HubSpot added a new tool to its Grader suite, today. The Marketing Grader – a replacement for HubSpot’s Website Grader tool - analyzes 30+ measures of marketing effectiveness and grades the business on a 1-100 scale. Taking the concept of website grading a step further, Marketing Grader evaluates performance at the “top of the funnel” (the ability to generate new interest and traffic), “the middle of the funnel” (whether that traffic converts into prospects, leads and customers) and analytics (measuring and comparing the right things). MORE >>

Despite the many business benefits of blogging , it remains an underutilized tactic. While blog adoption is actually slightly higher among small to midsized businesses (SMBs), roughly half are still not taking advantage of this medium. Leads. According to research from HubSpot , “Businesses with websites that have 401-1000 web pages get six times more leads than those with 51-100 pages. That works out to an ongoing cost of $36,000 per year for an appreciating asset (blog traffic builds over time as more content is added and authority is built). MORE >>

Much will be said over the next few days about HubSpot’s $32M Series D round.  The pattern of conversations will look something like this: First there will be a burst of emotion (observers will shout congratulations from the rooftops and laud HubSpot for attracting Google Ventures and Salesforce.com as investors).  Second there’ll be a wave of sober dialogue about what this investment means for HubSpot’s business.  should note that Eloqua serves a very different market than HubSpot. HubSpot is going big – on small business. We tracked 4.7 Reddit. MORE >>

Many digital marketers are using marketing automation tools to automate lead nurturing. But if you want to expand your business, you also need to continuously add new leads to your database. Traditional lead sources are tradeshows or lead programs with magazines. Those are definitely useful, but the number of leads is low and the cost per lead is high. It may be attractive to shift more budget to generating leads via your company’s website. That takes a lot of work upfront, but will result in ‘free’ traffic in the future. MORE >>

In a HubSpot eBook, the steps to developing lovable marketing are outlined: Develop a Stellar Marketing Offer - It should be educational and helpful, focus on the right stage of the sales funnel, and be in the right formats. Build Workflows - Workflows are an automated series of emails that pre-qualifies early-stage leads before handing them over to sales. Workflows are also known as lead nurturing, marketing automation, drip marketing, and auto-responders. Their goal is to make your new leads more sales-ready. Further explanation on HubSpot 3 in this 7:20 video. MORE >>