Thread by @TheCoolestCool

Hubspot launched the Website Grader in 2007.

Today, Hubspot's Grader gets 25k+ organic visits /mos, has 1.2M backlinks and assists in the acquisition of millions of dollars in revenue each year.

This product changed the marketing industry & Hubspot.

Let's dive into it 🧵👇

The original app was created by @dharmesh after he and @bhalligan became tired of manually evaluating the sites of prospective Hubspot customers.

They’d manually determine:

Are there links to the sites? Is there a blog? How often are they writing? Are SEO basics covered? Etc.

Then one day... In @dharmesh's own words:

"Out of my own personal laziness and obsession with AUTOMATING ALL THE THINGS"

They took this app and turned it into a public facing tool for people to get a report on how good their website was.

It was a hit. Millions have used it.

In 2009 alone the tool had generated 30,000+ links, 50,000+ emails and 1.1M reports.

Today, it does numbers like this every quarter.

A study conducted by @FoundationIncCo found that free tools are the most linkable asset in SaaS. This solidifies it.

Today, the Website Grader is a beautiful experience that is powered by Google Lighthouse.

It's doing a lot of things right:

> Capturing new leads
> Nurturing relationships
> Generating quality links
> Ranking # 1 for Website Grader
> Educating people on site opportunities

The original app took public info on and around your site and gave you a grade & report. Here's where the marketing brilliance comes in:

Your email was needed to get the report.

AND back in 2007, the people who cared about their website grade were potential Hubspot customers.

The Grader was such a hit that @TechCrunch even wrote a piece about the site suggesting that it was a great way for brands & people to learn how to get their website "high up in natural search results" ❤️

Trust me..

Almost everyone with a site in 2008 was using it.

Hubspot generated THOUSANDS of emails (lots of leads) through this tool. And as the leads came in - The growth opportunity became more clear.

Hubspot needed more Graders.

So that's what they did.

Press Release Grader, Book Grader, Facebook Grader, Twitter Grader and more.

One of their hits was The Twitter Grader

It would tally up your "followers and followings" and rank your Twitter page numerically against other pages.

This created a bit of a controversy and competition in the early days of Twitter. Both helped raise Hubspots profile.

The Twitter Grader was originally a part of a bigger social media project but after @dharmesh explained he could spin this thing out in a day (at 2AM)...

The team was sold.

Let's ship it.

On day one, it graded 5,000 profiles.

Here's a classic:

While the Twitter Grader no longer exists.

The idea behind 'graders' still run deep at Hubspot.

Hubspot has a handful of free tools that people can use to do things like check their SSL certificate, make personas or generate blog post ideas.

What's the goal of these tools?

Generate leads, awareness and sales.

Check this:

In 2017, the email signature tool generated 524k visits, 51k leads, 1.5k influenced opps, 122 influenced wins & $8.5M in new customer LTV.

Source: learn.g2.com/the-worlds-mos…

Ching. Ching.💰

Today, when you use the Hubspot Website Grader you're not just met with a website report & score.

You're met with call to actions offering you to learn more about an issue by enrolling in free courses or speeding things up with a free Hubspot trial.

This is MQL gold.

Others in the industry caught on and have benefited.

Grader inspired SaaS brands to launch free tools as a marketing. From CoSchedule's Headline analyzer to Service Titan's HVAC load calculator...

Free tools have become a staple in great SaaS marketing:

https://twitter.com/TheCoolestCool/status/1282745502061264896

Identifying content opportunities like these for your niche and business can be challenging but with just one or two:

You can unlock a new stream of growth for traffic, links and quality leads. It's smart to start with:

Research.

Talk to customers & analyze search trends.

Our team @FoundationIncCo has been planning, designing and building a few of these types of experiences lately.

Some key things to keep in mind:

> Use keyword research to guide your approach
> Identify arbitrage opportunities
> Understand the current SERP
> UX & Content is key

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