Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah grew their inbound marketing software business (founded in 2006) to an IPO in 2014 at $25/share (now around $450).
They are the 2nd fastest SMB SasS company to IPO
If you’re a SaaS entrepreneur, you need to study Hubspot
Here are the inbound strategies they used to grow from 0-100M+ users📈
A thread: 👇👇
Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah grew their inbound marketing software business (founded in 2006) to an IPO in 2014 at $25/share (now around $450).
They are the 2nd fastest SMB SasS company to IPO
Part of this shift was due to the internet/Google. People now had the power to do their own research to find products that could help solve their problem
They learned conversion rates from inbound/organic leads compared to outbound/paid were more than double. It was cheaper to acquire traffic and resulted in higher quality leads. 75% of their lead gen was inbound, focusing on blogs, webinars, free tools
They share resources/tips/steps to improve your inbound marketing. They drew people to their posts, provided value, and added a unique CTA related to the topic at the end to capture the lead.
The blog resulted in 20% of their organic leads and 3x their leads
They created over 50 pieces of content/week, targeting popular keywords related to inbound. In 2009, they ranked first on Google for phrases like “website leads” and “grow email list.” After a few years, any search related to inbound, Hubspot would appear
Today
In 2008 Hubspot started creating webinars, and it became one of their strongest lead gen tactics.
They attracted a lot of people by providing value in this form. They used webinars to educate users, generate buzz, attract website visitors, and grow leads
1. Educational
2. Software Demonstrations
The conversion rate on the product demo’s was really high (10-20% signed up would buy) but lower for education, however they generated much bigger audiences for the educational webinars
For webinars they used Twitter as a discussion tool, allowing people to ask questions, chat, and engage with each other.
More than 5 of their webinars were global top 10 trending topics. One of their most popular webinars had 13000 sign ups.
Hubspot created free tools that generated tons of organic leads. The most popular was their free Website Grader. Anyone could enter a URL and get insights about the sites performance. Between 2006-2011 the tool graded more than 4 million websites
This was early when business owners were still trying to figure out the ultimate value of social media.
2 key sites were https://t.co/31q4r1dbgK (hub for marketers to connect, learn, find jobs - over 200k members when launched 2013) and https://t.co/KvzKfvxrnz (medium publication launched in 2015, reaching 160k views/month).
This built a strong community
In 2013 they launched their first conference called Inbound, running interactive workshops where guests could get a certification. It attracted 500 marketers in year 1 growing to 26k in 2020. The conference generated buzz and hasn’t stopped growing
Inbound marketing is a long term growth strategy, however once the effect truly kicks in, it can lead to steady exponential growth. Hubspot's growth from 2006-2009 was impressive but still relatively slow compared to 2010+
It’s a worthy investment.
- $1B+ ARR
- 100k+ Users
- 21B market cap
Key to growth:
- Strong understanding of inbound marketing
- Value based approach through free tools/webinars/blog
- Producing tons of valuable content consistently
- Optimized for SEO
Subscribe to my Substack for a more in depth breakdown on Hubspot
https://t.co/ZmIRez6hGD
And follow me on Twitter for a new thread like this every week!
More from Startups
You May Also Like
I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
As someone\u2019s who\u2019s read the book, this review strikes me as tremendously unfair. It mostly faults Adler for not writing the book the reviewer wishes he had! https://t.co/pqpt5Ziivj
— Teresa M. Bejan (@tmbejan) January 12, 2021
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
Oh my Goodness!!!
I might have a panic attack due to excitement!!
Read this thread to the end...I just had an epiphany and my mind is blown. Actually, more than blown. More like OBLITERATED! This is the thing! This is the thing that will blow the entire thing out of the water!
Has this man been concealing his true identity?
Is this man a supposed 'dead' Seal Team Six soldier?
Witness protection to be kept safe until the right moment when all will be revealed?!
Who ELSE is alive that may have faked their death/gone into witness protection?
Were "golden tickets" inside the envelopes??
Are these "golden tickets" going to lead to their ultimate undoing?
Review crumbs on the board re: 'gold'.
#SEALTeam6 Trump re-tweeted this.
I might have a panic attack due to excitement!!
Read this thread to the end...I just had an epiphany and my mind is blown. Actually, more than blown. More like OBLITERATED! This is the thing! This is the thing that will blow the entire thing out of the water!
Tik Tok pic.twitter.com/8X3oMxvncP
— Scotty Mar10 (@Allenma15086871) December 29, 2020
Has this man been concealing his true identity?
Is this man a supposed 'dead' Seal Team Six soldier?
Witness protection to be kept safe until the right moment when all will be revealed?!
Who ELSE is alive that may have faked their death/gone into witness protection?
Were "golden tickets" inside the envelopes??
Are these "golden tickets" going to lead to their ultimate undoing?
Review crumbs on the board re: 'gold'.
#SEALTeam6 Trump re-tweeted this.