insights! #102: Your traffic numbers in the basement? Here's how to pull them back up

Joubin Rahimi

Fantastic that you're back for a new episode of Insights. My name is Joubin, Joubin Rahimi, and joining me today is Ben Harmanus. Hi Ben.

Ben Harmanus

Hi, lovely to be here.

Joubin Rahimi

Yes, brilliant, because we're starting straight away: traffic crisis, and you have the answer to it. So stay tuned. But first, how it came about: you had the masterclass, and we had the masterclass at the same time too, we just realised. And then Ben happened to be here at the stand through another contact, and we got chatting. We got chatting.

Ben Harmanus

We got onto the topic of content straight away.

Joubin Rahimi

Right.

Joubin Rahimi

And HubSpot. You're at HubSpot after all. Maybe you'd like to say a couple of sentences about your role, everyone knows HubSpot.

Ben Harmanus

Yes, so I'm on the media team at HubSpot. I've now been at HubSpot for five years and have been through many stations there, from product marketing through brand marketing, to now the media team. Very happy in the media team, because we experiment a lot there with content and that's why we've found many answers to the traffic crisis. And when I talk about the traffic crisis, I mean traditionally generating traffic via websites and blogs.

Joubin Rahimi

And for us, we have many B2C and D2C players who feel this themselves.

Joubin Rahimi

For B2B folks, they don't quite notice it yet. But ultimately through ChatGPT and changes at Google. Yes, Google has always... There are also nice statistics, studies too, that more and more people type in whole sentences, ask question and Google now basically answers it, so essentially ChatGPT has put something in there and that's changing game quite strongly.

Ben Harmanus

Yes.

Joubin Rahimi

Yes, your game too. Absolutely. And perhaps this from my point of view, correct me, we're also a HubSpot partner and customer. And what you're really great at is a lot of content. Content, how to do better. So it's not about the technicalities of how I use HubSpot, but how I do top-of-funnel, whatever that may be. You're excellent at that. But doesn't that get undermined by that, no?

Ben Harmanus

It depends.

Ben Harmanus

There is an answer. Now we're getting to it, exactly. Listen, pay attention. Yes, because it really is dramatic for many. You just said that in B2B you don't feel it so much either, but those who had already tried the HubSpot playbook over the last ten years. They're feeling it very strongly right now. We also showed the comparison of the curves, traffic curves, in the masterclass, and everyone who is in a similarly keyword-competitive field with us has the same insight. So they definitely feel it. Leads are going down. You can already see drop-offs in dramatic five-figure numbers, and so we need an answer. And it's quite clear that you can no longer generate leads the same way as before, or generate traffic the same way. You said it: search engines aren't becoming search engines, they're answer engines. And they don't actually want to send traffic elsewhere at all; rather, if you have a question, let's take something simple like getting a red wine stain out, you get the answer in the AI or in the search engine. Do I still need to go to the site for that? Probably not anymore. But where do we still want to read, see, watch content? For one thing, it's thought-leadership content.

Ben Harmanus

So thought leadership is still important to us. Opinion pieces, opinions are still important. People probably get more enjoyment watching us here in this interview and need us more for that than perhaps getting instructions for something, because that can be replicated so often with AI. What we're doing right now is harder to replicate with AI. We have a conversation, we might also go off on tangents.

Joubin Rahimi

We have a bit of fun with it.

Ben Harmanus

We even enjoy it. Exactly. People are suddenly much more important again. That's one thing, really thought-leader content that's unique and not so easily replicable with AI, because we are personalities - for some, perhaps. And then the other thing is finding different content formats. We're going heavily into YouTube, it's the second largest search engine in the world, and we find a lot of opportunities there too to generate content, or content, traffic, leads and also customers. So I had a pilot project now too, where we made tutorials in YouTube style and then say in the call to action: hey, why not try the Marketing Hub or our free CRM. People click, and once you have a video like that live, it can generate hundreds of customers over the years, so really not leads but customers, per month.

Joubin Rahimi

And how do you achieve thought leadership?

Joubin Rahimi

But you can't just say: right, now we're doing thought leadership, because they're still present worldwide too, right?

Ben Harmanus

The perfect question.

Ben Harmanus

That's a good question, because we used to have it so that we also had lots of content in the blog, where someone was in marketing and so they'd talk about social media or write an article. But were they the authority? No. And we're sharpening that now. So we really assign authority to individual employees, and Google knows who has authority. So I might not choose today to focus on talking about Google Ads. That's not my focus. I'm a marketer. But if I were to write an article about content strategy, about video marketing podcasting, then Google or answer engines would push me right up, because I can look back on 15, 20 years of history in that field.

Joubin Rahimi

This is mega exciting.

Joubin Rahimi

If I now have a company, then I actually need to check which of my employees is where and present at all.

Ben Harmanus

Ideally.

Joubin Rahimi

And then it's not just once, that was the mascot up front, but actually he has to push all the specialists into the spotlight.

Ben Harmanus

So it doesn't work to have Max Mustermann from sales talking about AI in content marketing today. If he has no reputation there, it gets difficult.

Ben Harmanus

One can of course work on building a reputation, but does it pay off? Does it help? Also nice when AI sees this person attends events, speaks on podcasts, gets invited everywhere, has written a book, then authority is of course incomparably stronger. And then you play the book-writing card on top.

Joubin Rahimi

Nobody actually buys a book, but it helps again on that level.

Ben Harmanus

I've written two books.

Joubin Rahimi

How well does it sell?

Ben Harmanus

It was certainly a bestseller. It's also recommended as a standard work, it's called Content Design, is certainly recommended as a standard work. It won't be enough on its own though.

Joubin Rahimi

Yes, great.

Ben Harmanus

I'll say it quite honestly: you won't get rich from it, you're right about that. Firstly, it was a need of mine to write a book. You won't become a millionaire from it, but for me it was still a mission, and yes, you do gain a certain authority from it too.

Joubin Rahimi

That's the important thing today, because we've also found that when you …

Joubin Rahimi

One of our staff members also wrote a book on web analytics with us, and that's quite different, also in the sales process, where we say: here, book

Joubin Rahimi

He says: Yes. Ah, okay.

Joubin Rahimi

"Even the publisher?" That's funny.

Ben Harmanus

Publisher also plays a role. I also have Hansa Verlag and so on. That's then already something different than, say, self-publishing.

Joubin Rahimi

Yes, I think self-publishing isn't worth much, somehow.

Ben Harmanus

Then the book obviously has to be the real hit.

Joubin Rahimi

Exactly. But then it doesn't reflect on who … that's not down to the brand.

Joubin Rahimi

Right.

Joubin Rahimi

What else are you doing besides HubSpot to avoid that? Because you have loads of content on that. So I understood video - so with the specialists?

Ben Harmanus

Right, so I'm on the media team and we have an enormous number of media formats. We're actually almost our own media company with hundreds of employees in the US team I'm part of. We have several YouTube channels. Some of them, or a few of them, are product-specific. But we have, for example, a Sales Content channel. We have a Marketing Content channel, which is really about topics and training. But we also have lots of formats that are totally top of the funnel. We have, for example, My First Million. That's two founders who are already millionaires talking about new cool founder ideas or growth ideas. That's fairly far removed from HubSpot, but for many people it's the first entry point into the HubSpot media world. And then of course it flows on through programmatic ads or recommendations and links.

Joubin Rahimi

Every founder has to say at some point: okay, I do need a CRM.

Ben Harmanus

Yes, exactly.

Ben Harmanus

But they listen to this podcast out of passion, because there are two recognised authorities on it who are investors and who have built their own business. One of them sold The Hustle to us, a media company. They did their own thing and people simply enjoy listening to them.

Joubin Rahimi

I think that's important too, that marketing needs to be completely rethought in this context.

Ben Harmanus

Total.

Ben Harmanus

So really creating content formats that break away from being so exaggeratedly close to the product, when you can afford it. We also have a podcast network with lots of creators. I can recommend working with creators a lot too. We can now scale that as HubSpot as well. So what others might do with Facebook Ads, that scaling, we scale collaboration with creators and see a very, very good cost per acquisition or cost per lead.

Joubin Rahimi

What type of creator do you have there?

Ben Harmanus

Different topics.

Ben Harmanus

It can be someone working in sales, it can be marketing experts, AI experts, but also something like mompreneur, as a topic. Completely mixed. Our podcast network has, I think, over 30 podcasts. The YouTube network is, I think, also at 14, 15 shows. We have newsletters and we've also had some as part of our acquisitions. In some cases we're now of course also buying up media, and above all the smart people behind them. That's very much our thing right now.

Joubin Rahimi

Great. And then thank you very much for all the insights.

Joubin Rahimi

And if you want more, we'll link your masterclass below too, the one you had. That's public at OMR, right? I think it's still unlisted on our YouTube channels, but let's see if we can get to it.

Ben Harmanus

Otherwise, write to me on LinkedIn and I'll send you the link.

Joubin Rahimi

Great. And as always, feel free to comment and discuss.

Joubin Rahimi

Yes. Ben, thank you very much.

Ben Harmanus

 Joubin, thanks for letting me be part of it.

Joubin Rahimi

Very happy to.