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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 1
A publication of
10
USELESS THINGS
TO CUT FROM YOUR
F K Y N $
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MARKETI NG
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 2
brings your whole marketing world together
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 3
10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT
FROM YOUR MARKETING
By Corey Eridon
Corey Eridon manages the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog,
creating content about SEO, social media, analytics, business
blogging, marketing automation, and email marketing. She
graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English and History from
Boston University. Before joining HubSpot, Corey worked as a
marketer and consultant for businesses in both the B2B and
B2C space, ranging in size from startup to the Enterprise.
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER
@COREY_BOS
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 4
The fast-paced world of digital marketing -- with
all its technological advancements and iterative
improvements to our marketing processes -- has
theoretically made marketers lives easier. We have
more options, tools, and resources to be better,
faster, and stronger.
But the fip side of the coin -- and probably the more
realistic manifestation of all these advancements -- is
that marketers are overwhelmed. It seems like every
week theres something new we absolutely must be
doing, lest we get left behind. Problem is, a lot of this new stuff, is now outdated and an ineffcient use of a
marketers time and budget. Or worse, was never a good use of time and budget to begin with.
Wed like 2013 to be the year you clean up your marketing toolkit. What are you wasting time on? What tactics
are you needlessly holding on to like a marketing security blanket? What can you eliminate from your budget?
This ebook is going to outline what many marketers waste time on thats not going to help you move the
needle in 2013 -- so you can eliminate it for good!
INTRODUCTION
%
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Most marketers are really comfortable with optimizing their web content for SEO,
because they know its something well within their control to do. They hit the
biggies -- H1, Page Title, Post Title, Image, URL, Content -- with their keywords, and
sit pretty thinking they totally nailed their SEO.
Unfortunately, what were comfortable with isnt always the best use of our time. On-
page SEO, while something you should certainly spend a couple minutes checking
out before you publish new web content, isnt something marketers should be
obsessing over anymore. Googles algorithm is much more sophisticated than it
was even a few years ago, so keyword optimization isnt going to cut it anymore.
#1 THE ON-PAGE SEO FIXATION
F
p
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CUT THE ON-PAGE SEO FIXATION
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
s Keywords
A Links
U User Experience
% Conversions
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 7
Not necessarily. If youre trying to compensate for low quality with
high quantity, youre doing yourself more harm than good -- readers
wont regard your content well, and as a result, Google wont hold your
domain in high regard, either.
Additionally, if youre resource-strapped, theres a blogging volume
sweet spot you can rest comfortably in. 92% of businesses that blog
multiple times a day have acquired a customer from it. But 78% of
businesses that blog on a daily basis have also acquired a customer
from it. That differential isnt too big. And if we bring down the volume
just a tad to 2-3 times per week, still, 70% of business acquire a
customer from their blog.
#2 THE FIREHOSE BLAST OF BLOG CONTENT
U
Much like the social media bandwagon weve all jumped on, most marketers are convinced they need to be
blogging for their business. Of late, some marketers have taken this concept to the extreme, pumping out
content at assembly-line pace. More blogging is better blogging, right?
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 8
CUT THE BLAST OF BLOG CONTENT
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
Test the frequency of your blog
publishing volume, and uncover the
volume you need to hold to maintain
the customer acquisitng you need
from that channel.
f
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 9
To generate leads, you need a blow-out marketing offer
that your site visitors can convert on. But then you need
another. And another, And another after that.
After a while, youll start to realize some offers perform
better than others for lead generation, so you start using
that offer all of the time. Problem is, that offer can get really
over-saturated really fast, and what once yielded your best
clickthrough rate will end up being mediocre at best.
#3 YOUR GO-TO MARKETING OFFER

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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 10
CUT THAT GO-TO MARKETING OFFER
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
Creating a new offer thatll capture
peoples attention. Look at
historical data to see what
topic has performed best
for you, and fnd a way to
make it 10 times better.

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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 11
To be great at SEO, you need inbound links. But to get inbound links, you need other sites to link to you. That
doesnt give you much control. Oh, I know! Ill create my own little websites -- many marketers have come to
refer to these as microsites -- and link to my domain from those!
Drop this. First of all, maintaining a bunch of websites takes a ridiculous amounf of a time and money. I mean,
where are you getting all the content to keep them going? Plus, for your inbound links to mean anything, they
need to be coming from a wide variety of high quality sites. Unless you plan on creating hundreds of microsites
that have a ton of clout with the SERPs, this strategy is a waste of your time.
#4 THOSE MILLIONS OF MICROSITES
'
'
'
'
'
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CUT THOSE MICROSITES
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
Attracting organic inbound
links. Work on creating
content and marketing
people love. Do that, and
youll see the right kind of
linking -- the inbound kind.
A
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 13
Were the last ones to say you shouldnt be reporting on your marketing, but with the Big Data explosion has
also come a whole lot of time wasted interpreting numbers and analytics that dont really mean anything for
you right now.
Its easy to spend an entire day just diving into, say,
conversion reports, but what is all that information getting
you? A lot of spreadsheets and numbers does not make a
marketing strategy. Figure out exactly what numbers you
need to know for your business marketing, and do deeper
dives into specifc metrics as needed. Its a better use of
your time, and frankly provides more actionable advice
than running hours of reports at the end of each month
that you never use.
#5 ALL THAT OVER-REPORTING
Y
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CUT OVERREPORTING
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
The metrics you need to
succeed. Analyze where your
business has performed well,
and where it has potential.
Start focusing on this areas.
Z
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 15
The thinking behind the millions of press releases businesses produce each year is that theyll get placed
on an external site when picked up, and the coverage will come with an inbound link. Also, you know,
getting press coverage.
Unfortunately, almost all of the press releases getting churned out
of marketing departments is not landing any actual press coverage.
And the releases that are picked up? Those arent exactly valuable
inbound links when theyre getting funnelled out to low quality sites.
Stop trying to weave an amazing story out of something relatively
unamazing just so you have PR fodder. Itll just make journalists get
really used to ignoring you. and your writing time is better spend on
other types of content -- like blog posts, for instance -- that attract
qualifed readers and quality links.
#6 PRETTY MUCH ALL OF YOUR PRESS RELEASES
N
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CUT ALL THOSE PRESS RELEASES
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
Writing other types of
content -- like blog posts,
for instance -- that attract
qualifed readers and
quality links.
p
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 17
2012 saw a ton of advancements in paid advertising targeting options. For
instance, did you know that Twitter paid advertising now allows marketers to
target their audience by interest or username? Did you know that Facebook
paid advertising now lets marketers target their audience by desktop or
mobile? If youre investing in PPC in any capacity for using targeting like this,
congratulations, youre doing it right.
If, however, youre dumping money into completely untargeted PPC, its kind of
like emailing your entire contacts database without doing any segmentation.
Turn off your paid media spend that isnt leveraging targeting functionality,
otherwise youre starting off 2013 by throwing your brand new marketing
budget right out the window.
#7 YOUR UNTARGETED PAID MEDIA SPEND
$
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CUT UNTARGETED PPC SPEND
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
Targeting your PPC
campaigns to people you
want to reach. Even if that
overall volume is lower,
the conversion will be
higher.
U
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 19
You unequivocally should be investing in mobile marketing. Investing in mobile
application development, however, is a distraction and resource sap for most
marketers.
There are well over one million mobile apps on the market, and theyre
being released at a rapidly increasing rates -- not to mention 25% of apps
are downloaded only once, and never used again after their initial download.
With a cluttered market and stickiness challenge, unless your mobile app is
going to drive some serious results for your business in 2013, reroute your
efforts to something that will give you a bigger bang for your buck.
#8 THAT MOBILE APP YOURE DEVELOPING
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CUT THAT MOBILE APP PROGRESS
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
Optimizing your entire
web presence for mobile.
The negative impact
from having an unfriendly
mobile presence will
be far greater than the
success of a mobile app.
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 21
Full-fedged website redesigns start out sounding like a great idea, and end up being a massive headache --
typically pulling in more people than you thought would be involved, spending more money than you budgeted,
and often adversely impacting conversion rates.
Its not that you positively do not need a website redesign in 2013
-- you very well may -- but before you overhaul what youve got, ask
yourself if you can work in smaller chunks. Consider a series of A/B
tests in which you incrementally improve upon parts of your website,
and apply your learnings on a wider scale once theyre statistically
signifcant. And if you do learn that a bigger redesign is needed,
assess whether you have the in-house resources required to pull it
off without derailing all your other initiatives. If you dont, for your
sake and your marketings, outsource it to a vetted professional.
#9 YOUR UNNEEDED WEBSITE REDESIGN
2
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CUT THAT WEBSITE REDESIGN
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
A/B testing various
components of your
website to discover what
smaller changes you can
make to have a large
impact on conversion.
A
B
/
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 23
Do you remember around 2007 when a small handful
of marketers started using social media as a marketing
channel? Do you remember how almost everyone in the
industry thought it was either 1) ridiculous, or 2) not
applicable to their business or industry?
Fast forward to today, and most marketers are really
scared of being the equivalent of the one who said
Facebook is dumb back in 2007. As a result, theres a
whole lot of time wasted on social networks that, frankly,
dont really work for you. But you keep using them out of
fear of getting left behind.
If the social networks youre using arent working -- 2013 is the year to stop using them. For example, if you
gave Pinterest the old college try, and it simply is not driving any meanigful business results for you, cut the
chord. Just make sure youre making your decision based on analytics, not gut feelings.
#10 THOSE SOCIAL NETWORKS NO ONE USES
^
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CUT UNUSED SOCIAL NETWORKS
%
AND START FOCUSING ON:
Optimizing the social
media channels that
are driving success
for your business. Its
okay to admit that
a particular network
doesnt work for you.
q
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CONCLUSION
With the year coming to a close, nows the perfect time to take a look at your marketing activities and fgure
out whats working, and what isnt. And if youre making 2013 marketing resolutions, cutting some of the
time-wasters and ineffective tactics mentioned in this ebook will give you the bandwidth you need to pursue
those new strategies.
Whatever it is youre resolving to do with your
marketing strategy next year, make sure you resolve
one extra thing: To constantly evaluate whether your
activities are moving the needle. Its always a good
idea to experiment with something new -- as long as
you know when to say, when with the latest and
greatest. This kind of self-analysis will keep you
running an agile, up-to-date, and effcient marketing
machine!
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10 USELESS THINGS TO CUT FROM YOUR MARKETING 26
OPTIMIZE FOR SEO
Track the performance of your
keywords, links and overall SEO
strategy. Learn how to use the
HubSpot software to keep your site
up-to-date with the rapidly evolving
SEO landscape.
Not sure if the landing pages you
are linking to are optimized for
conversions? Find out in a custom
demo of the HubSpot software.
BOOST LEAD
CONVERSIONS
to learn about these and HubSpots
other tools in our all-in-one
marketing software:
REQUEST A DEMO
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