In January, Blue Frog underwent a fundamental change in the way that we do business. After researching HubSpot and the Inbound Marketing philosophy, we decided to not only become a Certified HubSpot Partner, but also to implement the Inbound Marketing philosophy within our own business. So the question is, does HubSpot and the Inbound Marketing philosophy work?
In order to understand whether or not our efforts with HubSpot have been effective, we first need to understand where we were when we began implementation.
Blue Frog, like most businesses, had most of the basic online marketing pieces in place. We had an informational but mediocre website that provided basic content such as our services, about us, contact us, etc., a Facebook page and a Twitter account. We were utilizing Google Analytics and spending a little money sporadically on Adwords and Facebook advertising. We were doing what most people would consider a decent job of marketing our business online. However, like most small companies, marketing was what we did when we had spare time. As a marketing company it's tough to admit, but we were very rarely actively involved in marketing our own business. That may sound unusual but it seems to be more the norm than most would expect. After only a couple of months our website ranked higher on Google than nearly every marketing company in Des Moines which tells me our competition is putting forth a lackluster effort. Feel free to Google "Des Moines Marketing" or "Marketing Des Moines" and see for yourself.
Upon making the decision to implement the Inbound Marketing philosophy, the first thing we did was completely rebuild our website. This was a process that took a solid month between design, copy writing, etc. We wanted to build a site that was very clean and easy to navigate, but also contained basic but useful easy to read information. However, the biggest difference was the development of our blog, which allows us to consistently provide fresh, relevant information on our site, which Google loves!
Speaking of Google, prior to our Inbound Marketing efforts we were rarely found in Google searches unless you were specifically searching for Blue Frog in Des Moines, IA. We now actively manage a set list of keywords that we want to rank for. Since the rebuild of our website utilizing SEO best practices, we are now ranking on Page 1 of Google for 30 different keywords and we are in the top 3 for 18 different keywords. And these numbers only reflect keywords that we are tracking. We actually rank for many more.
Because our website was previously nothing more than a stagnant billboard, we didn't have much site traffic. In order to get the maximum benefit from Inbound Marketing, you first have to have site traffic so this is something we have focused on increasing in the early stages of our Inbound Marketing efforts.
Here are some more stats...
Website Visitors - June 2012 (71) June 2013 (654) +583
Total Website Page Views - June 2012 (222) June 2013 (1,685) +1463
Based on these numbers I think it's safe to say that implementing the Inbound Marketing philosophy has created a significant increase in our website traffic.
As we started to create better, fresher content we began sharing it via social media and here are the results...
New Facebook Likes - June 2012 (1) June 2013 (27) +26
Facebook Mentions - June 2012 (7) June 2013 (245) +238
Twitter Mentions - June 2012 (0) June 2013 (91) +91
Once again, based on the numbers presented here, it is obvious our new focus on fresh, quality content as part of our overall Inbound Marketing strategy has not only drastically increased our social media following, but also our interactions!
Now that we have built steady traffic and advanced from simply existing on social media platforms, to becoming an active participant, we are ready for phase 2 of our Inbound Marketing plan. While we are already generating business from our increased site traffic and social interactions, we are only half way there. We are just now starting to implement our calls to action, landing pages, and email marketing campaigns and we look forward to providing another update on our progress in the near future.
Inbound Marketing takes time, effort, and a commitment to actively working on marketing your business. I think anyone can see by these numbers that implementing the initial pieces of our Inbound Marketing strategy has drastically increased the visibility of our business as our website traffic and social media interactions are significantly improved.
Marketing is simply not as effective when done passively. That is like sitting around waiting for the phone to ring instead of going out and selling. Creating a stagnant billboard like website, and simply having a facebook page and twitter account will not provide the results you want. We made the choice to actively market our business and the numbers speak for themselves. Inbound Marketing works!
Oh yeah, and don't forget to "LIKE" us on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter!
