Hippo CMMS grew customers by 1700% in the first half of 2018 from Organic Search. Inbound Mantra could not have been more excited to be a part of this journey. Here is their inbound marketing growth story.
Hippo CMMS is a leading maintenance management software (cloud-based) that provides simple solutions for different aspects of maintenance management including but not limited to work order management, preventive maintenance, equipment management, CMMS Software and inventory management. Based in Canada, it is the simplicity and ease of use of the the Hippo CMMS’ software that has helped it acquire customers – big and small – throughout the world.
The CMMS Software market happens to be extremely competitive with enterprise size companies on one end like IBM, to fleet-footed well-funded startups pitching the latest in CMMS, on the other. To keep growing, Hippo CMMS had been practicing inbound marketing. But, growth was tepid. Hippo CMMS has also been a HubSpot power user since the last two years.
In 2018, Hippo CMMS has a goal to double organic traffic and leads from its two main geographies – US and Canada. That was the goal with which Inbound Mantra came on board in January 2018.
Hippo CMMS faced the following challenges.
There was one other challenge, a very unexpected one for a long standing HubSpot Partner like Inbound Mantra. The Hippo CMMS management had unhappy experiences with previous inbound agencies including a HubSpot Diamond inbound marketing agency. We faced this during the proposal phase, when projected organic traffic numbers and expected Top 5 SERP rankings were met with the comment, ‘We have heard that before’. We were already under pressure. In hindsight, it was a good thing.
Inbound Mantra was excited and nervous.
The opportunity excited Inbound Mantra not just because we consider ourselves experts with SaaS companies (what’s modesty anyway) but also because it’s always been about the entire inbound marketing strategy rather than solely content or lead generation. There was also the added opportunity to impact Hippo’s revenue thereby demonstrating ROI.
We started off with the brief – “Grow organic traffic and leads from US and Canada“.
The initial research involved understanding Hippo’s business, market, competition, revenue model, buyer personas and the current state of inbound marketing. The research combined with the brief helped us formulate the inbound marketing strategy for Hippo.
The strategy was to follow the inbound marketing methodology and align it with Hippo’s brief which led to prioritizing the “Attract” stage and creating a 12 month traffic and lead projection. Yes you heard that right – we projected the traffic and leads for every month. Within the “Attract” stage, Inbound Mantra adopted a high risk strategy focused on 12 Hero Keywords.
The strategy was executed as under:
This stage focused predominantly on SEO, as well as an increase in social media engagement.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Schema – Review Star rating
Social Media
This stage focused on maximizing the conversion rate using CRO tactics, website redesign as well as content.
Before and After redesigning the homepage
Analysing ‘time to close’ for existing customers, it was found that the buying cycle was 3 to 6 months. Basis this finding, following was undertaken to engage leads.
911 eBook Cover
We also managed to reactive some leads with the following email and retargeting campaigns.
What good are the leads if they don’t close into customers and revenues?
To enable Hippo CMMS sales reps close leads better, it was important to reduce lead response time (using Round Robin Workflow) and also equip them with more information (using HubSpot Salesforce mapping) and intelligence (using Predictive Lead Scoring).
Predictive vs Manual Lead Scoring
Sales reps view of Lead Scoring within Salesforce
Using the above strategy Inbound Mantra inched towards helping Hippo CMMS by achieving the monthly proposed goals of traffic, conversion rate and leads. While we’ve met and exceeded our traffic goals, when it comes to leads we’ve lagged behind in the last month, but hey, that’s a part of the game, isn’t it? It also keeps us humble.
Daniel Golub, General Manager, Hippo CMMS
“MS (Maintenance Software) company that applies the SaaS business model. In our increasing competitive space we need to keep the leads coming in and ensure cost per lead is manageable. Hippo CMMS has worked with 4 SEO consultants over the last 7 years. Inbound Mantra has been by far the best. Unlike other providers in the past who won’t commit to results or say you won’t see anything until 6 months, these guys have show great results in 3 months. They’ve also been instrumental in pushing out our lead scoring, updating our marketing automation, content creation and more. Basically, they are our in house marketing team and work so quickly that it is hard to keep up. They’re awesome.”
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