Sonya Hansen, Senior Director at SmartAcre, shares her inspirational story about how AlchemyAPI went from 0 to acquired in 6 steps with inbound marketing.

1. 0 to Acquired in 6 Steps
An AlchemyAPI Case Study
Sonya Hansen
Program Director, WW Demand Gen

2. SONYA HANSEN
@sonya_hansen
Past lives include:
• VP of Marketing, AlchemyAPI (now IBM)
• Customer Marketing, inContact (NASDAQ:
SAAS)
• Sr. Manager, Field Marketing, Rally
Software
(now CA Technologies)

3. Long Story Short…
Goals
• Trial Users
• Generate Revenue
• Attract a Buyer
Challenges
• Accelerate lead gen & funnel flow
• Improve lead-to-sales process
• Better segmentation
• Reduce time-to-market
• Improve visibility
• Demonstrate market leadership

4. 4
How we went from 0 to acquired in 6 steps
with inbound

5. S l o w down to speed up

6. Align to company goals
Perform a marketing audit
Know your buyer
Start!
Test your journey
Review and optimize
1
2
3
4
6
5
6 Steps

7. Step 1: Align to
company goals
Why do you exist?
What is the end goal?
What value do you provide?
Who are your customers?
What do they want?

8. Get Started with a Focus Canvas
• Timeframe
• Our Meaning Beyond Money
• Why We’re Different
• The Value We Provide
• What We’re Trying to Accomplish
• Who Our Customers Are
• How We’re Helping Them
• What’s Important Now

9. Step 2:
Perform a
marketing audit
What drives people to your company now?
Which tactics are performing best? Worst?
What’s missing completely?

10. credit: marekuliasz/Shutterstock

11. Step 3: Know
your buyer
Leverage your current customer list
Use social media
Don’t spend too much time on this!

12. becomes
Research from:
• Current customers
• Analyst reports
• Linkedin profiles
• Customer interviews
• Trial user
demographics
• And more…

13. Step 4: Start!
Pick something. Content, nurtures, anything
Get your marketing automation on point.
Don’t do it all yourself. You don’t scale.

14. Build Thought Leadership to Generate Leads

15. Use Marketing Automation to Your Advantage
Tips & Tricks
• Have a plan
• Include your whole company
• Take the time to do training
• Pick one campaign to start
• Learn by doing

16. Step 5: Test
your journey
Connect the dots.
Think like your customer.
Test, test, test.

17. How Inbound Works
Sentiment analysis api
Developer Brandon wants to
understand how consumers feel
about his company. He Googles it.

18. Search Online

19. Brandon tries the
demo and gets a
free trial.
Grab that Lead

20. Lead with content that teaches.
Nurture to MQL
Developer Brandon
No Fluff!
Practical, how to content.

21. Pass to sales

22. Step 6: Review
and optimize
If it can’t be measured, it didn’t happen.

23. Inspect and Adapt

24. +
Results
• 90% faster go-to-market
• 20% increase organic traffic
• 1 week HubSpot ROI
• 2 week blog migration
• 64 new workflows in 6 months
• 90,000 trial users
• Acquired by IBM in Mar 2015

25. Align to company goals
Perform a marketing audit
Know your buyer
Start!
Test your journey
Review and optimize
1
2
3
4
6
5
6 Steps

26. SONYA HANSEN
Follow me on Twitter:
@sonya_hansen
Connect on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonyahansen56
Email me:
sonya.hansen56@gmail.com

27. Step 1: Align to your company’s goals
• Moz Blog: How to Align Your Entire Business with Your Marketing Strategy
Step 2: Perform a marketing audit
• Hubspot Blog: How to Run a Simple Audit to Fix the Gaps in your Marketing
• Hubspot Download: The 3 Step Marketing Audit
• Hubspot Template: SWOT Analysis Cheat Sheet
Step 3: Know your buyer
• Hubspot Blog: How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas [Free Template]
• Hubspot Webinar Series: Marketing Personas That Tell a Story
Step 4: Start
• Hubspot Blog: Editorial Calendar Templates
Resources

28. Resources
Step 5: Optimize the journey
• Kissmetrics Blog: How to Optimize your Site for Every Stage of the Buying Cycle
• MarketingLand Blog: How to Optimize your Content for Each Step of the Buyer’s Journey
Step 6: Inspect and adapt
• Marketo: The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics
• Check out:
• Google Analytics
• Kissmetrics
• Heap Analytics