Quick Overview
Since 2006, Demand Metric has been steadily building a subscriber base of professional marketers by offering downloadable business tools, templates, checklists, and calculators. The site’s hybrid sales model uses online offers to convert visitors into monthly memberships, while an inside sales team targets mid-sized enterprises for group subscriptions. Check out how they use multiple email nurturing tracks to find high-quality leads for the sales team, and how the addition of video content previews has doubled conversion rates for online sales.
Target Market
Primary market: Directors or VPs of marketing at mid-sized enterprises ($25 million – $500 million in sales). Independent marketing consultants are a secondary market.
Content Model
Demand Metric provides more than 300 downloadable tools, templates, checklists, calendars, calculators, and spreadsheets to help marketers accomplish their day-to-day tasks, such as:
- Project tracking template
- Sales and marketing performance dashboard
- Marketing ROI calculator
- Department budget template
They develop the majority of that content in-house, with a team of two full-time analysts and two contract writers. The process involves studying third-party research, articles, and resources to determine best practices around a subject. From there, they create a how-to article and one or more actionable tools. The team also relies on its member community to provide examples and advice for new content. They occasionally will barter with an established expert to create or review a new tool.
They’re currently creating about 10 new documents or tools a month, and updating several documents annually, as needed.
There’s a free membership level that allows visitors to preview (but not download) content. Members who choose the top-level monthly subscription or an annual group membership receive access to more than 6,500 research reports from technology research firm Aberdeen Group. The company pays Aberdeen an incremental fee for allowing their members access to that research database.
Revenue Streams
Paid memberships account for about 90% of the company’s revenue (about $250,000 annually). Those memberships are split evenly between annual subscriptions and monthly subscriptions.
Annual subscriptions are sold by an inside sales team that targets mid-sized organizations. They cost for $1,497 a year for up to 10 users. Customers wanting access for more than 10 users negotiate custom rates. In addition to Demand Metric’s content, those subscribers get access to the Aberdeen Group research database, and can contact Demand Metric’s own analysis for assistance on their projects.
Monthly subscriptions are offered at three price levels with different limits on access and additional services:
- $39 “Time Saver” — one download per month, analyst support by email
- $97 “Professional” — 10 downloads per month, analyst support by phone, tool customization
- $297 “Unlimited” — unlimited downloads for up to five users, custom tools and templates, priority analyst support, access to Aberdeen Group research
“Professional” subscriptions account for 80% of monthly memberships. Hopps cites a few factors that contribute to their ability to attract members at the mid-level price point: The “Professional” tier is the highlighted option on the primary membership offer page and the selected option on a pop-up offer screen that’s served to site visitors.
Besides memberships, the site has three other revenue streams:
1. Content licensing to sites such as Hubspot
2. Selling tool bundles on third-party sites such as DocStoc
3. Brokering/reselling third-party software to members
Marketing Tactics
SEO
Natural search is the top source of visitors to the site, attracting about 10,000 visitors per month, so the team recently began ramping up their SEO efforts. The team developed a new site design and began researching keywords and looking for pages that were leading and lagging in search traffic.
They discovered that some of their existing documents and tools didn’t feature the proper keywords in their names. For example, they had a tool called a “Project Priority Index.”
“No one in the world searches for project priority index,” says Hopps.
Instead, they looked for low-competition, niche search terms that generated 200-1,000 searches per month and began using those to rename and retag documents and adjust page titles and H1 tags. For example, the “Project Priority Index” was renamed “Strategic Project Rank Template,” and is now the top result on Google for that search term.
Video and PDF content previews
Several months ago, the team added free previews of premium content such as short (30 second-2 minute) video overviews of premium tools, and 1-2 page PDF previews of how-to documents. Results — video previews, in particular, had a huge impact: Conversion rates on those pages doubled.
Inside sales
Inside sales is responsible for generating annual group subscriptions for mid-size organizations. The team uses a combination of email, outbound calling, online demos, and on-site visits to find and convert prospects.
To optimize the work of an inside sales team, Hopps recommends tracking metrics diligently to improve effectiveness and efficiency. His team tracks things like the number of dials per day, demos per day, conversions per day, etc., and then develops ratios to see where the team needs improvement.
“If we see a lot of demos but a low close rate, maybe we need to work with that person on objection handling and closing.”
Automated drip-email nurturing
Contacts generated by the inside sales team and free members are placed into an automated drip email nurturing funnel. For example, if a visitor signs up for a free membership, he or she is asked to specify their primary areas of interest — e.g., product management or lead generation.
Then, every three or four days, the prospect receives a new email with content relevant to those interest areas. The team uses a marketing automation platform, tied into their CRM system, to track each contact’s actions and to score leads based on email and web activity.
This nurturing has helped the inside sales team focus on higher quality leads. Before using marketing automation, the team typically generated one sale for every 300 dials. Now, they generate one sale for every 133 dials.
“Anyone interested in doing a hybrid model like this, it’s a huge requirement to have a marketing automation system that can connect with your CRM platform,” says Hopps.
Technology and Vendors Used
Camtasia Studio: On-screen video recording tool
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
DocSnaps: Finance and bookkeeping platform
http://www.docsnaps.com/
Google Analytics: Site analytics tool
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Hubspot: Inbound marketing platform
http://www.hubspot.com
Pardot: Marketing automation and email system
http://www.pardot.com/
Salesforce.com: CRM platform
http://www.salesforce.com/
Scribd: Embedded PDF preview tool
http://www.scribd.com/
Screencast: Embedded video hosting service
http://www.screencast.com/
Synapse India: Web design and SEO provider
http://www.synapseindia.com/
About Jesse Hopps
Hopps has serious, in-the-trenches experience selling online subscriptions: He worked his way through college as a sales rep for a Canadian research firm, cold calling mid-sized enterprises to entice them to purchase annual subscriptions. Rather than scarring him for life, the experience inspired him to create Demand Metric after completing his degree.
“I saw that the ‘Build once, sell many times’ model was really profitable — especially in years two, three and four,” he says. “I saw there was a huge opportunity in content-based businesses.”
Subscription Insider’s Analysis
We’re impressed with the team’s robust email nurturing program. Creating specialized funnels for different topic area adds more relevance than the typical, single-track nurturing programs we’ve seen from other B2B sites. Offering short video tours of the content is also a great way to share information with a busy, professional audience. The fact that conversion rates doubled after adding the videos proves the old adage, “Show, don’t tell.”
However, we think the homepage itself could do a better job explaining the content and services to new visitors. By featuring a large registration form and special bonus offer for new members, it seems to assume that visitors know all about the service and are ready to dive in. Adding more information about the content, and a list of current customers or testimonials (such as the video testimonials used later in the registration process), would help visitors understand who the site is for and why they should sign up.
http://www.demandmetric.com
