These areas are either confusing or really interesting. * Play rate: Like subjects lines do for email open rate, this indicates how well your thumbnail & description are doing to get plays.
64& Methods:&Growth&Hacking&Principles& with+Sean+Ellis+of+GrowthHackers.com+(1/3)& If your business is struggling to find growth through typical marketing channels like paid Google ads, email marketing, affiliate programs and SEO, perhaps it’s time to take a new tack with your marketing efforts. As the market gets more crowded & prospects’ attention spans shrink, companies are getting creative in making it easier for prospects to become quickly acquainted with and in love with your product – to get to “Wow!” faster. The term for this in Silicon Valley is “Growth Hacking,” coined by Sean Ellis, CEO of Qualaroo and founder of the neat site GrowthHackers.com. Sean says, “by far, one of the most neglected opportunities is creating a must-have experience with your product from the start.“ This must-have experience is what takes a product from being a “nice to have,” to “one that your customers absolutely can’t live without.” When products hit this point, suddenly, users “get” the value proposition; they’re excited to refer their friends, and happy to pay to keep using it. Only after you’ve identified a group of people who passionately care about your product can you really start to scale your growth. EXAMPLE: SalesLoft On Smart Signups “We made our free product SUPER simple to sign up for. And, when someone signs up we use oAuth (a tool that pings social networks like LinkedIn) to auto-populate their First & Last Names, so we only ask them to fill out two fields: 1) ‘Corporate Email Address’ (no gmail/yahoo/etc allowed), & 2) ‘What CRM they Use.’ Then, through oAuth we can also grab their Company, Title, Industry, social media URLs, geographic location, # of LinkedIn connections, etc (all behind the scenes without them having to do anything). This allows us to run sophisticated, automated, lead grading/scoring too because we have a lot of data about signups.”
65& Methods:&Growth&Hacking&Principles& with+Sean+Ellis+of+GrowthHackers.com+(2/3)& #1) Triple Down on What’s Working—This may sound too obvious, but do you have a marketing activity that works well or better than the others? (You may not have any idea!) Start by analyzing what works and how you can improve your best program. #2) Stop Doing What’s Not Working—Marketers spread themselves too thin. You probably are spending too much money on stuff that’s just not working. Don’t be afraid to just cut them to zero, if they aren’t your top few programs. Have Facebook ads or Google AdWords that aren’t generating a positive ROI? Turn them off. Reinvest your time and money back into your best program. Example: While at Dropbox we abandoned Google AdWords because it cost us $300 each to acquire customers who only spent $99. The faster we grew, the more money we lost. So we shut off AdWords and built a customer referral program that gave existing users extra space (which cost us nothing) for inviting their friends. This hack helped Dropbox to grow to 4,000,000 users without spending any money on ads. #3) Identify the Customers that Love Your Product—Who are the top 1-10% of your customers that can’t live without what you sell? Get specific! Then invest heavily in going after just that particular mini-slice of customers. Going after a broad market is great for raising money, but terrible for getting customers to sign on the line that is dotted. Example: “Circle of Friends” was growing like a weed with viral Facebook invites, but saw a problem as usage started to wane. They discovered moms were their power users, with more frequent logins, writing longer and more engaging messages, and referring more friends. They pivoted & refocused the entire company to become “Circle of Moms,” which doubled their 2 million monthly active users to 4.5 million, and led to an acquisition by PopSugar.
66& Methods:&Growth&Hacking&Principles& with+Sean+Ellis+of+GrowthHackers.com+(3/3)& #4) Slow Down Now To Speed Up Later — Growth hacking means coming up with hypotheses about what you think will improve your business and then testing them in reality. You must think & work like a scientist. It will slow you down to set up tests, run, measure & analyze them – but it’s worth it because you will get the insights you need to repeat results & scale. Example: Sean tells this story: “At a former company, we found that the visitors from a particular channel were signing up, but weren’t using the product. We ran a survey on the page to find out why. The answer floored us. The visitors didn’t believe our claims that the product was actually free. So we added a link to a paid product on the landing page and instantly saw a 3x improvement in conversions, and continuing to tweak the design, ended up improving that channel by 10 times. Fast-moving entrepreneurs often forget to just ask customers what they want.” #5) Get Creative — Yeah, Google Adwords worked like a charm for your cousin Benny and drinking buddy Tom, but that doesn’t mean they will for you. Your customers aren’t only found through Google Adwords, email or the AppExchange. They’re all over the place; reading blogs and forums, using services like eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook. Example: AirBnB took a creative approach with Craigslist. AirBnB tapped into Craigslist’s massive volume of traffic by developing a clever bit of code that allowed AirBnB users to cross-post to Craigslist. This increased visibility for AirBnB listings with people looking for vacation rentals, and resulted in both more bookings for current AirBnB users, as well as tons of new AirBnB users. Many credit this as the main hack that helped turn AirBnB into a company valued at more than $1 billion. For More: Sean Ellis’ GrowthHackers.com, plus he has an upcoming book: Unlocking Growth
67& Methods:&How&Cirrus&Insight&& Tripled&Their&Demos&Per&Day& Cirrus Insight made demos much more efficient for Account Executives Cirrus Insight’s a useful app that integrates Salesforce.com and Gmail in a very neat way. They creatively changed their free trial system & saw: - Demos grow from 2-3 to 8-10 a day - Conversions of people who start a trial then buy grow from 50% to 65% (even after a price increase) - Churn dropped from 12% annually to less than 9% What They Did As users start a free trial, Cirrus Insight uses Pardot (a marketing tool) and Salesforce to auto-assign them an Account Executive (AE) based on company size. Cirrus sends a pre-defined series of ‘drip’ emails to the prospects; particularly personal emails from the salesperson that include invitations and links to schedule a demo on their calendar using ScheduleOnce. Based on past data, they know if a user attends a demo, it’s very likely that user will convert. If a user clicks on the link inviting them to schedule a demo, they are taken to a page with the AE's calendar embedded in it, and lets them pick an available time that works. The AE approves the meeting & drops GoToMeeting details in. Usually, the first time they speak to the customer is during the demo. This allows AEs to keep their daily schedules booked with demos with little effort on their part. Note: Normally we tell companies “don’t send leads straight to salespeople!” But this is a great example of an exception, because the leads Cirrus Insight auto-magically passes to AEs are pre-qualified (they have started a trial), and have a very high historical close rate.
68& 2015& Watch for it! This ebook is being expanded & published in 2015… The expanded version of this ebook will be published (with Foundry Group Press / www.FGPress.com) in 2015. Extra marketing-related content will include topics such as… • Meaningful Messaging… simple ways to make your content and emails easier to understand and engaging with prospects • Social Media & marketing • More Case Studies on campaigns, finding your Needy Niche and metrics • How are these ideas different for Professional Services companies than for Product companies? • How do Aaron & Jason create content? • And more!
Stay&Tuned&For&Part&3:&“Spears”& 69& Thanks for reading Part 2. Watch for Part 3, about “Spears” lead generation (outbound prospecting & Outbound Sales Automation). To automatically receive each free chapter as soon as we release them, and to get additional case studies and other private freebies, make sure you get on our mailing list here. This ebook series shares highlights from the forthcoming full book to be published, which will include even more case studies, more details, more apps, and more ideas.
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Predictable revenue guide to tripling your sales part 2 - marketing + nets

  • 2. 37& If&You&Missed&Part&1& Welcome! This is Part 2 of the Predictable Revenue Guide To Tripling Your Sales. Part 1 covered “Seeds” lead generation, including… • The pros & cons of “Seeds” (word of mouth) leads, and the best way to systematize their growth • 6 keys to driving growth with Customer Success • 7 Customer Success triggers to watch • How Gild dropped customer churn from 3-4% to <1% per month • 5 Ways Topcon provides predictably excellent customer service • And much more… To download Part 1, CLICK HERE
  • 4. 39& What&You’ll&Learn&In&This&SecCon& Marketing’s goal is to generate leads and revenue, not make you look pretty • Our “Triple” 4-Step Marketing Framework (Page 41) • Common Marketing Fails (Page 42) • The most important growth metric in marketing (Page 46) • The 15/85 Rule & Achieving “Market Escape Velocity” (Page 50) • How Marketing Geniuses Jon Miller (Marketo) and Neil Patel (QuickSprout / KISSMetrics) Create Content (Page 55) • How SalesLoft Grew Leads 5x In One Year (Page 59) • Growth Hacking Tips From The Man Who Coined The Term (Page 64)
  • 5. 40& Gasoline&For&Growth:&“Nets”& Cast a wide “Net” & attract inbound prospects right to you In the prior chapter, we went into detail around the first type of leads, “Seeds” and how Customer Success Management helps systematize them. “Nets” is a general term for all your marketing leads and 1-to-many programs, such as internet marketing, events, webinars, white papers, advertising, etc. Because you’re casting a wide net, these leads are about “quantity over quality.” For example, if 50% of word-of-mouth (“seed”) leads may turn into customers, perhaps 5% of marketing-generated leads convert into customers…so you usually want a lot of them. Out of a trillion ways to market, two popular and growing approaches are: #1) “Inbound Marketing,” or “Content Marketing,” is still the most popular kid in school and focuses on creating marketing that customers love, and inspires them to want to learn more from you and buy your stuff. #2) “Growth Hacking” is a newer term, and refers to – in our busy world - making it easier for prospects to become quickly acquainted with and in love with your product; to get to “Wow!” faster…increasing adoption, sales and word-of-mouth referrals. Pros & Cons of Marketing Leads: Pros: Often easy to generate high volumes of leads; some kinds of marketing programs are scalable; content online can generate leads forever; highly measurable. Cons: The leads aren’t “free” – there can be high fixed costs to generate leads (mainly time & salaries); low conversion rates since most leads aren’t a fit; works best generally with small/medium businesses and smaller order sizes, not as well with enterprises.
  • 6. 41& Gasoline&For&Growth:&“Nets”& How focused – or distracted – is your company & marketing? Kids aren’t the only entities subject to ADD / Attention Deficit Disorder. Companies suffer from it as well, but let’s call it MADD: Market Attention Deficit Disorder. When your marketing leads are frustrating you – either the quantity or quality - the most common problem is a lack of focus: usually by creating the right content for the wrong people, or the wrong content for the right ones. A “Triple” Framework For Growing Great Marketing Leads: 1. Management 2. Market 3. Messages 4. Methods #1) Management Do you have the right person leading marketing? Do they have a quota or the right kinds of specific goals? #2) Market Are you focused enough in your target market to cut through the clutter? Do you have a Needy Niche? Or are you trying to be all things to all people? #3) Messages What ideas, content or words matter to your people? Are you communicating to your targets in their language or in yours? #4) Methods Video, webinars, email newsletters, events, blogging, social media, landing pages, calls to action, marketing software, widgets and apps…there are infinite tactics & tools to choose from in creating & optimizing your marketing machine. Focus on doing fewer, better, rather than doing them all not-so-well.
  • 7. 42& First&–&MarkeCng&Fails&(1/2)& “Build it & they will come”: great movie quote, bad marketing strategy Inbound Marketing has been a popular movement in b2b lead generation for the past 5+ years. There’s a 90% chance you’re either already doing it, thinking about doing it, or are feel guilty for not doing it. But - if you really haven’t heard of it, the gist of it is to create marketing that people love. So –publish educational or entertaining content online, then people will find it (and thus you), and they’ll want more and come register as leads and buy your stuff. (A great basics overview is here at Hubspot.) Because the practice is so common now, “inbound fails” are more interesting than ‘how to do it’… Fail #1: “Post and pray” “OK, we’re blogging! Why don’t people care?” You have to work at getting the word out through distribution. The simplest effective solution is finding complementary partners who will share your stuff with their own relevant audience. Action Tip: Make a list of relevant blogs/websites or complementary products, then reach out to get to know them & perhaps work together (help them first before expecting them to help you.) Fail #2: Being Corporate (Boring & Jargony) Do you feel compelled to write like… “this systemic ineffective activity obstructs sellers from achieving optimal close rates”? SNORE. People write this way because they are afraid of being rejected, or want to sound smart. But it just ends up being confusing and boring. Whether it’s a controversial opinion, visuals, stories, your ‘voice’ or anything else, bringing a personal touch to content makes it more interesting and engaging to readers, so the ‘facts’ will stick.
  • 8. 43& First&–&MarkeCng&Fails&(2/2)& Action Tip: When writing a newsletter, pretend you’re emailing a single person, an “ideal reader.” This makes your message more personal and engaging. Fail #3: Thinking It’s Free While posting blogs is free, content marketing can be a lot more expensive than you expect. Whether it’s the founders’ time, or money to hire freelancers or a marketing team, there is a real cost. Even with 100% focus, building enough momentum to see returns takes more than six months (and often much longer). Fail #4: Unrealistic Lead Expectations As many companies learned through experience, most of your “inbound leads” aren’t from decision makers. 95% of the time they are from small companies or low-level people at bigger companies. This isn’t terrible, but be realistic about what you’ll get. You can target medium & large companies with inbound marketing can happen, but isn’t easy and often takes a lot longer than you want (often, years – if it even works). Action Tip: Outbound prospecting can be a great compliment to inbound marketing, especially when targeting big companies. Like peanut butter and chocolate, inbound and outbound taste great together. Fail #5: The One-Trick Pony Today too many companies assume inbound marketing is the end-all-be-all that will take them to the moon. But at some point, inbound plateaus. Combine inbound, different kinds of marketing methods, outbound prospecting or anything else that works to create a portfolio approach to growing your leads. Don’t make inbound your one-trick growth pony
  • 9. 44& Management:&Your&MarkeCng& Leader&Needs&A&“Lead&Commit”&(1/2)& Your VP Sales has a quota; why doesn’t your VP Marketing? Your sales team has a quota. Your marketing team & leader has to have one too, as a “lead commit”. Everyone hires marketing folks that have squishy goals. Half of startups get this wrong, and don’t have any kind of lead commit at all. It’s the “We get what we get and we don’t get upset” approach. Lead Commit goals forces also force marketers to focus on sustainable marketing practices, instead of “get rich quick” methods that spike leads, but only for a short period of time. It’s not easy – especially when you’re creating it for the first time – but it is important. In the beginning, when you’re so early there’s little data, all you can do is start by taking your best estimate (aka “guess”). But having a guess is still better than nothing. Once you get the ball rolling, you can begin to set more confident future targets (just as with sales quotas).
  • 10. 45& Management:&Your&MarkeCng& Leader&Needs&A&“Lead&Commit”&(2/2)& EchoSign’s 2009 lead commits, goals (blue) vs. actual (red)…
  • 11. 46& Management:&Your&Key&Growth& Metric&(&“Lead&Velocity&Rate”&(1/2)& If you and the executive team watch only one metric, this is it One great thing about all the new ways to measure marketing and sales is being able to better See The Future (especially in SaaS businesses). You’re trying to gauge whether your revenue will keep growing in the future, but sales results vary a lot monthly or quarterly, and sales pipelines have big quality issues. And worse, sales numbers are a lagging indicator of all the hard growth work you’ve done (right or wrong) in the prior 12+ months…they can’t predict anything. And what about pipelines? It’s fun to list out every possible company who could buy, but a pipeline report is cr*p for predicting the future, since they are more often about hope than truth. Pipeline for this month is useful, but still dependent on how various reps estimate (guess) at probability and close dates. Next quarter’s pipeline is only slightly better than a guess, even once you get pretty big. But there’s a better metric, your Key Metric, you should track and score yourself to, and hold your VP Marketing and VP Demand Generation team(s) to… Your Key Metric: Qualified Lead Velocity Rate (LVR) LVR measures your growth in qualified leads & pipeline, measure month-over-month, every month. LVR is real-time, not lagging, and it clearly predicts your future revenues and growth - and - even better, your growth trend. So if you created $1 million in new qualified pipeline this month, and created $1.1 million in new qualified pipeline the following month, you are growing LVR at 10% month-over- month. So, your sales should grow 10% as well after a period of an average sales cycle length.
  • 12. 47& Management:&Your&Key&Growth& Metric&(&“Lead&Velocity&Rate”&(2/2)& Sales (or a lack thereof) is a lagging indicator of what you’ve done right or wrong for the past 12 months – but tells you nothing of the future Once EchoSign hit $1 million in revenue run rate, we set a LVR growth target of 10 %per month. Once we hit about $3 million in run rate, we dropped it to 8% growth per month. The goal of 8% per month was to produce enough leads to grow the business at least 100% year-over-year. We hit the lead generation growth goals, the LVR goals, just about every month, and certainly every quarter, and every year. And by hook or crook, enhanced with an ever-improving sales team and an ever- improving product — the revenue growth followed. Not like clockwork every day. But clearly over time, ever quarter, every year. One great thing about LVR is while sales can vary a lot by month and quarter, there’s no reason leads can’t grow every single month like clockwork. Every. Single. Month. Follow other core business metrics of course — just understand they aren’t as good. Sales and pipeline lag. Monthly sales growth is important, but minor variations can lead to huge forecasting / modeling variances. Know You Will Grow As long as you are using Qualified Leads (not raw or unqualified leads) with a consistent formula and process to qualify them, you can then See The Future. Hit your LVR goal every month and you’re golden. And with practice, you’ll see the future of your business 12+ months out, clear as can be.
  • 13. 48& Management:&How&To&Get&Blue& Logo&Pens&Instead&Of&Leads&(1/2)& Don’t get blinded by a marketer’s fancy resume So many tech companies have hired a head of marketing with a strong resume, from a strong tech leader. But they hired someone from Corporate Marketing, rather than Demand Generation. So that hire fails, and you’re left with nothing more to remember him/her by other than those nice blue pens with your logo on them that they ordered. Traditionally, Corporate Marketing is the sexier of the two. With branding, positioning, logos and press releases, it’s #1 at big companies. Demand Generation has been unappreciated, left to junior folks in the backroom slaving away. And because of this, you’ll find leading companies all spit out tons of senior Corporate Marketers. Corporate Marketing (like at Adobe, Google or Salesforce.com) is all about protecting and promoting the brand after you’re already big.
  • 14. 49& Management:&How&To&Get&Blue& Logo&Pens&Instead&Of&Leads&(2/2)& In the Fortune 500, Demand Generation (“DemandGen”) folks are usually second-class citizens. But in growing tech companies, these folks are the Lords of Marketing. DemandGen folks are all about the numbers. Spend $Y, create Z leads, which should be worth 5 x $Y in revenue. Great DemandGen marketers can handle the “squishy stuff” (logos, branding, press releases) well enough until you’re ready to get corporate. Their blue pens may not be as pretty as the ones the Corporate Marketer gets you. But you’ll get leads. So, for companies that need leads, brand marketing is very expensive in the early days — and frustratingly, generates zero leads. For companies with > $50 million, corporate marketing is a ‘nice to have,’ after you’re already growing fast because of your kick-butt DemandGen person. You want someone who’s shown a passion for areas like inbound / web demand generation programs, lead nurturing and metrics - who will also work hand-in-hand with your sales team. And that’s not Corporate Marketing. DemandGen folks can figure out Corporate Marketing. Corporate Marketing cannot figure out Demand Gen. Ever.
  • 15. 50& Market:+The&15/85&Rule&&&Achieving& “Market&Escape&Velocity”&(1/2)& While you want to benefit from things like referrals and risk-taking Early Adopters, you don’t want to be dependent on them for growth. No matter what kind of marketing you do – inbound / outbound / upside down… you need to pay special attention to a couple of key ideas if you fall into one of these scenarios: #1) You’re an early stage company trying to get to or past your first million in revenue. #2) You’re been growing through word of mouth and inbound marketing but now you want to get more aggressive in reaching out to colder prospects. #3) You’re starting a new marketing initiative – usually with a new product or target market. The 15/85 Rule & Early Adopters When growing a company, there’s a big milestone in getting your first 10-20 paying customers of a new product or target market. Usually these customers are part of the “15%” - the Early Adopters: the feedback from these Early Adopters and friends is more positive, and generally not reflective with the general masses (which is the other 85%). They’re more likely to think like you, be like you and buy like you. These people are willing to jump through more hoops, and tend to be more tech savvy or risk-friendly, which can give you false positives about the market's reaction to your product. Early Adopters aren’t like the rest of the (much bigger) market, that 85% of the world who doesn’t know you, aren’t like you and don’t like risk: the Regular Buyers. Those Early Adopters & word of mouth often can get you to $1-$10 million in revenue before you plateau; when realize you haven’t achieved Market Escape Velocity - which includes the ability to market & sell to Regular Buyers outside your networks. Has someone from Iowa bought your stuff yet?
  • 16. 51&Market:+The&15/85&Rule&&&Achieving& “Market&Escape&Velocity”&(2/2)& When you’re selling-to-friends-of-friends or startups-selling-to-startups, you’re still part of the incestuous 15% club. You haven’t ‘crossed over’ until someone from Iowa buys your stuff. “Regular Buyers” Are Different The challenge: you’ve been selling to people who are extra-trusting in working with your new thing. Then, when you try marketing to Regular Buyers, it’s incredibly frustrating because they buy differently from how your first customers do. For example, most Regular Buyers don’t want to do a free trial or read all your blog posts to self-educate. “Just Show Me” They often will go to your website and three others, submit “Contact Me” inquiries, and sit back to have you and the other companies educate them about the space. They want you to explain things to them with a demo over the phone. They can’t or won’t unilaterally push a new project through – they want more approval and support from more people. They’re less risk-tolerant. They work at more complicated organizations. This isn’t bad, just different. Don’t fall into the ego trap of thinking, because they ‘don’t get it’ as quickly as you that they’re dumber or lazier – they aren’t. Stop Bitching. Start Learning. Rather than bemoaning “why don’t they get it?”, start learning how to speak their language and learn how to help them buy. Especially at bigger companies, where it can be hard to buy and implement new ideas. When you find ways to do this systematically, seeing 6 months of month-over-month growth in qualified leads (aka your “Lead Velocity Rate” keeps up) that’s Market Escape Velocity. You’ve found a niche in which customers need your products, and ways to systematically generate qualified leads with both Early Adopters & Regular Buyers.
  • 17. 52& Market:+What’s&Your&Needy&Niche?&(1/2)& Don’t let the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) muddy your market & message When your company is struggling to generate quality leads, first ask yourself if you’ve found a Needy Niche. What’s A Needy Niche? Of all the kinds of companies who could use you…and all the kinds of buyers who should want you… which ones need & want you so much that they’re willing to expend their attention, energy & money to buy and use you? Finding a niche isn’t about thinking smaller – it’s focusing, making it possible to target & find the right people and more easily showing them how you can help. Example #1: LeadGenius LeadGenius started out as a company called Mobileworks, who did crowdsourcing. What’s that mean? Exactly – few people who weren’t friends-of-a-friend, or super Early Adopters, ‘got it’. They were burning cash like crazy when they narrowed their niche to “outsourced virtual assistance.” By narrowing (focusing) on a tighter market & service, they got to “cashflow neutral” in only 60 days. Then they narrowed (focused) even more, to on-demand prospecting & lead generation…and sales took off! It became easy for companies to understand how they could help.
  • 18. 53& Market:+What’s&Your&Needy&Niche?&(2/2)& Don’t let the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) muddy your market & message Example #2: Carburetor Carburetor (Carb.io) started out as VoltageCRM, building sales forecasting tools for software companies. People were interested…but not enough to buy anything. So they pivoted, into “Outbound Sales Automation,” doing the outbound prospecting for companies (using the Predictable Revenue Cold Calling 2.0 methods & framework). They found a Needy Niche: companies who wanted to generate leads from outbound prospecting, but either didn’t want to do it themselves or struggled hiring & training prospectors. And… sales took off. As VoltageCRM, they struggled signing any customers after almost two year. As Carburetor, they signed two dozen customers in months, and expect to hit a $1 million run rate in less than a year. We’ll get into more detail on LeadGenius & Carburetor in the next chapter on “Spears” lead generation: outbound prospecting. For Bigger Companies Commonly, when a big company who’s done mostly inbound marketing starts outbound prospecting, or starts marketing a new product, they struggle. Usually it’s for the same reason – instead of focusing on 1-3 killer use cases, they’re trying to speak to too many types of buyers. That Fear Of Missing Out (a fear of leaving money on the table, of saying “no” to opportunities) has the opposite effect, by muddying your messaging so that no one understands what you can do for them. Learn To Say “No” It takes courage to seemingly give up a bigger market to narrow your niche. But in order to become an easily-understandable “need” to your market, you have to.
  • 19. 54& Messages:+To&Create&Compelling& Content,&Know&Your&Buying&Stages& A beautifully simple way to think about what types of content buyers need When you’re creating content for marketing, make it useful to your ideal customers as they progress through their buying stages. For example, we spoke to Jon Miller (CMO Marketo) who uses three simple buying stages: Early, Middle and Late. Using them simplifies sorting out which content you need where, and to spot gaps. #1) Early Stage: “Why?” - These customers are actively learning, but not buying (yet). Why should they care about your category? Why change? Your content should be entertaining and useful whether people buy your stuff or not — don’t make it about you, your product or features. For example, Marketo created content that taught people how to become better marketers. #2) Middle Stage “How?” - Your audience wants to learn more about how to implement what you do in their business. Your content should help educate them on their options and how to deliver promised results. It should help people thinking about a purchase to make better decisions. Marketo created content such as “structured evaluations,” to help marketers learn more about a category and the space, multiple “Definitive Guides” (such as the Definitive Guide To Marketing Automation), and analyst reports. #3) Late Stage “Which?” - Your prospects are getting ready to buy, deciding “which path do we take?” Now your content should be heavily about you, why you’re better, different, how you can ensure results…including why you are better than the uber-competitor “do nothing.” Where Marketers Go Wrong By creating too much “me me me” content for these Middle Stage buyers, and little or no content for the Early Stage ones.
  • 20. 55& Messages:+How&Neil&Patel,&& Boy&MarkeCng&Genius,&Creates&Content& More than ever, people want step-by-step, detailed guidance Neil Patel’s the youngin’ behind the QuickSprout internet marketing blog, and founder of KissMetrics, a marketing analytics company. Here are his content tips… #1) Write Content For Your Readers, Not For You Try to create content that solves their biggest problems. Don’t write to make your boss happy, write to make your audience happy. #2) Use Tools To Find Interests Tools like Qualaroo surveys and drip email campaigns can help you get smarter about tuning into what your audience cares about. #3) Add More Details To Create More Desirable Content The more helpful your content is, the better. Blog posts that lay out step by step instructions of how to do things like implement Salesforce.com, break down inbound marketing steps, create sales scripts, do growth hacking, etc. do really well. This may be why you’ve seen a growth in things like “The Ultimate Guide To ____” and “The Definitive Guide To ____” – they work. Speaking of which, to see an example check out Neil’s Definitive Guide To Growth Hacking #4) You Don’t Need To Blog Every Day Or Every Week Make a plan and stick with it, whether that’s posting daily, weekly or bimonthly. Start with less commitment and then increase as you go if it makes sense.
  • 21. 56& Messages:+How&The&Founder&&&& CMO&of&Marketo&Creates&Content& “A lot of people think it must be easy for me because I create so much content, but it’s not.” Jon Miller is the Chief Marketing Officer and cofounder of the marketing automation tool Marketo. Started in 2006, Marketo went public in 2013 at a billion dollar valuation. He started blogging for Marketo before they began coding. Jon’s Creation Process “Slow and methodically” – he says - “my words don’t flow out quickly. I spend a lot of time reading and researching. I’ll copy and paste points I like into a big document with my notes. As I get my own ideas, I put them in there. It takes me time to think and organize my material into an outline. The process is a slow slog, like pushing through molasses My content is more of a synthesis than original content or thought leadership. Distilling ideas to be digestible is still very valuable content.” What helped Jon’s Writing After Marketo Had Money To Spend “It didn’t really get easier for me; we just got more budget for me to work with a writer. I take my detailed notes and send it to a writer I trust to turn it into a draft and then edit into my voice, which is how I wrote most of my Definitive Guides for Marketo. I found that works much better for me than just doing a call with a writer.” Don’t Fight Your Weaknesses It’s easy to avoid writing & creating content. Pay attention to your weakness, to find ways to work around them rather than fighting them.
  • 22. 57& Messages:+Make&It&Personal&(1/2)' At least in business-to-business marketing, it’s still cool to make your newsletters very pretty with logos, images, colors and HTML. But while it’s fancy (like Blue Logo Pens), it’s not the most effective way to write to your audience. People respond better to other people – or what seems like another person. When newsletters look and feel more like an email coming from one person, your audience responds better. This is something the best internet marketers in the world have known for a long time, but it’s slowly trickling out to businesses. A Webinar Invitation A/B Test Monica Girolami’s the head of marketing for NewVoiceMedia, and she ran a test for a webinar. First she invited people with a fancy HTML email that read more like a mass update. Then she sent a newsletter that looked and read more like a personal email from her. It was in plain text. It came from Monica, and “reply-to” went to Monica. She wrote it as if she was writing to a friend. Sample screenshots of the email are on the next page. Monica Tripled Her Results HTML Email Invitation: • Open Rate: 13.2% • Click-through rate: 1.8% • New Registrants: 20 “Personal” Email Invitation: • Open Rate: 15.3% • Click-through rate: 4.1% • New Registrants: 60 Monica: “Even more astonishing were all the personal replies I received – ‘sorry I can’t make that time but let me know about the next webcast’.” People want to hear from people – not machines
  • 23. 58& Messages:+Make&It&Personal&(2/2)& A/B test screenshots of “Personal Email” vs. “Mass Update” The&personal&email:& The&HTML&mass&update:&
  • 24. 59& Methods:&Puqng&It&Together&(&How& SalesLor&Grew&Leads&5x&In&A&Year+(1/3)& The power of partner / influencer marketing SalesLoft was founded in fall 2011. They’re a company who isn’t falling victim to the common inbound marketing mistakes. In their first full year, 2012, they had 2,400 leads. The following year, 2013, SalesLoft grew inbound leads 5x, ending up with: 12,000+ inbound leads 191 sales opportunities 110 customers $400k+ in recurring revenue And in 2014… That was 2013. In the first six months of 2014, from inbound leads SalesLoft is already at a $2 million run rate. Lesson #1: Influencer Marketing SalesLoft promoted the messages of related thought leaders, through: - A Sales Leader Video Series (both Aaron & Jason interviewed for it) - Infographics - Book Reviews - Webinars SalesLoft gained credibility and sometimes experts promoted the content. Plus, SalesLoft builds relationships (how do you think they ended up here?) Lesson #2: Simple Lead Signups SalesLoft made the free product SUPER simple to sign up for. (More details in on page 65). Lessons #3: Live Events Matter Nothing beats ‘in-person’! SalesLoft invented the B2BCamp conference and Ultimate Sales Conference to build community (1300+ total attendees). Tip: Community events build recognition, loyalty, and helped solidify SalesLoft as a thought leader. Frequently, the outbound team gets VP responses like: “Oh, I've heard of you, you put on that event in December...”
  • 25. 60& Methods:&Puqng&It&Together&(&How& SalesLor&Grew&Leads&5x&In&A&Year+(2/3)& Lesson #4: Maintain a Drumbeat of 3-4 Weekly Blog Posts – One of Kyle’s favorite blogging strategies: make a list out the top 10 questions your prospects have about their market (either take your best guess or go ask them). Then answer those questions yourself, or use them as questions when interviewing other experts. Action Tip: Use graphics and break up big paragraphs into small chunks to make it easier to scan or read. Many companies struggle to blog that often. It’s more important to be consistent in your posting –once a week is common - than to post a lot. Lesson #5: Use outbound techniques with inbound leads A common complaint about inbound leads is that many of them end up being low-level people without any authority. SalesLoft finds out who the boss(es) are for the leads coming in, and isn’t afraid to go after them with outbound prospecting. “Mr. VP, 15 members of your team are using our product, a handful have attended our events, and they've downloaded 6 white papers. Could we set up a short call to learn about what you want & share more?" Kyle+Porter,+CEO+SalesLoV+ Total Inbound Marketing Activities Over Two Years (2012 + 2013): • 310 blog posts • 3500+ tweets • 31 videos • 7 guest posts • 5 hosted events
  • 26. 61& Methods:&Puqng&It&Together&(&How& SalesLor&Grew&Leads&5x&In&A&Year+(3/3)& You can build your own audience by tapping into other peoples’ audiences SalesLoft has done a lot of interviewing and writing about thought leaders, including ones with big audiences. Thought leaders & experts won’t always share your stuff with their audience, but when the right one does, with the right article, it can create a big impact. This article SalesLoft wrote about Tony Robbins got 5,000 shares, once Tony Robbins shared it with his network! The best marketing article for the original Predictable Revenue book was written by a popular Venture Capitalist blogger, David Skok. David wrote it up as a book review, calling it “Why Salespeople Shouldn’t Prospect” and shared it with his wide following, helping Predictable Revenue take off. Bonus: we’ve found that doing interviews and partnering with experts also makes creating content easier and more enjoyable (aka more sustainable).
  • 27. 62& Methods:+Why&Viral&Videos&Won’t&Solve& Your&Content&MarkeCng&Problems&(1/2)&& Most of your videos should be for your existing audience Chris Savage is the CEO of Wistia. They help businesses host & analyze amazing videos to improve customer engagement & conversion rates. Chris’ video tips: #1) Sell Something Bigger Than Your Company or Product Want to create endless content & be really effective with video? Sell a mission or an idea instead of a product, such as how video can be powerful to your business. (Especially for early stage buyers - remember the Buying Stages on Page 57?) #2) Make Education Interesting Having experts from your company explain complicated things with white boards or visual aids works very well. #3) Don’t Try to Surprise Your Audience or They’ll Tune Out Put your most important information early in the video and make it part of your title. Because your viewers might not watch the whole video and could miss the point you’re trying to make. #4) Forget about “Going Viral” In many cases, viral videos are a PR stunt, and require big budgets. Spikes in viral traffic don’t last and are rarely repeatable. One time hits usually don’t grow your audience much; they’re just a small percentage in your total traffic. Focus on creating content that grows your existing audience. They’ll love it and share it. #5) Use the Magic of Lighting to Instantly Improve Your Videos The easiest way to dramatically improve your video quality is by paying attention to lighting. Wistia has a blog post on some simple ways to do this for less than $100.
  • 28. 63& Methods:&How&WisCa&Got&2000&New& Subscribers&From&One&Video&(2/2)& Wistia ran a video campaign about teaching people how to choose the right video music. Here’s the video. They showed examples of the good, the bad, and how to think about it. They sent it to the 50,000 people on their email list. Results: 15,000 page views. 10,000 plays. 9800 unique visitors. 125 comments. 88% of people clicked play. 500 hours watched. Viewers watched the video on average 1.5 times. 2000 new email subscribers. Lesson #1: Even With Video, Have A Call To Action Most business videos don’t have a clear call to action. Wistia’s video had a link to get free music tracks to download for video music if you entered an email. About 1/3 of viewers got the track. That meant 2600 email registrations, and 2,000 (80%) were brand new to Wistia. Lesson #2: Build For Your Existing Audience Like we said on the prior page, don’t try to build viral videos for the entire internet. You should be creating the right video content for your existing list to deepen the connection with that audience. You can expand your audience through them. Lessons #3: Video-Specific Metrics * Engagement rate: How many people are watching & what are they responding to? Where in the video are they dropping off? * Re-watching areas: What parts of the video are getting watched more than once? These areas are either confusing or really interesting. * Play rate: Like subjects lines do for email open rate, this indicates how well your thumbnail & description are doing to get plays.
  • 29. 64& Methods:&Growth&Hacking&Principles& with+Sean+Ellis+of+GrowthHackers.com+(1/3)& If your business is struggling to find growth through typical marketing channels like paid Google ads, email marketing, affiliate programs and SEO, perhaps it’s time to take a new tack with your marketing efforts. As the market gets more crowded & prospects’ attention spans shrink, companies are getting creative in making it easier for prospects to become quickly acquainted with and in love with your product – to get to “Wow!” faster. The term for this in Silicon Valley is “Growth Hacking,” coined by Sean Ellis, CEO of Qualaroo and founder of the neat site GrowthHackers.com. Sean says, “by far, one of the most neglected opportunities is creating a must-have experience with your product from the start.“ This must-have experience is what takes a product from being a “nice to have,” to “one that your customers absolutely can’t live without.” When products hit this point, suddenly, users “get” the value proposition; they’re excited to refer their friends, and happy to pay to keep using it. Only after you’ve identified a group of people who passionately care about your product can you really start to scale your growth. EXAMPLE: SalesLoft On Smart Signups “We made our free product SUPER simple to sign up for. And, when someone signs up we use oAuth (a tool that pings social networks like LinkedIn) to auto-populate their First & Last Names, so we only ask them to fill out two fields: 1) ‘Corporate Email Address’ (no gmail/yahoo/etc allowed), & 2) ‘What CRM they Use.’ Then, through oAuth we can also grab their Company, Title, Industry, social media URLs, geographic location, # of LinkedIn connections, etc (all behind the scenes without them having to do anything). This allows us to run sophisticated, automated, lead grading/scoring too because we have a lot of data about signups.”
  • 30. 65& Methods:&Growth&Hacking&Principles& with+Sean+Ellis+of+GrowthHackers.com+(2/3)& #1) Triple Down on What’s Working—This may sound too obvious, but do you have a marketing activity that works well or better than the others? (You may not have any idea!) Start by analyzing what works and how you can improve your best program. #2) Stop Doing What’s Not Working—Marketers spread themselves too thin. You probably are spending too much money on stuff that’s just not working. Don’t be afraid to just cut them to zero, if they aren’t your top few programs. Have Facebook ads or Google AdWords that aren’t generating a positive ROI? Turn them off. Reinvest your time and money back into your best program. Example: While at Dropbox we abandoned Google AdWords because it cost us $300 each to acquire customers who only spent $99. The faster we grew, the more money we lost. So we shut off AdWords and built a customer referral program that gave existing users extra space (which cost us nothing) for inviting their friends. This hack helped Dropbox to grow to 4,000,000 users without spending any money on ads. #3) Identify the Customers that Love Your Product—Who are the top 1-10% of your customers that can’t live without what you sell? Get specific! Then invest heavily in going after just that particular mini-slice of customers. Going after a broad market is great for raising money, but terrible for getting customers to sign on the line that is dotted. Example: “Circle of Friends” was growing like a weed with viral Facebook invites, but saw a problem as usage started to wane. They discovered moms were their power users, with more frequent logins, writing longer and more engaging messages, and referring more friends. They pivoted & refocused the entire company to become “Circle of Moms,” which doubled their 2 million monthly active users to 4.5 million, and led to an acquisition by PopSugar.
  • 31. 66& Methods:&Growth&Hacking&Principles& with+Sean+Ellis+of+GrowthHackers.com+(3/3)& #4) Slow Down Now To Speed Up Later — Growth hacking means coming up with hypotheses about what you think will improve your business and then testing them in reality. You must think & work like a scientist. It will slow you down to set up tests, run, measure & analyze them – but it’s worth it because you will get the insights you need to repeat results & scale. Example: Sean tells this story: “At a former company, we found that the visitors from a particular channel were signing up, but weren’t using the product. We ran a survey on the page to find out why. The answer floored us. The visitors didn’t believe our claims that the product was actually free. So we added a link to a paid product on the landing page and instantly saw a 3x improvement in conversions, and continuing to tweak the design, ended up improving that channel by 10 times. Fast-moving entrepreneurs often forget to just ask customers what they want.” #5) Get Creative — Yeah, Google Adwords worked like a charm for your cousin Benny and drinking buddy Tom, but that doesn’t mean they will for you. Your customers aren’t only found through Google Adwords, email or the AppExchange. They’re all over the place; reading blogs and forums, using services like eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook. Example: AirBnB took a creative approach with Craigslist. AirBnB tapped into Craigslist’s massive volume of traffic by developing a clever bit of code that allowed AirBnB users to cross-post to Craigslist. This increased visibility for AirBnB listings with people looking for vacation rentals, and resulted in both more bookings for current AirBnB users, as well as tons of new AirBnB users. Many credit this as the main hack that helped turn AirBnB into a company valued at more than $1 billion. For More: Sean Ellis’ GrowthHackers.com, plus he has an upcoming book: Unlocking Growth
  • 32. 67& Methods:&How&Cirrus&Insight&& Tripled&Their&Demos&Per&Day& Cirrus Insight made demos much more efficient for Account Executives Cirrus Insight’s a useful app that integrates Salesforce.com and Gmail in a very neat way. They creatively changed their free trial system & saw: - Demos grow from 2-3 to 8-10 a day - Conversions of people who start a trial then buy grow from 50% to 65% (even after a price increase) - Churn dropped from 12% annually to less than 9% What They Did As users start a free trial, Cirrus Insight uses Pardot (a marketing tool) and Salesforce to auto-assign them an Account Executive (AE) based on company size. Cirrus sends a pre-defined series of ‘drip’ emails to the prospects; particularly personal emails from the salesperson that include invitations and links to schedule a demo on their calendar using ScheduleOnce. Based on past data, they know if a user attends a demo, it’s very likely that user will convert. If a user clicks on the link inviting them to schedule a demo, they are taken to a page with the AE's calendar embedded in it, and lets them pick an available time that works. The AE approves the meeting & drops GoToMeeting details in. Usually, the first time they speak to the customer is during the demo. This allows AEs to keep their daily schedules booked with demos with little effort on their part. Note: Normally we tell companies “don’t send leads straight to salespeople!” But this is a great example of an exception, because the leads Cirrus Insight auto-magically passes to AEs are pre-qualified (they have started a trial), and have a very high historical close rate.
  • 33. 68& 2015& Watch for it! This ebook is being expanded & published in 2015… The expanded version of this ebook will be published (with Foundry Group Press / www.FGPress.com) in 2015. Extra marketing-related content will include topics such as… • Meaningful Messaging… simple ways to make your content and emails easier to understand and engaging with prospects • Social Media & marketing • More Case Studies on campaigns, finding your Needy Niche and metrics • How are these ideas different for Professional Services companies than for Product companies? • How do Aaron & Jason create content? • And more!
  • 34. Stay&Tuned&For&Part&3:&“Spears”& 69& Thanks for reading Part 2. Watch for Part 3, about “Spears” lead generation (outbound prospecting & Outbound Sales Automation). To automatically receive each free chapter as soon as we release them, and to get additional case studies and other private freebies, make sure you get on our mailing list here. This ebook series shares highlights from the forthcoming full book to be published, which will include even more case studies, more details, more apps, and more ideas.