Nick Sal's HubSpot Inbound Marketing and Consulting Blog

Assessing the impact of HubSpot's new Partner Inbound Success Training - some food for thought:

Well it's been a big week for me.  Not JUST because of HubSpot Academy's #WaffleWednesdays or even the fact that next week is #Inbound14 (although the excitement is palpable).  No, it's been a big week because it marked the 100th day since we launched the fully revamped version of HubSpot's Partner Inbound Success Training.  The time has come to reflect on the early returns and start to measure.  The thoughts that this milestone has got me chewing on lately are: Has it been working? Has all the work been worth it?  

I'm re listening to an audio book that our team leader @ HubSpot Academy, Mark Kilens, recommend to me last year -  Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen by David Novak, CEO of Yum Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell)

The book is great because it's written kindof like a guide and ends with self-assessments at the end of each chapter. I was struck by chapter 3 - Be an avid learner (sound familiar?) and the questions he asks the listener /reader to assess themselves on.   Maybe asking these questions and reflecting on your answers to them will help inspire insights and actions to help you "take more people with you" on whatever it is you are trying to accomplish in your life right now:

I just returned from my honeymoon with my wife which we chose to spend at the all-inclusive Excellence Resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.  As someone who spends his days trying to serve and delight customers, I was impressed with the examples of customer delight we experiences here and thought they would be a good set of lessons to share with any business that wants to delight more of their customers into becoming promoters of their products, services, or brands. 

As an Inbound Professor who is part of HubSpot's Customer Training Team @ HubSpot Academy, I get a lot of questions from customers who attend our product training classes each week.  Occationally, I get really really GOOD questions from customers that really make me think and write a long answer.  I expect that other HubSpot users are asking themselves the same thing, so I thought it might be helpful if I shared excertps of the questions asked, and the answers I gave.  

HubSpot customers often asking me for average landing page conversion rate statistics.  "What's a good conversion rate for my industry?"   They hope we can point them to that magic number to shoot for.

My answer, may either excite or disapoint you, depending on your attitude:  Landing page conversion rates are highly subjective.   They depend on a range of factors that each inbound marketer controls themselves such as:

• The visitors being sent to the page (Are there a lot? Are they repeat visitors?  What were they looking at before the page?  Do they match your target persona(s)?)  
• The offer for the landing page itself
• The form configuration:  (How many fields are there?  What types of fields are included i.e. what types of info are you requesting in exchange for the offer?  
• How is the form configured to function? (Are you using Smart fields, progressive profiling, marked fields as required?  What does the 'submit' button copy say?)  
• The copy used: (Headlines, descriptive text, formatting of the text, amount of text?)
• The images on the page: (Size, quality, descriptiveness/attractiveness, positioning on the page) 

Shooting for "industry averages" can be dangerous.   However I do think that if a customer were following the landing page best practices we use most of the time here at HubSpot and that I teach in HubSpot Academy's Introduction to Landing Pages training class, they could expect to convert 20 percent of the non-PPC based traffic they drive to that page*.  

Could they convert more?   Certainly!   But that's a solid first base that most of the customers I train feel is attainable.

HubSpot does publish stats around this type of thing under our annual "State of Inbound Marketing" report and also in the benchmarks portion of the Goals app found in every portal under Settings. 

Screenshot of my HubSpot SMART Goals Setting App which can be found under 'Settings' 

But, all these things said, I would remind HubSpot users that there is no better benchmark than their own past performance of previously published landing pages.   So a better question might be, "What are some of the best practices from current HubSpot users (including ourselves) that can get our own average landing page conversion rate within our portal to 20%+?  We actually have an ebook that walks you through some of our top customer example landing pages and how they got greater than FIFTY PERCENT conversion rates....but you'll have to come to the Landing Page Training class (available within your portal under Academy >> HubSpot Training >> Converting Visitors to Leads >> Landing Pages to get it!  :)

Know what that means?   Get started publishing landing pages and get them out there using promotional tools in your account so we get some juicy performance data to learn from and determine next steps!  :)

I hope this helps - Do you have a different opinion or approach for when people ask for "average" landing page conversion rates? please let me know your thoughts below.

*Why do I say non-PPC?  Only because I have limited experience working with PPC advertising, and my returns on my own campaigns have not been that great.  If anybody reading this is a veteran with PPC, please feel free to contribute your two centers in the comments thread below.