Startup Blog

Today I get this message through the contact form on this website:

Randy... I wish I had a simple way to send you 100 spam emails without taking much of my time. 

What have you found to be the most effective way to get revenge on spammers?  Leave a comment...

Inbound marketing is not just for tech companies.  A restaurant can make a video about how to cook salmon and put it on YouTube and their blog.  Looks yummy.  Maybe I should go there this weekend...  Get the idea yet?

I enjoy a lot of the content on public radio and public TV.  But, everywhere I have lived  - Massachusetts, California, Maine - both public TV and public radio spend a lot of time on air with their fund raising drives, basically interrupting all the great programming I love in favor of advertising for themselves until they meet their donation goals.  It's pretty annoying.

I was thinking that maybe we could help them do less interruption based advertising and use more inbound marketing to generate the donation revenue they need.

So, any ideas?  Leave a comment below!

Here are some of mine to start:

1. Membership. Offer online memberships that include copies of shows in online archives or DVDs, and the ability to connect with the stars of your favorite shows in chats and other means.
2. Fashion.  Sell some sort of "honor badge" that people would want to display to seem cool for having supported public broadcasting - maybe a bumper sticker, laptop sticker, pin or something.  Run a campaign showing celebrities wearing these pins - maybe it could become like the Lance Armstrong yellow bracelet and millions of people would want to buy it.
3. Training.  There is a lot of demand for media production skills, since inbound marketing and using the Internet requires a lot of publishing skills.  Maybe they could leverage their expertise and offer classes (online or in person) on how to produce a good TV, radio or print story and charge for that.
4. Collector's items.  Maybe you could take items used in the shows and auction them on eBay, like autographed shirts or even the chairs people sit in, etc.
5. Custom news.  Maybe you could figure out a way to record a 10 minute news segment to be posted online each day, but it would feature on person (who paid a bunch of money) in the news cast somehow.

Sometimes by being more public you get some rewards - blogging is one way of putting yourself out there.  Sweet Services Bulk Candy sent me 5 pounds of free candy and wrote about it, just because I blog.  Pretty cool!

I expected to get a mix of a bunch of candy I had before, but there were a few items that were new to me.  Vanilla Tootsie rolls? Yes, and they are good.  Cowtails?  Also good - they are sort of like bull's eyes (caramel with sugar in the middle), except they are long and thin.  Anyway, to make sure I make it past 40, I decided not to eat all the candy myself and I brought it into the office. 

It took 3.5 days for the company to empty the entire 5 pound bowl of candy.  Here are the photos to prove it.

So, check out their candy blog and all the candy they have to offer, including chocolate (my favorite).

I decided to do a video podcast about preparing for inbound marketing to give yourself a better chance for success while I was driving to Albany, NY to give a presentation to the AMA there.

Summary points:

• Too many people jump into inbound marketing without the proper preparation
• Who are your customers?  What is your fundamental value proposition?
• To answer these questions, talk to and interview your customers - ask them how they would describe your company and product or service
• Ask your customers where they hang out, how they learn more about their industry, what they read, how much they use discussion forums, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

All of this will help you with 3 things:

1. Some good seed words for starting your keyword research for SEO purposes
2. Great topics for content creation (blogging) and ways to find some other blogs to read and comment on
3. Starting points for where to get involved in your social media activity that will target the highest proportion of people in your market

Download File for iTunes / iPod / iPhone (.m4v)

It is amazing to me how hard people make it to buy things sometimes.  I admire companies that do not need to play games with pricing and discounting and there is just one price per product through all channels.

How complicated do you make it to buy your products?

Me: Hi, I'd like to renew my wife's subscription for her birthday.

US Weekly Magazine: Sure, that will be $67.

Me: Actually, I got something in the mail that says it is $51.

US Weekly Magazine: Do you have the offer code?  I can't give you that deal without the offer code.

Me:  No, the letter is in my recycle bin at home.  Can you tell me what the offer code is and I will repeat it back to you?

US Weekly Magazine: No.

Me:  OK.  I also found the same deal on amazon.com and this number was in the listing.  I figured it was easier to call so it would just get added onto the current subscription.

US Weekly Magazine:I can't honor online pricing.  There are a lot of websites out there selling unauthorized subscriptions.

Me: Amazon.com is selling your magazine without authorization?  I mean, this 800 number I called was in the

US Weekly Magazine:  I don't know about that Amazon thing, but I can't honor online prices. 

Me:  OK.  What should I do.

US Weekly Magazine: Well, I'll give you her account number.  Then you can go to our website, log in, and then renew online on our website and that will give you the best price.

Me: But you can't honor that price right here?  I have my credit card in my hand... 

US Weekly Magazine: No.  Sorry.

Me:  OK... Fine.  What's the account number and URL I need...?

Today I am speaking at the Albany, NY chapter of the AMA (American Marketing Association) about inbound marketing.

For anyone interested in what I am saying, download the presentation (PPT format), or flip through the slides below.

If you saw the presentation and liked it, leave a speaking testimonial on this blog article or on my LinkedIn profile.

Every Saturday, my wife and I start our day by going to the gym.  I don't workout as often as I should (who does?) but this routine is valuable.  I know what I am doing every Saturday morning, I never make other plans.  The result? My success rate on working out on Saturday is 99% over the last 6 months.

To make inbound marketing work, you also need a routine.  Think about setting a schedule for your self to spend some time each day, and I bet the benefits will pay off a lot over time.

Inbound marketing in 10 hours a week:

• 15 minutes per day to spend on reviewing analytics and reports 
• 45 minutes each day to write a blog article
• 30 minutes each day to read other blogs and news in your industry 
• 30 minutes each day to converse with people and make new friends in social media

I promise you'll get a lot more out of your inbound marketing routine than Patrick Bateman gets out of his. (The clip is from American Psycho for those of you who do not recognize it.  One of my cult favorites.  Shout out to Mike Miller in case he is reading this.)

Do you have a routine?  Does an inbound marketing routine make sense to you?

I was on a panel chatting about online video put together by Permission TV. 

Panelists

• Justin Levy, General Manager at New Marketing Labs
• Mike Volpe, VP Marketing at HubSpot
• Matt Cutler, VP Marketing & Analytics at Visible Measures
• Matt Kaplan, VP Solutions at PermissionTV

Moderator

• Matthew Mamet, Director of Product Marketing at PermissionTV

Valentine's Day is coming soon!

There's no better way to show you care to your favorite marketer than to send some link love.

Send some link love now! 

The key to having a successful business is to attract customers cheaply and then quickly monetize those customers at a multiple of what they spent to acquire them.  At least according to David Skok from Matrix Partners (and investor in HubSpot) - that link is to an interview in the Wall Street Journal.

I agree.

Too often startups make their strategy too confusing and complicated.  This is because they don't have the answer yet.  Most really successful businesses have a pretty simple model at the core.  Google, Ebay, Salesforce.com.  See?

There is a great article at Copyblogger about writing for your audience and sticking to your audience.  His tips (with some edits by me) are:

1. Decide who your target reader (persona) is and write your posts for that reader.
2. Avoid going off-topic, even if you know that topic might get you on Digg.
3. Write that post - and its headline - so that it's as interesting to your targeted reader as a story about Lindsay Lohan is to a 14-year-old boy in his bedroom.

Well said.

I have found the same thing.  Saucy articles are popular, but they don't turn into leads or customers.

At HubSpot we market to small business owners and marketing professionals.  We have found that webinars are sexy to them, as are research reports.

Who is your target persona?  What is sexy to them?

Seth Godin is a smart dude.  This article talks about how you should start marketing before you have a product.  This is something I have talked about a lot at HubSpot on our blog, in webinars and in interviews.

For startups, you used to spend 1-2 years building a product and then hire a marketing guy or gal.  Now a marketing pro should be part of the founding team.  Build an audience of fans, beta testers, future customers.  No product required.

Start Marketing Before You Have a Product

• Start blogging before you have a product.
• Start engaging in social media before you have a product.
• Start SEO before you have a product.
• Start building your database and capturing leads before you have a product.
• There is nothing stopping you, and it makes product launches easy.

HubSpot started marketing before we had finished the product.  Its one of the reasons we got to 1,000 customers so fast.  You should try it too.

PS - If you want to get started, there's a free trial of inbound marketing software at www.HubSpot.com (if you're lucky - it goes up and down as we test some things).

Flickr Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/learnscope/  

Recently we were trying to make more space in our apartment and cleaned out some old things.  We had a papason chair and an artificial Christmas tree that were just taking up too much space.  Both were in good condition and useful, and I thought maybe we could make some other people happy, keep landfills a bit more empty, etc.

The tree went on the "free" section.  I got 2 emails within 30 minutes and a teacher ended up coming to pick it up to use in a school production of Annie (there is a Christmas scene at the end).  The chair went into the furniture section and I got 3 emails in 40 minutes and someone paid our full asking price of $40 with a smile.  Within 5 hours both items were gone and we had a lot more space in our apartment.

Before the Internet this would have been impossible.  We could have put an ad in the newspaper or posted some signs, but that would have been time consuming and expensive.  We probably would have just thrown them out.  Why?  There were still lots of people looking for good cheap stuff.  We just had no way of accessing that audience.

The power of access to an audience today is that it is much easier to access audiences and build your own.  Things not possible or profitable before are now relatively easy and massively profitable.  Craig's List, Ebay, Match.com and thousands more.

Have you created an audience? How do you let others access it?  Are you making the most of your audience access?

Sometimes companies try way too hard to make people happy.  Looking for the next whiz-bang things that will revolutionize the world.  Sometimes customers just want little things.

I was at a coffee shop in my neighborhood in Boston a couple weeks ago and fixing my coffee (one sugar) and saw something cool.  A small basket with wrapped single pieces of minty gum in it.  Perfect to clean up that coffee breath.

Starbucks will sell you some cool "after coffee mints" for about $3.  Ouch.  These folks are saying "the gum is free, come back for the coffee".  It probably costs them about $0.01 per customer since not everyone takes the gum.  But it was enough to make me happy, which made me blog about it.

What is one tiny thing you can do for your customers to make them happy?

PS - Shame on the Berkley Perk Cafe for not having a simple website.  I would have linked to them and might have left a nice comment on their website for other customers to see.

Governor Deval Patrick came to our office at HubSpot last week.  We all wanted a photo with him.  So, we made it so easy he could not refuse.  The governor had a short meeting with our co-founders.  During that meeting, we all got together, set up the photo, lined everything up, and just kept one spot open in the middle for him.

We waited there about 5 minutes.  When he came out, we all clapped, and then someone said, "we saved you a seat!"  He sat down, we dropped a HubSpot sign in his lap and snapped a bunch of photos.  Then we all clapped and thanked him and he took off to his next meeting.

The total time commitment for the governor was about 25 seconds.  We made it easy for him so we got what we wanted.

What if we didn't make it that easy?  Well, with a schedule as busy as he has, it would have been easy to come out of the meeting and then look at all fof us getting into position to the photo (which you know from experience will take a few minutes), and he could have said "I'm late for my next meeting, it was so nice to see you all..." and then head off.

But, we made it easy for our target customer, and he couldn't help but do what we wanted.

Do you make things "crazy easy" for your customers?  How could you?

Marketing has always been about experimentation.  The old methods get crowded because lots of people are lazy and like to copy rather than innovate.  You need to find new marketing methods.

So I am trying something new this month for this blog.  I am going to write something everyday for the month of February.  A lot of the articles will be short.  Some might not make sense.  But if Seth Godin can write short articles and be a huge success, maybe I can write short articles and be a little success.

I'll report back at the end of the month about how this has or hasn't changed the stats of this blog.  For now, I'll share that I get about 1,000 visitors per month, and January was 1,300 visitors (I had a minor success on Reddit that drove a couple hundred visitors).  About 1/3 of my traffic comes from SEO with Google and another 1/3 from Twitter.  I only have about 90 regular subscribers to this blog (so you are really special if you're reading this).

Let me know over time if you like the content and frequency or not.

I'm looking to do more speaking this year, and part of that is showing other people that I am in fact a good speaker.  And the best way to do that short of having them watch me give a live presentation is to get other people who have seen me speak give a testimonial.

So, if you have seen me speak and liked my presentation, I am asking you to give a short testimonial.  You have 3 options:

1. Leave a recommendation on my LinkedIn profile (preferred)
2. Leave a comment on this blog article below
3. Leave a wall post on my Facebook profile

I'll choose a few of the best ones to publish on this website and will link back to you as well.

Thanks!

For those of you looking for some useful content and want to decide if I actually am a good speaker, here is a video of a "Website Redesign Tips" presentation I gave.

Another blog article from my email outbox.  Here is most of my response to a question about how to measure social media marketing ROI at a B2B company.

1. Reach. (overall reach/database size)
• In the old days, you had a mail/email database. Now you have a number of channels where you can still send messages to people, but they might not be in your "database" but it is almost the same thing. We track monthly a total "reach" adding up a number of metrics, like:
• # blog subscribers
• # fans on Facebook
• # followers on Twitter
• # group members on LinkedIn
• # iTunes subscribers
• Others/etc.
• This is pretty easy to do manually once a month in a spreadsheet.
  
2. Buzz.
• This is sort of an advanced version of the "number of mentions" chart that PR people often use, except this one includes all blogs and online discussions. You want to track the number of times you are mentioned and same for your competition. If people are talking about you more and more, and especially in relationship to your competition, that is good.
• You can do this manually by tracking
• # pages in Google search results for a search on your company brand
• # people that find your website each month on your branded company/product terms
3. Sentiment.
• You try to figure out the number of people who are saying good and bad things about you and trend that over time. For a startup, you just follow conversations and guestimate it since the volume is so low.  For bigger companies, there are some software solutions that are OK, but still being perfected for this (Radian6, Techrigy, Andiamo Systems, Trackur, Crimson Hexagon). The market is immature in my opinion, but the concept is good to think about.

HubSpot is having a 1K Celebration to celebrate our first 1,000 customers.  We're doing an open house in our new office.  Come by, meet the team, have a drink, play some foosball.

Thursday, Feb 19, 7pm
1 Broadway, 5th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02142

Registration is REQUIRED.

[I am not a political person.  I am not an Obama groupie (it feels like 90% of Bostonians and 90% of Internet users are blind Obama groupies).  I look forward to seeing real results, not talk, from our new president.]

But I am fascinated by marketing, language and messaging.  So, after getting an idea from an article by David Meerman Scott, I took the text from the Bush and Obama inauguration speeches and made word clouds.

What is noticeable to me is the lack of significant difference.  What do you see?  Leave a comment.

I recently responded to a discussion on an email group about the business value (or lack of value)from using Twitter.  I thought others would find my answer interesting.  Most of the people thought Twitter was a complete waste of time.  I disagree.

HubSpot recently launched Facebook Grader, which got the attention of Michael Arrington from TechCrunch.

I did a short interview with Matthew Mamet from Permission TV at the last WebInno event.  We chatted about some of the things to think about when using video for marketing.

We use a lot of video in our marketing at HubSpot:

• Lots of marketing webinars
• A live weekly marketing video podcast 
• An iTunes channelwith archived HubSpot TV and our webinars
• Viral videos on YouTube
• Our blog features video interviews
• We also have product demo videos on our website

In the video we talk a bit about how to think about using video in marketing.

UPDATE: For anyone having trouble with the video, here is a link to another version you can try.

A while ago, I wrote about being tagged in the 6th photo meme.  Today, I am writing a very late response about being tagged in the Five Fun Facts meme.  Lynn Morton started the fun by saying "I follow him on Twitter (@mvolpe) and love what he brings to the Conversation. I also love what HubSpot does, he's their VP of Marketing."

So, here are my Five Fun Facts:

1. I love to golf, and I am about a 14 handicap (on a good day).
2. I played football in college (Division III) and was named "Burger King Scholar Athlete of the Week" in 1996 and earned a $10,000 donation for my college's scholarship fund.
3. I like to play around with photography.
4. I went on an awesome Kenya safari trip in 2008 and posted an article about Safari Photo & Camera Advice.
5. I lived in San Francisco for four years during the dot-com boom and crash.

Now, as far as who to tag to continue the meme... I'm going to keep it in house and just tag folks on the HubSpot marketing team: Rick Burnes, Rebecca Corliss, Prashant Kaw, and Ellie Mirman.  (I will make Pamela Seiple optional since she is about to give birth any day now.)