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Case Analysis Report

HubSpot Case Methodology

November 23, 2015

Mr. Haligan & Mr. Shah:

Thank you for your faith in us to help you out in your efforts to scale up your business. It seems that your biggest problem is trying to figure out how to attract the type of customers that you want to attract. Our analysis has found three possible solutions that could help you with your problem. We feel that your three options are to continue to use inbound marketing to cast a wider net and try to catch as many customers as possible, to narrow your targeted range and only go after one type of customer like B2B and focus on getting their business, or to do a combination of inbound and outbound marketing. Ultimately we feel that using a combination of inbound and outbound marketing will work out the best.

Please review our included analysis below. If any questions arise feel free to contact our team for further assistance.

Sincerely,

Florida Consulting Team

Background Information

In 2006, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, two eager MIT students of Web2.0, recognized the transformative power the Internet possessed for changing the way small businesses operated, and formed HubSpot. After initially self-funding the business, in 2007, Halligan and Shah raised $5 million from General Catalyst: Cambridge-based venture capital firm. Less than a year later, the team raised an additional $12 million from Matrix Partners, a venture capital firm with offices in Boston and Silicon Valley. They headquartered the company near MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a hotbed of activity for high-tech start-ups. They staffed up with young, eager MIT graduates who were immersed in Web 2.0 culture.

Summary of Facts

HubSpot has built their company on inbound marketing. There are two different types of marketing, inbound marketing and outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a collection of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers toward a business and its products. Inbound marketers offered useful information, tools, and resources designed to attract prospective customers to the company during the time when prospects were actively engaged in a search for a particular product or service. Outbound marketing consists of cold calling potential customers, sending the potential customers advertisements in both e-mail and regular mail, and other methods.

HubSpot embodied the philosophy of Web 2.0 using a Web-based software product designed to help businesses attract prospects, qualify their potential, and convert them into paying customers. They have offered their customers a content management system software that helped with creating and editing online content. HubSpot’s product contains a series of tools designed to help customers make their published content more visible on the Internet. These included SEO tools that graded the firm’s content based on its likelihood to be included early in the search results that were returned when a potential customer searched through Google, Yahoo, or other search engines.

HubSpot’s software also enabled firms to analyze which of their inbound marketing programs were working to generate qualified leads, by telling them where potential customers were coming from and how they were engaging with the company.

HubSpot customers paid a small monthly fee for their product. HubSpot’s low cost and ease of use for Web 2.0 novices were its competitive advantages. Customers were also required to purchase a $500 onboarding package that gave them four hours of consulting. During this time, consultants helped customers through a process designed to kick-start their inbound marketing program which included:

(1) setting up the software

(2) using the SEO features to get found

(3) converting prospects to leads to customers

(4) analyzing their results

(5) Institutionalizing the process so that it could be repeated

The goal of the founders was to become the market leader in their industry which focused on helping businesses fill and manage their customer funnel. The customer funnel consists of (as shown in the following picture):

(1) the critical processes firms undertook to attract prospective customers to their business

(2) qualify those prospects to determine which ones had the highest probability of converting to paying customers

(3) finally, close the sale

The goal of the top part of the customer funnel was meant to attract large numbers of prospective customers. HubSpot’s competitors in this area included consultants who built online advertising, websites, blogs, and a social media presence for companies, as well as software companies with SEO products that helped companies maximize their likelihood of getting found by consumers using search engines.

The goal in the middle of the customer funnel was to assess the potential of different prospective customers brought in by the lead-generation programs. HubSpot’s competitors in this area included consultants and software companies with proprietary methods for rating and ranking prospects based on historical analysis of the company’s current customers and conversion rates.

The goal in the bottom of the customer funnel was to convert prospects into customers. One player, Salesforce.com, dominated this segment, providing easy-to-use customizable software that helped firms create a database of their prospects and track their conversion progress in real time.

HubSpot had attracted 1000 diverse customers by 2009 using inbound marketing. First they created a website that featured much dynamic content that included:

1) white papers

2) webinars

3) podcasts

4) a blog that provided information about Web 2.0 and inbound marketing strategies

HubSpot created an 8000 member LinkedIn group called Pro-Marketers, dedicated to marketing professionals who were interested in learning about Web 2.0 and inbound marketing. Employees even came together to host a live streaming podcast that featured interactive commentary on topical events. HubSpot even made a few YouTube videos some of which got between 35,000 and 50,000 views.

When starting out, HubSpot called on all leads and sold to any customer who was interested in buying their products. By 2009 however, the company had weeded out almost half of its leads. The rest of the leads were rated on a scale from 1 to 10 in their ability to convert, and only 63% of them were given a score that portrayed only about 31% of leads were given to the sales team as opposed to the 100% that was originally promised.

The Problem

The problem is in order for Halligan and Shah to achieve their long term goals, they would have to push things up a notch; however, they needed to figure out how to attract the type of customer that they wanted to attract. The method that should be used is the one that best helps HubSpot to achieve their customer goals. The problem is illustrated in the graphic below:

Continuation of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing concentrates on getting discovered by customers. In the normal marketing (outbound marketing), companies tend to focus on finding customers. They will use techniques that are ineffectively targeted and disrupt people. Techniques like cold calling, print and TV advertising, junk mail, spam, etc.

These types of techniques are less effective and costlier. For instance, caller ID can block cold calls, TiVo makes advertising less successful on TV, spam filters can block large amounts of emails, and implements like RSS are making print/display advertising less known. But it is still possible to get a message across using these techniques, but it will cost more.

Instead of disturbing or interrupting people with TV ads, creating videos that potential customers want to see is now a new form. Instead of purchasing display ads in print publications, creating a business blog that people can subscribe to and look forward to reading is a better option. Rather than cold calling, creating valuable content and tools so that prospects look for more information. There is no need to drive a message into people over and over and over again like a drill, these techniques attract highly qualified customers to the business like a magnet. Inbound marketing makes sense as the country is reducing speed. Businesses are looking to inbound marketing because it is a better way of dealing marketing resources than the normal traditional outbound marketing.

Three key factors for the most successful Inbound Marketing campaigns:

1. Content - Content design is the fundamental aspect of any Inbound Marketing campaign. Its information and tool that brings possible customers to a site or business.

2. Search Engine Optimization - Search engine optimization makes it so much easier for customers to find the content there looking for. It’s all about the building of a site and inbound links to the site to make the most of rankings in search engines, where most of customers start the purchasing process.

3. Social Media - Social media intensifies the impression of the content being presented. If the content is distributed all over and discussed on networks of personal interactions, it develops a more authentic feel, and is more likely to lure experienced customers to the business site.

Three key ways Inbound Marketing improves on the effectiveness of customary marketing:

1. Cost Effective - Outbound marketing means spending money – whether its buying ads, buying email lists or leasing booths at trade shows. Inbound Marketing means generating content and speaking about it. A blog costs zero to start. A Twitter account is free. Both of these options can draw thousands of customers.

2. Better Targeting - Techniques like cold calls, bulk mail, and email campaigns are extremely poorly directed. When inbound marketing is acted on, you only move towards people who already self-qualify themselves. If they show a like in the content, they are more likely to be interested in the product.

3. An investment vs. constant expense - When you purchase something like pay-per-click promoting on any search engines, the value goes as soon as you pay for it. In order to keep a place at the top of Google's paid results, payment must continue. But, if you devote your funds in making quality content that ranks in Google's organic results, that top spot continues to be yours until somebody displaces you.

Go After One Type of Customer and Focus on Getting Their Business

This company has grown vastly and has had to convince the American market that rules in marketing have changed. The founders of this company have had to shift their role of selling technological application to preaching new ways of doing business, which are fundamental. The market has had a willing group of audience for the new ideas HubSpot is spreading. Through this firm, we have a leader in web 2.0 who has been able to coin an important term that has changed the art of marketing.

Through the web, “inbound marketing” which pulls customers through their products by search engine optimization and social media. This company has reached a very critical point in the industry where it has gathered a milestone 1000 customers and has attained this level through practicing what they preach to their clients. The most important thing is that they have been able to create new designs for their clients both in the B2B and B2C industries. The business has to select one market in which they will be able to focus and make its mark. Below we look at the different factors, which importantly will dictate the market in which the business will focus.

HubSpot is serving a diverse group of customers and therefore it is difficult to create standardized processes that fit the customers. Different customers do have different comfort and familiarity with the Web 2.0. The first criteria to consider is that B2C clients are sophisticated users compared to B2B. More B2C companies find the templates created by HubSpot to be too rudimentary to suit their needs. The fact that most B2C companies already have their websites created, little do they need HubSpot like services. B2B companies are different since they have less experience with Web 2.0; there are no other agencies that support these efforts. This makes it appropriate for HubSpot to concentrate on this market.

The second reason as to why HubSpot should base its services on B2B customers is that these markets seem to get much value from inbound marketing more than B2C customers market. B2B firms deal in goods that are complex and need that customers take great amount of time to understand the goods and services before they are able to make decisions on such goods. It is therefore vital that they need to get Web 2.0 services, which will explain the products that they buy.

The above criterion is important as evidently shown through Owner Ollies who are less knowledgeable and complicated compared to Marketer Mary. Owner Ollies derive much value compared to Marketer Mary, this is an indication that HubSpot need to concentrate on those customers who derive much value in their products. The business can have a larger impact on Owner Ollies which is more important when it comes to a business’s meeting their goal. The last factor that needs to be considered is the churn rate which refers to the rate at which customers canceled their subscriptions. B2B firms have lower churn rate compared to B2C companies.

Do a Combination of Inbound and Outbound Marketing

There is certainly a dilemma facing the HubSpot organization and the way to market things properly in this new age. Trying to maximize their reach, while also being able to hit target audiences will make for the best growth for the company. Focusing on outbound marketing such as; television, and radio advertisements will end up giving a good amount of short term growth that will be beneficial. Negatives of this approach would be the cost of advertisements and the stagnant market of television; internet holds a much greater stake. It also requires a lot more research, trying to find out what channels to advertise on and what times of day. This is why also keeping a strong focus on Web 2.0 and inbound marketing is important. You will continue to see growth continuously over time without having to worry about a decline in television and advertising on it. As the internet grows more companies will see it as a valuable tool and will seek out ways to include inbound marketing into their toolset. They might even eventually see that they will have more success in full inbound marketing with no outbound. That being said, there are some good advantages to implementing both strategies at once.

1) Possible conversion of Outbound customers to Inbound Customers

2) Better Immediate growth

3) A more secure business since you have more avenues of profit

Adding Outbound marketing to the companies’ services may be a more expensive and require more work, but in the end you will grow the company and help to future proof the organization more.

Decision

Our recommendation is to utilize a combination of inbound and outbound marketing. We feel that while HubSpot’s focus is on inbound marketing, it wouldn’t hurt to add in a tiny bit of outbound marketing techniques. Choosing this alternative has some good advantages. By using a few outbound techniques, like TV and radio advertisements, HubSpot could try to convert customers that are stuck on utilizing outbound marketing to use inbound marketing. This can cause better immediate growth. This can also mean a more secure business since it leaves to more avenues of profit.

Conclusion

Finding new ways to attract more customers can be difficult, especially if you don’t want to compromise your business. Over the past year, HubSpot’s stock has risen from a 34.05 on December 1, 2014 to a 55.90 on November 27, 2015. The current estimated target is 64.36. This is proof that the company is on the rise now. If they continue to utilize the combination of both methods, with a strong focus on their inbound methods, they should continue to rise.

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Help/Already completed project/Hubspot.pptx

Hubspot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0 Case Study

Hubspot

This case study brings the perception of inbound marketing, pulling customer prospects towards a business through the use of Web 2.0 tools and applications like bloggings, search engine optimization, and social media.

Hubspot’s Challenges:

Developing market segmentation and targeting strategies to figure out which customers to serve and which to turn away.

Configuring pricing strategies to align with the value delivery stream customers experience

Determining whether inbound marketing programs can generate enough scale or whether traditional outbound marketing methods need to be employed to accelerate growth.

Hubspot Goals:

Speed up the growing rate and increase cost-effectiveness

Implement customer segmentation by dividing a ‘customer base’ into groups of individuals that are similar in specific ways relevant to marketing i.e., age, gender, interests and spending habits.

Make the proper modifications on a pricing model

Incorporate inbound marketing

Inbound Vs. Outbound Marketing

Inbound marketing concentrates on getting discovered by customers. In the normal marketing (outbound marketing), companies tend to focus on finding customers. They will use techniques that are ineffectively targeted and disturb people. Techniques like cold calling, print and TV advertising, junk mail, spam, etc.

Techniques that do the job at a higher cost!

Caller ID blocks cold calls

TiVo makes advertising less successful on TV

Spam filters can block large amounts of emails

Implements like RSS make print/display advertising

Using these techniques can be effective but will still cost more and who wants to spend more money especially if they don’t have too!

Techniques that do the job & cost less!

Creating videos that potential customers want to see instead of TV ads

No display ads, create a business blog that people can subscribe to and look forward to reading.

Rather than cold calling, create valuable content

Please stop the nagging marketing techniques!

There is no need to drive a message into people over and over and over again like a drill, these techniques work just as efficiently & attract highly qualified customers to any business like a magnet.

3 key factors for the most successful Inbound Marketing campaigns

Content - Content design is the information and tool that brings possible customers to a site or business.

Search Engine Optimization - Search engine optimization makes it so much easier for customers to find the content there looking for.

Social Media - Social media intensifies the impression of the content being presented when the content is distributed all over and discussed on networks of personal interactions.

Why does Inbound Marketing make sense?

Inbound marketing makes sense because inbound marketing is a better way of dealing marketing resources than the normal traditional outbound marketing. It uses better targeting, is cheap & is more of an investment than a constant expense.

Basing Services on B2B customers

B2B companies have less experience with Web 2.0

B2B companies seem to get more out of inbound marketing

B2B firms have lower churn rate compared to B2C companies

Churn Rate Details

Exhibit 8 Churn Rate Detail
BUSINESS TYPE VS. BUSINESS SIZE
Average Churn Rate (cancellations per month)
 
  Very Small Businesses Small Businesses
B2B 7.3% 1.4%
B2C 7.8% 4.1%
     

A combined approach

Positives:

Inbound and Outbound marketing both have uses

Employing both as services will draw in more customers

Future proofing by expanding client base

Conversion of inbound customers to outbound and reverse

Negatives:

Investing resources and time to jump start growth

Decision

Using a combined effect, while it has disadvantages, has many advantages.

Using both can create a surplus of customers.

It creates an opportunity to convert customers to inbound marketing

Conclusion

Finding new ways to attract more customers can be difficult, especially if you don’t want to compromise your business.

Over the past year, HubSpot’s stock has risen from a 34.05 on December 1, 2014 to a 55.90 on November 27, 2015

The current estimated target is 64.36.

. If they continue to utilize the combination of both methods, with a strong focus on their inbound methods, they should continue to rise.

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9-509-049 R E V : J A N U A R Y 2 4 , 2 0 1 1

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Professor Thomas Steenburgh and Professor Jill Avery (Simmons School of Management) and Naseem Dahod (MBA 2009) prepared this case. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. Copyright © 2009, 2010, 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800- 545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to www.hbsp.harvard.edu/educators. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted, or transmitted, without the permission of Harvard Business School.

T H O M A S S T E E N B U R G H

J I L L A V E R Y

N A S E E M D A H O D

HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0

None of [the old rules of marketing] are true anymore. The Web has transformed the rules, and you must transform your marketing to make the most of the Web-enabled marketplace of ideas.

— David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR

Business was good at HubSpot. Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah were thrilled with

the progress their young company had made in the two years since they began their journey to convince corporate America that the rules of marketing had changed. To be successful in the marketplace, HubSpot needed to be much more than just a software company. Its founders had to become evangelists, preaching a new way of doing business that would fundamentally change how marketers reached their customers. To their great pleasure, Halligan and Shah were finding a willing audience for their ideas. HubSpot was now considered a thought leader in the Web 2.0 space, coining the term “inbound marketing” to describe marketing strategies and practices that pulled prospective customers toward a business and its products, through the use of Web 2.0 tools and applications like blogging, search engine optimization, and social media.

Halligan and Shah realized that their business was at a crucial juncture. They had just reached the noteworthy milestone of 1,000 customers, attaining this level of critical mass by practicing what they preached. HubSpot had built its business by turning its back on traditional marketing methods and was solely using innovative inbound techniques to acquire customers. Looking ahead, the founders wanted to accelerate their growth rate and increase profitability. Ironically, they were grappling with many of the same issues that their customers faced when implementing inbound marketing practices.

Halligan and Shah realized that they would need to work through these issues in order to achieve their goals for the company. First, they would need to decide which customers to serve, pulling the best opportunities from the diverse pool of customers who were contacting them. Second, they would need to make some decisions about their current pricing model to entice new customers to the company and to maximize the profitability of existing customers. Third, they would need to assess whether they could achieve enough scale through inbound marketing efforts, or whether they needed to supplement their inbound programs with traditional, interruptive outbound programs. This was more than a test of HubSpot as a company; it was a test of the inbound marketing business philosophy. If HubSpot couldn’t scale its own business using inbound marketing, then how could it convince its customers that inbound marketing would work for them?

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

509-049 HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0

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Founding HubSpot

The two HubSpot founders met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As early and eager students of Web 2.0, Halligan and Shah recognized the transformative power the Internet possessed for changing the way small businesses operated. After graduation, Halligan joined Longworth Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with an expertise in technology. As he worked with start-up companies, he recognized an issue with which they all struggled—how to harness the Internet to build a business. Halligan, like many of his clients, came from a traditional sales and marketing background, working for the high-tech companies Groove Networks and Parametric Technology Corporation. However, at Longworth, he began to realize that the traditional marketing and sales methods he had previously employed were losing their effectiveness in the new Web 2.0 world. Shah also grew up in the technology sector, holding a number of management and development positions in technology companies. Prior to forming HubSpot, Shah was founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Pyramid Digital Solutions, an enterprise software company and the winner of three Inc. 500 awards, which was acquired by SunGard Data Systems. Shah also authored OnStartups.com, a top-ranking blog and online community for entrepreneurs.

Halligan and Shah founded HubSpot in 2006. With Halligan’s marketing, sales, and venture capital expertise and Shah’s technological knowledge and experience as a successful entrepreneur, the two were a winning combination. Halligan became the CEO and served as HubSpot’s evangelizing front man. Shah became the chief software architect and focused on product development. On the strength of their business plan, Halligan and Shah attracted premier financial partners. After initially self-funding the business, Halligan and Shah raised $5 million from General Catalyst, a Cambridge-based venture capital firm, in 2007. Less than a year later, the team raised an additional $12 million from Matrix Partners, a venture capital firm with offices in Boston and Silicon Valley. For a young start-up, HubSpot had a solid financial foundation.

Halligan and Shah strove to create a distinct culture at HubSpot. They headquartered the company near MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a hotbed of activity for high-tech start-ups, and they staffed up with young, eager MIT graduates who were immersed in Web 2.0 culture. The HubSpot office buzzed with energy. The sleek, minimalist architecture contrasted with the animated and passionate young team, who craved a fast pace. The team battled over business with the same gusto that they battled over the last slice of pizza.

Inbound Marketing

HubSpot built software products that helped companies execute inbound marketing programs to supplement or replace their traditional outbound programs. In the current environment, outbound marketing’s effectiveness was diminishing as consumers, feeling bombarded by the daily deluge of commercial messages, began tuning out. Increasingly, direct mail, trade shows, and telemarketing were yielding less new business. In contrast, companies were finding that search engines, blogs, and social media were generating new business at higher rates. These communication programs were more consistent with the inbound marketing approach. As HubSpot explained on its corporate blog:

Outbound marketing is about pulling people away from their dinner, or family, or TV and interrupting their lives. Do you really think you are important or interesting enough for them to want to talk to you instead of doing whatever they were doing when you interrupted them? They have not invited you into their home, and they certainly do not happen to enjoy being interrupted. Instead of spending your whole day interrupting people and hoping they pay attention, try setting up a blog and writing interesting content, so that people want to hear what you have to say and come find you when they’re interested in your products.

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0 509-049

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Inbound marketing is a collection of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers toward a business and its products. Inbound marketers offered useful information, tools, and resources designed to attract prospective customers to the company during the time when prospects were actively engaged in a search for a particular product or service. The informative content that the inbound marketer produced was used to entice prospects to interact with the company and begin a relationship with it. As HubSpot’s vice president of marketing Mike Volpe explained, “Instead of interrupting people that don’t care, why not help those who want what you’re offering to find you? We have found that building interesting tools is a more effective marketing tool than doing advertising. Things like this get people curious and draw them in.” This new approach to marketing complemented the way consumers were actually making purchasing decisions: by using Internet search, online blogs, and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to learn about products and services before they bought them. HubSpot preached this new way of marketing:

Instead of interrupting people with television ads, inbound marketers create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that people call them looking for more information. Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.

To be maximized, inbound marketing required three distinct skills. The first was the ability to write compelling content that would attract customers to the business. According to HubSpot, this content had to be useful to customers and not just a promotional message:

Whole Foods publishes recipes, profiles of their vendors, forums and a lot more. Across all of these mediums they use the right tone. Their content is useful first, and promotional second, not the other way around. This means that their customers find them when they want to know how to make oatmeal cookies, when they want to learn more about where their apples come from or when they want to watch a cooking show.

The second skill was the ability to distribute that content so that it was easily found by prospective customers using search engines, which required a sophisticated understanding of search engine optimization. The third was the ability to attract and engage a community of followers who interacted with the content, added their thoughts to it in an ongoing dialogue, and disseminated it to others. Firms that nurtured an active audience gained credibility in the marketplace, because it was the support of an audience that conferred expertise in a particular area.

In contrast to traditional outbound marketing, in which a business’s message was pushed to a mass audience that contained many who were not in the market for the product, inbound marketing was designed to create content that pulled in only those customers who were interested in the product. This created marketing efficiencies. According to Mark Roberge, vice president of sales for HubSpot, inbound marketing blended marketing and sales: “One of our salespeople calls it ‘smarketing’—we really blend it together so much more.” Volpe explained this concept further in an interview with RainToday.com: “Our salespeople hear things like ‘Oh, HubSpot. I’ve been meaning to talk to you guys,’ or ‘Oh, I just watched your webinar yesterday. I had a couple of questions.’ So it’s the opposite of a cold call. It’s like getting a call from one of your friends because we’ve already built a relationship. We really don’t do any cold calling.”

Volpe estimated that a lead generated using inbound marketing cost five to seven times less than a lead generated by outbound marketing. Businesses had increased the portion of their marketing budgets dedicated to inbound marketing, particularly in business-to-business (B2B) industries, where

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

509-049 HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0

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37% of the marketing budget was spent on inbound marketing and 30% was spent on outbound marketing. Given its lower costs and increased efficiencies, inbound marketing allowed small businesses to compete with larger firms in a way that had never been possible in the pre-Internet world dominated by mass media. Small businesses had realized that inbound marketing helped level the playing field and were more aggressively allocating their budgets to inbound marketing techniques.

The HubSpot Product

Embodying the philosophy of Web 2.0, the HubSpot Web-based software product was a complete inbound marketing system, designed to help businesses attract prospects, qualify their potential, and convert them into paying customers. The goal was to enable a firm to generate more qualified leads, to generate those leads more efficiently, and to convert them into sales. HubSpot’s user-friendly product allowed even those who were not familiar with Web 2.0 to build and manage a thriving inbound marketing program. The software included templates to design content for websites, blogs, and social networking sites; tools to help customers optimize their exposure on the Internet; tools to help customers solicit and engage the right customers; and tools to analyze their results.

Content Design

HubSpot offered its customers a content management system (CMS), software that made creating and editing online content easy. Further, HubSpot’s CMS allowed small businesses to add interactivity, the hallmark of Web 2.0, to their old “brochureware” websites. Predesigned templates helped customers create their corporate websites, providing guidelines for creating Web pages, blogs, online forms, and landing pages. The templates were designed to be turnkey so that customers without HTML programming knowledge could easily publish content online and have that content be search-engine-friendly. HubSpot’s Keyword Grader scanned the Internet and returned an analysis of the keywords relevant to the company’s business that were driving online search results. Including these keywords in their content, companies could improve their organic search results, making it more likely that potential customers would find their content. Steve Douglas, president and creative director for The Logo Factory, explained how search engine optimization (SEO) worked for customers:

I had been doing SEO all wrong when I came to HubSpot, trying to optimize my site for the wrong keywords. With HubSpot, I’m now able to see the words people are actually using to find my products and services. I’m able to see which words have the greatest search volume in search engines, helping me choose the right words to optimize my site. HubSpot has helped me be a lot smarter about how I optimize my site and track my progress. (HubSpot, Customer Quotes, 2009)

Exposure Optimization

The HubSpot product contained a series of tools designed to help customers make their published content more visible on the Internet. These included SEO tools that graded the firm’s content based on its likelihood to be included early in the search results that were returned when a potential customer searched through Google, Yahoo, or other search engines. The SEO tools graded the company’s website, its key landing pages, and its blogs, and made suggestions for improving them to increase exposure. HubSpot’s Link Grader analyzed the links a firm had on its website to see which ones were generating the most inbound traffic. The Link Grader also analyzed links to competitors’ websites to see which ones were driving customers to them instead of to the firm. HubSpot customer Noel Huelsenbeck, president of the telecom expense management software firm Vocio, gushed:

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0 509-049

5

I love the HubSpot software. With just a little page optimization I’ve already gotten great results and my traffic and keyword rankings continue to improve steadily. I’m about to sign a deal from a company that typed in one of our top keywords for which we are now the #1 organic result, thanks to HubSpot! That one deal will pay for all the money spent with HubSpot three times over. On top of that, the support is incredible. The HubSpot team had dedicated their time, even at off hours, to get my site up and optimized. The application is great, but it’s the people that make this company stellar. (HubSpot, Customer Quotes, 2009)

Lead Tracking and Intelligence

The HubSpot software had marketing intelligence analytics for tracking the interactions customers had with the firm’s content. This enabled firms to analyze which of their inbound marketing programs were working to generate qualified leads, by telling them where potential customers were coming from and how they were engaging with the company. Firms could generate an interaction profile for each customer by tracking the pages they viewed and the types of forms they completed. Firms could use this information to qualify prospective customers according to their potential. For example, HubSpot itself used the lead tracking software to construct its sales funnel (see Exhibit 1). Information about each customer allowed HubSpot to qualify some of its visitors as “prospects,” then “leads,” and then “opportunities” based on the behaviors they exhibited while on the site.

Team Jodi, a real estate firm, had seen a significant increase in business, claimed owner Jodi Bakst:

The traffic to my site increased by 97% in November, by an additional 62% in December, by an additional 31% in January and we’re on track for another big increase in February. In real estate, the absolute number of leads is way down. But what I’m looking at is the percentage of good leads. The percentage of good leads is actually going up right now and I attribute it to all of the hard work I am doing, 90% of which I learned from HubSpot. (HubSpot, Customer Quotes, 2009)

HubSpot used a software-as-a-service (SaaS) pricing strategy for its product. Rather than paying a large up-front fee, customers paid a smaller monthly fee (between $250 and $500), much like a gym membership. HubSpot’s low cost and ease of use for Web 2.0 novices were its competitive advantages. Volpe explained the difference between HubSpot and one of its competitors, Eloqua:

Eloqua is really expensive and complicated. It is awesome for larger enterprises. Everyone we talk to that uses Eloqua says, “If you can get it to work, it’s super powerful, but you have to give up your firstborn child to pay for it and you need to hire a full-time employee to run it because they have all these scripting languages and all this really, really difficult stuff.”

HubSpot’s customers were required to purchase a $500 onboarding package, which bought them four hours of HubSpot consulting. During this time, consultants helped customers through a process designed to kickstart their inbound marketing program: (1) setting up the software, (2) using the SEO features to get found, (3) converting prospects to leads to customers, (4) analyzing their results, and (5) institutionalizing the process so that it could be repeated. Once the original consulting hours were depleted, customers were on their own, unless they purchased additional consulting time at a cost of $500 for four hours. Customers were also given access to Success.HubSpot, which provided Internet marketing training and resources. Halligan described the HubSpot product as much more than a piece of software; it was a system of tools and training (see Exhibit 2):

HubSpot is a complete inbound marketing system that will help you get found by more prospects and convert more of them into paying customers. We use the word “system” intentionally. HubSpot is more than software. We have a complete inbound marketing

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methodology comprised of best practice guides, training materials, software tools, a community and support. Plus, HubSpot is hosted on demand software, meaning that you don’t need any IT staff to get started. We don’t just give you a new marketing tool. We teach you to be an expert in how to use it.

HubSpot’s products had garnered acclaim that drove buzz for the company. In 2008, HubSpot received the W3 Silver Winner Award in branding and marketing and the MITX Impact Award for innovative business strategy. HubSpot’s Website Grader was an official honoree for the “Best Websites in IT Hardware/Software” category in the 12th Annual Webby Awards. In February 2009, HubSpot was named in the top 10 of PromotionWorld’s “Best SEO Companies” ranking.

HubSpot’s Marketplace

Halligan and Shah envisioned that HubSpot would become the market leader of the industry space carved out by software companies and consulting firms focused on helping businesses fill and manage their customer funnel. The term “customer funnel” metaphorically described the critical processes firms undertook to attract prospective customers to their business; qualify those prospects to determine which ones had the highest probability of converting to paying customers; and, finally, close the sale. The customer funnel was divided into three main activity areas. Most of HubSpot’s competitors chose to play in only one of those areas, although some offered integrated services that spanned all three (see Exhibits 3 and 4).

Creating Traffic

The goal in the top part of the customer funnel was to attract large numbers of prospective customers. Firms used marketing programs to capture attention and interest to feed prospects into the funnel. Firms offered information, contests/sweepstakes, or free consulting on their websites to entice prospective customers. To receive the information or to participate in a contest, prospects filled out an online form that asked them for their contact information and other valuable information, such as budget available for the purchase and estimated purchase timing. HubSpot’s competitors in this area included consultants who built online advertising, websites, blogs, and a social media presence for companies, as well as software companies with SEO products that helped companies maximize their likelihood of getting found by consumers using search engines.

Analyzing and Qualifying Leads

The goal in the middle of the customer funnel was to assess the potential of different prospective customers brought in by the lead-generation programs. Selling a customer required an investment of human and financial resources, and firms wanted to ensure that they were targeting these resources to prospects who were most likely to convert to customers. Many prospects brought in through lead generation had a low probability of becoming customers, and firms could save substantial money if they could identify those customers early and weed them out. The lead-qualification process focused on finding customers with potential to pass along to the sales force. HubSpot’s competitors in this area included consultants and software companies with proprietary methods for rating and ranking prospects based on historical analysis of the company’s current customers and conversion rates.

Closing the Sale

The goal in the bottom of the customer funnel was to convert prospects into customers. One player, Salesforce.com, dominated this segment, providing easy-to-use customizable software that

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helped firms create a database of their prospects and track their conversion progress in real time. Salesforce.com’s software had become the industry standard for managing and tracking sales efforts.

Halligan and Shah hoped that HubSpot could dominate the lead-generation and analysis/ qualification stages of the customer funnel, just as Salesforce.com dominated the stage devoted to closing the sale. They claimed, “HubSpot could be to marketing what Salesforce.com is to sales.”

Filling HubSpot’s Customer Funnel

By 2009, HubSpot had 1,000 very diverse customers. Practicing what it preached, HubSpot had attracted these customers through inbound marketing. HubSpot used several different tactics to drive prospects into the funnel. First, the company had a robust website that attracted more than 300,000 unique visitors in 2008. The website featured white papers, webinars, podcasts, and a blog that provided information about Web 2.0 and inbound marketing strategies. HubSpot created and managed an 8,000-member LinkedIn group called Pro-Marketers, dedicated to marketing professionals who were interested in learning about Web 2.0 and inbound marketing. Employees came together every Friday to host their own television show, HubSpot TV, a live streaming podcast (also available on iTunes) that featured interactive commentary on topical events. HubSpot also produced YouTube video spoofs that changed the lyrics of popular songs like “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette to sell the inbound marketing concept. The most popular of these spoofs was viewed more than 50,000 times. A video entitled “Cold Calling Is for Losers,” which humorously showed the futility of outbound marketing techniques, was viewed more than 35,000 times.

The HubSpot team was encouraged to build the company’s own Web 2.0 presence to supplement corporate activities. Many employees blogged and participated on social media sites such as Twitter to promote HubSpot. Inbound marketing was a passion for the HubSpot team members, who used every avenue they could to evangelize it to whoever would listen. The company website claimed, “At HubSpot, we live and breathe inbound marketing. We know a lot about it. We love to teach. We’ll make you an expert.”

HubSpot’s most successful inbound marketing program was its freeware, small software programs that were available for free and accessible on the Internet. Three commonly used programs were the Website Grader, the Twitter Grader, and the Facebook Grader. All were designed to provide useful information to prospective customers and introduce them to HubSpot. The graders allowed users to evaluate how well their websites, Twitter accounts, and Facebook profiles were performing. For example, Website Grader analyzed a company’s website, rated it versus other sites on the Internet, and offered suggestions for improvements. Users who accessed the free Web tools often completed a lead form expressing interest in other offerings, which fed them into HubSpot’s customer funnel. By 2009, more than 650,000 websites, 22,000 Facebook profiles, and 2 million Twitter accounts had been graded by the free tools. The freeware had also generated a lot of positive press and online buzz.

Volpe explained how all these activities fed HubSpot’s funnel: “We think about the size of the community we’ve built. It includes people on our e-mail list, people that subscribe to our feed in iTunes, people that subscribe to our blog, people that follow one of our accounts on Twitter, people that are fans of our page on Facebook. It’s sort of how many fans we have cultivated in the world.”

When HubSpot was just getting started, the sales force called on all leads coming into the funnel. HubSpot sold to any customer who was interested in buying its products. This helped achieve the critical mass the fledgling venture needed to survive. However, as the number of prospective customers grew, HubSpot began carefully qualifying leads before turning them over to the sales

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force. HubSpot constantly updated its lead-rating algorithm based on its success with converting different types of prospects and on the varying customer retention rates experienced postsale.

By 2009, the company was weeding out almost 50% of the leads in its funnel. Low-quality leads were given no further attention. The remaining 50% were rated on a scale of 1 (low probability of conversion) to 10 (high probability of conversion). Of the rated leads, 63% were graded with scores ranging from 7 to 10, making them a high priority for the sales force’s attention. The selling process was fairly involved and focused on a salesperson guiding a prospect through an online product demonstration; closing a sale took between 30 and 45 days from the point of initial contact to the final sale.

Since HubSpot’s inbound marketing did not target a specific type of customer, HubSpot found itself attracting a diverse set (see Exhibits 5 and 6). HubSpot’s customers came from many different industries, including professional services, health care, software, real estate, and construction materials. They included businesses selling to other businesses (B2B), as well as businesses selling directly to consumers (B2C). Two different types of customers were visible: small business owners and marketing professionals working in larger firms. HubSpot affectionately dubbed these two types “Owner Ollie” and “Marketer Mary.”

Owner Ollie: The Small Business Owner Customer

Owner Ollies made up 73% of HubSpot’s customer portfolio. Owner Ollies owned small businesses with 1–25 employees. Owner Ollies were busy, as they were simultaneously managing the human resources (HR), marketing, sales, operations, and finance areas of their companies. Given their companies’ small size, they did not have a dedicated marketing professional on staff and thus did most of the marketing themselves. Owner Ollies were curious about Web 2.0 and inbound marketing but had not made investments in consulting, software, or programs in this area. Their primary objective was to generate more leads for their businesses; Owner Ollies were focused on feeding the tops of their customer funnels. Time and resources were scarce, and Owner Ollies wanted quick, simple solutions to help them generate leads, because leads were the lifeblood of their small businesses. Owner Ollies were fairly easy to sell; HubSpot’s cost to acquire this type of customer was around $1,000. As Volpe explained, “Ollie doesn’t even think about marketing most of the time. He’s thinking about finance and HR and there is a leak in the pipes in the office. He’s got all kinds of stuff to worry about. He typically doesn’t shop around and try to find any other software competitive to HubSpot. He gets on the phone, he decides if he likes it, he gives you his credit card number and he’s like, ‘Great, let’s do it.’”

Marketer Mary: The Marketing Professional Customer

Marketer Marys made up 27% of HubSpot’s customer portfolio. Marketer Marys were marketing professionals working in companies that ranged from 26 to 100 people. Unlike Owner Ollies, who tended to work alone on marketing, Marketer Marys were supported by a marketing team. As marketing professionals, Marketer Marys were more educated than Owner Ollies about Web 2.0 and were looking for assistance with running their programs, evaluating their results, and justifying their return on investment to senior management. Marketer Marys often had Web consultants who designed websites and programs. Hence, Marketer Marys were more interested in the analytics and reports that HubSpot provided. Marketer Marys ran many more inbound marketing programs than Owner Ollies, and needed more robust and sophisticated tools to design them and measure their results. Marketer Marys had more money to spend on products like HubSpot but were harder to reach and had a longer selling cycle, because they often had to get approval from managers higher up in their organizations. HubSpot’s cost to acquire this type of customer was $5,000.

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As these two customer segments emerged in the customer base, HubSpot tweaked its product, developing two different versions, each with features designed to better serve the needs of either Owner Ollies or Marketer Marys (see Exhibit 7).

HubSpot took good care of its customers. Jonah Lopin headed up the HubSpot services group, known as the Customer Happiness Department. Lopin and his team quickly realized that the customers HubSpot was serving were very diverse, making it difficult to standardize processes across customers. Different customers had different familiarity and comfort with Web 2.0 tools. B2C companies were much more sophisticated Web 2.0 users than B2B companies, and many found that HubSpot’s content templates were too rudimentary for their needs. Most B2C companies already had highly performing websites and a strong social media presence, and had engaged Web 2.0 consultants and agencies to work with them prior to coming to HubSpot. In contrast, most B2B customers had little to no experience with Web 2.0 and no other agencies or consultants supporting their efforts. They required more attention from Lopin and his team during start-up and during their lives as customers.

The second difference was that B2B customers seemed to derive greater value from inbound marketing than B2C customers did. Many of the B2B customers sold products or services that were complex, which required buyers to undergo in-depth learning prior to purchase. Blogs, podcasts, webinars, and other Web 2.0 programs that explained the product served as valuable inputs into a customer’s decision-making process and were effective feeders of B2B customer funnels. The buying processes associated with the B2B companies were much more complex than those associated with B2C companies, due to a longer decision-making cycle involving multiple stakeholders at the buying firm. Because of this, B2B customers were more selective about whom they focused their sales forces’ attentions on and derived great value from the lead-qualification analysis that HubSpot provided.

The third difference was that Owner Ollies were less knowledgeable and sophisticated than Marketer Marys. Owner Ollies also derived greater initial value than Marketer Marys. Volpe explained, “The great part about Ollie is that we can actually have a much larger impact on his overall business than we can with Mary. It saves him a ton of money and he is getting a much better customer flow. It has fundamentally changed his business.”

Lopin also saw differences in the customer retention data, as the churn rate (the rate at which customers canceled their HubSpot subscriptions) varied across segments. The results of his analysis are listed in Table A (also see Exhibit 8). Although Marketer Marys were a harder sell up front, they stayed longer than Owner Ollies. Lopin speculated that usage of the monthly analytics and reporting was driving her longer customer life. Owner Ollies were focused on using SEO to increase visitors to their websites. They derived much of their value in the first few months as a customer. Once Owner Ollies thought they were “done” optimizing, they would cancel their HubSpot subscription.

Investigating further, Lopin realized that customers who hosted their websites on HubSpot’s content management system (CMS) had lower churn rates than customers who hosted with other companies. Lopin urged the sales force to push the CMS service to new customers. As a result, an increasing number of Owner Ollies were migrating their websites to HubSpot. In 2009, 13% of Owner Ollies selected HubSpot to host their site, paying an initial fee of $500, which covered 12 hours of HubSpot consulting designed to make the migration process painless. In contrast, only 2% of Marketer Marys hosted their websites with HubSpot.

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Table A Churn Rates by Segment

Average Churn Rate

(cancellations per month) Owner Ollies 4.3% Marketer Marys 3.2 Total B2B 3.3 Total B2C 6.0 CMS 2.1 Non-CMS 5.5 Total 4.1%

Source: Company reports.

Finally, Lopin saw differences in the amount of time different types of customers were willing to put into using the HubSpot software. To derive meaningful results from the software, customers needed to consistently invest 10 hours per week to it. This was a significant time investment, particularly for Owner Ollies. Customer Geoff Alexander, president of Geoff Alexander & Company, a telesales training company, explained: “It took a couple of hours to mash through all the training, but the key to HubSpot is putting the time into it. Without HubSpot, I just would have winged it. The investment required for HubSpot is actually a lot like paying for web intelligence school. I was ignorant of the nuts & bolts of SEO and online lead generation for years. Now I’m making up for it.” (HubSpot, Customer Quotes, 2009).

Some of HubSpot’s current customers were not putting in the time, as shown in Table B. Fifteen percent of current customers had not logged in to the HubSpot software over the past 12 weeks.

Table B Customer Usage

Percent of Customers

Logged into HubSpot system > 50% of weeks 45% Logged into HubSpot system < 50% of weeks 55%

Logged into HubSpot system 12/12 of weeks 23% Logged into HubSpot system 0/12 of weeks 15%

Source: Company reports.

When customers complained that HubSpot was not working for them, the first thing the customer service team looked at was the amount of time the customer was spending on HubSpot. As Lopin explained, “It’s like saying that your gym isn’t working. People say ‘I joined a gym six months ago and I’m still kind of out of shape, and it’s not working.’ No, it’s like, you’re not working out. There’s no question that inbound marketing is effective, it’s just that you’ve got to do the work.”

HubSpot customers who were using the software were seeing results (see Exhibit 9). Dedicated users experienced a burst of increased leads in the first six months after using the software, a result of the creation of inbound marketing programs. Over time, the growth rate in leads diminished, but customers continued to gain value by focusing on efficiently rating and following up on the leads with the most potential.

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Scaling Up

While their employees were celebrating breaking the 1,000-customer mark, Halligan and Shah were not resting on their laurels, realizing that they still had a lot of work to do. The founders knew that they needed to quickly scale up the HubSpot business. Their venture partners saw huge market potential for HubSpot and looked for the company to make significant inroads into small and medium-size businesses. Table C lists the number of small and medium-size businesses in the United States that formed HubSpot’s market potential.

Table C Market Potential: Small and Medium-Size Businessesa

Category Number of Employees Number of Businesses Large 100 to 499 86,538

Medium 20 to 99 526,355

Small 10 to 19 632,682

Very small 5 to 9 1,043,448

Total — 2,289,023

Source: Company reports.

aRoughly half of all businesses are B2B; the other half are B2C.

Volpe was excited about the opportunity:

We’re growing fast, there’s a market there. We’re trying to get as big as we can as fast as we can. We have this gigantic vision for what the product should do and it is relatively broad. And I think it’s why we think that the market we are going after is potentially very, very large and today, our product is a small, small fraction of what it needs to be. The company is still small. We’ve got only so many engineers and we can only build things so fast and that whole process in matching the product to the market and building the right features at the right time is difficult. Sales and marketing have been ahead of the product and we just need to continue to focus on the product and hope that it will catch up more.

As they looked back at their achievements, Halligan and Shah realized that the inbound marketing that built their business presented them with challenges that they would have to overcome to reach the next level. While traditional marketers prospected for new customers based on a predetermined target market that was strategic, inbound marketers fished for customers, took what they caught, and then figured out who their actual market was. This left HubSpot with a very diverse customer base and made strategic planning more difficult. Different types of customers valued different features, and prioritizing items in the long list of potential software updates proved challenging. A mix of customers also added layers of complexity and cost to the sales and customer service areas of HubSpot. Halligan and Shah wondered if they should continue to throw a wide net to attract all different types of customers or if they should narrow their focus to a particular target market. Roberge believed that HubSpot needed to refine its focus:

If we picked one type of customer to focus on, we would likely get to success faster. Ollie and Mary speak different languages, have different needs. Now, we are choosing between them and dividing our development resources. There are certain applications that are specific to Ollie and they would be designed and implemented differently. And then it affects customer support and how well we really get to know our customer, understand them, and then ace the product.

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Halligan and Shah debated which segments were the best customer segments to cater to. Was it the B2C or B2B market? Was it Owner Ollies or Marketer Marys? HubSpot employees disagreed about who was more profitable over the long term. Roberge placed his bets on Marketer Marys: “I think there are more Ollies out there, but I think we can get more money out of Mary. There’s a lot of macroeconomic risk associated with Ollie because there are a lot of small businesses that are just bad business models, they are risky during recessions.” Others argued that Ollies were likely to stick around longer, especially when they were using the content management system. Narrowing the target market presented challenges for an inbound marketing company. HubSpot was already ignoring 50% of the leads brought in by its inbound marketing programs. This selectivity seemed at odds with the founders’ desire to grow quickly. Shouldn’t HubSpot sell to anyone who wanted to buy the product?

Halligan and Shah also wondered if their current pricing strategy was effective. While the software-as-a-service (SaaS) monthly pricing model seemed to be the right way to capture maximum value from customers and provide a reliable income stream for HubSpot when it started, the patterns in customer churn rates were showing that some customers were obtaining the initial burst of value from the software and then canceling it within the first several months. Halligan and Shah wondered whether they were leaving money on the table by not charging more for the HubSpot software up front or locking in customers for longer periods. The diverse customer base also presented opportunities and challenges for pricing, which made Halligan and Shah consider if the two products and price points they had developed to address the Owner Ollie and the Marketer Mary market segments were adequate, given those segments’ different business needs and sensitivity to price.

Finally, an internal debate raged within HubSpot about the role of outbound marketing programs going forward. Looking at aggressive growth targets, some employees, including Roberge, were itching to supplement the inbound marketing tactics with traditional outbound marketing programs, including targeted telemarketing and traditional advertising. Roberge lamented:

Most sales organizations are responsible for doing their own lead generation for prospects. We have to wait for the inbound marketing programs to bring leads to us. I’m not allowed to cold-call prospective customers because HubSpot’s been preaching inbound marketing and publishing these videos and webinars about how cold calling is “for losers.” If someone then gets a cold call from someone on my team, that can hurt our brand. So I am actually restricted from doing outbound prospecting, which makes things more challenging for me, because I own the sales number and I have to sit back and be dependent on what marketing brings to me. So, yeah, I think we are hindering scale a little bit by not creating outbound marketing programs.

Looking at their growth rates, Halligan and Shah realized that they would have to push things up a notch to achieve their long-term goals (see Exhibit 10). However, the founders were as committed to inbound marketing for their own company as they were for their customers. Volpe, in an interview with RainToday.com, explained, “If we couldn’t make inbound marketing work for our own company, then we shouldn’t be selling software that helps other companies do it.” Though the founders’ vision was centered around inbound marketing, the reality was that most businesses— including HubSpot customers—would likely have a mix of inbound and outbound marketing.

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

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For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

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Exhibit 2 HubSpot’s Product Timeline

2006

Q1: Content management system (CMS); blog; analytics (alpha)

Q2: Search marketing tools (alpha)

Q3: First paying customers

2007

Q1: Public launch of WebsiteGrader.com

Q2: Series A venture capital round funding

Q4: v1.0 product launch; 100 paying customers

2008

Q1: Started using “the cloud” on Amazon EC2; 100 million page views served

Q2: Series B venture capital round funding; introduction of two separate products ($250/month and $500/month)

Q3: PageGrader, aka The Crawler, HubFeed (entry into social media);

single sign-on; Salesforce.com integration; HubSpot Express + Trials

Q4: Changed products to HubSpot Owner and HubSpot Marketer; launched Grader.com, TwitterGrader, Facebook Grader

2009

Q1: 1,000 customers; 500 million page views served; free trials for main product

Source: Company reports.

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

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Exhibit 3 HubSpot’s Competitive Field

Source: Casewriters.

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This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

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Exhibit 4 The Marketplace

Company Products and Services Web Position Offered tools to improve a website’s search engine rankings. The

software included a summary dashboard, trend graphs, several metrics (link popularity and search engine saturation reporting), and many search engines.

Nielsen’s BuzzMetrics Services Provided tools to help clients understand how consumers perceived

their brand, monitor trends that might be influencing their industry, and monitor how marketing campaigns were resonating with consumers.

Ektron Provided a software platform with all of the tools that were needed to

create, deploy, and manage a company’s website. Traction Provided businesses and government organizations with enterprise

weblog software that allowed groups and teams to communicate more effectively.

Marketo Provided SaaS solutions that helped marketing and sales teams

collaborate throughout the sales cycle, from demand generation to the close of a sale. Its solution included e-mail marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and sales effectiveness tools and was tightly integrated with Salesforce.com.

Eloqua Provided software to automate a broad range of marketing functions.

Its solution could help clients build databases, create e-mail campaigns, capture leads, and measure their marketing effectiveness.

Coremetrics Provided on-demand Web analytics and precision marketing

solutions. Its platform could capture and store all customer and visitor clickstream activity to build a Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience (LIVE) Profile.

Marketing Sherpa Specialized in tracking what worked and what didn’t in all aspects of

marketing.

Source: Casewriters.

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0 509-049

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Exhibit 5 HubSpot’s New Customer Acquisitions

Number of Customers Percent of Customers Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08 Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08

New Owner Ollies 24 31 27 34

B2B > 25 2 3 3 2 8% 10% 11% 6% B2B < 25 11 11 13 19 46 35 48 56 B2C > 25 1 0 0 2 4 0 0 6 B2C < 25 10 17 11 11 42 55 41 32

New Marketer Marys 41 60 68 74

B2B > 25 9 18 21 30 22 30 31 41 B2B < 25 12 24 22 19 29 40 32 26 B2C > 25 4 9 7 13 10 15 10 18 B2C < 25 16 9 18 12 39 15 26 16

Total B2B 34 56 59 70 52 62 62 65 Total B2C 31 35 36 38 48 38 38 35 Total > 25 16 30 31 47 25 33 33 44 Total < 25 49 61 64 61 75 67 67 56 Total 65 91 95 108 100% 100% 100% 100%

Source: Company reports.

Exhibit 6 HubSpot’s Customer Portfolio in December 2008

Number of Customers

Percent of Customers

Owner Ollies 694 73% Marketer Marys 255 27 Total B2B 647 68 Total B2C 302 32 Total > 25 CMS 21 2 Total < 25 CMS 122 13 Non-CMS 806 85 Total 949 100%

Source: Company reports.

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

509-049 HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0

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Exhibit 7 HubSpot’s Product Portfolio

HubSpot Owner HubSpot Marketer

For business owners who need a simple system to generate more qualified leads and convert those leads into sales.

Includes:

• Search Engine Optimization (500 Keywords)

• Business Blogging

• Business Blog Analytics

• Competitor Analysis (Up to 5)

• Marketing Analytics

• Website Editor (Required)

• Lead Tracking & Intelligence

• Landing Page Wizard

• Marketing Intelligence

• Social Media

• Inbound Marketing Advice

For marketing professionals who require flexible, sophisticated inbound marketing tools, including closed loop marketing reports.

Includes:

• Search Engine Optimization (2,000 Keywords)

• Business Blogging

• Business Blog Analytics

• Competitor Analysis (Up to 20)

• Closed-Loop Marketing Analytics

• Website Editor (Optional)

• Lead Tracking & Intelligence

• Lead Grader

• Lead Visit Alerts

• Landing Page Wizard

• Marketing Intelligence

• Social Media

• Inbound Marketing Advice

• Salesforce.com Integration

$500 consulting fee at start-up

$250/month ongoing fee

$500 consulting fee at start-up

$500/month ongoing fee

Source: Company reports.

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

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This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

509-049 HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0

20

Exhibit 9 HubSpot’s Visitors and Leads Generated for Customers

M/M Growth in Average Weekly Unique Visitors

Customers included in analysis: (381 for Oct, 458 for Nov, 511 for Dec)

• Accounts must be over 3 weeks entering the lift period • All weeks in lift period must have >10 unique visitors

M/M Growth in Average Weekly Leads

Customers included in analysis: (78 for Oct, 92 for Nov, 95 for Dec)

• Accounts must be over 3 weeks old entering the lift period • All weeks in lift period must have >1 lead

Source: Company reports.

For the exclusive use of D. Faherty, 2015.

This document is authorized for use only by Daniel Faherty in Capstone Team 13-1 taught by Nathan Heinze, HE OTHER from October 2015 to April 2016.

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Help/Case Files/Supplement.xls

Copyright

HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0
Harvard Business School Case #509-049
Case Software #XLS-226
Copyright © 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College. No part of this product may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School.

Table A

Table A Churn Rates by Segment
Average Churn Rate (cancellations per month)
Owner Ollies 4.3%
Marketer Marys 3.2%
Total B2B 3.3%
Total B2C 6.0%
CMS 2.1%
Non-CMS 5.5%
Total 4.1%
Source: Company reports.

Table B

Table B Customer Usage
Percent of Customers
Logged into HubSpot system > 50% of weeks 45%
Logged into HubSpot system <50% of weeks 55%
Logged into HubSpot system 12/12 of weeks 23%
Logged into HubSpot system 0/12 of weeks 15%
Source: Company reports.

Table C

Table C Market Potential: Small- and Medium-Sized Businessesa
Category Number of Employees Number of Businesses
Large 100 to 499 86,538
Medium 20 to 99 526,355
Small 10 to 19 632,682
Very Small 5 to 9 1,043,448
Total - 2,289,023
Source: Company reports.
aRoughly half of all businesses are B2B, half are B2C.

Exhibit 5

Exhibit 5 New Customer Acquisitions
Number of Customers Percent of Customers
Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08 Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08
New Owner Ollies 24 31 27 34
B2B>25 2 3 3 2 8% 10% 11% 6%
B2B<25 11 11 13 19 46% 35% 48% 56%
B2C>25 1 0 0 2 4% 0% 0% 6%
B2C<25 10 17 11 11 42% 55% 41% 32%
New Marketer Marys 41 60 68 74
B2B>25 9 18 21 30 22% 30% 31% 41%
B2B<25 12 24 22 19 29% 40% 32% 26%
B2C>25 4 9 7 13 10% 15% 10% 18%
B2C<25 16 9 18 12 39% 15% 26% 16%
Total B2B 34 56 59 70 52% 62% 62% 65%
Total B2C 31 35 36 38 48% 38% 38% 35%
Total >25 16 30 31 47 25% 33% 33% 44%
Total <25 49 61 64 61 75% 67% 67% 56%
Total 65 91 95 108 100% 100% 100% 100%
Source: Company reports.

Exhibit 6

Exhibit 6 Customer Portfolio in December 2008
Number of Customers Percent of Customers
Owner Ollies 694 73%
Marketer Marys 255 27%
Total B2B 647 68%
Total B2C 302 32%
Total >25 CMS 21 2%
Total <25 CMS 122 13%
Non-CMS 806 85%
Total 949 100%
Source: Company reports.

Exhibit 8

Exhibit 8 Churn Rate Detail
BUSINESS TYPE VS. BUSINESS SIZE
Average Churn Rate (cancellations per month)
Very Small Businesses Small Businesses
B2B 7.3% 1.4%
B2C 7.8% 4.1%
Source: Company reports.