HubSpot
The Background
In 2017, I participated in a joint project between SmartBug Media and HubSpot to produce a pillar page about buyer personas. Pillar pages were a new content marketing technique being promoted by HubSpot at the time—and together with my team, I helped tell the story.
The project doubled as a case study for HubSpot and a lead gen piece for SmartBug. We wanted to share our process with the rest of the inbound community. And HubSpot wanted examples of agencies that were successfully incorporating their tactics. We worked together with HubSpot Academy to incorporate pro tips so marketers could replicate the steps in their strategies.
Content Audit
We had existing content we wanted to incorporate into the mix—including an existing ebook and blog posts. Together with my creative director and two marketing strategists, I identified gaps in our existing content and organized it in a way that made sense. This meant editing content to cater to our target personas and identifying pain points and motivating factors they would encounter while reading.
Content Production
After identifying gaps in our existing content, I pitched concepts to my team and HubSpot. After approval, it was time to start writing new copy. Starting with about 3,000 words, I expanded body copy to nearly 6,000 words. This also found me writing new headlines, microcopy, and CTAs to build a final product.
Design & Optimization
Next, my creative director and I collaborated with our developer and project manager to build the page. The result? An engaging, optimized piece of content. My team wrote auxiliary blog posts based on new concepts identified in the gap analysis to boost link building and SEO tactics. We also created a thank you page, social media posts, and an email campaign to promote the launch.
The Results
In the first two weeks, the page received nearly 2,000 views. It had 330 submissions, saw an 18% conversion rate, and yielded 122 net new contacts.
Within this two-week timeframe, the campaign influenced four closed deals at $77,250 in revenue.
Additionally, after three months, these numbers increased to 4,800 views, 1,000 submissions—with a 22% submission rate (and a 13% new contact rate).
We even received a shoutout on the HubSpot Academy blog!
