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lalexander
HubSpot Employee
HubSpot Employee

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Next week’s Ask Me Anything host is Kyle Denhoff, who directs HubSpot's global lead generation campaigns. His previous AMA was a hit, so we've brought him back to answer your recent questions on branding & lead gen.
 
Kyle's team is responsible for bringing cutting-edge marketing campaigns to life in multiple markets and languages. With a background in software, health care, IT, and sports, he’s a seasoned pro in lead generation, branding, and marketing strategy.
 
Drop your questions on running global lead gen campaigns, brand messaging and positioning, and rallying a team of international stakeholders below, and Kyle will answer them from 9am - 5pm EST on Thursday, August 6!
 
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14 Replies 14
jonathan_unger
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

I think I'm a little late, but as it still says "Open for Questions" Smiley Happy ...

 

Hi Kyle - we recently conducted a test on LinkedIn hoping to prove that priming an audience with branding content would then make them more likely to convert on a later lead-gen offer. 

 

We exposed one group to a very popular brand-centric video, and then showed a separate lead gen form ad to those who viewed for a significant amount of time. At the same time we ran the lead gen form ad to a control group who was not exposed.

 

It's very expensive to generate enough volume to reach statistical significance for a test like this on LinkedIn, but we gave it a go anyway. Unfortunately we didn't really see any difference between the test and control groups.

 

So my questions are:

 

1.) Do you have a cheaper way to test this hypothesis? I know what all the studies say about how branding investments makes lead gen easier, but I would like to prove it for our organization and sell that idea internally.

 

2.) Have you done a "brand-to-demand" test before and what results did you see?

0 Upvotes
KDenhoff
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Hey Jonathan,

 

Great question! We're actually running a very similar test. 

 

Can I ask what your KPI is? CPL or value of the lead (average sales price).

 

It makes sense that the brand advertising creative would provide an assist on your lead generation efforts. 

 

We have tested this strategy on both LinkedIn and Facebook. 

We continue to see the lowest CPL on Facebook look-a-like audiences. Showing acquisition content to the LAL audience outperforms most.

That being said, one thing we are waiting on is the value of the leads. We've been running this exact test for about 30-days. We're going to run the test for 60-days and see if the leads mature into customers. 

 

I would recommend that you give your test time to see if the lead quality is high. 

 

That may determine if you're still willing to invest in more expensive ad placements. 

0 Upvotes
jonathan_unger
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Thanks for the quick reply! Great to hear you're conducting something similar.

 

We're looking specifically at CPL (really CPMQL) and pipeline created. Our sales cycles are too long to wait for deal closures on an experiment like this.

 

Moving the experiment to Facebook makes a lot of sense and would lower our risk. We've likewise seen very low CPLs there - espeically compared to LinkedIn - but quality is lacking so we rarely devote ad spend there. Still, if we prove the hypothesis on one platform it should be applicable across the board.

0 Upvotes
KDenhoff
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Love it! Have my coffee. Ready to go!

0 Upvotes
Drishtii
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Thank you for taking the time out to answer our questions Kyle!

 

I have a few for you here: 

 

1. When trying out new channels for lead generation, how do you prioritize them? And how would you experiment - Would you try to bring in TOFU audience first and then push for demo requests? Or try it out one after the other?
For context, we are a subscription-based SaaS company. 

 

2. How long do you wait and invest in a new channel until you decide to pull the plug and say "This is not working"?

KDenhoff
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Hi Drishtii,

 

Great questions!

 

1) When selecting new channels and tactics I always ask myself two questions first. 

  • What is my objective? Lead Generation
  • Who is my audience? (be specific here)

Once I know the audience, I want to lean into channels where they spend time. You don't have to be active on every single channel. Just the channels where you can reach and engage your audience. My priority is always organic search first.

Next is setting up your funnel. So we know the channels where our audience spends their time, but our audience can be broken into segments.

 

Let's use marketers as an example.

 

Audience Segment #1: Marketers who have never heard of you.

Audience Segment #2: Marketers who have visited your site but never converted.

Audience Segment #3: Marketers who have converted but never purchased. 

Your messaging to each of these segments is going to be slightly different. 

 

Audience Segment #1: Messaging that introduces this segment to your brand

Audience Segment #2: Messaging that offers this segmenet value through education

Audience Segment #3: Messaging that offers this segment a demo.

 

I believe in building a funnel that nurtures to a demo. Not necessarily asking people to demo right away. Let them get to know you first. By offering value first, you will see higher conversion rates and close rates down the road.

 

Once that funnel is set up for a specific channel and optimized, now you can experiment with another channel. 

Start with a channel that your audience spends their time on. Create a specific offering for that channel. Then invest in a 3 month experiment. 

 

You'll learn a lot right away. Your cost may be too high. But you need to optimize the experiment and give it time to resonate. If it doesn't after 3 months, you can try something new. 

 

For our audience, the best channels for lead gen are:

  • Organic Search (Blog + Offers)
  • Facebook Advertising
  • Marketing Partnerships (email)

I will say, never give up on a channel completely. Timing plays a big role. You can always revist a channel if your audience changes behaviors.

GregBrown
Member

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

This is going to be great!

 

@SkylerSchmanski@LBeresford-Ward@Rolf@Pagenoi@LROADY - I think this may be of interest to you!

KDenhoff
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Hey Greg and team!

 

How's your morning? What can I help with?

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RyanHilliard
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Have you ever created device specific funnels for acquisition since a free trial or account creation makes less sense from a UX standpoint on a mobile device? Something like content on mobile or email onboarding that tries to pull them to desktop where users can take the right actions.

KDenhoff
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Hey Ryan,

Great question, I'm thinking of one mobile specific play I've run in the past, but I'd love to learn a little more.

What the objective? Lead Generation, User Gen, Click-to-call?

Who's the audience? 

What are we selling?

RyanHilliard
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

The end goal is the same, regardless of device: drive more customers. We have a few B2B SaaS products but our Freemium Corporate Wellness Solution and our On-Demand Paid Expertise Solution would come to mind. 

 

Corporate wellness is free to sign up and free for 100 employees. You can create your account but onboarding can't really happen on mobile.

 

SkillSpring is a 2 sided marketplace engine. Free to sign up but you can't implement the code on mobile or configure your account. 

 

In both cases, they can complete forms on mobile, but onboarding can't really happen. Just curious how you have leaned into that with Hubspot since it is a similar predicament while user behavior is what it is.

0 Upvotes
KDenhoff
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

At HubSpot we lean into the policy that if you do what's best for the customer expeirence, everything else will follow.

 

If you're driving people to a mobile experience and they can't complete the on-boarding (and that is the expected outcome of the user flow) then it may be causing people to have a poor experience. 

 

One way that we've tried to solve for that is through email or app.

 

As a user I go through the mobile experience and complete the form, as the form is completed a message displays asking me to check my email on desktop for onboarding instructions.

 

The second user flow that I've seen be successful is SMS. 

 

As a user I go throug the mobile experience and complete the form, a SMS message is sent to me with a welcome message and link to download the app. Once I download the app, I'm able to access the content in a preferred format. 

 

It's tempting to drive mobile traffic to your sign up flows, but if the experience isn't there, you could have mobile as an omission.

 

0 Upvotes
mharrison
HubSpot Employee
HubSpot Employee

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

What an exciting opportunity to learn more about lead generation and branding best practices. @jtAccusoft@aporteus and @amabilemorgan20 I think this might be of interest to you! 

KDenhoff
Contributor

[Closed] AMA with HubSpot's Head of Global Acquisition Campaigns, Kyle Denhoff

Hi Margaret, 

How can I help? What are you currently working on?

 

 

0 Upvotes