the three step marketing audit how to use customer data to recharge your marketing

THE 3-STEP MARKETING AUDIT: HOW TO USE CUSTOMER DATA TO RECHARGE YOUR MARKETING Learn How To Find Valuable Insights About Your Lead Conversion Experience By Running a HubSpot Customer

THE 3-STEP MARKETING AUDIT: HOW TO USE

CUSTOMER DATA

TO RECHARGE

YOUR MARKETING

Learn How To Find Valuable Insights About Your Lead Conversion Experience By Running a HubSpot Customer Audit

vANCED

Introductory content is for marketers who are new to the subject This content typically includes step-by-step instructions on how to get started with this aspect

of inbound marketing and learn its fundamentals After reading it, you will be able

to execute basic marketing tactics related to the topic

I NTRODUCTORY

Not quite sure if this ebook is right for you? See the below description to determine

if your level matches the content you are about to read

Intermediate content is for marketers who are familiar with the subject but have only basic experience in executing strategies and tactics on the topic This content typically covers the fundamentals and moves on to reveal more complex functions and examples After reading it, you will feel comfortable leading projects with this aspect of inbound marketing

INTERMEDIATE

Advanced content is for marketers who are, or want to be, experts on the subject

In it, we walk you through advanced features of this aspect of inbound marketing and help you develop complete mastery of the subject After reading it, you will feel ready not only to execute strategies and tactics, but also to teach others how

to be successful

brings your whole marketing world

together in one, powerful, integrated

Analyze your web traffic and see which sources are generating the most leads.

N BlOGGINGCreate blog content

quick-ly while getting SEO tips and best practice pointers

as you type.

M EMAIlSend personalized,

segmented emails based

on any information in your contact database.

SEARCH OPTIMIzATION

s Improve your rank in

search engines by finding and tracking your most ef- fective keywords.

U lEAD MANAGEMENTTrack leads with a

complete timeline-view of their interactions with your company

q SOCIAl MEDIAPublish content to your

social accounts, then nurture leads based on their social engagement.

WRITTEn BY REBECCA GuTnER

Rebecca is a Senior Inbound Marketing

Consultant on the HubSpot Consulting

team Over the past 10 years, Rebecca

has worked with over 100 companies,

ranging from the Fortune 500, to startups,

to nonprofits In addition to her love for

data analysis, Rebecca’s areas of expertise

include lead generation and conversion,

segmentation-based email marketing

strategy, search engine optimization, and

@REBECCAGUTNER

Desmond is a creative designer and inbound marketer on the Brand & Buzz team at HubSpot He specializes in graphic design, content creation, and content strategy for lead generation

Many marketing decisions are made based on a marketer’s

“intuition.” In other words, semi-subjective opinions from Marketing and Sales While these opinions can be extremely valuable, where possible they can (and should!) be paired with objective trends found within your data

The HubSpot Customer Audit is designed to provide valuable insight into your online lead conversion experience By aggregating and analyzing the data you’ve collected about your existing customers, an audit will

help you identify trends that can help inform your sales process An audit

is an important step in verifying the accuracy of assumptions you may have made about the lead qualification process

This resource will serve as your guide to learning how to use your data

to conduct your own customer audit

Introduction.

Some common uses for the customer audit are as follows:

1. To determine/update your lead scoring values

2. To inform your content strategy by learning the types and frequency of content that best resonates with your existing customers

3. To guide you as to which traffic sources to invest more resources

4. To update your Sales & Marketing Service Level Agreement (SLA) to include the most accurate portrayal of sales ready leads

5. To inform your prospecting within certain industries or types of

companies

6. To update your marketing personas to more accurately reflect

your core base of customers

A customer audit can be performed as often as once per quarter and

should be performed at least once per year

01 CHAPTER

WHAT To ConSIDER WHEn BEGInnInG

YouR AuDIT

What to Consider When Beginning

Your Audit

What should your sample size be?

Depending on your business, the sample size of your customer base

may not be large enough to be statistically significant Generally

speaking, a good rule of thumb for true data significance is 1,000 records

or more If your data is between 100-1000, it could still have some

significance If your sample size is less than 100, it can be reviewed for overarching trends but should be rerun when the group grows to 100

level of Significance

Normally, you should have 1,000 records or more for true data significance If your sample data is between 100-1000, you should still have some significance.

How Do I Collect Data?

Now you must be wondering how is the data being collected? The

answer is simple: form intelligence

We learned early on that the best way to collect data and intelligence on your audience is to collect it by providing them an even greater benefit You may have done this already without even thinking it! In order to

receive this ebook, you filled out a form that contained various fields

These fields, depending on how often you’ve filled out out forms, asked you for some business-specific information What you may not realize when filling out those fields is that you’re helping us better analyze and understand who our audience is and what their interests are

The best way to collect the right information is to use progressive

profiling Progressive profiling allows you to control which questions

appear on a form based on what you already know about a lead That way, each time a lead fills out a form, you are collecting valuable new information about them while keeping your forms short and easy to fill out - not squandering the opportunity by asking the same questions

twice

Progressive profiling allows you to control which questions appear on a form based on what you already know about a lead.

l

What fields should i have on my forms?

Now that you know where data is coming from, here are some suggested fields to review when designing your audit Some of this data pulls from

your analytics platform, while other pieces of data must be collected by

asking the right questions on your landing pages These are suggested

fields for all industries; note that some may not apply to your business

Demographic Data

Number of EmployeesIndustry

Annual Revenue Gender

Age Job Title

Demographic information will help you determine exactly who your customer is and how to best target them.

Time First Seen - The date at which the prospect first discovered your site.First Page Seen - The first page the prospect landed on within your site Original Source - The traffic source that first brought the prospect to your site.First Conversion Date - The date at which the prospect became a lead.

Close Date - The date at which the lead became a customer

Number of Visits to your site

Number of Pages Viewed

Number of Emails Received/Delivered

Number of Emails Clicked

Number of Social Media Clicks - The number of times the lead/customer engaged with your site via social media

The analytics and behavioral data will give you more insight into the performance of your customers marketing strategies You’ll be able to guage the success of landing pages, calls-to-actions, and clickthrough rates to help implement new techniques and improve their conversion rates

Lead Score - (If tracking)

Persona - (If tracking) Author’s Note: if you are tracking leads

by persona and you have enough data, you may want to do an individual customer audit for each persona type

Email - This will allow you to dig deeper into an individual record after the fact to review the interactions with this customer

Company Name - This will allow you to dig deeper into a company’s engagement path to becoming a customer

Any other custom fields you are tracking that would be relevant

Information like lead scores, emails, company names, and personas can all give you a deeper dive into the customers path of engagement and interactions to better adjust your strategy for acquiring more new customers

02 CHAPTER

HoW To puLL AnD

AnALYzE YouR DATA

What Data Should You Be Pulling?

Most analytics programs allow you to export your lead/customer data collected from form intelligence into an excel format For HubSpot customers, the steps are as follows:

Step 1: Create a list of customers excluding any imported contacts Then export this list into excel

Step 2: Open the export file and remove all fields except the fields you have chosen to analyze above

Step 3: Create a summary sheet (either in a new tab or a separate document) This will be your central repository for any data you collect and it will make it easy to visualize your findings Here is a sample Summary Sheet from HubSpot data (built in excel):

Industry use a pivot Table to see total numbers of each

category for this column Use the top 2-3 for your summary

Gender use a pivot Table to tally the totals for this

col-umn Subtract the total for each group from the total number of contacts to find the percentage breakdown

Age Take the average of this field

Job Title use a pivot Table to see total numbers of each

category for this column Use the top 2-3 for your summary

Fill in these columns with the numerical data that you have collected from your forms to create a summary sheet.

Average Sales Cycle (Close Date - Time First Seen)

Create a new column in your excel document and format this column as a number field

Subtract the number in the “Time First Seen” field from the number in the “Close Date” field

Research Period (First Conversion Date - Time First Seen)

Create a new column in your excel document and format this column as a number field

Subtract the number in the “Time First Seen” field from the number in the “First Conversion Date” field

First Page Seen use a pivot Table to see total numbers of each

category for this column Use the top 2-3 for your summary

Original Source Type use a pivot Table to see total numbers of each

category for this column Use the top 2-3 for your summary

Number of visits Take the average of the numbers in this

column

Number of Pages viewed Take the average of the numbers in this column

Number of Emails Received/Delivered Take the average of the numbers in this column

Number of Emails Clicked

Take the average of the numbers in this column

Number of Social Media Clicks use a pivot Table to take a count of how many people have engaged with you in social media

Subtract this number from the total number of contacts to find the percentage breakdown

Persona use a pivot Table to see total numbers of each

category for this column

If you don’t use HubSpot, use the current software, analytics, and/or

data you’ve collected over time to gather similar information to what

HubSpot provides You may not receive the full picture, but hopefully

have enough data to analyze and extract conclusions

Number of Employees The company size that is most closely aligned

with your target customer

Annual Revenue The average revenue of companies most likely

to become your customers

Industry The most common industries that are finding

your site on the web

Gender The gender of the person most commonly

re-searching your product/service offerings

Age The age of the person most commonly

researching your product/service offerings

Job Title The role of the person most commonly

researching your product/service

Now What Does All That Data You Pulled Mean?

Once you have completed the step of pulling your data, you can now

begin the process of analyzing it Here are some suggested pieces to

analyze from the data you’ve pulled:

Demographic Data:

use these charts to help determine some helpful takeaways and insights about the data you have collected with your forms.

lead Score The average lead score that is indicative of a

prospective customer This will help you identify if the lead score values might be using to register a lead as “marketing qualified” are accurate

Persona What persona group most commonly leads to

customers

Demographic Data:

Seen) Research Period (First Conversion Date - Time First Seen)

The average length of time it takes a new prospect to become a lead

First Page Seen The pages that have been successful at

bringing leads into the sales cycle

Original Source Type The most effective traffic sources in driving

new customers to your site

Number of visits The average number of visits a lead makes

before becoming a customer

Number of Pages viewed The average number of page views a lead sees before becoming a customer

Number of Emails Received/Delivered

The average number of emails received that helped nurture the customer

Number of Emails Clicked

The average engagement of leads with your email campaigns

Number of Social Media Clicks The number of times the lead/customer engaged with your site via social media

03 CHAPTER

HoW To uSE YouR

FInDInGS To InFoRm YouR mARkETInG

be used to inform your marketing Here are a couple of examples:

1 Determining Your lead Score values

If you have never used a Lead Scoring tool before then the customer audit is critical to making sure that lead score values are based on objective data rather than subjective assumptions To get started, make a list of the values above that are represented in your lead scoring tool (if you are using the HubSpot lead scoring tool, all fields should apply except for Average Sales Cycle and Research Period) From there, prioritize your list from the most important characteristics

to the least and assign point values in descending order

2 Informing Your Content Strategy

Use the “Emails Delivered” and “Emails Clicked” fields to determine the number of emails with which most customers willingly engage Next, review the Average Sales Cycle value to determine the lifespan in which the customer reviewed these emails Compare these numbers to your existing lead nurturing campaigns and overall email marketing strategy Are you sending the right number of

emails? If not, consider tweaking your campaigns accordingly

Use the “First Page Seen” data to determine the field that is most successful in driving visitors to your site For most companies, this will be the home page, make sure to review the next 2-3 pages on the list!

1. Review the content of these interior pages, what do they provide that might be resonating with the visitor? Do you have any offers that speak to these topics? If not, consider building them out and promoting them on these pages

2 Are the pages accessible from your homepage and other key entry points (blog, social media, etc.)? If not, consider providing more direct links to these pages throughout your site

3 Determine Your Most Successful traffic Sources

One of the simplest metrics identified in the Audit is the referring traffic source Review the most successful sources for customer generation (Note: this may not be the same as the most successful site for lead generation) Do most of your customers come from organic search? Consider investing in your blogging team Are most

of your customers coming from eferral traffic? Consider expanding your PR team to help promote your content even further