By 2015, FlexMR had decided that its marketing needed to be just as cutting edge as its product. It wanted to increase awareness of its brand, boosts leads and put processes in place to support lead nurturing and customer retention. Enter Christopher Martin, who was hired as FlexMR’s digital marketing manager.
“Before I started, we did some blogging and content marketing through a custom CMS, and that was about the extent of it. In my first few weeks, I set up a lot of different tools - including Constant Contact for emails and Hootsuite for social media, but they didn’t have the automation features that we needed. They weren’t integrated, so we couldn’t track leads or calculate ROI. We spent much time manually entering data to ensure the information was accurate."
Christopher also wanted to have greater alignment between the sales and marketing teams, so that FlexMR could pursue its goals more holistically. An all-in-one inbound solution was the way forward, and the company began an in-depth investigation of its options.
"We scrutinised both Pardot and the HubSpot Marketing Platform to a high degree. However, the HubSpot software’s wider variety of features at every stage of the marketing funnel made it stand out. Its Workflows were of particular interest to us, as they would allow us to push through tailored messages that fitted well with our modular product.”
The decision, Christopher says, was an easy one, and FlexMR signed on the dotted line with HubSpot in 2015.
Tightly Targeted Content That Converts CustomersFlexMR wanted to get more leads, but it also wanted to understand their needs so that it could nurture them more effectively. To facilitate this, it first migrated its contacts database to the HubSpot CRM and created personas for its different types of clients.
“We realised there was a divide between the needs of the end-clients who come to us for research and services and the agencies who need software to run projects on behalf of their customers. We created a main persona for each and then refined that further depending on their level of influence within their organisation. We set up some ‘negative’ personas too –including students who come to us for information but who won’t be in a position to buy for some years, giving us a chance to nurture that relationship without making a direct sale.”
Once the personas were in place, Christopher began creating Landing Pages for FlexMR’s vast repository of content, adding Calls-To-Action to encourage visitors to download and leave their information.
“I gathered all these Landing Pages together in our research resource centre, which is a collection of all of our gated content sorted by topic and content type. We also instituted a very tight content schedule. We produce at least one piece of content every week, such as a whitepaper, case study or slide show, and we produce a demo video every couple of months.”
FlexMR generates interest in this content using the HubSpot Social Inbox, which it uses to post across Facebook and Twitter. Website visitors are then nurtured with Workflows; something Christopher describes as a revelation.
“We have a different one set up for each content offer, and we often segment by persona as well. We run them on a two-week to two-month timescale, so we can keep our brand top of mind and direct people to the content and software that’s most relevant to them.”
The HubSpot software has also allowed the sales and marketing teams to work more closely, he says.
“The sales team uses the HubSpot CRM, so they have access to a considerable amount of lead information. Everything is collected in the timeline, which allows the salesperson to have much warmer discussions with the potential client.
“Before we didn’t have a very defined sales process – it was based on relationships, and every situation was different. With the HubSpot CRM, we have a more structured approach in place, allowing us to move people through the sales pipeline more efficiently.”
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