027: Growth Marketing Lessons From Inbound.org’s 5x User Growth w/Sam Mallikarjunan

When I read Sam’s post “The Hard Choices Behind How Inbound.org Grew 5x” (they now have over 160,000 members) I knew I needed to get Sam on Experts On The Wire.
We dissect many of the elements of their growth, including – why you need to ignore your earliest adopters, keeping a team focused on one thing (only the things you can grow with statistical significance!), how they leveraged SEO, their homepage algorithm – and the secrets behind the “persona” and micro-copy on Inbound (hint: it’s modeled after a real person!)
Enjoy!

And don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!
Links

* HubSpot
* Inbound
* How Inbound Grew 5x
* Moz
* How Not to F**k Up Your First 90 Days as CMO
* Stack Overflow
* Quora
* How HubSpot Writes Microcopy
* MailChimp Style Guide
* 37 Signals
* Why Medium Works
* My Favorite Sales Email Ever
* How to Sell Better Than Amazon

People

* Sam Mallikarjunan
* Dharmesh Shah
* Rand Fishkin
* Mary Green
* Ed Fry
* Alex Schultz
* Alaura Weaver
* Brian Lenney
* Casey Henry
* Gary Vaynerchuk

Agenda
What is HubSpot Labs?
Inbound.org

* “It started as Dharmesh and Rand’s side project but got too big.”
* How Inbound grew (a lot)
* “We tried to create the Avengers team of the marketing world.”

Growth Tactics

* “Your early adopters will rarely form the core of your future growth.”
* “Velocity indicates value.”
* Featured content
* “Should we allow people to sign-up without Twitter?”

Personas

* The why is more important than the who
* Implicit and explicit data

Measurement

* Statistical significance
* “Let’s get to X number of subscribers before we start doing advanced lead attribution.”
* Build a reliable bank of data

SEO and Inbound.org

* “We’re going to stop building new features and focus on SEO.”
* The Smartest Inbound Marketing Community Online
* Using microcopy
* “Tone/personality of site is modeled after……”
* “Puts happy juice in your brain.”

Depth and Width