By Noa Eshed|2023-05-09T06:18:45+00:00August 15th, 2018|
B2B Marketing Case studies Inbound Marketing
John Doe
Architect & Engineer
We love that guy
What’s SimilarTech?
SimilarTech is a leading Israeli startup with branches in Silicon Valley, Brazil and Japan. Their SaaS product is a SIP (Sales Insights Platform) that tracks technology adoption and usage analytics in real-time.
SimilarTech’s technology and analysis tool provides business insights through website crawling. Their technology allows users to spot trends, research the market, generate leads and prospects by providing information like technologies used on a particular website, revealing a specific technology’s use throughout various websites, or tracking and listing an entire category of web technologies.
The challenge
SimilarTech is the ultimate tool for sales VPs and Sales ops who are selling tech products as using SimilarTech they can:
Fill their pipeline with relevant prospects by finding out what tech they’re currently using
View correlating technologies that are typically used in their vertical. This can help them unlock and explore greenfield opportunities that they might not have considered in their initial market research
Find the leading industries in their vertical to tap into new markets
And more
We wanted to get as many relevant sales VPs an Sales ops to experience SimilarTech and see the potential for themselves. But how?
The plan
We conducted a thorough research to map out the core challenges that sales managers are dealing with on a daily basis (we mapped out a few sales audiences, in this project we focused on startups as the type of company).
Based on what we’ve learned, we created the “No BS guidebook to winning startup sales” – a comprehensive guide to establishing a winning sales strategy. The guidebook focused on helping startups learn how to drive tangible, long-lasting growth, avoid startup-thirsty killers (such as burning through budget) and building relationship and trust with prospects.
We set the guidebook up as gated content whereby in order to download it, sales managers had to provide us with their name, email and industry.
The last field was the golden ticket.
Based on the industry they’ve provided, alongside with the guidebook, we let sales managers know that we’ve taken the liberty to sign them up as free SimilarTech users. All they had to do was confirm and pass through a few clicks to finalize the sign up process. We made sure the benefit of what they’d be receiving would be crystal clear.
We then started sending them emails with personalized SimilarTech reports aimed at helping them with their daily challenges. This was the ultimate way of introducing them to SimilarTech at a stage where they’re most interested in solving their challenges.
Getting the word out there
We now had to make sure sales managers are aware of the guidebook. We used paid advertising, inbound marketing methods and social methods to spread the word.
Chen, SimilarTech’s CEO, published a LinkedIn post telling sales managers all about the guidebook and inviting them to download it.
In no time hundreds of sales managers were exposed to the guidebook and invited to download it.
The results
During one month:
82.66%
196
104
67%
104
Increase in website sessions
Sales managers asked to download the ebook
New accounts opened
Email open rates
Marketing Qualified leads transferred over to sales
By Noa Eshed|2023-04-24T10:37:32+00:00May 28th, 2017|
Case studies
John Doe
Architect & Engineer
We love that guy
Following our Hubspot Inbound Growth Story Impact Award win, the Hubspot team asked us to create a video that will be featured on our Hubspot impact awards page and details the winning story of who we grew our client BusinessBlocks’ business by 600% in 6 months and helped them get acquired by a publicly traded company all using HubSpot and amplified Inbound marketing services. So we did.
Our Hubspot Impact Growth Story Impact Award video
What comes next?
Winners from each round are entered as finalists for the Impact Awards Grand Prize which is awarded at the INBOUND 17 annual conferences (featuring former first lady Michelle Obama this year!).
We will also be featured in a “Best Of” compilation eBook which HubSpot is working on right now.
We’re very proud to have our work recognized in this way. We could not have done it without Hubspot and without the trust and cooperation of our client – BusinessBlocks who were super supportive and collaborative all throughout the project and also when we approached them and asked to submit their story as a nominee for the Inbound awards. Special shout out to BusinessBlock’s CEO and founder – Justin Kulla.
This is what David McNeil, VP Global Partner Program and Strategy at HubSpot, Inc had to say about this:
“Bold Digital Architects had a very creative idea to deliver value for their client, BusinessBlocks. Through a inventive inbound approach, strong paid search strategy, and several other techniques, Bold Digital Architects exemplified innovative client work.”
Now it’s your turn
If you’re spending lots of time and effort on your online marketing but you’re frustrated because you’re not producing results – reach out to us and maybe you could be our next case study.
By Noa Eshed|2023-04-24T10:39:50+00:00May 15th, 2017|
Case studies
John Doe
Architect & Engineer
We love that guy
We have great news to share! We won the Hubspot Inbound Growth Story Impact award!
The Inbound Growth Award recognizes an agency that helped a client experience rapid growth with Inbound Marketing practices.
We’re all feeling very proud – our submission received 91 out of a possible 100 points.
Why is this awesome?
The annual HubSpot Impact Awards, are awarded in 2 rounds across five categories: Sales Enablement, Integrations Innovation, Inbound Growth Story, Website Design and Graphic Design.
Our submission
Over the course of 6 months we managed to grow our client BusinessBlocks’ business by 600% and helped them get acquired by a publicly traded company, all using HubSpot and amplified Inbound Marketing.
We jumped at the opportunity to showcase this success and proceeded to enter our Inbound Marketing work with BusinessBlocks, under the Inbound Growth Story category.
Businessblock’s Inbound growth story
BusinessBlocks is a Silicon Valley startup. They’re an online education company with the goal of helping small American businesses who have never had any formal business training, succeed.
The BusinessBlocks team came to us with a very simple request: to grow their business in a short amount of time. Our team realized we were facing two main challenges:
Positioning and authority – According to research, 57% of potential customers decide on purchasing before they even contact the supplier. With that in mind, why would a small business owner who has never head of BusinessBlocks trust their ability to help with business growth?
Time to market – BusinessBlocks needed immediate results in a very short timeframe, and couldn’t afford to sit around for months waiting to see results.
Our strategy was to get in front of BusinessBlocks’ potential customers at the stage where they are researching online, looking for solutions to their business growing pains. We figured it would be the perfect opportunity to position BusinessBlocks as a valid cure for their challenges. But how?
Using HubSpot, we launched an inbound marketing campaign focused on creating a personalized buyer’s journey for small business owners who are struggling due to knowledge gaps.
Using paid media, we invited potential customers to download an eBook or participate in webinars in exchange for their contact details.
This initiated a relationship with BusinessBlock’s potential customers that helped us add value, build trust, and push potential customers down a personal buyer’s journey.
Once we had the potential customer’s email address, we created an assessment that was aimed at uncovering gaps in knowledge that BusinessBlocks’ courses could help them with. Each potential customer who took the assessment received a sequence of triggered emails that compiled into a personal development plan. The plan provided potential customers with personalized content based on their individual knowledge gaps that surfaced in the assessment.
Once we introduced the personalized marketing assessment (and plan), conversion skyrocketed.
And where did this journey take us?
BusinessBlocks was acquired by publicly traded company AmTrust!
Winners from each round are entered as finalists for the Impact Awards Grand Prize which is awarded at the INBOUND 17 annual conferences (featuring former first lady Michelle Obama this year!).
We will also be featured in a “Best Of” compilation eBook which HubSpot is working on right now.
We’re very proud to have our work recognized in this way. We could not have done it without Hubspot and without the trust and cooperation of our client – BusinessBlocks who were super supportive and collaborative all throughout the project and also when we approached them and asked to submit their story as a nominee for the Inbound awards. Special shout out to BusinessBlock’s CEO and founder – Justin Kulla.
This is what David McNeil, VP Global Partner Program and Strategy at HubSpot, Inc had to say about this:
“Bold Digital Architects had a very creative idea to deliver value for their client, BusinessBlocks. Through a inventive inbound approach, strong paid search strategy, and several other techniques, Bold Digital Architects exemplified innovative client work.”
Now it’s your turn
If you’re spending lots of time and effort on your online marketing but you’re frustrated because you’re not producing results – reach out to us and maybe you could be our next case study.
By Noa Eshed|2023-04-24T10:43:27+00:00April 4th, 2017|
Case studies
John Doe
Architect & Engineer
We love that guy
What’s eLoan?
eLoan was established in 2012 and launched their product to the mass market on September 2013. It is the first Israeli peer to peer lending platform.
What was their challenge?
Initially, eLoan focused only on generating website traffic and tracking lead generation in order to generate revenue. They lacked a strategical process of setting KPIs and measuring them. They needed to map out their prospects and start measuring every step in their online journey.
The Solution
By harnessing the data accumulated in the businesses IT Systems we better understood the demographic profile of eLoan’s ideal customers. We mapped out which terms or adgroups drove better or worse prospects. By implementing flexible bidding methodologies that correspond to eLoan’s data we achieved an increase of 25% in conversion rates.
Results
How we increased lead generation:
How we increased conversion rates:
Business Impact within 3 Months
In the clients words…
Bold was very clear with us and has a high tolerance for working with very impatient people. They’re always open to consulting with us on any issues or questions we have. They’re measuring everything about our audience, which is very detailed.
They were on top of everything, even when we needed things done quickly. They’re amazing and a very dedicated partner. – Nurit Dor Haim, CMO, eLoan
Conclusion
A strategical process of setting KPIs and measuring them can make or break success. Make sure to map out and understand your target audience, adjust your messaging and find the most relevant terms and adgroups for your audience. Lastly, measuring every step in your prospect’s online journey can work wonders to your online marketing and advertising efforts.
By Noa Eshed|2023-04-24T10:45:23+00:00March 30th, 2017|
Case studies
John Doe
Architect & Engineer
We love that guy
What’s BusinessBlocks?
BusinessBlocks is a business that loves small business. In fact, its mission is to empower Main Street to live the American Dream. Justin Kulla started the venture-backed online education company for one reason: to help small businesses that have never had any formal business training/education to succeed.
Justin grew up in a small business; his parents started one a month before he was born. He watched his parents experience both good and bad years with the business, and he became obsessed with figuring out how to make his parents’ life easier.
Fast forward to 2015, Justin and the BusinessBlocks team set off to assemble the world’s first online MBA designed specifically for small business.
The result: BusinessBlocks offers marketing and finance courses designed specifically to meet the needs of small business owners eager for practical knowledge they can apply immediately.
What was their challenge?
Once the business was launched, the team made a few attempts to advertise using paid media. Those attempts were unfortunately not successful. When they approached us we identified that there were two main challenges to overcome:
Positioning and authority. Why would a small business owner trust that BusinessBlocks could help them grow their business, reach more customers and generate profit? Simply running a bottom of the funnel campaign, sending people to a landing page that invites them to sign up to a course (or even a free trial) wouldn’t do the trick. People’s time is a valuable commodity, especially for small business owners who find themselves having to wear a lot of different hats.
Time to market. As is typical with most startups, we needed to generate immediate results. We couldn’t wait until we had full Inbound Marketing funnels in place.
The Solutions
Since we had to build authority and create a quick and impactful campaign, we decided to incorporate 3 marketing methods:
Inbound Marketing using HubSpot in order to build authority
Paid media campaigns to grow exposure and drive targeted buyer personas to the top of the funnel
Partner webinars to generate quality leads at zero cost through the partners’ marketing efforts
Inbound Marketing using HubSpot
We needed to:
Launch an effective Inbound Marketing campaign in a short time frame
Create a swift and effective onboarding process
Create a personalized buyer’s journey for relevant incoming leads including:
Contextual blog content
Gated content offers
Call to actios aimed at driving traffic to designated landing pages and thank you pages
Automate nurturing campaigns and progression emails aimed at pushing prospects down their own buyer’s journey
Create numerous variations of landing pages to test and optimize different micro-segments
HubSpot was an obvious choice as it answers all of the above needs.
Paid Media
We used Google and Facebook as the main media channels to amplify the Inbound marketing services efforts. The idea was to not wait for the Inbound Marketing efforts to kick in organically. We targeted relevant keywords sending prospects to download content offers and participate in webinars. We also used Google and Facebook’s remarketing capabilities to progress top of the funnel leads down the funnel.
Partner Webinars
BusinessBlocks partnered with leading companies in the small business space to create high-value webinars for inexperienced entrepreneurs. The BusinessBlocks team created 60 minute webinars on topics ranging from funding and accounting to blogging and advertising. For example, they partnered with the online lending company, Kabbage, to teach small businesses about working capital loans. As a result, we had nearly 500 people register for the webinar. We also worked with top brands, including GoDaddy, NerdWallet, and the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce.
The Campaign
We conducted an in-depth buyer persona research to truly understand BusinessBlocks’ ideal target customers. We looked into their goals and demographics and researched what challenges small business owners have. We then created a series of awareness stage offers which we promoted via social networks and paid search. Using workflows we worked on nurturing incoming leads, qualifying them and lastly turning them into customers.
We tested each stage of the funnel using different offers in order to find the ones that yield most conversions. The funnel we ended up with was constructed as such:
The amazing thing is that in just a few months we were executing campaigns that were more sophisticated than the most sophisticated I could have imagined just a few months earlier – Justin Kulla, CEO, BusinessBlocks
Awareness
We identified that the main challenges BusinessBlocks prospects were facing were knowledge gaps as to how to manage their business and how to market it. We created the following gated content to help educate them and overcome their challenges:
Partner webinars
#iamMainStreet Marketing Playbook
Prospects were invited to download the playbook/ participate in webinars in exchange for their contact details. This initiated a relationship that helped us add value, build trust and push them down a personal buyer’s journey.
Consideration
We wanted to give prospects an idea of the content covered in the BusinessBlocks Mainstreet marketing course. Using an integration between Typeform (a web-based platform for creating surveys) and Hubspot, we created an assessment that was aimed at uncovering gaps in knowledge the course could help them with,
Each prospect who took the assessment received a sequence of triggered emais that compiled into a personal development plan. The plan provided prospects with content based on their individual knowledge gaps that surfaced in the assessment. We wanted to wet their tastebuds of the business knowledge they lacked and that the course could provide. Once we introduced the personalized marketing assessment (and plan), conversions skyrocketed.
This was done without a single line of code using only Hubspot’s features.
Example of a personalized results page
Decision
The personal development plan was educational in nature and sent prospects to blog posts covering knowledge gaps uncovered in their marketing assessent. On those blog posts we invited the prospects to start a free trial. This was a huge success.
Results
Business Impact within 6 Months
Contact list growth by 2,500%
Customer growth by 600%
BusinessBlocks was acquired by publicly traded company AmTrust
(NASDAQ: AFSI) (!!)
In the clients words…
Conclusion
Inbound Marketing is a marathon, however, if push comes to shove, it’s possible to amplify inbound efforts using paid media. So long as proper research is conducted and there’s an in-depth understanding of who you are targeting and their buyer’s journey, it’s possible to generate amazing results in a short time frame and even get acquired.
B2B Marketing Case studies Inbound Marketing 
