How Long Does It Take To Rank on Google?

 

SAM NELSON

Ah, the almighty Google search box.

Website developers spend a lot of time trying to make sure their pages show up directly beneath that box, at the top of Google’s first page of search results.

Reaching the top of the search rankings does not happen overnight, especially for small businesses with little or no existing web presence.

According to multiple sources, the average time for websites to rank on Google through optimization (SEO) techniques is about three to six months.

That’s right – jumping to the front of Google’s results usually takes between 90-180 days, depending on the competitiveness of your industry and popularity of your keywords. For several reasons we’ll discuss below (competition, domain age, content accumulation, etc.) a high ranking may take as much as a year in competitive fields.

This can be frustrating for developers and clients alike. We just put weeks into building a new site! It looks great and no one is seeing it! Why isn’t Google recognizing us?

Don’t worry. In this case, doing everything right doesn’t mean immediate results. Ranking on Google is a process, not a magic trick.

To understand which websites appear at the top of Google‘s rankings, first, we need to dive into how Google finds those pages and adds them to your search results.

How Does Google Find My Page?

Software programs called “Googlebots” (also known as bots, robots, or spiders) move or “crawl” through billions of web pages, collecting and cataloging information that is added to Google’s index of the web. For your webpage to reach Google’s index, the spiders must be able to crawl and read the information on your site.

This video from Google explains in more detail how the search function works:

Like the nice man in the pink shirt says, when you search through Google, you are actually searching the Google index, not the whole Internet. Google uses an algorithm to match your query to the bazillion pages it has on file.

The algorithm considers more than 250 factors, including keywords, titles, and content tags. The algorithm also incorporates PageRank, a separate program that measures each page’s importance according to the amount and quality of traffic from other sites.

How Are Websites Ranked?

When you type a search into Google, pages are selected from the index according to how well they match up to your specific query.

There is no exact formula for placing your website at the top of a Google search. However, the following factors play a key role in the ranking process:

• SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ensures that your website is visible to Googlebots and other indexing programs. This includes things like titles, keywords, headings, and ALT image text.
• Domain age. A web domain less than six months old is considered a “new” site, and therefore less trustworthy or reliable than an older website that has been thoroughly verified. New sites can still be ranked, but rankings are more likely to increase after the six-month window.
• Keyword competition. Words or phrases that are searched often are highly competitive, and more established sites in your industry have a head start on ranking for popular searches. If your site is new, it will be easier to build trust and rankings through keywords with lower levels of competition before moving on to more popular searches.
• Content quality. The Googlebots are designed to identify characteristics like how often new content is published, whether the content is original, as well as the length and overall quality of your posts. Regularly adding new, original, high-quality content to your page will keep the search bots looking at your page, and could lead to higher rankings as time passes.
• Clean domain. Google’s algorithm is also designed to spot when websites try to cheat the system with tricks like keyword stuffing or buying inbound links. These schemes may work for a while, but when Google catches on, your site will be penalized. Your ranking will suffer until you correct the problem, which can be a lengthy and difficult process.

(Hat tip: reliablesoft.net)

So if you’re maintaining your page with good content, keeping your domain clear of any shady shortcuts, and focusing on low-competition keywords that will build your online authority… be patient.

You’re on your way.

https://websitemuscle.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-rank-on-google/

How long does it take to rank in Google? (A study by Ahrefs)

Tim Soulo

If you’re doing client SEO, I guess every new client, without any exceptions, will ask you this question: 

“How long till my website (page) ranks on top of Google?”

The common response to this question is obviously, “It depends,” because there are just too many variables to consider: website strength, competition, budget, skills, etc.

But here at Ahrefs, we decided to sift through the petabytes of historical ranking data that we have and give you a slightly more quantifiable answer, something more concrete than simply, “It depends.”

How old are the top-ranking pages?

For starters, we identified how old the current top-ranking pages are.

We took 2 million random keywords and pulled data on the Top10 ranking pages for each of them. Which resulted in this beautiful graph:

SIDENOTE.

 The “age” is calculated from the date when Ahrefs crawlers first saw the page. But since we crawl the web at a pretty staggering speed, the actual age of the page should be very close, if not identical, to our records. 

As you can tell from this graph, the average Top10 ranking page is 2+ years old. And those that rank at position #1 are almost 3 years old (on average).

In fact, only 22% of pages that currently rank in the Top10 were created within 1 year:

So the next thing we wanted to know is what percentage of pages at each ranking position were less than 1 year old:

This doesn’t look too promising, right? The SERP is clearly dominated by “old” pages.

How long does it take for a page to rank in Google?

To answer this question, we randomly selected 2 million pages that were first seen by Ahrefs crawler a year ago.

We then tracked the position history of each page for any keyword it’s ranked for.

Which resulted in this graph:

Only 5.7% of all studied pages ranked in the Top10 search results within 1 year for at least 1 keyword.

Pages from websites with a high Domain Rating (DR) performed way better than those with a low DR. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise, because Ahrefs’ Domain Rating metric (shows the strength of a website’s backlink profile) correlates well with Google rankings.

We then zoomed into these 5.7% of “lucky” pages to see how quickly they got from nowhere to the Top10.

The majority of them managed to achieve that in approximately 61-182 days.

By looking at this graph, you might think that, on average, it takes a page anywhere from 2-6 months to rank in Google’s Top10.

But that conclusion isn’t valid here, because this data only represents the 5.7% of pages that were lucky enough to rank in the Top10 within a year — while almost 95% of all the pages we studied didn’t make it to the Top10 within that timeframe.

We also re-calculated the numbers based on monthly search volume of the keywords:

Only 0.3% of pages ranked in the Top10 for a high-volume keyword in less than a year.

And here are the dynamics of these 5.7% “lucky” pages, broken down by search volume of the keyword that they ranked for:

Clearly, you can rank for low-volume keywords in a very short time, while the high-volume ones take almost a year to get into the Top10.

But again, don’t forget that this data only applies to 5.7% of “lucky” pages that ranked in the Top10 within a year. The vast majority of pages don’t perform that well.

What does this all mean?

Did our study give a definite answer to “how long does it take to rank” question?

No.

But at least we’ve shown that almost 95% of newly published pages don’t get to the Top10 within a year.

And most of the “lucky” ones, which do manage to get there, do it in about 2-6 months.

Actually, I shouldn’t be framing these pages as “lucky,” because the reason they got to the Top10 in less than a year is most likely hard work and great knowledge of SEO, not luck.

Check out these tips from Sam Oh if you want to rank #1 in Google quicker:

Here’s to hard work and dedication!

https://ahrefs.com/blog/how-long-does-it-take-to-rank/

Do some business models perform better than others?

 

I will read through, hyperlink and briefly comment publications in this blog relating to business models and perhaps some of you will download, read, comment or discuss them with me. The first one is a study of the 1000 largest US firms, conducted at MIT Sloan in 2004.
Do some business models perform better than others? A study of the 1000 largest US firms (Weill et al. 2004)

The paper is a good academic exercise, and it is a difficult task the authors are trying to accomplish. The objectives are many:

1. Define four basic types of business models (Creators, Distributors, Landlords and Brokers)
2. Create 16 specialized variations of the above based on the type of asset involved (Financial, Physical, Intangible, or Human)
3. Classify 1000 companies' business models separately for each reported revenue stream
4. Draw conclusions on how each business model performs in terms of operating income, return on invested capital and return on assets.

Conclusions

The authors come to the conclusions that business models are better predictors of financial performance than industry classifications and that some business models do perform better than others. Specifically, selling the right to use assets is concluded to be more profitable and more highly valued by the market than selling ownership of assets.

As companies seldom explicitly report what business models they use, the authors did use financial reports and their own judgment to allocate revenue across different business models. This is not an easy task. I have worked with several companies using parallel business models where some have the objective to create a demand and increase the return for other business models. Think of companies selling low margin physical products to get customer lock-in for recurring high margin services, or companies providing consultancy services to enable technology and IP licensing.

It is an interesting article with an interesting conclusion. Several companies have over the last decade moved from business models based on transfer of ownership to right based or service based business models. One example is Rolls Royce that instead of selling the jet engine, it owns the engines and provide "power by the hour" by contract. Since its customers only make money when their engines are running, they only pay Rolls-Royce for that time. Rolls-Royce in turn promises to maintain it and replace it, if it breaks down.

https://cutt.ly/F2kDj8U

Open Source License Selection in Relation to Business Models

 “The roads we take are more important than the goals we announce. Decisions determine destiny.”

Frederick Speakman

Abstract

This article provides recent research results from the European Union's FLOSSMetrics project. The results focus on the business and practical aspects of the adoption of open source within software products or as a basis of service offerings. Research into free/libre open source software (F/LOSS) is usually conducted with a software engineering focus or with an emphasis on F/LOSS as a spontaneous or directed collaboration effort. The FLOSSMetrics project expanded that research with an investigation on how licenses, business models, and project choices affect development and productization. This article provides a summary of common licensing issues and business models choices in F/LOSS, and it provides a list of recommendations for selecting a license for a software project to suit both business objectives and licensing constraints.

Introduction

There are literally hundreds of different licenses for free/libre open source software (F/LOSS), the majority of which are used for only a single software application. As of early January 2011, the top 20 most commonly used licenses are used in 96% of all projects, as listed in the Black Duck Software Knowledgebase. The GNU General Public License (GPL) family of licenses remains the most widely used license group for F/LOSS projects, with over 60% of all projects using one of the GPL licenses. This skewed distribution of license usage has prompted a community call for standardization on a limited set of known and recognized F/LOSS licenses, both to ensure a clear understanding of mutual obligations in case of mixing of code from different projects and to facilitate the process of managing contributions.

Components from different license groups sometimes can be combined together to create an aggregated object. Most licenses allow for such recombination freely, while some others introduce various constraints that may limit the potential reuse of a project in different conditions. Figure 1 illustrates how popular licenses may be combined. An arrow from one box to another indicates that those two licenses can be combined and that the combined result effectively has the result of the license at the arrow's destination. To determine whether two licenses can be combined, find a common license that can be reached by pathways leading from each license. For example, an Apache 2.0 license and a GPL2+ license can be combined using GPL3 or GPL3+.

Figure 1. Compatibility Relationships Between Popular F/LOSS Licences*

*Adapted from David A. Wheeler (2007)

A license of particular importance that is still not represented within the top 20 licenses listed above is the EUPL, the European Union Public License. This license was originally intended to be used for the distribution of software developed in the framework of the European Union's IDABC programme. This license is designed to be consistent with the copyright law in the 27 Member States of the European Union, while retaining compatibility with popular F/LOSS licenses such as the GPL. Version 1.1 of the EUPL was published by the European Commission in January, 2007 and is available in all official languages of the European Union. All 22 linguistic versions have identical value, which gives the EUPL a distinct advantage compared with the GPL, for which only the official, English edition is considered valid.

Intellectual Property Rights

The debate on software patents is still not entirely settled. On one side, most F/LOSS companies are vigorously fighting the process of patenting software-based innovations; on the other side, large software companies, for example SAP, are defending the practice. An especially important point of F/LOSS licenses relates to “embedded intellectual property rights (IPR).” Embedded IPR is released code that relates to software patents held by the releasing authority. Most open source licenses explicitly mention that software patents held by the releasing authority are implicitly licensed for use with the code. This means that business practices that rely on separate patent licensing may be incompatible with some specific F/LOSS licenses, in particular the Apache License and the GPL family of licenses. The Eclipse Public License gives patent grants to the original work and to enhanced versions based on the original work but not to code that is not directly derived from the release. In contrast, permissive licenses like BSD and MIT give no patent rights at all.

If a license that explicitly gives IPR rights must be selected for purposes of compatibility or derivation, and the company or research organization wants to maintain the rights to use IPR in a manner that is not compatible with the license, a possible solution may be the use of an "intermediate releaser." An intermediate releaser is an entity that has no IPR on its own, to which the releasing organization gives a copy of the source code for further publication. Since the intermediate release has no IPR, the license clauses that require patent grants are not activated, while the code is published with the required license. This approach has been used by Microsoft for some of its contributions to the Apache POI project.

License Selection

The choice of an open source license for a project's code base is not clear-cut and depends on several factors. In general, when reusing code that comes from external projects, license compatibility is the major consideration in selecting a license. Red Hat has provided a compatibility matrix for its Fedora project to enable contributors to clarify compatibility issues they might encounter when mixing and integrating different components into this free Linux distribution (see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing).

Licenses have an impact on development activity, depending on the kind of project and who controls the project's evolution. Some studies have shown that restrictive, copyleft licenses have a negative impact on contribution (e.g., Fershtman and Gandal, 2007). However, Stewart and colleagues (2006) found that restrictive licenses are associated with lower development activity in projects with non-market sponsors, such as foundations, than is seen in projects that are coordinated by a company. Generally, this effect is related to the higher percentage of “infrastructure” projects (such as libraries, development tools, and enabling technologies) undertaken by foundations.

Business Models

License selection is also impacted by the expected (or potential) business models underlying an open source project. F/LOSS business models can be analyzed by examining the two possible sources of value:

1.Intellectual property: a right that can be transferred. With F/LOSS, property is usually non-exclusive, with the exception of the open core business model where part of the code is not open at all. (For an overview of open source business models, including open core, see: http://www.slideshare.net/cdaffara/linuxtag-daffara.) Examples of intellectual property are trademarks, patents, and licenses - anything that may be transferred to another entity through a contract or legal transaction.

2.Efficiency: the ability to perform an action with a lower cost (both tangible and intangible). It is inherent in what the company does and how they do it, and it follows the specialization in a particular work area or appears following the creation of a new technology or process. For example, it could be the decrease in time necessary to perform an action associated with an increase in expertise and experience in performing this action. Another example is the introduction of a tool that simplifies a process and introduces a substantial improvement in efficiency.

These two sources of value are the basis of all open source business models, which can be represented along a continuum between property and efficiency (Figure 2). Among the results of our recent research, we found that property-based projects tend to have lower contributions from the outside because this requires a legal transaction for a contribution to become part of the company’s properties. Consider dual licensing: for contributions to become part of the product source code, external contributors need to sign off their rights to the code so that the company can sell the enterprise version alongside the open version. Note that dual licensing also requires at least one of the licenses to be a strong copyleft license, like the GPL.

Figure 2. Open Source Business Models Along the Property-Efficiency Continuum

In contrast, models based purely on efficiency tend to have higher contributions and visibility, but lower monetization rates. It is important to recognize that there is no single ideal business model, but a spectrum of possible models, and companies should evolve according to changing market conditions and adapt their model as required. Some companies start with purely efficiency-based business models and build internal property value with time; others may start with property-based models and move to the other side to reduce engineering effort though increased contributions or to enlarge the user base and create alternative ways of monetizing users.

Recommendations

We have already identified some of the possible constraints in selecting a F/LOSS license for a project; among them, compatibility with an upstream project from which code has been reused, different contribution rates for non-market sponsors, and constraints related to the business model. In general, the recommended approaches follow from the main licensing and business model constraints:

1. When the project is derived from an external F/LOSS project, then the main constraint is the original license. In this case, the basic approach is to find a suitable license from those compatible with the original license, and select a business model that is consistent with the selected exploitation strategy.

2. When one of the partners has an IPR licensing policy that is in conflict with a F/LOSS license, the project can select an MIT or BSD license (if it is compatible with an eventual upstream release) or use an intermediate release; in the latter case there are no constraints on license selection. If an MIT or BSD license is selected, some business models are difficult to apply. For example, open core and dual licensing are difficult to implement because the licenses lack the reciprocity of copyleft.

3. When there are no external licensing constraints, and external contributions are important, a license can be more or less freely selected, but models that reduce contributions (such as open core and dual licenses) should be avoided. When the software produced is related to infrastructure or when the future project releases are expected from a non-market entity (such as a consortia), a copyleft license may be more effective in stimulating developer participation.

Conclusion

Research into F/LOSS commonly focuses on community, participation, or contributions; licensing and business models are often overlooked. However, licensing and IPR are substantial factors in deciding whether or not a software project can be used in a specific environment. These factors also influence the degree of adoption by commercial companies as an embedded element. It is hoped that this summary of important license selection issues in relation to business models may help others decide upon the best approach to suit their circumstances.

Carlo Daffara

https://cutt.ly/606UAXL

Open Source Licensing and Business Models (Onetti, Verma, 2008)

In this study, written at Insubria University in Italy, the authors aim to shed light on licensing issues for open source companies and its implications for the choice of business model.

Licensing and Business Models (Onetti, Verma, 2008)

Software licenses
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) currently has a set of 72 licenses as open source "OSI-Approved" and the authors provide a clear picture of the basic open source approaches. They differ between GPL-like and BSD-like licenses and some of the different available variants with different trade-offs between advantages and disadvantages.

GPL-like licenses are the most popular and well-known examples of licenses that require copies and derivatives of the source code to be made available on terms no more restrictive than those of the original license. Any user (licensee) is given the permission to modify the work, as well as to copy and redistribute the work or any derivative version.

BSD-like licenses are permissive free software licenses that allow users to use the code in proprietary software, with or without modifications without obligation to propagate the license to derivative work. Any user (licensee) may create closed versions, re-brand the software and commercialize it. A BSD license can easily create competitors that can launch products based on the same source code.

Business Models
The authors consider three main business models and present examples of companies moving from one business model to another and the complications involved. The business models are:

Reciprocal - based on GPL-like licenses generating revenues from professional services such as maintenance, support, customization, consulting and training.

Academic - typically built around a BSD-like license with revenues generated from both license fees on software reselling and from professional services.

Dual - based on two different licensing models, one at no charge with GPL-like license and one license for which the customer pays a license fee.

As the authors write it is not easy to assign open source companies to the business model categories as they typically adopt hybrid schemes.

Conclusions
The choice of OSS license is typically made by the creator of a project, usually a software developer, without the business or legal skills needed to understand how the choice of license affects the choice of business model. Since the terms of a license determine what companies can do with their software, companies are implicitly narrowing the choice of business models when they select a license type. Business models are often defined around the license and not the other way around.

The authors show with examples an interesting trend in companies changing from one license type to another, trying to adjust the license to the business model at a later stage. Also, if the company does not find a suitable OSI-approved license, it seems to be a trend to create a custom/private license by adding terms to an OSI approved license scheme.

Obviously not all open source companies can change the license as they might have given away the rights needed. Only the ones who own the IPR or the ones who are able to get assignation of rights from all contributors to the software, are entitled to change the license. The authors believe that there are plenty of open source companies for whom modifications of the license to fit another business model is not available, forcing them to adopt suboptimal business models.

The conclusions are very similar to the ones I have experienced within R&D and patenting where the inventor, usually a researcher in a narrow technical field, rarely has the skills to understand how the invention and patent will be used, and how do strategically design the patent application or keep parts of the invention as trade secrets to enable different business models.

https://cutt.ly/A06U5PG

How COVID-19 Has Impacted Business: A 6-Month Retrospective

 

Written by Kipp Bodnar

It's been over six months since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. As we reported in March, the initial impact was painful on businesses. But now, six months in, businesses appear to be adapting to the new normal. Digital transformation is accelerating. Inbound marketing strategies are working incredibly well, while outbound sales strategies are struggling. Buyers are more in control than they've ever been, and companies delivering a great digital customer experience are winning.

COVID-19 forced many businesses to start operating online, and since then we've seen a huge spike in online buyer interest that has steadily increased over the past two months. This digital transformation was already occurring before the pandemic, but COVID-19 accelerated its timeline pressuring businesses and buyers to pivot to an online environment. Now that brands are experiencing the benefits of on-demand tools like live chat, these features will be standardized as consumers come to expect them more over time.

We've also seen a simultaneous decline in the effectiveness of outbound strategies. Take sales emails as an example — sends have nearly doubled since March, but open rates continue to remain well below pre-COVID levels. It's not that buyer interest isn't there; it's that consumers now have the liberty to choose when and where they want to interact with businesses. This places greater emphasis on inbound tactics as brands need to prioritize new channels like chat where consumers can interact with marketing, sales, and service at their own pace.

As more businesses learned how to successfully make this pivot, and the global economy slowly started to reopen, sales outcomes started to gradually improve. In June, we saw a significant change in deal performance as both deals won and deals created increased from just below pre-COVID levels to well above the benchmark by the end of July. Currently, global deal performance is hovering at and above pre-COVID levels as more businesses are getting used to working under these new circumstances. While it's certainly still a difficult time for businesses, the sales data suggests that we are slowly starting to move forward.

In this post, we'll take an in-depth look into buyer interest, marketing and sales outreach, and sales outcomes over the past six months. We'll examine how different industries, regions, and company sizes have been impacted by COVID-19, and offer suggestions for investments that make sense right now.

HubSpot can't make predictions about what will happen, and nobody knows what the future looks like. But we hope this report from our customer base provides a helpful reference as businesses enter the next quarter, and that the insights are useful to you in some way. To explore the accompanying dataset on your own, you can find our interactive microsite here.

1. Buyer Interest

2. Buyer Outreach

3. Sales Outcomes

4. Takeaways

This data is based on benchmarks calculated using weekly averages from Q2 vs. post-holiday weekly averages from Q1. Because the data is aggregated from our customer base, please keep in mind that individual businesses, including HubSpot's, may differ based on their own markets, customer base, industry, geography, stage, and/or other factors. While certain data is reported by industry, please note that we do not track all industries, and that HubSpot's industry classifications may not correspond with standard industry classifications.

COVID-19 6-Month Marketing, Sales, & Service Retrospective

1. Buyers Are in Control.

Customer-Initiated Chat Conversations

Buyer research has shifted to a more on-demand, in-the-moment experience than ever before, and live chat usage strongly supports that. Chat volume has steadily increased over the past six months, and have been trending over 90% above the benchmark since September. Since businesses have moved online, consumers have flocked to chat as a resource for real-time help. Now, consumers expect a live chat option when interacting with brands and businesses are slowly starting to implement them on their websites.

Additionally, now that a significant number of people are working from home and communicating on their preferred time and channel, research is happening on the buyer's schedule -- and they want real-time answers, even if the sales team is asleep. Marketing teams have pivoted to chat to engage prospects. Sales teams are using it to nurture leads, and customer service personnel are using it to support customers. Live chat is proving to be one of the most effective channels for communicating with customers because it allows people to interact with a company on demand. The arc of technology bends toward convenience, so even if demand for chat doesn't stay at this level forever, we feel confident that the pandemic has made chat a table-stakes channel going forward.

Regionally, APAC engaged in the most chat conversations compared to LATAM, EMEA, and NORTHAM. Just three weeks ago, APAC reached 144% above pre-COVID levels and it's been the highest above the benchmark since July. While every region has experienced significant increases for live chat volume, APAC's chat conversations have increased 132% since March, EMEA 86%, LATAM increased 81%, and NORTHAM 81%.

We're not surprised that APAC has been leading the way when it comes to live chat conversations as we've seen this region using more chat and SMS technology for quite some time. Apps like WeChat have gained popularity in the region for years, not only because they make it easier for customers to chat with sales and service people, but also because they give brands the opportunity to launch engaging campaigns. For example, in 2019, India alone had 340 million WhatsApp users, which was a significantly higher proportion of the population more than any other country in the world. Countries in APAC have also been early adopters of SMS and chat — Japanese retailers were using WeChat to advertise and offer customer discounts as a way to incentivize Chinese tourists as far back as 2016.

Web Traffic

Two weeks ago, total web traffic was at a year-high 34% above the benchmark and we've seen this metric increase over 25% since March. Global web traffic seems to be holding steady at this rate as we push past summer and into fall. In fact, this metric has been over 20% above the benchmark for the past 10 weeks. As buyers continue to do their shopping online, businesses with the most established online presence seem to be seeing the most benefit.

If we look at the industry breakdown, computer software leads the way with the most web traffic at 51% above the benchmark. This reflects the digital transformation that was already occurring before COVID-19 but was sped up due to the effects of the pandemic. Compared to where we were in March, nearly all industries have returned to about pre-COVID levels. For example, entertainment, a structurally impacted industry, was 18% below the benchmark in July but has been above or right below the benchmark for the past seven weeks.

2. Inbound Strategies Continue to Prove Effective for Buyer Outreach.

Marketing Emails

With buyer interest so strong, marketers have reinvested in email. Marketing email volume has increased a total of 49% since the start of the pandemic and is currently a year-high 52% above pre-COVID levels. This is a continuation of the steady increase in traffic we've seen over the last few months. At the start of the pandemic, marketing email volume had increased nearly 30% by the end of March. Over the summer, send volume was steady at about 30% above pre-COVID levels and has risen again in the fall.

Response rates are also performing well, remaining at 10-20% above the benchmark since April. In the spring, we saw open rates shoot up immediately following the start of the pandemic, then they leveled out throughout the summer and fall. It's encouraging to see response rates holding up since email marketing has been declared "dead" many times over the last few years as channels like chat have been on the rise. But, in marketing, it's not what channel you're using, it's how you're using it. Highly relevant, helpful content will reach buyers in almost any medium, and we're glad to see marketing teams sustaining high-levels of engagement via email.

Sales Emails

On the sales side, email activity has also increased, but response rates have been on the opposite trajectory. Global send volume has increased 79% since March, but response rates have consistently stayed nearly 30% below the benchmark since April. Send volume continues to grow through the fall as it's increased 25% over the past five weeks.

It's not that this approach isn't working, it's just not great for customer experience. Consumers are getting overloaded with emails as sales teams try to engage their new online audience. Since the pandemic has placed even more control into the buyer's hands, they're really only engaging with sales teams on their terms.

Email is still a valuable channel for salespeople, but blindly emailing prospects isn't going to increase responses. You need to make sure you're being deliberate in your prospecting mix because buyers have a lot more options these days to signal interest (visiting a site, converting on an offer, signing up for a demo, etc.). The key is to understand the intent behind these channels instead of just doubling down where it's easy to spray-and-pray — like with email.

Sales Calls

Even though sales email engagement has been stagnant, a really positive takeaway for sales teams is that call events are now trending 21% above the benchmark and have increased 18% since March. This is a significant turnaround for call prospecting as it dropped to around 25% below the benchmark from March to June, but picked up again later in the summer — about the same time that deal performance began to return to pre-COVID levels.

If we look at call prospecting by company size, smaller companies seemed to have called their prospects sooner than larger ones. Companies with 1-25 employees saw their call prospecting return to pre-COVID levels at the start of July, while 26-200 and over 201 companies are just starting to return to those levels now. Since smaller companies have fewer customers and not as many "set and forget" channels, their sales reps typically have stronger relationships with their customer base. When the pandemic pushed buyers and businesses into a time of uncertainty, these trustworthy relationships are what both sides could lean on to get through hardships. It makes sense that as deal performance began to stabilize in July, smaller companies were the first to return to the phones because they rely so heavily on these close-knit relationships as well as traditional prospecting channels like phones.

Currently, call events are 31% above the benchmark for companies with 0-25 employees and are up 26% since March. We can compare that to other company sizes like 26-200 employees, which is 18% above the benchmark and has increased 17% since March. Over 201 companies are only 2% above the benchmark right now, but this number has increased nearly 30% over the past four months. We'll look for 201 companies to increase their call prospecting as sales outcomes continue to gradually improve.

3. Sales Outcomes Are Gradually Improving.

Deals Won

Over the last few months, we have seen businesses adapt to new circumstances very rapidly. There was a lot of fluctuation in sales outcomes due to changing buyer circumstances, economic uncertainty, etc., all driven by the spread of COVID biologically. At the 6-month mark, businesses are simply more used to operating under these circumstances, and while it's certainly a difficult time, the data suggests that companies of all sizes are starting to move forward.

In April, we hit the lowest point for total deals won at 36% below the benchmark. Following that, we saw steady recovery from late-April to mid-June where deals-won returned to the same levels they were at before the start of the pandemic. Deal performance continued to improve through July and August, and at the end of September, deals won reached 10% above the benchmark. That's more than a 45% increase since the first week of April.

The pandemic has changed the definition of what a "good fit" customer is. Cashflow issues rendered some customers unable to purchase products that they could afford in the past. Changing circumstances affected the urgency customers had around purchases in both directions, accelerating some deals while stalling out others. Businesses have had to reassess their target personas because buyers' circumstances had changed so dramatically. To be successful, brands need to update their definition of a "good fit" customer as well as their sales motions.

Deals Created

In April, we not only saw the lowest number of deals won recorded, but the lowest number of deals created as well. During the week of April 6, deals created fell to 30% below the benchmark and remained below pre-COVID levels until mid-June. Over the summer, deal creation continuously improved and now it's at 35% above the benchmark. That's 65% more deals being created now than they were at the start of April. As businesses pivoted their strategies and learned to operate in a digital world, many found success and are starting to benefit from their new prospecting channels.

Regionally, it appears LATAM was hit the hardest for deal creation in the first three months of the pandemic. It reached its lowest point in April at 43% below the benchmark, but fortunately, bounced back over the summer and is now 16% above the benchmark. EMEA also had a recent return to pre-COVID benchmarks as it was trailing behind all the other regions up until July and August. It was 18% below the benchmark while all other regions sat at least 10% above it. In September, EMEA deal flow surpassed the benchmark for the first time since March and is now 20% above pre-COVID levels.

Construction, Manufacturing, and Computer Software have all been trending above the benchmark since the start of September. Construction is the top-performing industry and has been trending roughly 20% above pre-COVID levels since May. This is expected though, as these industries haven't been as structurally impacted as others. Industries like Travel, Entertainment, and Human Resources are still working their way back towards pre-COVID levels. While they're not exactly at the benchmark, deal creation for these industries has been significantly better than it was at the start of the pandemic.

Takeaways

Online Conversion Isn't New and It's Not Going Anywhere.

Businesses didn't suddenly discover ecommerce and live chat when COVID-19 forced them to adapt their operations. Brands and consumers were already moving online before the pandemic, but COVID accelerated their timeline and pressured them to embrace a digital transformation at a rapid pace. What were once novelty features and services — like live chat — are now vital to day-to-day operations. Without these tools, businesses can't engage or prospect customers like they could before the pandemic.

Now that many companies have pivoted online and are discovering the benefits that come with it, there's no returning to the way things were before. Companies will continue to invest in digital channels as these are proving to be highly-effective options for engagement, prospecting, and support. And, consumers are getting more familiar with these channels as well. As they continue to interact with brands through a digital landscape, they'll come to expect this environment as the standard for businesses moving forward.

Resources to Help:

• Learn how chat should and shouldn't work in this blog post
• Get up to speed with this beginner's guide to conversational marketing
• Get your sales team started by learning how to add live chat to your website

Free Software to Get Started:

• Free conversational marketing tools are included in HubSpot CRM
• Facebook Messenger integration with HubSpot

Inbound and Buyer Interest Aren't Optional.

With businesses operating in a digital world, buyer interest has turned into an on-demand experience. More consumers are working from home and spending more time online, which means they're interacting with brands when and where they please. Buyers now have a variety of channels to choose from when they want to contact your brand and they also have the luxury of switching between these channels as they see fit. So, if you want to successfully engage your digital audience, your brand needs to be available on all of the platforms your customers are using. That will also help you maintain a noticeable digital presence as more companies follow suit and go online.

You'll also need to focus more on your inbound methodology since consumers now have more power to interact with brands at their preferred pace. If you prioritize quantity over quality when it comes to messaging — like what we've seen with sales emails — you won't get far with engaging your audience and you may end up damaging the customer experience in the process. Instead, try focusing on sending high-quality content to your "good-fit" prospects. You may have to reassess what "good-fit" means since COVID has significantly impacted buyer profiles, but this should get you on track in terms of engaging buyers that are an ideal match for your sales team.

Resources to Help:

• Use these prospecting strategies to find new channels to engage your prospects
• Watch the replay of our Adapt 2020 webinar on selling through uncertainty
• Refresh your email outreach with these sales templates
• Start using video in your sales outreach to engage more prospects
• Use this guide to increase your sales close rates
• Streamline your sales process with this guide to frictionless selling (and this course)

Free Software to Get Started:

• HubSpot CRM is free and comes with included advertising and sales acceleration tools, including free 1:1 video, meetings, and chatbot tools
• Gmail and Google Calendar integrations with HubSpot
• Zoom integration with HubSpot
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration with HubSpot
• Check out what HubSpot's app partners are offering at this time with this list of relief initiatives

Businesses Have to Adapt.

Compared to where we were in March, global sales outcomes look a lot better. But, for many businesses — especially those in structurally-impacted industries — we're nowhere near where we were prior to the pandemic. Businesses have had to adapt their approach to operate under very different circumstances and some have done this successfully while others are still working to come up with an effective plan. The good news is it seems like most businesses understand they need to adapt their strategies in some way if they want to continue to operate in a post-COVID world.

Resources to Help:

• Create an effective SEO strategy using this helpful guide and template
• Prevent traffic loss altogether using this guide to predictive SEO
• Use this editorial calendar template to plan educational content
• Get started writing with these blog post templates
• Optimize content and get found online with our guide to SEO

Free Software to Get Started:

• HubSpot for Wordpress integration
• Google Search Console integration with HubSpot

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