Hubspot launched their Website Grader in 2007. Today, it gets 25k+ organic visits /mos, has 1.2M backlinks and assists in the acquisition of millions of dollars in revenue each year. This free tool changed the marketing industry & Hubspot.
In this episode Ross and Talia breakdown why it worked so well (and still does), and the different ways you can leverage free tools for your own growth.
Transcript
Ross:
If I was to ask you to grade your own web presence on a scale of zero to 100, how would you grade yourself? How would you say your web presence is today?
Talia:
That’s a very large scale.
Ross:
It is a large scale. It’s pretty big.
Talia:
I’m going to say 70?
Ross:
70, I love it. I had a feeling you would pick that. I was reading a study the other day where everybody is humble enough to never say you’re 100% perfect, but we’re always a little bit egotistic where we say that we’re above the average. I know I 100% [inaudible 00:01:11]. When I asked that question, I was thinking to myself, “What would I grade myself?” And I was like, “78%.”
Talia:
Because as you were asking me this question, I was like, “Okay, what are the criterias? Okay, website, got it. [crosstalk 00:01:24], I got a blog, awesome. Got a podcast, awesome. But [inaudible 00:01:28] this and this.” So I immediately went through the whole list in my mind.
Ross:
And I would ask the listeners to do the same thing. Think about all of your digital properties, think about everything that you own it and then give yourself a rating. What would you rate yourself from zero to 100 on that scale for all the various pieces? And what’s interesting is similar to what you just described of how your brain immediately went like, “Okay, this, check, this, check, this, check,” it’s like an internal algorithm that we have in our brain where we look at all of our different properties and we’re like, “Okay, how good is my website? Do I have an SSL certificate? Do I have good call to actions? Do I have lead magnets? How’s my Twitter account? Am I tweeting often enough? Do I have a blog? Blah, blah, blah.” We go through a mental algorithm to give ourselves this grade between zero to 100. And funny enough, that’s the same thing that we’re going to be talking about today as a throwback to what HubSpot launched back in 2007, which was the original Website Grader. Have you ever used it? The Website Grader tool from HubSpot?
Talia:
I did. I used it right at the beginning when it was just coming out. I loved it. I loved it. I didn’t really like understand how it was grading things, but I loved it.
Ross:
Because back then when it first launched, no one was really talking about the idea of having ranking factors. No one was really talking about, what’s the algorithm for doing Twitter right or LinkedIn right, et cetera. HubSpot was really one of the first to do this. And back in 2007, when they launched it, they launched this website called Website Grader where you could submit your URL as well as a few different competitors, so some websites that your brand competed with. So let’s say you were Nike, you would plug in nike.com. Competing websites would have been Adidas, Lulu, Crocs, et cetera. And then if you submitted your email, they would actually generate a report. And like what we just talked about, it started with a algorithm that essentially looked at a few checkpoints on your site that just analyze publicly available information. And it gave you a report on whether or not you were doing a good job with your website.
Ross:
Fast forward from 2007 to today, and the HubSpot Website Grader has completely changed the marketing industry. We’re going to be talking about that today. But more than that, the HubSpot graded today is doing an amazing job for HubSpot even today. While back then in 2007 everybody clapped their hands and they were like, “This is innovative. This is brilliant.” Today, the HubSpot grader gets 25,000 organic visits a month. It has 1.2 million backlinks, and talking and reviewing some of the past sales decks and information that HubSpot has put out there, it looks like it actually assists in generating millions of dollars in revenue for that company today. And it played a significant role in HubSpot being able to own that whole idea of inbound marketing and really becoming a publicly traded company with millions, if not billions of dollars as a whole.
Ross:
So that’s what we’re going to be diving into today. Let’s go back into time. I’m going to take you all back to 2007 to a time when the internet wasn’t as pretty. If you look this thing up in way back time machine, you’ll see that the website wasn’t the most pretty thing, but it is a great inspiration for how marketing can be done, especially with SaaS companies when it comes to creating interactive tools. So the app itself was created by Dharmesh, who is the CTO and founder of HubSpot, after he and Brian Halligan, who is the CEO of HubSpot, became tired of really manually evaluating various websites, just like that experiment that we just done, where we started to think about, “Okay, from a zero to 100 scale, how is your digital presence?” They’d do that back in 2007 to qualify whether or not somebody was a prospective client for HubSpot.
Ross:
They’d say, “Are there links to this site? Is there a blog on this site? How often are they writing? Have they covered the basics of SEO, et cetera?” They started to ask themselves all of these things. And then they essentially, Dharmesh was like, “I’m just going to write a script to automate this entire process and create a public facing tool that people can use to get a grade on how good their website was.” And as discussed, it was a hit. Millions of people have used it. Millions of people have used these reports. I can remember back in 2008 going into boardrooms, and I feel like for a good chunk of time, every meeting, someone was talking about their Website Grader score. It was a consistent thing. So it was a fascinating time back then. But they had done an amazing job at creating something.
Ross:
And I think one of the elements of this that worked so well that looking back again, hindsight is 2020, but one of the reasons why this works so well is that they captured the email of the people immediately right then and there if you wanted to get your report. There’s so much value in getting a report from someone that is personalized, et cetera, that of course, you’re going to be willing to give your email to get the answer to that question, “How good am I doing at marketing?” Of course, you’re going to submit your information to get that answer. So I think that was one of the brilliant parts of this. And I think for that reason, the Website Grader tool was a massive success.
Ross:
What are your thoughts on that? I want to get your take on when somebody does make a decision, “Okay, we’re going to create this,” where do you see email playing a role in it? Should people gate this type of stuff or should they just make it free for all where anyone can access it, anyone can get the report? What’s your perspective. Do you think it makes sense to always gate these things sometimes? And maybe speak to what things should and shouldn’t be gated, maybe.
Talia:
First of all, I absolutely love this grader. And I think that there’s so many different psychological triggers here at play, because as soon as you mentioned like the competing websites, which by the way, I’m still stuck on the fact that you compared Nike with Crocs, but we’ll [crosstalk 00:07:21]. It’s like a whole different story. But the idea of you having to put in your competitor is a psychological trigger, because you want to know how good you are doing as opposed to your competitor. I think to the question of, should this be gated? Should it not? I mean, it depends on your goals as a company.
Talia:
I, for one, think gated is the way to go. Because if you are going to spend time building this thing and you want to provide valuable answers, then at the end of the day, you do want to gate this so that you can, at some point, turn them into your customers or your clients. So I’m very for gated content, as long as it really does provide valuable information and a valuable report to anyone who’s actually using it.
Ross:
Right. I think that’s so true. I think there’s oftentimes a bad rep that gated content gets, but for sometimes, in some cases, it makes sense to gate it. The value that somebody is giving you, the value that a brand is giving you or an organization is giving you is so significant that you might want to just invest that little bit of time of potentially going down their drip sequence and getting some automated emails. I think one of the other areas that stood out for me around the power of this thing was the fact that between its launch in 2009, the Website Grader generated 30,000 links. It generated 50,000 emails and it had run more than one million reports. Now, fast forward to today, the piece is doing those types of numbers every single quarter, maybe every single month. I haven’t been able to confirm what that looks like, but it is doing so well.
Ross:
And it done so well, even back then that it speaks to the importance of maintaining content as well, right? I think oftentimes we press publish on a piece of content, something that is very valuable that we put a lot of work and energy into. And if we create it in 2007, by 2010, it’s dead. We’re not giving it anymore love. But I think there’s a lot of value in maintaining content when it adds value to people. And I think that’s something that speaks a lot to HubSpot’s philosophy around just embracing what’s working and continuously doing it for months to come rather than just calling it quits. I think that’s one other piece that really stands out in this story, is the longevity of content as a whole.
Talia:
A hundred percent. And you know, we’ve had these conversations quite a few times about this specific topic. And I actually had this conversation with a friend the other day. We were talking about how to scale the company and how much content we should create. And the first thing she said to me was, “Don’t create more content. You have so much content.” And she was basically preaching the same thing that we preach all the time, which is you need to use the content that you’ve already created and keep using it and repurpose it and keep promoting it and keep bringing people to it because you’ve spent the time creating it. No one’s going to see it unless you actually put the time into it, which is funny because we all know it, but we seldom do it. So this is a wonderful, wonderful example of how a tool from 2007 can still do so much work, and not even the same, even more and still bring in so many clients.
Talia:
And we’re talking about a time when in the past, people didn’t mind giving out emails because they didn’t really know what it meant. Nowadays, people, they don’t give out their email that easily. So the fact that this is generating so much value for this company goes a long way to explain at how much they’ve spent thinking about it and planning it and promoting it and putting a lot of time, work, and sweat into this tool in order for it to keep delivering. And will probably keep delivering for years to come.
Ross:
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s the key. And recognizing that HubSpot made a smart decision just over the last couple of years where they updated the Website Grader to create something even more powerful. So now the Website Grader, if you go to the website, it is not the three form, very basic, very rudimentary experience that you would have experienced back in 2007. Now it looks like a modern 2020 experience. And it’s powered by Google Lighthouse. So my assumption is that they found a way to partner with Google Lighthouse to create a more in-depth and valuable asset for folks. And it really does do a lot of things right, specifically it captures new leads. And we’ve talked about that and how important they are able to do by having that email request piece. But what’s also interesting is if you scale this down a little bit, I know that not everyone who’s listening to this has the budgets of HubSpot to create some amazing website grader.
Ross:
But if somebody is giving you their website and their email and they’re asking you for a grade and you are someone who offers website services of some sort, that’s a great prospect for you to build a relationship with. And I think the Website Grader tool offers that in the sense that when somebody says, “I work at Nike and here’s my email. Give me a score.” That is gold for a sales team. That sales team can now reach out to the person and say, “Hey, I saw that you used our website grader tool. It looks like your website is performing a little bit below average in terms of this, this and this. I’d be happy to jump on a call and just talk you through how HubSpot may be able to work with you.” There’s so much opportunity that exists in just creating content assets that provide you as the person on the other end of the form with ammo to go and nurture and close a lead.
Talia:
100%. One of the things that a lot of people can do even if they don’t have a grader is to use an existing grader in order to reach out to potential clients. So for example, if you really want to work with a furniture company, an e-commerce furniture company, you could use this grader. You could put their website in there, the link and reach out to them and say, “Hey, I graded your website. Here’s the results that you got, and here’s what I think we can do for you to optimize it.” So it’s another angle. If you don’t have the resources to create your own grader, you can still use it in a different way. The one that’s already existing.
Ross:
Exactly. I think one of the other areas that the Website Grader tool thrives outside of capturing new leads and providing opportunity to nurture relationships is generating quality links. And this is something that became very true watching the evolution of the HubSpot grader. Alone Foundation, a few months back, we had done this study where we looked at some of the most linkable content assets in martech. We took all of the top sites. We analyzed what content they had published that was generating links. And without a question, tools, free tools, free quizzes, et cetera, things that were interactive in nature generated the most links. Press talked about them, other blogs talked about them, journalists talked about them, freelancers talked about them, influencers talked about them. People love to link to graders because they’re valuable, right? They provide your reader with the opportunity to do something and get something that is personalized that they can act on. And I think that’s a powerful opportunity that HubSpot has been able to capitalize on.
Ross:
The grader back in 2008 was such a hit that TechCrunch actually wrote a piece about the site saying, and I quote, “This is a great way for brands to learn how they can go high up in natural search results.” And at that point, when this piece went live back in 2008, it actually crashed the app. Brian, the CEO of HubSpot tweeted at me when I talked about this on Twitter a few weeks back, and he mentioned like, “I remember that day because when TechCrunch wrote this piece, it crashed the app.” So it’s interesting to know that that link that they got from TechCrunch ultimately crashed them. But they got picked up by Wired, they got picked up by tons of various sites. Entrepreneur talked about them. Tons of various sites would talk about the Website Grader. And it was just all over the web. Earlier, before we’d started to press record on this session, we were talking about quizzes and the role that they play in doing something similar.
Talia:
I think quizzes are the evolved era of this grader. There are top notch companies and entrepreneurs that are using quizzes these days to get new subscribers to their list and get potential leads and clients. The way that quizzes work are actually a really cool way of answering questions. So for example, if you are a company that has two or three different options for a plan, or if you want people to choose between a certain email list and content they’re going to receive from you, you could create a quiz. So on one hand, you’re creating this quiz in order to help your customers or your potential clients choose the right tool for them, the right solution for them, the right plan for them, the right content that they’re going to receive from you. And on the other hand, you’re also collecting their email. And it’s a wonderful, wonderful new strategy that so many companies have started using, and it works every single time.
Talia:
I’ve seen it being used by e-commerce sites. I’ve seen it used by the likes of Amy Porterfield and Marie Forleo. Everyone’s using it in order to help their prospect make a better decision. So in a sense, you’re doing the same as the grader. You’re giving value to people, helping them make a decision, and you’re gaining more followers and building your list so that you can later on reach out to them, create a nurture sequence for them and convert them into your customers or clients.
Ross:
Have you ever run one of these quizzes on your end and used it as one of these types of tools or maybe used it for a client? What has been your experience with them? It’s not something that I’ve personally run for like the Ross Simmonds or Foundation brand, but I have been blown away by the concept and I think it can work extremely well. I just haven’t actually pulled the trigger on them. What about you? Have you done it yet?
Talia:
I’ve done it for a few of our clients now and it is doing some amazing work. We are in the midst of planning a quiz for our GetUplift website. So, because we have three different paths that you can essentially choose. Whether if it’s you want to learn about psychology of marketing or if you want to get into landing page optimization or email marketing, then we’re actually creating some sort of quiz to help you identify what are the right content pieces that you need in order to do that. But we have actually done it for clients and it’s worked really, really well. And the other thing that it works well with, and I always go to this, is learning about your customers. The fact that people answer questions and tell you who they are, what they’re looking for, what they care for, what they don’t care for, all this stuff contributes to the fact that you now know more about your prospect.
Talia:
And that’s what the grader did for HubSpot too, right? I mean, at the end of the day, they were able to look at thousands and thousands of reports and say, “Oh, our best clients have this grade. Or they come from this type of industry, or they have these amount of links,” or whatever it is that they grade upon, they’re able to actually categorize and segment their best customers and their best clients. And you can do that with a quiz in such a great way too.
Ross:
I love that. I think quizzes are on my roadmap for something that I need to embrace and give a try with. And I might end up being so addicted to them that I start rolling tons of quizzes left, right and center if they start to do really well. And I think that’s also a part of what happened at HubSpot. So if you go back into time again, back when HubSpot launched the grader, they started to see all the traction and the attention that this thing was getting that they started to roll out a bunch of new graders. So they launched the Press Release Grader, they launched the Book Grader. They launched the Facebook Grader, the Twitter Grader and so much more. So at one point, if you went on the Website Grader’s website, they actually called itself Website Grader, a HubSpot Company. So I think internally there was enough dialogue and enough traction on these assets that they were thinking, “Maybe this is going to be a company in its own right. This is bigger than just us being HubSpot. This could be a company.”
Ross:
And funny enough, it does feel like. I don’t know what companies out there are going to admit this, but it does feel like some of the SEO tools that exist today probably got a lot of inspiration around the whole business model of, “Let’s analyze what somebody’s website is and give them a report, give them data,” solely around the website graders that HubSpot had created back in 2007, 2008. So I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the famous SEO tools or even some of the social media reporting tools use the graders as like inspiration for what was to come as their own industry.
Ross:
One of their hits though within this grader community was the Twitter Grader, and a Twitter Grader is something that I can recall very vividly using to figure out how I could go up the ranks. And the way it worked is you would plug in your Twitter handle, you could type in TheCoolestCool, and it would show me how many followers I had, how many people I were following, how many tweets I’ve shared. It would even give me a rank out of all of the other Twitter accounts that it had analyzed and scanned. So it would say, “Ross, your Twitter account is ranked 7,942 out of X million.” And that would be an interesting psychological play where you were like, “Okay, how can I increase my rank? I need to engage with these people who have a lot more followers than me. I need to build relationships with them, and then hopefully I will start to go up the ranks even further.”
Ross:
It was interesting to be a part of seeing that when it went live, because I look back at some of the people I follow and they’re directly people who I just happened to come across on the Twitter Grader site. Because they had a section that was titled, I think it was the standings, Twitter standings or something like that, where they actually ranked who the most influential Twitter users were all the way through to the most uninfluential. And you would follow whoever had the most influence, who had the best accounts. And a lot of the people who I followed in those early days came directly off of the Twitter Grader, which was for inside of HubSpot just something that they spun out of this Website Grader profile.
Ross:
And Dharmesh said in a video that I found on YouTube that he just spun this thing out in a day. He published it at 2:00 AM in the middle of the night. He just was like, “Okay, folks are interested in this.” He sent it over to his Twitter. At the time, his Twitter account had 1,100 followers. Today it has 279,000, so a whole different world Twitter was back then. But they graded 5,000 profiles in day one, and that was, again, icing on the cake as a great opportunity for HubSpot. And they continue to double down on that grader approach.
Talia:
You know what this reminds me of? I can’t remember which company this was, that they started the whole trend of the wait list. So there was this whole trend where you would announce that you are about… I think it was an email client at some point, where you would ask to join the wait list. And it would tell you how many people that are before you on the wait list. And if you wanted to actually increase and bring yourself higher up in the wait list, you’d have to invite people to join the wait list. And it had this whole effect where it would show you, “These are the top people who are in the wait list.” And you’d actually review them and look at them and say, “Okay, what else can I do? I can tweet, I can share this. I can email this. I can share this on Facebook. What can I do in order to get up in that waiting list?”
Talia:
And I thought that is the same type of psychological trigger and the same mechanism of the competition, the whole idea of generating more interest and growing everything around you in terms of even a launch.
Ross:
Right. I forgot all about those. I remember so many of those. It felt like there was a new company launching every week with those like pre-launch landing pages where you would say like, “If you want to get early access to this app, you have to sign up today.” The amount of early waiting list landing pages that were being rolled out in the early 2000s were significant. I remember them. I forget what… There was definitely a tool that was dedicated just to that. But I remember those tools, I remember those pages. They were flying high back in the day. So let’s go back to the graders and how that evolved at HubSpot, because today HubSpot has tons of free tools. I believe that Website Grader triggered a opportunity in the eyes of the team and the culture within HubSpot where they started to create more and more of these kind of assets that they could use to increase value with their ideal customers.
Ross:
Today, they have the Website Grader, they have a marketing plan generator. They have a website SSL checker, they have a blog post idea generator. They have all of these different engineering style content plays that are generating value for them. And I believe if you go back to 2007, this wasn’t common practice, but it has fundamentally changed the way business is done in B2B and SaaS and marketing as a whole, where we’re now seeing marketers create these types of interactive experiences like quizzes with the intent of adding additional value that a blog post or something just might not add.
Ross:
And there’s a bunch of other ones. Like I know CoSchedule has a headline analyzer. Everyone who’s in the world of social media might remember Moz having Followerwonk which at one point was a free tool that you could use to get insight into your social media platform. I think Canva has Unsplash or someone else has Unsplash. I’m not sure who has it. But that’s a free website that you can use for photos. But yeah, there’s a ton of these free services that people have. And I think it’s a brilliant play. I think it’s a genius play in many ways. What about yourself? Is there any that stand out in your mind as great executions around this whole idea of using free content assets?
Talia:
Yeah, definitely. So Unbounce actually recently released a landing page grader and it’s super cool. It’s great to look at. I think CXL actually published a copywriting grader, I think. I need to check that. They’re coming out with a new tool. So I feel like it’s a very good approach for companies in order to grow that following, get potential customers and clients. And I think what would be really valuable for our listeners is to understand if they don’t have the budgets, if they’re not big as Moz and HubSpot, how can they leverage this strategy in order to do the same, but maybe on a smaller scale?
Ross:
Yeah. I think there’s a few different ways that they can go about it. First and foremost, I think you should think about your target audience, as we always say, and think about the things that they’re trying to do on a regular basis. So are they trying to calculate a certain thing? If so, maybe you can create a calculator of some sort that will assist in helping them get an answer to a question. For example, if you are a plumber and you sell a plumbing service, maybe you’re going to hire an Upworker to put together a quick and dirty calculator style experience on your site where people can calculate how much it’s going to cost on average to do a kitchen rental or a bathroom rental. And that calculator lives on your site and you can capture those leads.
Ross:
Or let’s say that during the wonderful world of marketing. Maybe you’re going to create like a Mad Lib style experience where you have a cheat sheet or a template or you have some type of guide where can fill in the blanks. And as a result of filling in the blanks, you’re met with an answer to something that feels personalized to you. Those are some of the high-level angles and opportunities that could exist for folks who are not dealing with hundreds or millions of thousands of dollars worth of budgets.
Ross:
But another lane would be leverage the calculators, the generators, the tools, the resources that others have already created, and then use them as just ways to nurture your relationships. So if you are someone who sells website design services, take the Website Grader from HubSpot, email it to your clients and build a relationship using it that way. What else? Do you have any other thoughts for how folks could use this if they don’t have the multi-millions of budgets to create something that’s really in-depth?
Talia:
Quizzes. There are so many quiz generators these days. You literally just have to go in, put in the questions and it will create it for you. Another cool tool you could use which wasn’t built for it, but this is a client of mine. They’re called Wizer.me. And they’re actually worksheet generators for teachers, and it’s transforming online education. It’s absolutely incredible to see. But you could actually use one of their advanced worksheets to create something cool for your prospects. In order to find out, to get answers to different questions, you could use it as a quiz. You could record different things for people. I feel like there’s just so many different tools out there that you could leverage. I wouldn’t go ahead now and spend thousands of dollars or who knows how much in order to create something of your own. There’s just so many generators out there that you could use.
Talia:
And as you mentioned, and we mentioned beforehand, you can use the existing graders and tools to actually cold outreach to people or build relationships with people. And there’s just so many different ways you can do that. I was telling you before that I have spreadsheets that I share with my audience. So it’s a calculator that you put in all the sums, all the information, and it tells you how much you should spend on different elements in your marketing. So there’s just so many different cool things you can do with just a spreadsheet. So I definitely think there’s so many cool ways to leverage it. And at the end of the day, what you need to remember is you’re creating value for people and you’re gating it in order to create a relationship.
Talia:
But what matters most is creating that value. Because the reason HubSpot worked so well is because you get that answer to such an important question that you have. Am I doing a good job? Is my website doing well? What should I improve on? How can I make this better? And if you can answer those questions, as you mentioned, Ross, I think no matter what tool you create or what it looks like, it will be a slam dunk.
Ross:
Yes, I love that. And the idea around spreadsheets speaks to my heart. I think spreadsheets are a very underrated opportunity across all industries for you to gain insight into how you can create something that is valuable. Think about the types of spreadsheets that people are using on a regular basis within their job and within their career, and if you can find a way to create something that is scalable and valuable, leveraging the insight from a spreadsheet, you’re off into the races.
Ross:
So another piece of the HubSpot story that I think is important is to reiterate the goal of creating these types of things. For HubSpot, it’s generating leads, it’s generating awareness, and it’s generating sales. When you’re planning your quiz, when you’re planning a tool, when you’re planning any type of experience, you need to figure out from the starting point, what is the goal that you have for doing this? Maybe it’s just to purely get research. Maybe you’re just trying to learn a little bit about your audience.
Ross:
The email signature tool that HubSpot created back in 2017 was also achieving significant amount of results for them. Specifically, it had generated over 520,000 visits, 51,000 leads, 1,500 influence opportunities, 122 influence wins, which all resulted in $8.5 million in customer lifetime value. Not shabby, right? Like Ching Ching. That’s the metrics. Those are the numbers that we love to see. And while you may not be HubSpot, is there a tool, is there a quiz, is there something that you can create that’s going to increase the lifetime value of your potential customers? I think while it might be intimidating to have this conversation and you might be listening to this like, “I have to come up with a quiz idea. How am I going to do this?”
Ross:
Start with research. Start by understanding, what are the things that your customers and target audience are trying to do today that a tool or a quiz or something, a template, whatever it may be, could make their lives easier to do? And once you are able to create that asset or plan that asset, it just makes your life so much easier. I do believe one of the best ways to go about this is to start with keyword research, do the analysis. Are people typing in, “I want a business plan,” or, “I’m looking for a template on how to price my services.” An example of that is proposal templates, right? There’s an entire industry built around this idea of proposal templates where freelancers are looking for templates that they can use to create a proposal. In fact, there’s entire businesses built off of it.
Ross:
If you can create a free proposal template or a free proposal, people will download it, people will give value to that. And if those are your ideal customers, it’s a win-win. So you want to be thinking about those types of opportunities as well. At Foundation, we have a handful of job descriptions because our target audience is oftentimes trying to hire marketers, marketing coordinators, et cetera. So we have a handful of job descriptions for those roles, and the people who are downloading them are typically the people who are making decisions around hiring, and it gets those folks into our pipeline and into our funnel. So I think there’s a lot of opportunities just like that for you to think about. But also think about going after qualitative research, asking questions, having discussions with the people who you’re trying to sell to.
Ross:
If you were to ask your customers as you were planning a tool, what would be some of the questions that you think you should be asking the person who you’re trying to reach to get insights into maybe what tool or what asset you should create in the future for them? Is there any questions that stand out in your mind around, what can you ask them to get to a point where you know, “Okay, this piece of content, this tool, this generator, this calculator is something that would add value to their life.” What type of questions would you ask?
Talia:
I’d probably focus on the jobs that they’re trying to get done and then on the roadblocks. So I’d want to know the questions that they ask themselves or the one thing, the one roadblock that they keep hitting. Maybe it’s the same question that keeps coming to their mind, or what is the one thing that you keep Googling and searching for or reading articles about? So, I mean, I’m always thinking about it from a marketing perspective because obviously those are the people that I serve. But I’m thinking if I understand what people are searching for online or what they’re trying to understand, what they’re trying to break down, then I know what tool or what generator I need to create in order to answer that, because that’s all we’re doing, is at the end of the day, as we said, we’re giving answers to the most pressing questions that people have.
Talia:
So if I can just understand what those questions are by digging into those biggest roadblocks, by digging into the things that are stopping them from achieving, what they really want to achieve or the things that just mind bulk them and they just don’t understand how to get done, that to me would be the best approach.
Ross:
I love that. I think that’s a great call. And once you’ve done the research, you’ve done the analysis, the next step is to really see what already exists. What are the things that are out there that you would be competing with? Are they paid things that you would have to go up against? If so, that might mean there is a real opportunity here for arbitrage where the rest of the market is giving this thing away for a cost. And if you can do it for free, maybe there’s an opportunity that exists in that alone for you to be better, for you to give value to a community or an audience that ultimately feels like, “Yeah, for years we’ve been paying, but if you can give it to us for free, we’re going to take it and we’re going to run with it.” That could be an awesome opportunity.
Ross:
So don’t forget to review and understand the SERP and the results that are showing up when people do look for the tool, the asset and the thing that you’re going to be giving them. And then the final piece of the equation is to make sure that your user experience and the content is actually good. I look at the HubSpot original asset, and sure, it was not that beautiful, the UX wasn’t great. I’m sure all of the UX people listening to this would be like, “Maybe UX doesn’t matter that much when it comes down to it.” But it does make things better, right? Like, sure.
Talia:
It was 2009.
Ross:
Exactly. Those were days that were a whole different world for the internet. Standards have risen. We have higher standards for what brands are putting out there. So I think UX and content is important when it comes to creating these things. And you want to make sure that you’re adding value to the people who are requesting to use your calculator, your generator, et cetera. But that’s essentially the HubSpot space.
Talia:
I feel like this is such an interesting episode, a great way to go back into the past, analyze something that not only worked really well in the past but is still working till this day. And if we just find the right thing that we can leverage, maybe we’ll be seeing the same results ourselves. And, I don’t know, a decade from now. That would be super cool.
Ross:
Exactly. I think that would be amazing. And, folks, we really hope you enjoyed this episode. We would love to connect with you further, so by all means, don’t forget to reach out and connect with us on the various social media platforms. Also don’t forget to join our Facebook group, facebook.com/group/actiondrivenpodcast. We would love to connect with you there. Also, I have to say thank you for the folks who have been leaving us reviews. They are so, so, so much appreciated. If you are listening to this on Apple, we would really appreciate a five-star review only, but we would love, love, love to get a review from you. It keeps us going. It makes my morning. It makes my day. And I’m sure you can agree that when we do see those positive reviews come through, they mean the world. So if you could leave us a review, it would help us get more people understanding the power of marketing, but also help get more people doing marketing the right way. With all that said, we look forward to seeing you, folks. Have a great one.
