Date Published: 05/18/2012
Author: Diana Urban
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Question

Marketing Grader Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Answer


What is Marketing Grader?

Marketing Grader allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and those of your competitors over time.  It can be found as a free tool at marketing.grader.com or within the HubSpot app under the analytics tab.
 

What is my Marketing Grade so much lower than my Website Grade? 

Marketing Grader and Website Grader are very different tools that measure different things. Website Grader was primarily focused on your website, whereas Marketing Grader is grading your entire marketing funnel. Website Grader used 9 different metrics to calculate your grade, while Marketing Grader uses over 35. This means that Marketing Grader will be a more accurate measure of your inbound marketing successes (and areas needing improvement).

 

Why does my Marketing Grade change so frequently? 

Inbound marketing isn't something you can do for one day or one week and then stop. It can be a full time job, and you have to stay on top of so many different marketing tactics. Marketing Grader looks at your regular activities and uses those to calculate your current grade. This means that if you don't blog for a week (or a month) or if you drop off the face of Twitter or Facebook, your Marketing Grade will reflect this neglect. 

 

How do I improve my grade? 

The best thing you can do to improve your Marketing Grade is to embrace a complete inbound marketing strategy. This includes creating content, optimizing and promoting your content, converting visitors into leads, and measuring all of your marketing efforts. There isn't one magic puzzle piece that will ensure you get a 100. Read Inbound Marketing 101 for more information on how all of these marketing tactics work together.

 

Why didn't Marketing Grader guess my blog/RSS/Twitter username/Facebook fan page correctly? 

Marketing Grader does its best to gather as much information based only on your URL, but it's not perfect (and probably never will be). Instead, Marketing Grader gives you the chance to correct these key pieces of information in order to make your score as accurate as possible. The good news is, you only have to do this once! Create an account and we'll remember your corrections forever. 

 

What metrics were in Website Grader but aren't in Marketing Grader? How do I get that information?

There are 6 metrics that were available in Website Grader but which didn't make the cut for Marketing Grader. There is a variety of reasons why these metrics weren't included in the new report, but if tracking them continues to be important to you, you can find information on them at the following sites.
  • Readability Level - http://www.read-able.com/
  • Heading Summary - http://www.hubspot.com/free-trial/ - Page Grader Tool
  • Domain Summary - http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
  • Twitter Grade - http://Tweet.Grader.com
  • Twitter Grader Rank - http://Tweet.Grader.com
  • Alexa Traffic Rank - http://www.alexa.com/
     

Why does Marketing Grader fail to grade my marketing?

Sometimes Marketing Grader has a hard time accessing your website to grade your marketing. If you get an error message when you enter your URL, it could be one of 3 things causing the problem.
  • The website doesn't exist - The first thing to check is that you typed in the URL correctly. If a website doesn't exist, we can't grade its marketing.
  • The website is blocking Marketing Grader - This can happen based on the configuration of your hosting. When it does, we get a 403 error message back from your site, which means "The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it." You probably need to chat with your IT team or hosting provider.
  • The website is very slow - We try to access a website for 15 seconds. If it takes longer than that, we don't complete the report.
 

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