Author: Franz Malten Buemann

It’s hard to believe that if the HubSpot Blog were a person, it would currently be in high school.
That’s right – for well over a decade, content has been published on the HubSpot Blog to help hundreds of millions of readers discover best practices in the areas of marketing, sales, customer service, website development, agency work, and general business best practices.
Behind the scenes, our team also thinks about how we can convince as many readers as possible to become leads and access more information, tools, and resources from HubSpot – and anyone who has worked on lead generation knows that accomplishing this task is much easier said than done.
Effective blog lead generation requires both creative and analytical skills. It’s about knowing what numbers to crunch, how to analyze your existing data, and how to make projections based off of traffic, monthly search volume, and conversion potential.
Additionally, any good marketer needs to understand the human aspect behind this process and not lose sight of the people reading your blog and the problems your business can help them solve.
Over the years, the team at HubSpot has landed on a process that continuously generates leads day-after-day, with a reliable blog view-to-lead conversion rate and a steady flow of traffic.
Here are the steps my team at HubSpot takes to generate leads from our blog.

1. Audit existing blog metrics.
To develop a process for growing our blog lead number, we first needed an understanding of how well we were performing.
To capture the current state of blog lead generation, we looked for the overall traffic number and number of leads generated from the blog. These two numbers gave us a baseline conversion rate (in this case, number of leads generated, divided by the total views to the HubSpot Blog in a given time period) from which we knew the team could only go up.
While the number of leads was the ultimate goal for our team, we wanted to take a deeper look at the overall conversion rate and how it changed month-over-month – this number would let us know for sure if we were growing traffic to posts and topics that were most likely to convert their intended audiences.
The big-picture conversion rate gave us an important directional view, but if we ever saw a major shift in that conversion rate, we needed to know where that shift was happening. For example, if we saw a surge in traffic to a low-converting post, that would hinder the overall conversion rate for the blog.
To drill down further, we also looked at all of our post-level data – that is, each post’s traffic number, number of leads generated, and CVR. By exporting and tracking this data monthly, we were able to see which posts were dragging down our CVR, which posts were keeping it strong, and which posts were prime candidates for a better CVR.
How to complete this step:

Choose a time period (last quarter, last month, etc.) for which you want to know your conversion metrics.
Determine your overall data for traffic and leads generated in this time and calculate overall blog CVR.
Export your traffic and lead numbers for individual blog posts for this time period. Depending on your analytics tool, this may require you to export data from two different sources and combine metrics using a VLOOKUP on Excel or Google Sheets.
For each post, divide the number of leads it generated by its traffic number to get post-level conversion metrics.

2. Group common posts together.
Over the years, HubSpot has published thousands of blog posts – and while this was immensely helpful for growing HubSpot’s email subscription base and ranking for countless keywords, it made the process of organizing and analyzing conversion metrics extremely difficult.
Luckily, the blog and SEO teams developed a model to group posts with similar search intent with the pillar-cluster model. In a nutshell, this model was the result of a massive audit to better organize our blog, reduce redundancy on the blog, and help search engines understand which pieces of content we wanted to be considered the most authoritative on a given subject.
As a result of this project, all of our blog posts were given a relevant “topic tag” – or the cluster for which each post belonged. For instance, any Instagram post is assigned an “Instagram Marketing” tag, and links back to our Instagram Marketing pillar page.
This process ensures effectiveness when analyzing metrics. For instance, when exporting blog metrics, we can analyze blog posts by tag (i.e. all “Instagram Marketing” posts), of which we have a few hundred — rather than analyzing each individual URL, of which we have over 10,000.
How to complete this step:

Export all of your blog posts from your CMS or website analytics tool onto a spreadsheet.
Categorize each of your keywords into a topic cluster. These topic clusters should be high in search volume, anchored by a long and high-trafficked post, and related to each other when it comes to search intent. For example, rather than put all of our posts on social media in one giant “Social Media” cluster, we created more niche clusters for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to help us categorize with more specificity.
With each post properly categorized, organize your data with a pivot table to look at the numbers generated by each cluster rather than each URL. Your pivot table should include the number of posts in each cluster, the views generated, and the leads generated. From there, you can calculate the cluster’s CVR by dividing total leads by total views.

3. Determine the best content offer opportunities.
One of the major benefits of grouping your posts together is identifying a content offer opportunity that can be effectively promoted on multiple blog posts, as opposed to an individual post.

As acquisition marketers, it’s tempting for us to attempt optimizing the conversion paths for high-traffic posts. However, these high-traffic posts are oftentimes too general and unrelated to what it is we’re trying to market.

This mismatch results in misplaced efforts and unmet lead goals, as we’re quick to ignore blog posts which – on their own – may have lower traffic numbers, but together have a substantial traffic number.
Ask yourself – which of these two options is a better pursuit for lead generation?

A blog post that has little or nothing to do with your products or services, but is viewed 100,000 times a year.
10 individual blog posts that have a clear connection to your company’s core competencies, but on average generate only 10,000 views each per year.

In either scenario, you’d be optimizing the conversion path for 100,000 readers – it’s only by grouping these posts together that you’d realize option #2 is a much better option for lead generation.
To address this issue, we organized all of our blog topics by the potential number of leads they could generate, but readily discounted any topic cluster of which we doubted the conversion potential. This crucial step ensured we only considered ideas that we believed would be worth our time and resources to create.
Along with dedicated CTAs for each blog post we create, we also create featured resources for certain topics we believe have high conversion potential. For instance, in this Ebook Format blog post, we created a special featured resource, 18 Free Ebook Formatting & Creation Templates:

How to complete this step:

Calculate how many leads each topic cluster could be generating. At HubSpot, we do this by subtracting each cluster’s actual CVR from its target CVR, and multiplying that difference by the traffic number for the desired time period.
Organize data by each cluster’s lead generation opportunity – looking first at the highest opportunity and at the lowest opportunity last.
Work through your list of high-opportunity clusters and remove any low-intent clusters from your consideration, ensuring you’re only left with topic clusters that have a direct connection to your products/services.
Select one (or many) topic clusters which you want to support with a lead-generating content offer.

4. Create lead-generating content.
By this point, you’ve identified topic clusters which you feel would benefit from a new, dedicated piece of lead generating content. Now, it’s time to create that piece of content.
Understanding what kind of content to create comes from knowledge of your industry, your market, and your buyer personas. In our experience, we discovered HubSpot’s Blog audience responds to actionable, personalized, and customizable content in the form of templates, tools, and kits.
However, this is not the case for all organizations – so figure out which content format works best for your audience by auditing the performance of your current library or testing out different formats to see what resonates with your blog readers.
With the knowledge of what formats work best for our readership, we got to work on creating templates for our most-read but lowest-converting clusters, so that readers would see our content as an actionable next step for them to apply the knowledge they gained in the blog post. Below are a few examples of how we mapped an offer to a topic cluster.

Blog Topic Cluster
Content Offer

Customer Experience
Customer Journey Map Templates

Sales Training
New Hire Sales Onboarding Template

Product Marketing
Product Go-to-Market Kit

Pricing Strategy
Sales Pricing Strategy Calculator

Facebook Advertising
Facebook Advertising Checklist

The most important thing to remember during this step is to not overcomplicate your content. Remember, to secure a conversion, you need to convince a reader of your content’s quality and relevance. If you’re struggling to make the connection between your blog content and your offer’s content yourself, how well do you think a reader skimming your blog posts will make that connection?
How to complete this step:

Look through the posts in the topic cluster you want to optimize with new content and think about what a natural next step would be for the reader.
Cement an idea for a piece of content you can create that aids your readers in that next step.
Create the content in your desired format (PDF for ebooks, Google Sheets or Microsoft Word for templates, etc.) and launch it behind a lead-generating form on your website.

5. Promote content with CTAs.
To facilitate a blog conversion, you’ll need to let blog readers know about the new lead-generating piece of content on the same page as your blog content.
Blog CTAs can take a variety of formats. Two of the most popular are:

Anchor Text CTAs – Hyperlinked text to the landing page of the offer you’re promoting. Remember to keep anchor text direct and clear so readers know what they’re clicking – action words like “download” and “access” are useful here.

Image CTAs – Hyperlinked images to your offer’s landing page. These CTAs might look like a banner ad and contain an image of the offer alongside copy explaining the value of it. These image CTAs could also be an image of the offer itself, which makes sense if promoting a template or a tool.

At HubSpot, the majority of our posts contain at least three CTAs – one anchor text, and two image. Depending on the intent we expect readers have on a specific post, we may include several more. However, all of these decisions are based on years of data collection and A/B testing – which we encourage you to rely on as well to ensure a non-intrusive CTA experience on your blog posts.
How to complete this step:

Determine the CTA types you want to include for the blog posts you’re optimizing.
If necessary, create CTA imagery with a design tool like Adobe or Canva.
Add CTAs to each post, either by utilizing a CTA tool or hyperlinking each image or line of text you add into your blog posts. We recommend the former.

6. Analyze your results.
We gained confidence that this approach worked best for us when the results confirmed so.
After 30 days of launching a new content offer on a series of blog posts, we always answer two questions:

How many leads did each blog generate before we optimized it with the new content offer?
How many leads did each blog generate after we optimized it with the new content offer?

Far more often than not, these clusters see a notable increase in CVR, with some increasing by more than 1,000%.
However, there have been times where we missed the mark and the offer did not perform as expected. When that was the case, we reverted the changes and went back to the drawing board – equipped with the knowledge of what didn’t work, which helped us determine what would help us generate more leads in the future.
How to complete this step:

Calculate the traffic, lead, and CVR numbers for each blog post optimized with the new offer before swapping out the CTA.
Calculate the same for a set time period after the CTAs were swapped.
Calculate the difference in leads and in CVR for each post.
If the post did not increase in CVR as expected, consider reverting your changes and creating a new content offer.

7. Align with SEO.
When we discovered that this process was helping us hit our goals, our immediate thought was protection. HubSpot writers and SEOs work hard to ensure our blog posts continuously rank on the first page for the search results of their intended keywords — and we don’t want to lose that hard-fought real estate.
However, like all teams, SEO needs to prioritize which blog posts are most in need of protection from losing their SERP rankings and traffic – so it became our job to ensure HubSpot’s SEO team knew which posts were most important when it came to generating leads.
We’re fortunate here at HubSpot to work with expert SEOs who are able to quickly and effectively prioritize the right content.

As my colleague Braden Becker – HubSpot Senior SEO Strategist – said when we spoke about this topic at INBOUND 2020, “Traffic doesn’t pay the bills.”

Once we were all on-board regarding prioritization, our teams came to an agreement on how to best manage an SEO strategy for high lead-drivers while respecting the importance of maintaining high traffic numbers for posts across the HubSpot Blog.
The team takes the following steps to ensure lead generation goals are met:

Protect the traffic to high-traffic, high-converting blog posts by regularly checking performance and making as-needed updates to the content of these posts. By frequently optimizing these posts, we let search engines know we’re quick to add the most relevant information onto these pages.

Grow the traffic to low-traffic, high-converting blog posts – or ensure that these posts have maxed out their organic traffic potential.

Create posts for keywords that we have not written articles for – but align with related content offers or clusters – as these posts could generate substantial lead numbers for us. This step requires keyword research to ensure these new posts generate traffic.

Stop protecting traffic to high-traffic, low-converting posts. While strong traffic numbers are great, we came to the conclusion that a lower traffic number is acceptable if it means redirecting our historical optimization efforts away from posts that might not generate as much traffic, but will generate significantly more leads than other posts.

How to complete this step:

Come up with a list of blog content that you’d like to see an increase or decrease of traffic to for lead-generation purposes.
Present this list to your colleague(s) in SEO to determine what work can be done to redirect traffic growth efforts to the right posts. Note: it’s important to set expectations here, as an SEO cannot wave a magic wand and increase demand for a low-ranking keyword. Sometimes, a post is ranking as well as it can be – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t double check to see if there’s opportunity to grow traffic where possible.

Present a list of high-traffic, high-converting blog content to see if there are similar keywords which could be written about in a new (or updated) blog post, in addition to potential keywords that could be the basis for net new posts.
Come with data. SEOs aren’t in the business of risk-taking, so explain how a sacrifice of traffic in some areas could result in a stronger CVR and higher lead number from your company’s blog.

8. Repeat the cycle!
HubSpot’s bloggers are always creating new blog posts and historically optimizing existing ones. In other words, my team is always presented with opportunities to create new lead-generating content and ensure the content we’ve already made still holds up and is of value to our leads.
Whenever we create a piece of gated content, we always follow the seven steps above, and we’re consistently rewarded with an increase in leads from our blog.

In this article, you will learn everything about data driven marketing from definitions and examples to best practices and how it influences marketing automation and personalization.

Have you ever wished you could just use a picture to explain a process instead of words (or your hands)?
A process infographic could be just what you need to show your audience how to do something or how a process works. A well-designed one can establish you as an authority on whatever subject you choose to cover — whether you’re trying to show how your business’s coffee is sourced or train the new hire remotely.
Even better, they’re easy to create using a template or from scratch, meaning you can get started on one today.

What is a process infographic?
A process infographic simplifies and explains the steps of a process in primarily visual terms. Generally, it illustrates what happens during each step or phase with an intuitive layout that’s easy for the viewer to follow from start to finish. A well-designed process infographic makes the concept you want to share more accessible and saves you and the audience time.
Chances are, you encounter process infographics in some form pretty regularly in your daily life. Just imagine how much (more) complicated it would be to build your new Ikea desk if the instructions only included words and no visuals. Pretty daunting, huh?
Process infographics allow us to visualize how a process works more quickly and with more clarity. This makes them excellent training and educational tools — but also a smart marketing strategy.
Here’s an example of a process infographic that explains mechanical recycling:

Image Source: bluevision
For marketers — particularly those of us who are trying to market products or services that require a bit of explanation — process infographics are extremely helpful for connecting with potential leads and communicating your company’s value. Explaining how your company’s offerings can provide value to customers with visuals can make your marketing materials more memorable and impactful than using copy alone.
Where to Find Process Infographic Templates
If you want to create your own process infographic with a template, here are a few offerings for every budget.
Venngage
Venngage has a wide variety of process-specific infographic templates for a number of different purposes. If you’re looking to essentially plug your process into a finalized design and go, you’ll likely find what you want on Venngage. Monthly and annual subscriptions are available that give you full access to their template library and the ability to create and download your own process infographics.

Template available on Venngage
Canva
Canva has ready-made infographic process templates ideal for fun activities, recipes, and the occasional life hack. You can also create a blank infographic process template on the site if you can’t find one that fits your project. Canva has a free and paid version depending on your needs.

Template available on Canva
Visme
Visme’s library of process-specific templates includes an extensive variety of different options, including more flowchart-style process templates than other infographic builder sites. If you’re looking to translate a particularly complex process into a visual medium, Visme is a smart place to start your search for the perfect template. You can set up an account for free or get access to the full library as a premium member.

Template available on Visme
HubSpot
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention that HubSpot offers free infographic templates, including a number of process-specific templates that are easy to customize. All of our templates are free to use and compatible with PowerPoint, so you don’t need to download any new programs or apps to use them.

Template available from HubSpot
DesignCap
DesignCap is an online graphic design tool with a curated selection of process infographic templates available to customize to your needs. While their selection is technically smaller than other template tools on this list, every template was created by a professional designer. They offer many templates for free and have paid plans starting at $4.99/month.

Template available on DesignCap

How to Create a Process Infographic Without a Template
If you can’t find a process infographic template that fits the process you want to visualize, you can always create your own from scratch.
For the mechanics of conceptualizing, structuring, and creating a cohesive design for your infographic, you can check out our step-by-step blog post here to develop your own infographic design in PowerPoint. Below, we’ll chat through a few tips specific to process infographics you can apply to any design.
Pick one process to explain.
Process infographics are good at breaking down complex subjects, but you still want to limit the scope of your design to one single topic that can be explained in a linear way — i.e., things that have a start and an end. Trying to explain too much in one visual can make your design confusing. Stick to one central idea per infographic.
Speak to your audience, not yourself.
This applies to most marketing strategies, but it’s always important to remember that you are — more often than not — not your target audience. Chances are, you know a lot more about the subject of your infographic than your audience, so it’s easy to fall back on that knowledge as you plan your design.
Because your audience knows less than you do about this subject, it’s important to approach any complexity from their perspective, taking the time to explain more elements than you would need yourself.
Map out each step with a clear start and end.
As you start outlining your infographic, identify where your audience will start (what they likely know about the process before reading the infographic) and where you want them to end (what you want them to know by the end). With those specifics in mind, map out the steps of
Experiment with the layout.
What’s the best way to structure the information of your process infographic? This will ultimately depend on the “shape” of your information.
For example, a supply chain infographic will likely benefit from a straightforward, linear way of displaying information, but a process like how your company recommends specific products for different needs would need more of a flowchart style design. Experiment with different ways to lay out each step of the process you’re describing until you find one that makes sense.
Edit for clarity.
Once you have a draft of your process infographic completed, give it a re-read and check for areas that might be unclear or confusing. Or even better, ask someone else to review your work with a fresh pair of eyes.
Don’t skip this final review — the goal of your infographic is to make something complex more accessible, and not everyone learns new information in the same way. Having someone else take a quick look can help you refine your infographic so it suits a wider audience.
Visuals succeed where words can fail.
We’ve avoided using this particularly relevant cliche for this entire article, but here it comes: a picture really is worth a thousand words. Using visuals to aid in your explanations of complex subjects or processes can help make your marketing materials more accessible and human.
The next time you’re tasked with breaking down a subject that seems to resist clear explanations, consider making a process infographic instead.

As mentioned in the title. Most of our leads and prospects can be found on these 3 platforms. Possibly if the mentioned service serves SEO as well it would be a cherry on top, but right now we are perfectly fine with using google search console and ahrefs.
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Improve your ROI with these email marketing best practices for 2020. Making it easy to send the best email marketing campaigns.

Characteristics and Strategies of Service Marketing, no business can survive in the market today without a strong service marketing strategy. Even physical products need exceptional service support to succeed. Do you do everything you need to manage service marketing? Read on to find out.
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The start of a new year means new goals and the chance to start fresh. That feeling of wiping the slate clean, both at home and at work, leaves us inspired and motivated for the year ahead. That feeling is all the more refreshing after a year like 2020.
In order to help you get organised for the year ahead, we’re highlighting some of our popular time-saving features. These will help free up your schedule so you can focus on more important things.
Here are some of our customers’ favorite features for saving time and doing more.
Features to help you find what you’re looking for
These actions help you move through your campaigns simply and quickly. Less time spent poking around looking for information means more time getting work done.
Campaign categories
Your campaigns are organised into easy to understand categories: draft, sent, and deleted. There’s also an overview page which shows your recent scheduled, draft, and sent campaigns at a glance.
Tagging
You can create and filter by customized tags to organise your campaigns in the way that makes the most sense for your team. You can even use multiple tags for total customization.
Thumbnail and list view
You can choose to view your campaigns either in a list or as a series of thumbnails. List view provides a succinct summary of your campaigns, while thumbnail view shows a handy view of your email design.
Search improvements
If you can’t remember what you named a campaign, you can search by subject line and by category (such as draft, sent, deleted) to help you find campaigns faster.

Date filtering for sent campaigns
No need to scroll through all your sent campaigns to find the one from last January. Use the date filter to view campaigns sent during a date range of particular interest.

Features to help you complete tasks quicker
There never seems to be enough hours in the day, especially when you’re planning for the year ahead. These efficient actions in the Campaign Monitor app will make your life easier and help you move through your email tasks quickly.
Single-click copy
Hover over an existing campaign and click copy to quickly duplicate the campaign in a new draft.
Quick preview
To see a quick view of an existing campaign, click on the three-dot icon for that campaign and select preview.

Quick rename
To rename any sent or draft campaign, click on the three-dot icon for that campaign and select rename. 
Features for smarter campaign management
Better campaign management means you spend your energy creating stellar content and less time dealing with the nuts and bolts of email. Say hello to less frustration for an enjoyable experience with Campaign Monitor.
Restore deleted campaigns
Campaigns are stored in a deleted folder for 30 days after deletion. You can restore campaigns within that time frame or you can permanently delete them from there. Never again worry about losing something you need.

Copy scheduled campaigns
You can copy a scheduled campaign to create a new draft. No more waiting until the campaign has sent to start working on your next one. Simply copy the campaign and get to work.
Bulk delete
Want to clear out all your old campaigns? Hover over an existing campaign and a checkbox will appear. From there you can select multiple campaigns and choose delete. 
Compare sent campaigns
Compare results from multiple campaigns to see which are performing best. Hover over a campaign and use the checkbox to select the campaigns you want to review, then select compare. 

Wrap up
Feedback from our customers shaped these updates and will remain at the heart of how we grow in the future. Because email marketing should be enjoyable, with fewer frustrations and hair-pulling.
The new year is a time for new beginnings, new goals, and new systems. We here at Campaign Monitor know you need to make the most of every second of your workday in order to do more of what you love. 
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