Table of contents
Eduardo talks to Christian about employment database package how to take the lead through the Buyer's Journey to complete the conversion. Learn how to do lead scoring and map out a strategy for each stage of the journey. Find out in a new episode of our weekly series Inbound from the inside.
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EE: Hello everyone, welcome to a new episode of Inbound from within. This time I am in the digital laboratory of the Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola to talk with Christian Núñez, head of digital strategy at the university. We are going to talk with him about the experience of implementing inbound marketing within the business unit of the Institut Paul Bocuse and Christian is going to share with us all his experience and knowledge of having been one of the pioneers in implementing inbound marketing within the university. Welcome to the program and thank you for having us here in the office.
CN: Thanks Eduardo, it's a good opportunity to tell a little about the risks we took at some point.
EE : By 2016.
CN : From doing Inbound when almost no one believed in the methodology at all, but yes, let's talk to see what we can tell the audience.
EE : Great, just today I published a piece of content on my LinkedIn that talked about the return on investment of doing something new. Sometimes that stops many businesses “I want you to show me the ROI of doing inbound marketing” and I remember that here at the university I did come across that question but I told them “if you don’t try it you will never know what ROI you will get” and so we have been carrying out this adventure for two and a half years, increasingly internalizing the methodology within the university, which fills us with quite a bit of pride. And about you, Christian, because you have been one of the driving forces within the university.
CN : Well, yes. By telling a little bit of the story, it is important for the audience to know how we decided to create a world of inbound or how we managed to decipher what that was, what that strange word was that everyone was talking about but that here in Peru was not yet known. We were lucky enough to find some content, we had the opportunity to read it, we shared it and it just so happened that you came to us and we said “here it goes. Here it goes.” But we came across what you said before, the wall of people who see short-term actions, that if I invest so much I have to have so much return, so we had the first barrier to break and I think we achieved it hand in hand with you and your company. I don't think we had a great return on investment, but what we did have was a lot of information, a lot of data that we found at that time from users, and that gave us the opportunity to continue moving forward a little with all the people who were left behind to continue doing the traditional thing, and today that is compensated in that we are not only with Paul Bocuse , but we also have four new products, and the San Ignacio de Loyola organization is focused on taking this further. Right now we already have an inbound marketing department, so I think it's the first one in Peru, because we should bet 100% on this.
EE : And I'm sure it will yield very good results. Let's talk a little about the beginnings, when we started this adventure with the Institut Paul Bocuse. Tell us what the marketing strategy was that the Institute followed.
CN : Well, a marketing strategy, without belittling, traditional where many media were involved, a mix of media was made when, perhaps, many times the person we wanted to attract did not consume those media or perhaps suddenly did not know the product, and they would end up saying “come, study with us” to a product they had never even heard of.
The person we wanted to attract did not consume those media or perhaps suddenly did not know the product, and they would say “come, study with us” to a product they had never even heard of.
EE : And also, let me cut you off here, but it is also difficult to communicate everything that your product can do for the user in a newspaper clipping, in a Facebook ad. I remember that the Institute has a lot to tell, not only as a product itself, but from its educational methodology, the technology they use, the business approach they give to people who go to study cooking, so there was a lot to tell, which obviously telling it in traditional media was very difficult and the user was not necessarily consuming those media.
CN : Exactly, it was a very niche product, so to speak, where traditional media perhaps did not reach that audience. So we discovered throughout the process of natural acquisition that we needed more and more money to reach more media because we believed that if we reached more media we would have more clients. There came a time when that was not seen, it was a very marked thing, and we could not continue investing in something that did not bring us income. And we said “ok either we look for something new or we do not sell the product.”
We increasingly needed more money to reach more media outlets because we believed that if we reached more media outlets we would have more clients. There came a time when that was no longer possible.
EE : I was even at risk.
CN : Of course, that's where the initiative came from. We had to go together to convince this hall of internal clients that we could try a different tool, a different methodology. That's where we embarked on the inbound marketing product.
EE : Let's talk a little about the first results.
CN : The first results, as I was telling you, did not give us a tangible return on investment. What they did give us was a lot of information about the buyers . I want to tell you a very simple anecdote that I always tell. For example, we managed to get a student to enroll in the methodology when this student, at some point in the traditional marketing actions, had said that please do not call him again. So we said, “Why did this student enroll?” and we began to find out what had seemed interesting to him and what content and contact points he had gone through to enroll and we said, “Ok, so the product is not being communicated well.” There are many benefits, there are many variables of the product that we have to communicate and that gave us the opportunity to do the second pilot. Now, in the second pilot we did quite well, we managed to reach the goal in number of students, not to be irresponsible with the numbers, we managed to have the expected number of students and the most successful thing from my point of view is that we managed to lower the acquisition cost: if a student cost me 10, with the methodology with those 10 I attracted 4. So that, in a commercial environment or in a purely financial matter, is the return that is sought.
We managed to get the expected number of students and the most successful thing from my point of view is that we managed to lower the acquisition cost: if a student cost me 10, with the methodology with those 10 I would attract 4.
inbound marketing what is it
EE : But it was not a short-term return, it happened as I recall in the second year.
CN : This process that I have told you about, that I will tell you about in a minute, but this process lasted three months, six months, a year. We began to create content , and today that content has become perpetual and continues to generate leads or interested parties.
EE : And that is one of the things that fascinates me about inbound, that this content that you develop, as you mentioned, is perpetual content, meaning it does not expire unlike an ad and it is always generating traffic and leads for you. The more time passes, the more authority you generate in search engines with this content, your positioning increases. Today, for example, 30% of traffic, without having done any campaign outside the country, is from visitors from abroad. From people who are looking to solve their problems related to this vocation of studying cooking and they are finding the answers in the content hub of the Institut Paul Bocuse and that is how they begin to build their relationship with us.
The content you develop, as you mentioned, is perpetual content, meaning it does not expire unlike an ad and is always generating traffic and leads for you.
CN : Exactly, and there is one very important thing that I am often asked and that is why I am telling you, obviously you know it very well but so that the public is aware, is that I was often asked “Christian, how is it that content that has no advertising investment can reach so many people and can be positioned in a short time, let’s say 4, 5, 6 months?” Something that does not happen with a strategy.
US : 100% ads.
CN : Of course, because that created content, which is perpetual, which is maintained today and continues to bring traffic and therefore leads and quality leads, has been created and thought about the buyer we are going to speak to. That is very important, in other words, content is generated that is very good, but we generate content thinking about a defined and classified buyer.
EE : From which we understand their pain, their fears, their behaviors.
CN : Exactly, and another thing that comes to mind is that in the research something came out like it was not only the fear of the student or the prospect but the fear of the father, of saying “if my son studied cooking, could he make a living from cooking?” So that was resolved through content and we resolved a pain, a concern, a problem that could make a living from cooking.
EE : Of course, if you are making content or thinking of making content, the first thing you have to do is identify who the buyer persona is and understand their pains, behaviors, and motivations behind the purchase in order to, from there, from that pain, start producing the content that solves those pains and in that way you build an entire experience and you not only focus on generating a strategy to get leads for today, which is important, and we also have to develop a strategy for today, but we are also thinking about tomorrow, about what is coming. We are educating prospects who are in their third year, fourth year, are starting their fifth year, precisely because we believe that we have a product that can be sold forever. So we are not thinking about short-term strategies but rather long-term strategies. Let's talk a little about personalizing the experience. Once contacts start arriving and, through the content, they start to leave us information, their data, we begin to understand where they came from, what source, what content they consumed, how we use all this information, how does the university or the Institute use it in this case to translate these contacts into new students?
CN : I don’t want to go into the technical part, which we also handle, but basically you define certain workflows of content points where buyer A should go through. Many times they don’t follow a linear path, but sometimes they skip depending on the need. If we can solve something in two pieces of content and this one is skipped, it’s much more valuable for us. People also ask me “how do you do that? How many teams do you have to do that?” The team doesn’t do that, the methodology does it through marketing automation , and that’s where two concepts come in that are also very difficult to understand, but I want you to understand them a little quickly, which is lead scoring. What is that? Basically, through that workflow, we measure the interest that your user may have in certain content points that are always getting closer to the decision process where we have to capture them, so what is lead scoring? You assign points to see if in the lead nurturing process, which is the natural content process, this contact applies to become a much hotter contact where we can close it. So lead scoring is a qualitative work of seeing the quality of that contact and seeing “ok, this contact is ready to buy the product” or to intervene and invite him to a talk, a meeting with the dean or whatever.
