Why It’s Time for Marketers to Stop ‘Hacking’ Content

When Content ‘Hacks’ Won’t Cut It

What does a wildly successful marketing brand do once success hits and growth explodes? It keeps optimizing, according to HubSpot’s Kieran Flanagan.
That optimization, Kieran says, isn’t focused on hacking content or experiments that yield short-term gains. Instead, HubSpot focuses on its long-term goal of winning the hearts and minds of its audience. It even split its content team into two parts: one that targets the “minds” of business owners with its content and another that targets their “hearts.” Through this strategy, HubSpot hopes to preserve its reputation as both a teaching resource for marketers worldwide and a company to which users feel they have a personal connection.
No shortcuts, hacks, or tricks here—rather, Kieran and his team plan for things like scalability and long-term maintenance in each experiment they conduct. You’ll hear these strategies and more in this episode, along with more insights into HubSpot’s approach to top-of-funnel users.

In This Episode

• Why HubSpot split its content teams into “mind” and “heart.”
• How HubSpot’s historical optimization program keeps older content as current and relevant as possible.
• Strategies for creating an emotional response to your brand.
• Hard truths about the short-sightedness of “growth hacks.”
• How HubSpot optimizes its “freemium” offerings to attract more and better leads.
• The two most common things teams overlook when running experiments on their marketing strategies.

Quotes From This Episode

“Have some sort of enemy in mind, or take some sort of stance—something that helps people feel one way or the other. It’s better to be on one end of that spectrum versus being a brand who just sits in the middle.” – @searchbrat
How we win the minds of business owners is we create tactical content that teaches them something and helps them solve a problem. Share on X
“We separated our content teams into two, and we thought, ‘How do we win the hearts and minds, of every SMB and mid-market owner within our space?'” – @searchbrat
“The problematic thing with most experiments is that they need to take into account scalability.” – @searchbrat

Resources

• Get the free Content Experience Report here.
• Stay connected with your email subscribers using Emma.
• Hear more from Kieran on the Growth TLDR Marketing Podcast.

Content Experience Lightning Round

If you were to create a (non-marketing) podcast, what would your podcast be about, and who would your first guest be?
Kieran would love to host a podcast that explores conspiracy theories. His first guest would be the inventor of the Flat Earth theory, a conspiracy Kieran finds bizarre and fascinating!
See you next week!