How On The Stage Turned Marketing Into a Revenue Generator

The goal of our partnership was to work with their team to create and implement a marketing and sales strategy using HubSpot to drive holistic change and growth.

We worked as an extension of OTS’ marketing team to make marketing a core revenue generating function.

They needed to optimise how data was collected and used within HubSpot to build a long-term strategy centred around inbound marketing. 

The following case study offers insight into OTS’ strategic approach to a campaign created in 2022 using HubSpot.

Attracting & Nurturing Inbound Leads

OTS had a robust outbound sales process, but they were missing out on the potential of inbound leads. They lacked an established inbound marketing strategy to attract and nurture relevant and engaged leads, and as a result, missed out on a significant revenue stream.

Data Symmetry

When we first began to work with OTS, they had a wealth of data, but it was scattered across different platforms and departments, which made it difficult to gain a centralised view of prospects and customers. The team spent a significant amount of time completing manual data entry work and struggled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies in their data. They needed a streamlined approach to data collection, management, and reporting to make better-informed decisions.

Reporting on Core Objectives

OTS needed a clear picture of their marketing and sales performance to make informed decisions and drive growth. The company lacked a consistent and reliable reporting process, making it difficult to identify what was working and what wasn't. They needed to actively report on key performance indicators (KPIs) to make informed decisions and communicate insights to the wider team.

Making Marketing a Revenue Generating Function

To increase marketing’s contribution to total pipeline and revenue, we first set out to create a strategic roadmap. OTS’ HubSpot structure needed to support their inbound marketing goals. 

The Strategic Roadmap

Our partnership began with a workshop to identify key elements to optimise team efficiencies, integrate systems, and ensure transparency across the business.

Persona Development - We collaborated with the team at OTS to develop buyer personas, taking into consideration each persona's core needs as well as understanding the market OTS operates within. These personas were built into HubSpot to ensure content creation and lead generation were in alignment. 

Paid Media Strategy - HubSpot's Ads tools provided time-saving and contextual tools. We used the centralised ad platform to build and manage all paid media campaigns.

Sales Process - Our team mapped and consolidated OTS' sales processes in HubSpot and identified under-utilised features. The roadmap included a series of recommendations to improve traffic generation, lead qualification, and customer success stages. This included lead scoring, progressive form fields, nurture workflows, surveys, and HubSpot integrations.

Reporting & Attribution - After structuring and connecting OTS' data, we mapped the customer journey and developed a series of reports. Attribution reports and campaign dashboards played a critical role in reviewing content performance and measuring the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

By creating these foundations in HubSpot, OTS then began to adopt a content-driven model and focused on inbound campaigns. 

“Our goal was to reach a place where the majority of our business is coming from inbound as opposed to outbound.” 

OTS utilises HubSpot as a comprehensive marketing solution, equipped with the necessary features and data to effectively target their audience personas and yield favourable marketing outcomes.

Creating a top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel campaign in HubSpot

OTS exhibited their dedication to positioning themselves as leaders in the industry through the creation of valuable content tailored to their distinct target personas. As part of the Director’s Guide to Tech Week Campaign, OTS needed to create a content plan that addressed the Director persona’s core needs and offered the support theatre educators need with directing and running tech week.

To generate demand for the guide and convert leads, a campaign in HubSpot was created consisting of paid social, landing pages, organic social and email nurturing workflows. 

Our paid media team created a targeted audience to promote the guide across paid social. We tested a series of ad copies and since October 2022, 29% of paid media traffic converted to contacts. 

In addition to paid media activity, the guide was cross promoted organically. Adopting an approach OTS calls, “automization of content”, we created 15+ social posts based on content created in the initial guide. These organic posts were shared in addition to daily engagement posts to drive awareness to specific blog posts and the landing page before converting 40% of page views. 

To continue cross-promotion, the guide was distributed to both prospects and existing customers. OTS’ segmented prospect list has been growing through the promotion of other guides and ebooks, in addition to their monthly newsletter. By leveraging data cleansing best practices in HubSpot, they delivered this promotional email to an audience of 9,000+ contacts and saw a click through rate of 2.92%.

The sales team at OTS then nurtured these leads, which resulted in 14% of all inbound opportunities coming from this campaign. 

OTS achieved strong results across the buyer’s journey as a result of our combined marketing efforts and strategic timing on the content piece. The Director’s Guide to Tech Week campaign was strategically planned to go live when the audience from this persona would be testing light and sound performance before performance week. With the right social plan and nurture workflows in place, OTS was able to capture high-quality leads and convert them to opportunities.