Remarkable Content with Ian Faison HubSpot: B2B Marketing Lessons from their Shift to YouTube with HubSpot’s Director of Marketing, Kyle Denhoff
Changing your content strategy is - in business speak - “scary.” The market is ever shifting and it’s hard to know what platforms to be on, whether to make static images, videos, audio, or blog posts. What do you invest in? Don’t worry, we have answers for you.
We’re giving you steps to shift your content strategy in a way that is grounded in research so you can build brand awareness, drive demand, and still sleep at night.
In this episode, we’re learning from a company that’s already well into their content strategy transformation - HubSpot. Kyle Denhoff, Director of Marketing at HubSpot, is sharing with us how to use market research to drive demand, how to experiment to see what’s working, and about all the nuances to building a portfolio that gets people to your website and across the finish line. So get ready to dip your toe into new content in this episode of Remarkable.
About our guest, Kyle Denhoff
Kyle Denhoff is Director of Marketing at HubSpot. He joined the company in January 2019 as Group Manager of Marketing (Acquisition). Before he became a Marketing Strategist, Kyle played 7 years of professional lacrosse. He has also served as Director of Digital Marketing and Communications at Fresenius Medical Care North America, and held other marketing roles at Xerox and Haley Marketing Group.
About HubSpot
HubSpot is an innovative cloud-based CRM platform designed to help align sales and marketing teams, foster sales enablement, boost ROI and optimize your inbound marketing strategy to generate more qualified leads. HubSpot has over 184,000 customers in more than 120 countries around the world.
About the benefits of putting content on YouTube
Next to Google, it's the second largest search engine—and the number one for video.
YouTube has more than 2.70 billion active users as of 2023. Youtube Premium has 80 million active users worldwide in 2023. 52% of internet users access YouTube at least once a month. Over 122 million people visit YouTube every day via its Website and Apps.
Videos are 12 times more likely to be watched than text is read.
A survey by Unbounce found that videos on landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 80%. A survey by Digiday found that 64% of consumers made a purchase after watching a branded social media video. A survey by AdWeek found that 85% of consumers find video helpful when making a purchase decision.
YouTube is free to use.
You can post cell phone videos - they don’t need to have high production value.
YouTube is a Google product, so your videos are more likely to rank in search results. There’s a definite boost to your SEO strategy.
YouTube allows users to add captions and transcripts for greater accessibility.
What B2B Companies Can Learn From HubSpot’s shift to YouTube:
- Use market research to drive demand. And create media in the format and location your audience prefers. If they’re listening to podcasts on Apple or watching videos on TikTok, follow suit. Kyle says, “When we look at the market itself, most folks are moving to new channels and new mediums to consume news and education and entertainment. And so you have research companies like Nielsen sharing that YouTube is now the top streaming platform in the United States ahead of Netflix. And so there's this shift happening where folks are going from these traditional media companies to some of these independent media properties to get their information. And so we want to make sure that we are there and meeting our audience and providing them value.” Instead of relying on traditional marketing like buying ads, make a strategic investment in building channels and content that supports your audience’s media appetite to drive demand more effectively.
- Run experiments to see what’s working. You don’t have to go all in on a marketing strategy. Instead take a tactical approach and experiment on a new channel. Kyle says HubSpot started their shift to YouTube by investing some in video production and seeing if they can convert viewership into demand for the business. So they ran conversion rate optimization experiments, and he said, “We inched into it. We did that for a month or two, and then we built a big enough data set where we said, ‘We really think this can be a meaningful channel for the business and that's when we can build that business case to invest all in on YouTube and build out that network.” What they’ve found is not only does YouTube build brand awareness, but that they’ve figured out how to get people from YouTube over to the HubSpot website.
- Cultivate a portfolio of talent. We hear again and again on Remarkable that humans buy from humans. So enlist trusted people within your company as well as external creators as brand ambassadors. Kyle says, “There are personality driven brands and institutional brands. We’re all going to end up in a house of personal brands. There's going to be people within your organization or that you build partnerships with that are trusted sources of information. And they're going to be on camera. They're going to be on mic. And they don't have to have the full TV studio production. They can have some good at home cameras and mics and help support your prospects and customers to get more conversions for your business. And so I do think that's where we're headed is folks want to trust other people and brands are going to need to figure out, ‘Okay, who internally is going to be a great representation of my brand?’” It humanizes and lends authenticity to your brand.
- Assign a key value metric to each channel. Kyle says, the way HubSpot thinks about this is that ”each one of our media programs can serve really two objectives. One is it can support the business's goals of reach and influence. Can we create demand for HubSpot in the market by driving brand impressions to our target audiences? The other thing our media properties can do is they can convert audiences into leads for the business.” So for YouTube, for example, they track new, unique, organic views. For podcasts, they look at reach or listenership. And they’re able to use these metrics to decide where to invest in more content.
Quotes
*“The framework we go through is, What's the objective? Who's our audience? What channels are we going to use to reach that audience? And then what content can we make for them?’” - Kyle Denhoff
*“You could have a podcast, turn it into a video podcast, put it on YouTube, and the audiences are very different. So even though you've built a show for a given persona, the people who listen to podcasts in the car or at the gym are very different than people who are on YouTube and browsing on their laptop or on their phone.” - Kyle Denhoff
*”Most brands need a mix. Like, I'm going to invest in these core media properties for the audiences I know I'm going to want to reach long term. And then if there are these brand building or spike plays where we want to reach a target audience during a given set period of time, let's talk about advertising.” - Kyle Denhoff
*”You don't necessarily need a ton of money. Get something out there, get the data points, build the case. And then go back to your business leaders and say, ‘I believe that if we continue investing in this podcast or in this YouTube channel, we can hit these business goals and here's the budget I'll need.’“ - Kyle Denhoff
*”Going in cold is the mistake I've seen from a lot of folks, which is I have this big vision, I have this big budget ask, and then it doesn't happen. And then you're like, ‘Oh man, I'm kind of defeated.’ Just start. I mean, you can go to Best Buy and get a Logic cam and a Blue Yeti microphone, and you can deliver value to your audience right away. And you'd be surprised at how many people are going to watch that video and then ultimately take an action.” - Kyle Denhoff
Time Stamps
[0:55] Meet Kyle Denhoff, Director of Marketing at HubSpot
[1:30] Learn more about HubSpot’s content network
[3:25] How is the market shifting?
[5:52] What is HubSpot’s content strategy?
[8:00] What are the benefits of putting content on YouTube?
[9:58] How does HubSpot experiment with putting content on a new platform?
[11:33] How does Kyle’s team decide what kinds of videos to make?
[15:10] Why are personality-driven brands more effective than institutional brands?
[17:56] How do you build a network of creators?
[28:02] How does HubSpot appeal to different target personas?
[30:32] How does HubSpot track what’s working and what’s not?
[33:15] How does HubSpot know when to increase or decrease their investment in a particular channel?
[34:47] How does Kyle prove the ROI of content?
[36:52] The importance of creating evergreen content
[38:39] Do you need a big budget to make effective content?
[46:56] What’s next for HubSpot?
Links
Check out HubSpot’s YouTube channel
About Remarkable!
Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com.
In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK.
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