Emma Jessica Knox - How HubSpot Use Content to Drive Demand

I'm Emma Jessica Knox, Senior Demand Generation Manager at HubSpot in the Dublin office and I've been here today to talk at the content marketing conference. Give us a quick recap of your talk. Sure, it was around the evolution of marketing. And basically I covered three main topics. And that was the history of marketing, where we've been. I looked back into the 1740s and even the 60s. Look at like where we've got to. But then also I was looking at the current state of play of marketing. That the new current, the new marketing playbook is actually broken. And that we have to get new tactics to gain the same results that we would have five years ago. And then I also went through a HubSpot case study called Optimizing the Past. How we actually improved our blog click through rate by 240%. Wow. Yeah. How did that happen? Well, that was an experiment and at HubSpot we love experiments. So we do run a lot. But this one was one called Optimizing the Past. And basically we looked at our blog data last year and realized that we were getting almost 90% of our demand from old posts. And actually only we were getting 50% of our leads from only 30 posts when we actually had 6,000. So we figured out that we need to actually be focusing more on the content we've previously produced. We're still creating new content. But it was more about optimizing the ones that were already there. That were working for us in the background to ensure that they were converting at the best possible place. And they were also ranking the best on Google. Wow. How do you, can you tell a bit about how you work daily when it comes to content? Sure. Tying into the funnel and also to how this content plays into how they convert. Sure. So at HubSpot we have a lot of different forms of content. We have the blog obviously. But then we also have our gated offers. Which where we actually give people e-books, how-to guides, free tools, templates. Templates are actually our most popular. People love a template. But what we do is I look after the near regions. So I actually figure out looking at historical data, what do people like to read about in these regions? In the UK are they more interested in SEO? Or do they want to know about online research and buying? Do they want to know about buyer personas? So you actually just do historical analysis to figure that out. And then you do targeted campaigns. And that can be across social, across your email, in activation. So you're not just neglecting people that are already in your database. You're ensuring that once they're in the HubSpot ecosystem, we're also targeting them with relevant content. And then what we also do is we create micro conversion tracks. So say for example you have downloaded an SEO e-book, which is the 10 SEO myths to leave behind in 2017. If we know you've downloaded that, we'd send you an email two days later with actually a template to say, OK, you've been reading about SEO. That's something you want to work with. So we'll give you a template for on-page SEO. On-page so you can actually improve it. And then once you download and click on that, we'll actually say, Hey, it looks like you actually need someone to help you with SEO. Either here is access to our trial for the SEO software, or do you want to speak to? And we always give people the option. Are you ready to speak to someone? We don't push it on them. We allow them to make the decision based on the own research they've been doing. Oh, that's amazing. Thank you. How do you like it now? I'm back again to the buyer's journey. Video has been very much removed from the buyer's journey because we haven't been able to track it in the same way as with other types of content. Where do you see that going? I think video is hugely impactful. It drives a lot more leads than people actually think because this video is interactive. We're actually even experimenting with software HubSpot where if our salespeople are talking to someone, they actually do like an on-site kind of analysis of someone's website and send it directly to them. It's so personalized video and you can do it around so many different things. It's interactive and people don't have time to read full e-books and guides. But as marketers, as you said, you should never shy away from video because one, it can actually be very easy to produce well, but you can get very creative and get very interested in the video. And as you said, there's so many technologies out there that allow you to track exactly what people are looking at, what they're skipping when they're doing it and actually to follow up with that in a way that pulls people down your funnel. So I think it's got a huge future ahead of it. Because I mean, also seeing from the last, from Inbound, in 2016, your CEO was basically saying that if there's something you're going to invest in, it's basically hiring a videographer, not a new blogger. Why do you think it's more important now than before? Well, I think it's also just about the way we're consuming technology and information as a whole. Obviously smartphones have been around for a few years, but so many platforms such as, we do live videos on Instagram now and so many of the platforms, that when we think of content team, people just, as you said, sometimes think of bloggers. They contented every bit of information that is consumable by your prospect. And actually there's so many stats that show that people are more likely to consume video, that they find it more interesting and engaging rather than just reading. So I do, I completely agree with Brian Halligan. I think that video, investing in video, especially for a startup or for someone who they're really trying to make an impact in a noisy marketplace, is a huge win moving forward. I'm going to go a bit step back a bit and go a bit more into content marketing. So what do you think are the main challenges that marketers face today with content marketing? Well, I think content marketing is fantastic and there's been a lot of tension in content marketing in recent years, which means that actually it can get more competitive. It can get really hard to rank, for example, for certain ones, for certain phrases, for certain blog posts. And I actually had a very interesting conversation with a lovely man at dinner last night when I was in Copenhagen. And he was saying, it was like your presentation was very interesting, shocked by optimizing the past. And he was like, a lot of people just feel the need to constantly creating new content, even if it's not as valuable anymore because they have been told by someone that they need to produce three blogs a week to be successful. And I've even seen companies where that is the only metric they track. They don't track engagement. They don't track conversion rate. They don't track their search volumes. They just track volume. And that is a big error because it does not matter if you're pumping out this content, if no one is reading it. It's the old adage that if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it doesn't make a sound. If you're creating this content but no one's seeing it, it's not valuable. So why I would always suggest is focus on creating small bits of really good content that is really valuable to you, that is really valuable to your consumers, to your buyers, to your prospects. And with that, you can actually don't feel the need to keep creating this stuff. Like, yeah, it's always good and it's good to be inventive and creative. And if you see a really timely article about something, yeah, talk about it. But don't do four different SEO blogs in one quarter because you feel the need to. Refer back to it. Keep talking about it. But don't get what I like to call an acquisition treadmill of content. So what would you think would be the solutions for that? What would you suggest if you would give one kind of advice to those marketers? Focus on what your buyers and your prospects want to read and what they're reading. Figure out what they want to read and give that to them. As Marcus said, if they ask, you answer. Don't create content for the sake of it because as marketers time, it's very valuable and it's told in a lot of directions. So you need to guard that. So only create the content that your prospects and your customers want to see and ignore everything else. Great. So any predictions about the future of marketing? Not necessarily just about marketing, but the space that you're in looking three to five years ahead. So I think video is going to be big. And I think that people should actually jump on video as soon as possible because I think it's one of those windows of opportunities. And the minute everyone starts doing it, you can see that decline. You can see those click through rates and consumption rates decline. That's always a tricky challenge. For example, Facebook Messenger and Facebook Live are hugely impactful channels for us. But as more marketers realize this and jump onto it, it gets less effective because people are used to it. And I think AI is going to be hugely impactful in the next few years. I think smart targeting is going to get even better. And I think, you know, the machines are coming in a good way. And I think that, you know, one thing I always talk about is when does personalization go too far? So I think with marketers we need to watch there's not a backswing against personalization. And people are like, oh, that's too creepy. You know, too much about me. This is too personalized. So I think the prediction is we're going to have so much data. We don't know what to do with it. It's about using that in a smart way, in an ethical way. It doesn't freak people out. It's funny because it's creeping people out. It has been a very three words that have been some way repeated in so many of these conversations because it is about data and using that data right. And to be helpful and not creepy. Which brings me to maybe something that you've already answered. What are your three favorite marketing tools? Marketing tools. So this is technically actually a sales tool. But in the HubSpot kind of platform that I've actually found the most useful as a marketer is the book a meeting link in sales pro in HubSpot. Because it actually allows me to auto prospect on behalf of my sales team. So instead of them following up with someone on a content download and saying, hi, would you like to do a meeting with me? It allows us to do that automatically in a really smart way. For example, with triggers on our website or behavioral analysis and triggering off that. So that's one of my favorite tools. Absolutely. I think Facebook Live is usually influential. It's one of my favorite tools at the moment because I think it's almost like a mini webinar and it's really authentic. And you can do it in the moment and people really engage with it. And inbound last year, I was working with the social team to do Facebook Live and we would drag people in from the crowd and say, answer these questions. And it was live and it was right in the moment. And, you know, like people you could see 300 people are watching it. And that's so interesting. And my final one, I think, is chatbots. I think that's really interesting at the moment. I think that's where, as I was talking about, AI really comes into it. How these chatbots get so smart. And, you know, with chatbots, it's always interesting. As I've seen before, don't build a chatbot just because you feel like you should. Build it. We have growth bots and that actually answers questions like on HubSpot or like on your competitors. That has a purpose. So I think chatbots are hugely influential. Just don't do it for the sake of it. Make sure it's valuable, not to you, but to your customers. Awesome. What do you think are the most common mistakes businesses do when getting into content marketing? I think they've heard kind of what it is and they know they need to do it. So they either brush it and they do something that's not valuable. As I said before, they just get on this treadmill where they do crappy articles and they just, you know, push it out quickly, quickly, quickly. But they don't actually track what's this driving. You know, is this valuable? Are people reading this? And I think that also, I think businesses also just get pulled in so many directions when it comes to content marketing. I think that they don't really develop a strategy before they launch. They go far too quickly into tactics and execution. And tactics, I was speaking about theirs. Like you can't automate marketing that's crappy. You can't automate tactics that don't work. So it actually doesn't matter if you have purchase automation software. If you don't have the mind frame that this is about this, this is about the buyer. This is about inbound. This is about bringing people to you. It's not about getting a workflow to send a thousand emails to people that don't want to receive it. So I think that people don't actually fix what was wrong with their marketing in the first place. They just add automation and expect things to happen where it's all about designing marketing for humans, by humans. Perfect. I mean, yeah. We're in exactly those kind of conversations with AirCrossBusiness as well that are just acquiring marketing automation software also on top of it using our analysis integration. It's just interesting to hear that a lot of them are basically automating bad habits. Yeah, exactly. Automating bad habits. Do you have a secret content marketing technique in your arsenal that you teach? So this is so tricky because there's no silver bullet and there's loads of tricks and tips that I can give you. I think optimizing the past is always a good one, focusing on the content you've produced. But the thing is, the actual, the only trick that really works is knowing your buyer. The only trick that really works, there's so many tools and new channels and ways to hack the system. And I have a paid marketer in Cambridge who's currently trying to hack or compete with the Facebook algorithm. And there's all these technical things you can do and they change weekly, monthly as technology moves at such a rapid pace. But long term, what your strategy should be is figure out where your customers are. Figure out what they need. And that's actually a silver bullet. Because you should almost be there before they even realize you need to be there. Great. What do you think is going to be important for marketers to understand? To understand? With creating the video content itself? Yeah, that was creation of it, but also understanding how to put videos into the journey, the right place. I think it's about understanding when it's valuable and when it's non-interruptive. And that's doing small tests and that's the understanding when are people clicking on this? When are people engaging with this? Whenever you're rolling out a new strategy or a new part of the funnel, such as putting video into the buyer journey, you know, for example, getting sales to speak directly to someone through a video and, you know, going and running through their website and finding out anything that's applicable to your business, I would always suggest you run a test on it. Because you, anything, you could say, yeah, it's much better at the top of the funnel. Or actually, no, it's much better at the bottom. But like my assumptions could be no better than yours or anyone off the street. You need data. So with a new channel or a new distribution platform like video, that as you said, maybe isn't as advanced as other types of content, you need to always run a pilot program. You need to A-B test it and you need to understand what people find valuable. Because otherwise it's just an assumption. Awesome. Okay. Thank you so much. No problem.