As a HubSpot employee, I am witness to the power of inbound marketing each and every day. However, when it came time for me to "drink my own champagne" and start using HubSpot for my family wedding business/real estate venture, Granite Ridge Estate & Barn, I was scared. Would Inbound Marketing really help us earn back our investment?  Could we master the Internet to generate real solid leads? Could we penetrate a saturated internet market, the wedding industry? The short answer is yes, yes, and yes. The success has been remarkable.  As soon as the website went up, the leads started to come in. It has been an incredible Inbound journey that has had us on the evening news, featured in magazines, on the cover of manufacturing brochures, and more importantly has us completely booked for our first full wedding season. 

Here are 5 Inbound Marketing Tactics we obsess over at Granite Ridge Estate & Barn and simply can't run a business without. 

1. Content, Content, and More Content

I can't sleep unless there is at least one blog post a week (on average) published on the Granite Ridge website targeting a wedding topic or specific keyword that will improve our SEO ranking. Before we had a barn, we had to find a way to start booking weddings. Weddings are planned out a year or two in advance, so if we missed the first season because we were under construction, we would lose a significant amount of income. I began by creating Facebook, Twitter, and blog content around the construction of the project to start ranking for keywords like "Maine barn wedding", and "Maine rustic wedding venue." Consistent blogging has allowed us to go from completely invisible on the internet to ranking in the top 3 in Google search for our specific targeted keywords. The whole process landed us on the news. We use the HubSpot Keyword tool to monitor our success (it should come with a warning label that it can become slightly addictive). One of our blogging strategies is to blog about wedding trends by featuring local business owners. It's a win win for all involved. We get interesting topics, they get a feature they can promote, and the content gets shared much more than if we blogged about it ourselves. 

Other forms of content that help us are pictures of both weddings and staged shoots, as well as videos like our promotional tour video that has been featured in Wellwed. The general rule at Granite Ridge is that all posts via social media or on our website have to be of professional quality. Our business depends on beautiful images and videos that allow our potential couples to dream.  Each picture gets a meta tag that also helps us rank for industry specific key words as well as the image itself helping sell our vision.

 2. A Mobile Friendly Website

According to Google analytics, almost 40% of our web traffic comes from a mobile device. The website has to be beautiful from whereever it's being viewed. We use the HubSpot COS that is automatically mobile friendly and responsive. 

 3. An Easily Editable CMS with Built in Easy to Use SEO Tools

In order to be successful with Inbound Marketing, the speed of which you can get content published is extremely important. I am not a web designer and needed a way to make updates to the pages on my site, blog, landing pages, and email templates quickly. I also check, as I edit, how well the blog, landing page, email, or website page looks on a mobile device. If the content can't be easily viewed on the device my visitors are utilizing, they will quickly move on. 

4. Work Flows / Lead Nurturing Campaigns

 We get leads all hours of the day and night and many times, couples don't answer our first phone call. Sending a series of thoughtful, educational content allows us to stay in-front of our prospective bookings vs. no follow up. These emails are strategically sent using my email address and are each personalized. As our content grows, we will start segmenting and developing more content that focuses on our specific buyer personas: the Bride, Groom, Mother of the Bride, Wedding Planner etc. The conversion rates on the email campaigns were surprising to me. I thought no one would open them, but I was very wrong!

5. Analyze Constantly

The best part of inbound marketing for my business is that everything is measurable. Something I learned early on in the wedding industry is that there are countless paid sites to list your venue. You can easily rack up thousands of dollars listing your venue. Because I use HubSpot, I track each and every referral website in how much traffic, leads, and most of all, customers I receive, allowing me to better understand which sites are most valuable. I often find myself checking my HubSpot mobile app multiple times a day to see how many views our blog posts get, how my emails are performing, and how much traffic the site has received.  

What is Granite Ridge Estate & Barn?

We are a private, luxury Maine Barn wedding venue that incorporates a 3,500 sq foot Timberframe barn, 123 acre mountain, and Estate Lodge that can accommodate up to 15 guests. We rent our property for an extended weekend and wedding professionals take over for catering, event rentals, alcohol, and all of the details that go into making one of the most memorable wedding experiences. 

Every day we have inquiries from all over the world that found us using a simple Internet search. Without Inbound Marketing, Granite Ridge Estate & Barn would not be nearly as successful. The most gratifying conversation of any day is when I pick up the phone to contact one of our inquiries and the first statement is "I am in love with your venue. It's gorgeous!" without having ever seen the venue in person. It's a true testament that our Inbound Marketing efforts are working. Most of the time, I can see from the HubSpot contact analytics that prospective guests have been stalking the site for months, and after speaking with them I learn in some cases they search even before they get engaged! Inbound Marketing works. Period.

Jill Fratianne is a Channel Account Manger for HubSpot, an internet marketing software company with over 15,000 customers. Currently she helps marketing agencies grow thier business and services leveraging Inbound Marketing and the HubSpot software. Her side passion for real estate ventures began with her brother, Anthony. They now own multiple apparment buildings as well as a manufactured housing community in Maine. Together, they founded Granite Ridge Estate and Barn in 2014.