4. • Business owner (Founder)
• Small business, 1-5 employees
• Industry expert, no marketing experience
• 44, Married, 3 kids (20, 16, 11)
Goals:
• Deliver on past sales
• Generate new sales
• Keep the business running
Challenges:
• Lack of marketing expertise
• No time or budget for marketing
Loves HubSpot because:
• Helps him generate leads
• Free marketing education
Meet Owner Ollie
5. • Professional Marketer (VP, Director, Manager)
• Mid sized company (50-200 employees)
• Small marketing team (1-5 people)
• 42, married, 2 kids (10 and 6)
Goals:
• Support sales with collateral and leads
• Manage company communications
• Build awareness
Challenges:
• Too much to do
• Not sure how to get there
• Marketing tool and channel mess
Loves HubSpot because:
• Easy to use tools
• Learn marketing best practices
• Easier reporting to sales and CEO
Meet Marketing Mary
17. When we used a topless man in our ads to sell
sales software …
Never compromise your brand
values for click-bait
18. When Marketing won, but Sales lost.
Marketing
Hit a milestone for most
leads generated in one
month, EVER!
Sale
s
Missed their monthly
target for the first time in
15 months.
In the same month:
19. When we relied on qualitative data alone to decide a
new website design.
CVR on Academy website
L a u n ch e d n e w we b s i t e
Traffic to Academy website
L a u n ch e d n e w we b s i t e
20. So how can
you avoid the
dangers of
data-driven
decisions?
23. 1. Quality over quantity - Look at what happens after theclick
2. Don't sacrifice brand image for superficialmetrics
3. Understand if you need qualitative data or quantitative data, or both.
4. Connect your metrics with business goals and tie activities back to revenue
growth where possible
5. Create aSLA(Service level agreement) between Marketing & Sales
6. Don't let alack of historical data prevent creation of newdata
Protips:
25. There are many ways to collect data to answer different questions
26. 1. Understand the variety of data types available to inform yourdecision.
2. Always start by narrowing down the problem, question, or goal that
you're trying to answer.
3. Never start by choosing atype of data that will answer yourquestion,
e.g. "Let's run asurvey to find out if people want thisfeature".
4. Bydetermining agoal first, you can pick the most appropriate method
to answer the problem, question, orgoal.
Protips:
28. 1. Don’t focus on the “good” data that makes you look good. Focus on
the metrics that show what part of the business requires attention and
go fix it!
2. Look at all data with a healthy dose of skepticism, always.
3. Focus on the metrics that have real business impact, forget about
Facebook Likes and impressions!
Protips:
If you were HubSpot, and you had to decide which persona to target, which would you choose?
If we look at the cost to acquire an Ollie versus Mary, for every dollar we spend on an Ollie, we get 5 back. For Mary, just three dollars back … anyone changing their mind?
All of this to say, data should INFORM your decisions, it should not make it. There are many risks associated with making decisions on data alone ….
All of this to say, data should INFORM your decisions, it should not make it. There are many risks associated with making decisions on data alone ….
Some companies have developed this idea that if you don’t have data to back up your ideas, it doesn’t deserve a seat at the table. So if that’s your philosophy, do you not believe in innovation and creativity either? What about Santa? I suppose there’s no room for him either?
I’m going to see who’s going to be honest with me here … hands up high if you have you ever run a report and not liked the numbers staring back at you so you changed a few of the parameters until you did like the look of it, or just not shared the data with anyone at all so you wouldn’t look bad? That’s another problem with data. It can be manipulated, it can be hidden, it can tell the story the storyteller wants to tell…. Decisions should be made on a made up fairytale.
There are SO MANY VANITY METRICS THESE DAYS!! Marketing can get lost in a sea of KPIs that should actually be called KPDs – key performance distractors. Marketers own over 60% of the sales cycle now, it’s time we were held accountable to real business metrics, like opportunities influenced and actual revenue closed. I’m tired of Marketing being branded as the arts and crafts department. We need to stand up and start being responsible for real business growth.
And if you’re going to do that, please for the love of pizza, make sure you’re aligned with your sales team’s goals. If Marketing is hitting all of their targets but sales isn’t seeing any quality leads coming in, that’s a big problem. Marketing data should connect to sales data – reverse engineer how many leads are needed based on your revenue goals, and TALK to each other! Otherwise, your business is doomed.
So, now that I’ve give you a few of the dangers of data-driven decisions, let’s look at a few of HubSpot’s mistakes before we had learned these lessons…