Podcast appearances and mentions of kipp bodnar

In today's competitive market, many entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, business leaders, and marketers struggle to cut through the noise and scale their businesses. Kipp Bodnar's rise from employee to Chief Marketing Officer at HubSpot in just five years demonstrates how the right mindset and focus drive success. By blending entrepreneurship, inbound marketing, and leadership, he achieved remarkable growth. In this episode, Kipp shares the most effective marketing strategies, reveals how to spot opportunities, and the key to scaling your business through content marketing, customer relationships, and AI. In this episode, Hala and Kipp will discuss:  (00:00) Introduction (01:24) Key Strategies for Career and Business Growth (10:32) The Entrepreneurial Mindset in Leadership (12:10) HubSpot's Secret to Global Marketing Success (15:10) Inbound vs Outbound Marketing (17:23) Effective Content Marketing Strategies (22:00) Three Ways to Stand Out as a Content Creator (24:16) The Value of Email and Online Marketing (30:42) Leveraging AI in Sales and Marketing (35:52) The Power of Customer Service in Retention (39:09) How to Market a Startup with Limited Funds (40:53) Marketing Strategies for Busy Entrepreneurs Kipp Bodnar is the Chief Marketing Officer at HubSpot, a leading global marketing and sales platform. His expertise in social media, SEO, and email marketing helped him advance to CMO in just five years. With a background in entrepreneurship and marketing, Kipp also hosts the Marketing Against the Grain podcast, where he shares insights on AI, marketing trends, and growth hacks. Sponsored By: Resources Mentioned: Kipp's Podcast, Marketing Against The Grain: bit.ly/MarketingAgainstTheGrain  Kipp's Book, The B2B Social Media Book: bit.ly/B2BBook  Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals   Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap  Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting  LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/  Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/  Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com  Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new  Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, E-commerce, LinkedIn, Instagram, Digital Marketing, Storytelling, Advertising, Social Media Marketing, Communication, Video Marketing, Social Proof, Influencers, Influencer Marketing, Marketing Tips, Digital Trends, Marketing Podcast.

This week on Modern Marketers, Kipp Bodnar, CMO of Hubspot, joins Google's Joshua Spanier to discuss how to make B2B marketing creative better, how to convince your CFO it's OK not to attribute 100% of your marketing spend, and the importance of taking risks as a leader. Hear how Hubspot has built out its marketing team, approaches growth opportunities, and about Kipp's experiences from his days as an early employee at Hubspot to now.

Ever wish you could have a go-to-market therapy session with one of the most seasoned marketers in the biz? We have, and lucky for us, the B2B doctor was in! On this week's episode of Talking Too Loud, Chris gets some sage advice from HubSpot's Chief Marketing Officer, Kipp Bodnar, on the best ways to market platforms vs. point solutions. The pair get quite loud about the virtues of tech-optimism, the future of brand, and the best way to perform marketing inception! Also, Sylvie gets loud about the Olympics! Links to Learn More About Kipp:Kipp's LinkedInKipp's Podcast, Marketing Against the GrainLinks to Learn More about Wistia and Talking Too Loud:Follow Wistia's CEO Chris Savage on LinkedInSubscribe to Talking Too Loud on WistiaWatch Talking Too Loud on YouTubeFollow Talking Too Loud on InstagramFollow Talking Too Loud on TikTokLove what you heard? Leave us a review on Apple!Leave us a review on Spotify!

Ever wish you could have a go-to-market therapy session with one of the most seasoned marketers in the biz? We have, and lucky for us, the B2B doctor was in! On this week's episode of Talking Too Loud, Chris gets some sage advice from HubSpot's Chief Marketing Officer, Kipp Bodnar, on the best ways to market platforms vs. point solutions. The pair get quite loud about the virtues of tech-optimism, the future of brand, and the best way to perform marketing inception! Also, Sylvie gets loud about the Olympics! Links to Learn More About Kipp:Kipp's LinkedInKipp's Podcast, Marketing Against the GrainLinks to Learn More about Wistia and Talking Too Loud:Follow Wistia's CEO Chris Savage on LinkedInSubscribe to Talking Too Loud on WistiaWatch Talking Too Loud on YouTubeFollow Talking Too Loud on InstagramFollow Talking Too Loud on TikTokLove what you heard? Leave us a review on Apple!Leave us a review on Spotify!

Today's episode is my interview on the Marketing Against The Grain podcast with Kipp Bodnar, CMO - HubSpot, and Kieran Flanagan, SVP Marketing - HubSpot. We discuss the central role of attention in marketing and how it shifts across platforms, the value of engaging comments as a marketing tool, and much more. Hope you enjoy this one! Check out my new book - Day Trading Attention: https://garyvee.com/attention Learn more about Marketing Against The Grain: YouTube:  @MATGpod  X: https://x.com/matgpod — Thanks for watching! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/garyvee/message

"Well, these tools are able to do a lot of the work that comes after when someone signs up for something, whether it's a form where they sign up for a product and they're able to like, do personalization better than we've been able to do through humans." - Kieran Flanagan, CMO at Zapier and co-host of the successful podcast 'Marketing Against the Grain' with Kipp Bodnar, HupSpot's CMO. Listen to our new episode where you'll hear from Kieran Flanagan and Ryan Howard, Technical Program Manager at Google. They share insights on leveraging AI to transform audience engagement from mundane to mesmerizing. They'll have your audience double-tapping, sharing, and subscribing before you know it!   Check it out!

Dharmesh Shah is the co-founder and CTO of HubSpot (currently valued at $30 billion) and one of the most fascinating founders I've ever met. Dharmesh is the keeper of HubSpot's Culture Code, built ChatSpot (an AI chatbot built on top of HubSpot CRM) and a game called WordPlay (which grew to 16 million users), and also founded and writes for OnStartups, a top-ranking startup blog and community with more than 1M members. He's also invested in 100+ startups including OpenAI, AngelList, Coinbase, and Dropbox. In our conversation, we discuss:• The biggest lessons he has learned from building HubSpot• The importance of leaning into your strengths• Dharmesh's data-oriented approach to public speaking• How he developed HubSpot's culture code• The decision-making process at HubSpot• His contrarian approach to building products• Why founders and product teams are all fighting the second law of thermodynamics• How “flash tags” can save your teams time• How to decide what ideas are worth investing in—Brought to you by:• Explo—Embed customer-facing analytics in your product• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security• LinkedIn Ads—Reach professionals and drive results for your business—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-30-years-of-building—Where to find Dharmesh Shah:• X: https://twitter.com/dharmesh• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dharmesh/• Website: https://dharmesh.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Dharmesh's background(04:20) Fun facts about Dharmesh(06:31) His data-oriented approach to public speaking(11:45) Advice for adding humor to your presentations(15:28) Why he has no direct reports(18:46) You can shape the universe to your liking(20:02) Lessons from building HubSpot(23:43) Contrarian ways of running a company(37:26) Fighting the second law of thermodynamics (40:29) The importance of simplicity in running a business(45:22) Succeeding in the SMB market(50:29) Zigging when others are zagging(54:17) When it makes sense to go “wide and deep”(57:33) Using flashtags to communicate opinions(01:02:44) HubSpot's decision-making process (01:09:41) Deciding what ideas to invest in(01:15:26) Defining and maintaining company culture(01:30:46) The potential of AI(01:37:03) Practical advice for learning AI(01:40:07) Where to find Dharmesh—Referenced:• WordPlay: https://wordplay.com/article/unlimited• ChatSpot: https://chatspot.ai/• Indian-origin entrepreneur buys ‘chat.com' for over $10 million, then sells, donates $250,000 to Khan Academy: https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/indian-origin-entrepreneur-buys-chatcom-for-over-10-million-then-sells-donates-250000-to-khan-academy-382907-2023-05-26• Kipp Bodnar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kippbodnar/• The surprising metric presenters should analyze: https://lars-sudmann.com/the-surprising-metric-presenters-should-analyze/• SoloWare: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dharmesh_for-3-decades-now-in-addition-to-my-day-activity-7166500611247583232-kZgb/• Brian Halligan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhalligan/• First Principles: Elon Musk on the Power of Thinking for Yourself: https://jamesclear.com/first-principles• Peter Thiel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterthiel/• The second law of thermodynamics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics• What is an SMB?: https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/SMB-small-and-medium-sized-business-or-small-and-midsized-business• Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/• Relentless curiosity, radical accountability, and HubSpot's winning growth formula | Christopher Miller (VP of Product, Growth and AI): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/relentless-curiosity-radical-accountability-and-hubspots-winning-growth-formula-christopher-mil/• FlashTags: A Simple Hack for Conveying Context Without Confusion: https://www.onstartups.com/flashtags-a-simple-hack-for-conveying-context-without-confusion• What it means to “disagree and commit”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16949021• A Simple Decision Framework: Debate, Decide and Unite: https://connectingdots.com/p/debate-decide-unite• Dharmesh Shah's Frameworks for Creating a $1 Billion Net Worth: https://hakune.co/dharmesh-shah-networth/• Zip: https://ziphq.com/• The HubSpot Culture Code: Creating a Company We Love: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34234/the-hubspot-culture-code-creating-a-company-we-love.aspx• How defining values and culture helped Airbnb achieve worldwide success: https://lattice.com/library/how-defining-values-and-culture-helped-airbnb-achie• What is SQL?: https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/sql/• GrowthBot: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Releases-and-Updates/Meet-GrowthBot-from-HubSpot-Labs/ba-p/417985—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

In today's episode of Unsolicited Feedback, Fareed Mosavat, Joff Redfern, and Kipp Bodnar delve into the meteoric rise of Martech tools and the transformative role of AI, with a special focus on the innovative video creation platform, HeyGen. This discussion is very valuable for anyone leading marketing efforts in 2024 and beyond.

LinkedIn Games: A Brilliant Move or a Misstep?

From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2021. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL's in these archive episodes are still relevant. Kipp is the Chief Marketing Officer of HubSpot, where he sets HubSpot's global inbound marketing strategy to drive awareness and demand for HubSpot's inbound marketing and sales products. Top 3 Value Bombs 1. It is not just how hard you work, it is what you work on. 2. Brands should try to work with creators in their space. 3. If you are a business person, align yourself with creators. Subscribe to HubSpot's channel! Watch. Learn. Grow - HubSpot YouTube Channel Sponsors HubSpot With the HubSpot for Startups program, you can save 30-90 percent on a platform that scales right along with you! To see if you're eligible to join the HubSpot for Startups program and take your growth to the next level, visit HubSpot.com/startups Thought-Leader Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk. Visit Thought-Leader.com/fire to join a free training and learn how to land a TEDx Talk and spread your message to millions

From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2021. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL's in these archive episodes are still relevant. Kipp is the Chief Marketing Officer of HubSpot, where he sets HubSpot's global inbound marketing strategy to drive awareness and demand for HubSpot's inbound marketing and sales products. Top 3 Value Bombs 1. It is not just how hard you work, it is what you work on. 2. Brands should try to work with creators in their space. 3. If you are a business person, align yourself with creators. Subscribe to HubSpot's channel! Watch. Learn. Grow - HubSpot YouTube Channel Sponsors HubSpot With the HubSpot for Startups program, you can save 30-90 percent on a platform that scales right along with you! To see if you're eligible to join the HubSpot for Startups program and take your growth to the next level, visit HubSpot.com/startups Thought-Leader Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk. Visit Thought-Leader.com/fire to join a free training and learn how to land a TEDx Talk and spread your message to millions

Kipp Bodnar is Chief Marketing Officer at HubSpot and co-hosts the popular "Marketing Against The Grain" podcast. Kipp joins Dave to talk about his path from managing the HubSpot blog to CMO, what changes from individual contributor to marketing exec, how HubSpot's marketing has evolved over the years, and some predictions for 2024. Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.comJoin the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter***This episode of the Exit Five podcast is brought to you by our friends at Knak.  Launching an email or landing page in your marketing automation platform shouldn't feel like assembling an airplane mid flight with no instructions, but too often that's exactly how it feels. No more having to stop midway through your campaign to fix something simple. Knack lets you work with your entire team in real time and stops you from having to fix things mid flight. Check them out at knak.com/exit-five/***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Today we have another episode of Better Done Than Perfect. Listen in as we talk to Lloyed Lobo, co-founder of Boast.ai and author of From Grassroots to Greatness. You'll learn about the four stages companies go through to become a global phenomenon, the values for building a sustainable community-led business, how to nurture brand evangelists, and more.Please head over to the episode page for the detailed recap and key takeaways.Show notesFrom Grassroots To Greatness — Lloyed's new bookStart with Why — a book by Simon SinekNick Mehta, Dharmesh Shah, Kipp Bodnar, Mark Roberge — brand evangelistsLarry Ellison, Jason Lemkin, Gary VaynerchukFollow Lloyed on LinkedInFrom Grassroots To Greatness websiteThanks for listening! If you found the episode useful, please spread the word about this new show on Twitter mentioning @userlist, or leave us a review on iTunes.SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — an email automation platform for SaaS companies. It matches the complexity of your customer data, including many-to-many relationships between users and companies. Book your demo call today at userlist.com.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

How do you build and grow a community-led business? In this episode, we talk to Lloyed Lobo, co-founder of Boast.ai and author of From Grassroots to Greatness. You'll learn about the four stages companies go through to become a global phenomenon, the values for building a sustainable community-led business, how to nurture brand evangelists, and more.Visit our website for the detailed episode recap with key learnings.From Grassroots To Greatness — Lloyed's new bookStart with Why — a book by Simon SinekNick Mehta, Dharmesh Shah, Kipp Bodnar, Mark Roberge — brand evangelistsLarry Ellison, Jason Lemkin, Gary VaynerchukFollow Lloyed on LinkedInFrom Grassroots To Greatness websiteThanks for listening! If you found the episode useful, please spread the word about the show on Twitter mentioning @userlist, or leave us a review on iTunes.SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — an email automation platform for SaaS companies. It matches the complexity of your customer data, including many-to-many relationships between users and companies. Book your demo call today at userlist.com.

Kipp Bodnar, CMO of HubSpot, and Kieran Flanagan, CMO of Zapier, join Isaac and Jared to discuss four radical truths of marketing: distribution is undefeated, storytelling is unconditional, marketers flourish with AI, and marketers are creators.**Key Takeaways:**- Distribution is a key factor in marketing success, and marketers should prioritize partnerships.- Storytelling must be authentic.- AI can help marketers own more of the customer journey by automating tasks and providing personalized experiences.- Marketers should embrace their role as creators and focus on building their personal brand and audience.**Chapters**01:39 The Importance of Distribution in Marketing13:04 The Power of Storytelling in Marketing21:05 The Role of AI in Marketing22:04 Marketers as Creators35:54 The Future of Marketing: AI and Creators

Today's guest is HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar. He's helped HubSpot grow from a $10 million company to a $1.7 billion company. Kipp reveals how in today's Nudge. Tune in to hear the 7 marketing lessons he used to grow Hubspot.  Access the bonus episode with Kipp: https://tinyurl.com/4pfrj637 Listen to Marketing Against The Grain: https://link.chtbl.com/VRVPL0rs Follow the Nudge Newsletter (it's free): https://www.nudgepodcast.com/mailing-list

Today, we have a special guest whose work has made a lasting impact in the realm of category design — Kipp Bodnar, the Chief Marketing Officer at HubSpot.

Here's how you can hack your marketing using AI. Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan dive into the power of how the code interpreter will scale your business. Learn all the new team features that will simplify cross-functional work, how ChatGPT will help package the data in ways you can understand it, and more tactical ways you can use AI to grow your business. Mentions Google Bard https://bard.google.com/  Insider article https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-tool-code-interpreter-masters-things-in-seconds-wharton-professor-2023-7 Matt Wolfe tweet https://twitter.com/mreflow/status/1678506029620006912  Chase Lean's tweet https://twitter.com/chaseleantj/status/1677651054551523329  We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: ​​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg  Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod  Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934   If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar   Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

Would you rather be wrong or boring? Kipp Bodnar is joined by Codie Sanchez (Founder of Contrarian Thinking) to discuss the power of storytelling as a boring business. Learn about the hidden traits of great businesses, why most business models in media are awful, how to think about interacting with your community, and how to lean into your unfair advantages to win. Connect with Codie Contrarian Thinking https://contrarianthinking.co/  LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/codiesanchez/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez/ About Codie Sanchez Codie runs Contrarian Thinking a financial media company and Contrarian Capital a small business holding company that does $50Million in annual revenue and is focused on bringing Main Street Businesses back.  We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: ​​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg  Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod  Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934   If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar   Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

How does one of the world's most influential companies think about marketing?  HubSpot's CMO, Kipp Bodnar, is in the studio to unpack all of the lessons he's learned in marketing. He's talking to Daniel about why you should always create content that prioritizes helping and entertaining your audience above all else, why podcasting remains one of the hardest channels to grow an audience in, and how HubSpot thinks about hiring content creators.  Plus, Kipp also divulges how he thinks about the media funnel and explains why distribution is everything.   0:00 Intro/Background 1:30 Creating Great Media 4:20 Considering Creators 9:46 Podcasting is Hard 13:30 The Media Funnel Parts 16:35 Qualitative Data Tracking 22:00 HubSpot Marketing 22:20 Words of Advice 25:20 The Hiring Criteria 30:46 A Hill to Die On 33:23 Follow Us Discount code to attend Inbound: TMMINBOUND (15% off discount code on General Admission passes – expires on July 31, 2023) inbound.com/agenda Follow Kipp:  Marketing Against the Grain Podcast Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Kippbodnar LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kippbodnar   Follow Daniel: Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing   Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:  www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials   Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: www.workweek.com

Where will there be lots of innovation in AI tools? Ads. Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan bring the weekly update on all things happening in the AI world and how it will affect the business world. Learn about all the new AI tools that have hit the market, How AI tools may make you lose leverage in your skills, and the power of outsourcing your brain use cases. Mentions Chat GPT iphone app https://openai.com/blog/introducing-the-chatgpt-app-for-ios  Meta AI sandbox https://www.facebook.com/business/news/introducing-ai-sandbox-and-expanding-meta-advantage-suite  Google AI-powered ad solutions https://ads.google.com/intl/en_us/home/campaigns/ai-powered-ad-solutions/  Yoodli speak coach https://app.yoodli.ai/  DraGAN https://vcai.mpi-inf.mpg.de/projects/DragGAN/?ref=theresanaiforthat  Tweet on DraGAN https://twitter.com/AiBreakfast/status/1659601613739409409  Quiver https://github.com/StanGirard/quivr Rewind AI https://www.rewind.ai/  Glean AI https://www.glean.com/  BarGPT https://www.bargpt.app/  We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: ​​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg  Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod  Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934   If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar   Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

Product-led growth is one of the biggest advantages in business today. Kipp Bodnar dives into the growth hacks HubSpot used to become a billion-dollar company and how you can use it to grow your business. Learn about the power of early adopters with category creation, the importance of investing in customer happiness, and why you need to obsess about distribution. We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: ​​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg  Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod  Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934   If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar   Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

Summary:This week on How to Win: Lindsay Bayuk, CMO at Pluralsight, an online technology learning platform designed to help teams upskill. Pluralsight was founded in 2004 and was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2021.In this episode, Lindsay breaks down some of the strategies that have helped her as a CMO. We discuss communicating the importance of marketing to a CEO, how to align your company metrics, and why you should be wary of 'yes-men'. I weigh in on cross-company collaboration, the correct way to use customer research, and why a day not gathering customer intelligence is a day wasted.Key Points: Lindsay discusses what it's like being a CMO with a product marketing background (01:10) Is life too short to work with a CEO who doesn't understand marketing? (03:10) I dive into communicating the importance of marketing with a CEO with a quote from former Privy CMO Dave Gerhardt and Drift's David Cancel (03:51) How does Lindsay communicate important marketing metrics cross-company? (05:38) I talk about getting buy-in from across the company with a quote from Hubspot's Kipp Bodnar (09:31) Lindsay lays out Pluralsight's successful messaging and positioning play (11:24) I weigh in on how you should approach your positioning and messaging (13:34) How does Lindsay use customer interviews to inform Pluralsight's positioning? (14:26) I discuss how to use customer research in the right way (16:02) How are Lindsay's teams structured and how does she juggle them all? (17:14) I explain why you should surround yourself with people who challenge you with a quote from former astronaut Garrett Reisman (19:11) Why does Lindsay think that "go-to-market is a team sport?" (20:54) What are some of the mistakes Lindsay has made in her career? (22:24) Wrap-up (23:48) Mentioned:Lindsay Bayuk WebsiteLindsay Bayuk LinkedInPluralsight WebsitePluralsight LinkedInDave Gerhardt LinkedInDavid Cancel LinkedInKipp Bodnar LinkedInGarrett Reisman LinkedInMy Links:TwitterLinkedInWebsiteWynterSpeeroCXL

Turning Audiences Into Businesses with Kipp Bodnar and Piyush Mangalick    On today's episode, Alvin Bowles at Meta is talking to Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot, and Piyush Mangalick, VP of Business Engineering for a Media & Community Partnerships team at Meta. We're talking about:   - How to get started building audiences and turning them into businesses. - The shift from trusting brands and media to trusting influencers and creators. - Tools and resources for turning audiences into businesses. - How HubSpot's tools can help creators build businesses. - How can existing companies connect with creators and influencers? - The importance of authenticity when working with influencers. - The future of the influencer and creator industry.   #innovation #technology #genz #metaverse #socialmedia #socialmediamarketing   Keep up with the latest from Meta's Business Engineering Team by following us on Medium. At Meta, we're always searching for new ways for technology to drive your business forward – like augmented reality. Learn more here.  

Today I had the huge privilege to interview one of the most influential and successful marketers on the planet: Kipp Bodnar, CMO of HubSpot. I've been following Kipp for many years and always admired his wisdom and his unique point of view on marketing. In this episode we talked about Kipp's journey. He's been with HubSpot for over 12 years, and has been one of leaders who took the company from startup to a multi billion dollar giant. We also spoke about the future of careers in Marketing, and about how today's economy is influencing the way B2B buyers are thinking and buying. The episode is filled with “gems for thought” from Kipp, so make sure you don't miss out.

If you read the tea leaves of the conversations people are having about social media channels these days, you'd probably think TikTok was dominant, Instagram was struggling, YouTube was relevant and everything else was dead. But the way the conversations go and reality aren't always aligned.  HubSpot published two reports over the last couple of months specific to Instagram. One was its 2022 Instagram Engagement Report. The other was a report specific to shopping on the platform. Both reports offered up reminders that not only do consumers still prefer Instagram over TikTok and other platforms, but so do marketers.  But … research reports come out weeks and sometimes months after the surveys and data analysis is done. And social media often changes by the day. So are HubSpot's Instagram reports even still valid? Well, the short answer is yes. Consumer trends often take months to shift. Instagram is still bigger and used by more people than TikTok, though that gap is closing. And the perception of Instagram's waffling wasn't helped when its CEO came out recently and said, “Make more vertical video,” in an obvious attempt to compete with TikTok-like content. But I wanted to dig in deeper to the information and question it a bit. When I do that I like to go to the source. I invited my old pal Kipp Bodnar, who is now the chief marketing officer at HubSpot, to sit in with me and talk Instagram, TikTok and more. I asked him if he was concerned at all the survey data might be old the day it was published, if Instagram is still relevant and a lot more. We also dug into the shopping report a bit to talk about how marketers are leveraging those features to turn Instagram into a frictionless, shopping app, while also being a fun social network. This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger, a complete influence marketing software solution. Check them out for a demo today at jason.online/tagger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a little special because we are featuring segments from not one but 4 amazing, industry-leading CMOs that were on the 3-Minute Marketing Podcast! You'll hear amazing insights from Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot's CMO, Udi Ledergor, Gong's CMO, Grant Johnson, Emburse's CMO, and Kevin Alansky, Jedox's CMO. Buckle up for this blast from the The post 4 B2B SaaS CMOs share their marketing wisdom appeared first on WebMechanix.

Kipp Bodnar is the Chief Marketing Officer of HubSpot, where he sets HubSpot's global inbound marketing strategy. Prior to his role as CMO, Kipp served as VP of Marketing at HubSpot, overseeing all demand generation activity worldwide and building out the EMEA and APAC marketing teams. Kipp serves as a marketing advisor for SimplyMeasured, InsightSquared and Guidebook. Kipp is the co-author of “The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More.” In Today's Episode with Kipp Bodnar We Discuss: 1.) The Journey to CMO @ Hubspot: How Kipp made his way into the world of marketing and came to be CMO @ Hubspot? What does Kipp know now that he wishes all CMOs knew when they started? 2.) Choosing The Channel: How does Kipp advise founders on which channel they should focus on? What is the framework which will tell them which channel is right for them? How many different channels should they try? How focussed should they be? Should they have independent teams for each channel? How do the best founders allocate resources to new channels? How do you know when one is not working and you need to stop? When do you just need to keep going and persisting? What have been some of Kipp's biggest mistakes when entering new channels? 3.) Product Marketing, Brand Marketing and Founders Marketing: How does Kipp advise founders who say that, "social and personal brand is just not for them"? In what two ways does Kipp believe that all businesses are constrained? Does Kipp agree that the state of product marketing has never been worse? What is truly great product marketing to Kipp? How does Kipp distinguish between good and great brand marketing? How has what it takes to be great at brand marketing changed over time? 4.) The Best Marketing People: What are signs of clear 10x performers in marketing? What advice would Kipp give to someone aspiring to be a CMO? What mistakes do 95% make that they should change? How do the best CMOs manage up and manage their team? Why does Kipp compare the role of the CMO to the general manager in NFL teams? Why does Kipp believe the role of the CMO is a lonely one? What are the hardest elements? What framework for learning does Kipp use to learn all new topics? What works? What does not?

In 1995 46% of Americans trusted TV news, today that's only 11%. Join Kipp Bodnar and guest Katie Burke (CPO @ HubSpot) on this special episode live at INBOUND. Press play to find out how to win in a market with messaging discipline, how to think about investing in PR, how to approach your influencer strategy, how to know if your PR is ACTUALLY working, and more! Links: MironkoProductions.com IG: https://www.instagram.com/MIRONKOPRODUCTIONS/ Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934   If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar   Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

How important is it to have a privacy-centered strategy in 2022? We chat with Hubspot's Kipp Bodnar about the state of data privacy, first-party data, becoming a more human-focused marketer, and more.

How do you market to a difficult target audience? Do you market to the buyer or end user? Kipp and Kieran answer YOUR marketing questions on how to tailor a 2x2 for your business, using a series C content strategy as an early-stage startup, and more. Do you want your question to be featured in a future episode? Leave a review in Apple Podcasts with your question, name, and Twitter handle - and we may feature YOU next! Links Next Health https://www.next-health.com/ Katie Hardy https://twitter.com/KPmanHardy Crue https://www.yourcrue.com/  Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934  If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar  Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

Who will own the next generation of the internet? We're talking about the ownership economy, Kipp and Kieran's community frameworks, understanding the scarcity in utility, and more! Join hosts, Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan as they go on a Twitter deep dive on fascinating things and strategies that will help you take your business to the next. Links: From @ljin18 about “The Ownership Economy” https://twitter.com/ljin18/status/1519691235555958787 Kevin Kelly's article “103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known” https://kk.org/thetechnium/103-bits-of-advice-i-wish-i-had-known/  Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain!  Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934  If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends.  We really appreciate your support. Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar  Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

What's a great opportunity for brands and marketers? We're talking intellectual property, genius licensing deals, and differentiating yourself from the competition. Join hosts, Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan as they go on a Twitter deep dive on fascinating things that will help you grow your business. Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934  If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://www.hubspot.com/company/management/kipp-bodnar Kieran Flanagan, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/author/kieran-flanagan Twitter deep-dive links: @PirateApe coinbase tweet https://twitter.com/PirateApe/status/1513625770605879303 Kieran Flanagan's post on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kieranjflanagan_incentives-are-the-secret-to-any-world-class-activity-6918162096702513152-mN46/ @Sama DALL-E Ai thread https://twitter.com/sama/status/1511724264629678084 @WolfofFranchises Dippin' Dots thread https://twitter.com/franchisewolf/status/1513147851873865730  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

Listen as Kipp and Kieran brainstorm fresh marketing ideas to help five real businesses differentiate themselves. You'll hear creative strategies for Sticky Tasks, Wurkr, Wisp, Toggl, and Stampede.  Plus, Wanna win free stuff? Tweet YOUR half-baked marketing ideas at @kippbodnar and @searchbrat with the hashtag #marketingagainstthegrain, and the best 5 half-baked marketing ideas will win Airpods! Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain!  Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934  If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends.  We really appreciate your support. Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar  Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

The HubSpot Podcast Network is proud to announce our latest podcast: Marketing Against the Grain. Listen here: https://link.chtbl.com/eASRByGO About Marketing Against the Grain: If you want to know what's happening now in marketing, what's ahead, and how you can lead the way, this is your podcast! In this weekly show, HubSpot's CMO and SVP of Marketing, Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan, share their marketing expertise - unfiltered in the details, the truth, and like nobody tells it to you. Tune in for high-level perspective, conversation, and the occasional argument as they serve up an honest-to-goodness sense of how you can move your business forward!

Get ready for some high-level perspective and conversation on how you can move your business forward! This week, hosts Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan go on a Twitter deep dive on fascinating things that will tilt everyone's perspective on growth. Keep your ears peeled for talks on how simplicity is underrated Web 3 and how it's going to put the customer acquisition game on its head (hint: incentives!) how this founder showcases the value proposition of her company's tools with one tweet They also discuss how LinkedIn joins the Podcast Network game, YouTube can win podcasts, and what podcast discovery engines are missing. Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934 If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. As a way to celebrate the launch, we're giving away over $9k in tech prizes! Including a Playstation 5, Airpods Max, Eight Sleep Mattress, and so much more! Click here https://upvir.al/129763/MATG1?utm_source=MATG-Show-Notes&utm_medium=owned&utm_campaign=MATG-External to sign up. The giveaway ends on April 13th. Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://www.hubspot.com/company/management/kipp-bodnar Kieran Flanagan, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/author/kieran-flanagan Twitter deep-dive links: Pat Grady's thread on 15 Lessons from 15 Years at Sequoia Capital: https://twitter.com/gradypb/status/1500853901901197314 Chris Cantino's tweet on Web 2 and Web 3 acquisition differences: https://twitter.com/chriscantino/status/1496546019244490757 Yuliya Bel's tweet on Who people are engaging with the most on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ybelyayeva/status/1493265844352294917 ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network

Web2 is the Internet era defined by products and services from large centralized companies aka FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google). Those platforms invest significantly in sales and marketing teams as part of their GTM (go-to-market) strategy to generate leads and acquire & retain customers. One of the big problems with Web2 is that the vast majority of accrued value goes to the platform itself, not to the creators who are doing the work and thus should be earning that money. Web3 gives the power back to the creators. It leverages decentralized technologies to bring the users into the center of decision-making processes. That is why a new approach to marketing is needed in the decentralized world. While some conventional customer acquisition techniques may still be relevant for Web3 projects, the introduction of tokens and new organizational structures like DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) requires us to rethink go-to-market strategies as well as initiatives for building communities and generating revenue. Join Hubspot's Chief Marketing Officer, Kipp Bodnar, in a fireside chat hosted by Cardstack's Founding Director, Chris Tse. Agenda: The fireside chat will focus on these central points: How is Web3 marketing different from Web2 marketing? GTM for Web3 projects: centralized apps, dApps, DAOs, and DeFi The role of community in Web3 marketing Growth metrics that must be tracked by Web3 projects

Welcome to Marketing Against The Grain. Co-hosted by HubSpot's CMO and SVP of Marketing, Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan. Each week, you'll get a seat at the table with Kipp and Kieran as they take you behind the scenes and into the discussions with the sharpest minds in marketing & growth (like Ross Simmonds, Mayur Gupta, and Alex Lieberman), who are doing things differently to grow their businesses. Tune in to Marketing Against The Grain for weekly wisdom — unfiltered, unvarnished, and like no one else tells it to you. They'll be leaning into essential marketing, business & Web3 topics and answer the question, “What's happening now in Marketing, what's ahead, and how can you lead the way?” This show isn't just for marketers. It's for those who believe the impossible is actually just improbable and with the right execution, they can change a whole market's perspective. Available starting Tuesday, April 5th wherever you get your podcasts. 'Marketing Against The Grain' is brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast network.

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot.   Today's most innovative companies will have a media company embedded in them - that's what Kipp believes. HubSpot, Salesforce, Amex, and Adobe are a few companies that have leveraged this strategy to drive multibillion-dollar outcomes.   Kipp oversees all demand generation activity worldwide, building out the EMEA and APAC marketing teams, and managing HubSpot's field marketing, localization, strategic partnerships, and social media efforts. He also serves as a marketing advisor for SaaS companies and is the co-author of The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More.   Kipp tells us about HubSpot's experience building a media arm by leveraging education, content, and advocacy to not only drive awareness but also exponential growth and revenue.   Specifically, Kipp discusses:   3:08 - Kipp's backstory 5:05 - Benefits to becoming a media company 10:53 - How a podcast network ties into the bigger picture 12:49 - Driving traffic to new marketing sources 15:43 - What's needed to build a media company? 19:43 - Ensuring your content stays relevant 26:37 - The effort behind building a massive community 30:19 -  Deciding which marketing channel to prioritize 36:19 - Common business models outside of ads 40:51 - How to keep growing your audience 45:49 - Where is the media company strategy headed? 51:13 - How do you prioritize the best ideas and find great marketers?   Connect with Kipp Bodnar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kippbodnar/   Learn more about HubSpot at https://www.hubspot.com/   This episode is brought to you by: Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don't get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI. Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca  Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com  

Welcome to another episode of 3-Minute-Marketing, where we interview some of the world's foremost growth and performance marketing leaders and distill their best knowledge into binge-worthy three-minute blocks of brilliance. We're closing out 2021 with a bang — I'm very excited to have Kipp Bodnar with us today. Kipp is CMO at HubSpot, who we've The post Web3, NFTs, metaverses, and the future of content marketing with Kipp Bodnar of HubSpot appeared first on WebMechanix.

The Buzz 1: “Recruiting great marketers should be your number one priority.” (Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot CMO) The Buzz 2: “Marketing's job is never done. It's about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.” (Beth Comstock, former GE CMO & Vice Chair) The Buzz 3: “Just because you are the loudest, doesn't make you right.” (Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO & Co-Founder) The Buzz 4: “The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing.” (Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist Founder & CEO) Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, technology was accelerating society's rate of change, especially impacting the skills needed in the workforce. And Marketing has not been spared. “The rapid rise of digitization and remote work has placed new demands on employees who, in many instances, now require different skills to support significant changes to how work gets done and to the business priorities their companies are setting.” (www.mckinsey.com) Today's marketers need to equip themselves to meet the challenges ahead in the next decade. What skills are imperative today? Will those same skills be relevant and needed in 2030? We'll ask Kirsten Boileau, Anna Millman, Jeremy Kestler, and Emily L. Phelps for their take on Winter is Coming: Arming Marketers with Skills for Today and The Decade Ahead.

Kipp (CMO, Hubspot) and Vidya (CMO, Marqeta) run through the most valuable strategic and technical plays to hack your way to a multi-billion dollar valuation by driving enormous increases in non-paid visitation. Want to join a private community of ambitious SaaS founders? Apply now to become a Founder Member and scale faster together: https://cutt.ly/cnT8Zt7

Kipp is the Chief Marketing Officer of HubSpot, where he sets HubSpot's global inbound marketing strategy to drive awareness and demand for HubSpot's inbound marketing and sales products. Top 3 Value Bombs: 1. It is not just how hard you work, it is what you work on. 2. Brands should try to work with creators in their space. 3. If you are a business person, align yourself with creators. Generate leads, close deals, and create remarkable customer experiences - HubSpot Sponsors: HubSpot: Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at HubSpot.com/podcastnetwork! Streak: Stay on top of each part of your process - and your inbox - without ever leaving Gmail. Sign up for Streak TODAY at Streak.com/fire and get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan!

Kipp is the Chief Marketing Officer of HubSpot, where he sets HubSpot’s global inbound marketing strategy to drive awareness and demand for HubSpot’s inbound marketing and sales products. Top 3 Value Bombs: 1. It is not just how hard you work, it is what you work on. 2. Brands should try to work with creators in their space. 3. If you are a business person, align yourself with creators. Generate leads, close deals, and create remarkable customer experiences - HubSpot Sponsors: HubSpot: Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at HubSpot.com/podcastnetwork! Streak: Stay on top of each part of your process - and your inbox - without ever leaving Gmail. Sign up for Streak TODAY at Streak.com/fire and get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan!

Kieran Flanagan is an author, startup advisor mentor who runs his own podcast called the Growth TLDR - which you guys should also check out -  and is currently the VP of Marketing & Growth at Hubspot.  He is a thought leader on growth marketing and speaks at events across the globe. Kieran has a proven track record in helping SaaS businesses, from start-ups to enterprise-level grow their traffic, users and revenue - which we'll be talking all about today.  During this interview we cover: 00:00 - A Word From The Sponsor 01:03 - Intro 02:02 - Kieran's  Background, Past Ventures & Joining Hubspot 06:39 - Most Common Growth Challenges for SaaS Founders 10:17 - B2B Scale-Ups Hitting Growth Ceilings & The Canva Model 17:58 - Product Market Fit, The Main Reason Startups Fail 22:35 - Best Strategies to Drive Traffic for a Growing Company 27:11 - User Journey Optimization & Marketing Engine 33:03 - How Hubspot Turn Users Into Advocates & Lead The CRM Market 35:24 -  Effective Filtering System for Leads, While Balancing Quality/Volume of Sales Demos 39:24 - Optimizing Cash Flow VS Maximizing MRR/ARR Growth 41:52 - Where's Kieran Spending His Marketing Budget? 43:16 - Where Kieran Is Investing Now? 45:34 - What Does Success Mean To Kieran Today? Mentions: https://www.canva.com/ (Canva) https://www.loom.com/ (Loom) https://www.hubspot.com/ (Hubspot) https://www.evernote.com/ (Evernote) https://zapier.com/ (Zapier) https://www.loom.com/ (Loom) https://www.pandadoc.com/ (PandaDoc) https://www.reforge.com/ (Reforge) https://fs.blog/ (Fs Blog) People: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kippbodnar/ (Kipp Bodnar) https://fs.blog/ (Shane Parrish) Get In Touch With Kieran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieranjflanagan/ (Kieran's Linkedin) https://www.kieranflanagan.io/ (kieranflanagan.io) Tag us & follow: https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ (Facebook) https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital (LinkedIn) https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (Instagram) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYvpqdVVSlSMunWiEwlMjzw?sub_confirmation=1 (YouTube) More about Akeel: Twitter - https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber (https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber) LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar (https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar) More Podcast Sessions - https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast (https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast)

Today I reflect on my conversation with Kipp Bodnar, and discuss finding less popular items for your content diet and the skill-sets that help a startup employee to grow.

In this episode we hear from Kipp Bodnar, Chief Marketing Officer at Hubspot. Kipp shares how a self-service journey fundamentally changes B2B marketing, his view that anyone (including C-level executives) can introduce a new self-service tool to a team, and Hubspot's secret to collaboration between marketing and growth. All of that and more on this episode of BUILD.

It's a common question during the COVID-19 #WFH crisis. Intent Data volumes are falling. Just when we need it most! Why??!! It has to do with the collection method. Many rely on IP address resolution and ad activity. So even while activity is up (check out Kipp Bodnar's HubSpot data here) many data sources seem to be drying up. Let's dig into why...and a critical consequence.

How do you market a company that is selling something fundamentally new and different? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, John Rougeux of Flag & Frontier talks about category design. It's not a tactic for every company, but when used strategically, category design can drive truly remarkable marketing results. John digs into who category design is right for, how long it takes, what a category design go-to-market plan looks like, and how to gain organizational support. He also shares examples of companies and marketers who've successfully created new categories. Highlights from my conversation with John include: John is an experienced category designer who has also owned and exited a business. He says that compared to traditional inbound marketing strategies, category design requires a much larger lift when it comes to educating the market. Every business has a choice to either compete in an existing market or create a new market.  If you're creating a new category, you have three choices: 1) try to fit your product within an existing category; 2) ignore category in your marketing and focus on the product's features and benefits; or 3) create a new category. John says options 1 and 2 don't work. When considering whether category design is right for you, you need to honestly evaluate your product and determine whether its simply a niche within an existing category or something that has truly never been offered before. If its the latter, then category design is really the only logical solution. Category design takes time. John says you should expect to spend six to nine months just designing the category behind the scenes, and then once you roll that out publicly, it can take another few years before it really takes hold. Category design needs to be a business initiative, not simply a marketing strategy, because it affects product roadmaps, sales and more. When executing a category design strategy, it is critical to focus marketing messaging on the problem that your audience is experiencing and the outcomes that they will experience as a result of your solution rather than how the product itself actually works. The companies that have been most successful at category design have evangelists whose job it is to go to market and talk about the problem and why there is a new solution. Its also important to build a consistent conversation around your new category. That might mean holding a big event (like HubSpot's INBOUND or Drift's HYPERGROWTH) or building a community, like Terminus's FlipMyFunnel.  If your company is venture-backed, it is also important to get your investors on board with the idea of category creation so that you have the funding to support the strategy. There are examples of category design all around us. Some of the bigger and more visible ones are minivans and music streaming services. The category wasn't created overnight, and in many cases, people don't even realize its a new category, but we see it is as fundamentally different from the status quo, and that is what successful category design looks like.  Resources from this episode: Visit the Flag & Frontier website Email John at John@FlagandFrontier.com  Visit John's personal website Purchase a copy of Play Bigger Listen to the podcast to learn more about category design, when it makes sense, and how you can use it to dramatically improve your marketing results. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is John Rougeux, who is the founder at Flag & Frontier. Welcome, John. John Rougeux (Guest): Hey, Kathleen. Thanks for having me on. John and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: Yeah. I'm really excited to have you here for completely selfish reasons. I am deep, deep into the weeds, trying to learn everything I can right now about category creation because it's something that I'm kind of working on for a little project at work. And I stumbled across your name. I think it was in a LinkedIn post mentioned by Sangram Vajre at Terminus, and he mentioned you as somebody who's doing a lot of work on category creation. And I immediately thought, oh, I need to have him in on the podcast. And here you are. I am so excited, so welcome. John: Thanks. Thanks. I actually want to come back to something that you said a minute ago. You mentioned this was a little project for you, so I'm going to pick your brains about why it's not a big project. Kathleen: I think I might just be downplaying it. John: Okay, all right. Kathleen: It's a huge project. John: All right. Kathleen: Yes, yes. It is a giant. In fact, it's probably bigger than I think it is. No, it's- John: Well, Sangram told me a few weeks ago. He said, "If you're not doing something that scares you a little bit, then you're not setting your sights high enough." So I think you're on the right track there. Kathleen: Yeah, no, I think my whole career has been a succession of choices that consistently terrify me. So hopefully, that means I'm on the right track to somewhere. So you have an interesting story. You started out or your career really grew in B2B tech, and you worked in some companies that were looking at category creation as a potential strategy and it seems that that wet your appetite and led you to where you are today. Can you just talk a little bit about your background and how it got you to where you are now and what you're doing now with Flag & Frontier? About John Rougeux and Flag & Frontier John: Yeah. Yeah, happy to. So the thing that I like to tell people is that I always wish that I knew about category design earlier in my marketing career. I think it would have helped me be more successful and make better choices and think through the strategy of what I was working on at the time a lot more thoroughly. So the reason I say that is in 2013, I co-founded a company called Causely. And I won't get too far down into the weeds of what Causely does and the business model, but we were basically using cause marketing as a way to incentivize people to take action. And specifically, we were looking at incentivizing referrals on social media. And at the time, I was looking at marketing through a fairly narrow lens, like a lot of people do maybe when they are kind of earlier in the middle of their marketing careers. We were looking at things like you know how do you improve the performance of an advertising campaign? How can you write a better better blog post? All of those kind of tactical things. And I didn't realize at the time that what we were doing was something categorically new. People didn't have context for what that meant, what they should compare it to, what value they should expect, what things should it replace or not replace? And so we had a reasonable trajectory. We scaled the business to a few thousand locations. It was acquired. But when looking back on it, I know that if we had had this lens of category design of how do you describe something when it's different than anything else out there, I think we could have gone even further. And so when I joined a company called Skyfii in 2018, I had started to kind of understand what that meant, so I had read Play Bigger. I read some, the works by Al Ries and Jack Trout that talk about how if you can't be first in a category, design any category you can be first in. And at Skyfii, that business, it's a publicly-traded SaaS company out of Australia and they found that they were participating in a fairly commoditized space. Or I guess to be more accurate, the perception was that they were a competitor in a fairly commoditized space. And their business had evolved past that and the product did all sorts of other things that were much bigger than the category the market thought they participated in, but they didn't really have a framework for talking about that. And so we went through a repositioning exercise where we defined a new category that better reflected what they were all about and and how people should kind of relate to that. And that was a really, I think, powerful and challenging exercise to think through.We've got something new in the market, but how do we describe that? How do we tell the right story? How do we tell the right narrative so that people know how to relate to it? Why category design is a fundamentally different approach to marketing Kathleen: This is so interesting to me. There's so much I want to unpack here. I guess, starting with something that you kind of started with, which is that there is this typical marketer's playbook, right, where people come in and they think, "Oh, we need to top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. We need to create content and attract people," this and that. And when it comes to category creation or trying to market something that is different than anything else people are used to, that playbook doesn't really work. Because as I'm quickly learning, especially looking just at the top of the funnel, traditional top of the funnel marketing, it's like well what is that problem that people are having and they start to look for a solution. And the challenge you have is that if the solution you're offering is something they've never heard of, it's such a steeper climb to try and gain their attention. It's like they don't know the right questions to ask even, if that makes sense. John: No, that's absolutely right. And I always like to mention a really thoughtful post that Mike Volpe, the founding CMO of HubSpot wrote a few years ago because it lays such a great groundwork for any discussion around category design. And the blog post simply says that look, every marketer has two choices on their strategy. They can pick an existing category and try to carve out a niche within that category. Maybe they can dominate that category. But basically, they have to pick a space and then do the best they can within that space. Or they can try to design a new category. And when you look at kind of the underlying product or business model and you really take a close examination of what it is and whether it's different or whether it's something better, you almost don't have a choice. If you're doing something that is new that people don't have a framework for, you really have three choices. So I want to pack these for you. So choice number one is you can try to shoehorn this new thing you've built into an existing category. And we'll come back to why that doesn't work in a second. Number two is you can just talk about the products, like features and benefits but not really think about a more underlying narrative for that. And then number three is you can design a new language, a new framework, which is called category design. And so here's why number one and number two don't work. So again, number one is if you try to shoehorn something new into an existing category. The reason that works against you is that people will make the wrong comparisons for what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to be priced, how you deliver value. That just works against you. Secondly, if you just try to talk about the product itself but don't provide a larger context, you're not giving people, you're not giving them really any framework, and it makes it difficult to understand what you're all about and why they should be interested in you. I'll give you a great example. A friend of mine works at a company and I won't mention the name of the company, but they combine two different categories kind of in an existing platform. So one of these is VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol communication software, very established, known space. The other thing they do is they have these marketing automation functions that they add to their software to at least in my view very disparate types of software, but they combine them together. And so far, they haven't really given their buyers a context, a category for what this thing means. And so they're basically letting people to their own devices to understand and come up with their own conclusions about what that is. And that just puts a lot of work on your buyers when they have to think about who they should compare you to when they need to think about what department is this even for, or what products does this replace or not replace? That's generally too much work for people when they're trying to understand something new. And like you said, Kathleen, if you're not telling them what questions they should ask, then chances are they're just going to be too confused before they'll even really be interested in having a conversation with you. Kathleen: Yeah, and there's two other aspects to what you just said that I think are really interesting, which I'm beginning to appreciate more with the work that I'm doing. One is that human nature is such that people want to slot you into something that they already understand. They don't want to have to think outside the box. So when people hear about something new, that their natural inclination is to try and categorize it in with things that they already know. And that's a hard thing to battle because you are literally battling human nature. And the second thing is if you do allow yourself to be put into a category that already exists that maybe isn't really truly what you're doing and you are actually successful in selling your product, you will wind up having a lot of problems with churn once you do sell it because people are still going to be thinking that you are like that other thing that you're not actually like. And they're going to be looking for your product or your service or whatever it is to solve for them in the same way that other thing does, when in reality your thing does not solve those problems. So it's like you're setting yourself up for a very long horizon of failures that you might not see at the outset, but it's kind of a you're failing before you've even begun. John: Yeah, that's a great point. And yeah, people do... They tend to... The world is so complicated, and there's so many things that we have to deal with and try to understand that we use this rule of thumb of categorizing things. Sometimes we do it explicitly, like smartphones are a great example of a category we all know about and buy them and we know why they're different than a mobile phone. Sometimes we just do it implicitly. We don't necessarily have the language or the terms to describe that category, but we know that we try to group likes things together because it makes it easier to understand the world. Kathleen: Yeah or we use analogies. So many times, you hear things like, "Well, that's just the Uber of," and then they list a different industry. Or, "That's the Airbnb of something else." John: Yeah, that's right. Kathleen: And so we're constantly trying to put these things into comfortable mental frameworks, which I think is fascinating. So you mentioned there were three things. The first two, I think you covered. And then the third is really designing a new category. John: The third is designing a new category. That's right. That's right. When does category design make sense? Kathleen: So how do you know... I guess the first question is how do you know when that's the path you should be taking? John: That's a great question because I've heard from some people that they have this idea that every company should try to design a category, and that's really not the case. It applies to some companies. But for many other companies, like if you're developing a CRM, a better version of a CRM, don't try to build a new category around that. So yes, so the way you would look at that is there's no formula you can put into Excel and calculate and churn all this out, but it really comes down to does the thing that you've built, does it solve a problem that has not been solved before? Or does it do so in a way that the world isn't familiar with? So is there a new business model behind that? Is there a new delivery mechanism behind that? It really comes down to those two things. And maybe if you want to look at it at a more fundamental level, you could ask yourself do the existing categories that my market is familiar with, do they accurately capture the type of thing that I'm offering? If they do, then one of the reasons you may want to choose to carve out a niche in an existing category is that people are looking for established products in established categories. People are looking for marketing automation software, they're looking for smartphones, they're looking for video communications tools like Zoom, like we're using today. And so, if you say, "Hey, we have the right tool within this category for this specific market or for this specific need," that can be very powerful. And arbitrarily forcing yourself out of that category just because you like that idea of category design is going to work against you. Now, that being said, again to kind of flip it around, if you find that the categories and the language that are used to describe existing products your market is familiar with just don't capture what you're doing or they limit it in some way, then ultimately you need to find a way to break out from that and that's what the process of category design is all about. What does it take to create a new category? Kathleen: Now, one of the things that I've come to appreciate just the more I look at this is what a big lift creating a category is. As you said in the beginning, this isn't a little project, right? I would love it if you could just talk a little bit about sort of expectation setting. If somebody is listening to this and they're thinking this really sounds like it could make sense for me, from your experience and what you've seen and you've talked to people who've been involved in category design, how long does it take before you can really expect that the market will recognize a new category? John: Yeah. It's a pretty long-time horizon. And so I mentioned Mike Volpe at the beginning of the call and I'll mention him again and Kipp Bodnar, the following CMO of HubSpot mentioned the same thing I'm about to tell you. And they told me that when they first started talking about inbound marketing, it was like standing in the middle of a town square on a soapbox just shouting into the wind with nobody paying attention. And that was the case for two to three years before that phrase really started to work its way into the lexicon of marketers. Salesforce, they pioneered, not so much CRM but cloud-based software. And even today, they still talk about other applications to cloud-based software that's 20 years later. And another example might be... So at Terminus, they talk about the account-based marketing gospel. And maybe this kind of hints to the challenge of how difficult it is to build a category. Sangram used to be there, I think he was their head of marketing if I'm not mistaken. He's definitely a co-founder, but his role is chief evangelist. And so they recognize that to really get people to be aware of and to understand and use this terminology around account-based marketing, they've had to invest very heavily in evangelizing that market or that message out in the market. Kathleen: Yeah. The other story that I've always found interesting... I followed all the ones you just mentioned really closely. And then the other one that's been fascinating to me is Drift because they came on the scene. And if they're listening, they may take issue with what I'm about to say, but look. A big piece of what their product does is live chat, website live chat, and then they have chatbots. Well, those things have been around for a while. That was not anything new, but they were really smart and they coined it as conversational marketing and they really focused more on, not so much the how and what the technology does, as what it enables the business to do, and kind of wrapped a methodology around existing technology in a way that made it feel fresh and new. And it was pretty genius. And I feel like they actually moved really quickly by comparison to a lot of the other examples I've seen. So it's interesting to me why in some cases, businesses are able to gain traction faster than others. John: Yeah. I would have to think that a lot of it has to do with the culture and how quickly or rapidly that business has gone through change in the past. And the other thing we should probably discuss is just the timeline of everything that happens before you share your new category with the world. I was talking with... There's an interview I did with, let's see, Anna and Cassidy at a company called Narrative Science. And they expected just the category design process itself to take about six to nine months. This is before they released language out publicly. And at Skyfii, that was our experience as well. And for that situation, that company, I think they were founded in 2012 or 2013. So they were five, six years into the business and there had already been a lot of discussion around the space that they started in, which was Wi-Fi marketing or Wi-Fi analytics. And so anytime that you're going into a space where the culture already kind of thinks and has a mental model for what their business is, the process of reworking all of that and getting everyone on board, especially the leadership team and perhaps even investors, getting them on board with that new message in a new way of thinking about the business, it takes time. And I would argue it should take time. Because if you rush the process and you ask your team to start using maybe even radically different language about what you do, people need time to really think through that and maybe they need to push back or challenge you a little bit or ask questions or provide suggestions. There's just this change management process you have to go through. And if you rush through that, people are not going to feel like they're a part of that process. And then ultimately, that's going to undermine your efforts in years one, two, three and further as you're asking your team to help you share that message. And at Skyfii, Skyfii is publicly traded in the Australian market and so they have investors and they have a public... They're very thoughtful about the message they put out into the market. And so they really wanted to take the time to make sure that message was right and that it made sense. And so, yeah, it took us, I don't know exactly how many months, but yeah, around six to nine months to really start that discussion and then get to a point where we were comfortable with the category name and the underlying narrative to support it. Why category design needs to be a company-wide effort Kathleen: Yeah, and I think there's... To me, one of the most important things is consistency because you kind of said if everybody is not on board and everybody isn't speaking from the same playbook, all it takes is one or two people to diverge and talk about your thing and language and terms that puts it squarely back in with all of the other things out there that... And it destroys your effort. John: Yeah. Well, and this is probably a great segue into another really important point about category design, which is that it's not a marketing project. Sometimes, it can be spearheaded by marketing, and marketing will often do a lot of the legwork, but it's not something that's relegated or exclusive to marketing. It has to be something that that CEO is involved in. It affects the company vision and is affected by the company vision. They kind of play off of each other. It affects the product roadmap. It affects what the sales team says. It affects what you might tell investors. So if your CFO is in charge of investor relations, he or she, they have to be on board and educated on the message. That's another misconception I heard a few times and it was... Personally, I thought it was a marketing initiative when I first read about it. But the more I dove deep into it and the more people I talked to, I realized it's actually a bit more of a business initiative, more so than a marketing one. Kathleen: Yeah, that's a great point. Having that buy-in top to bottom, it's really important. John: Yeah. What's been your experience at Prevailion in kind of leading your team in that discussion? Kathleen: So it was interesting because I came in really excited to make this a category design play. And shortly after I came in, we hired a head of sales, who also had some experience with category design and saw that that was a really strong play for us. He and I had both read Play Bigger, and we just kept talking about it until we basically beat the rest of our leadership team down into buying copies of the book. They've all now read it. They're all super excited about it, and it's great because it's given us a common language and framework around which to talk about what it is we're doing. So we're still really early stage, but I think we have that excitement and that buy-in in principle at least is there. And now, we're at the stage where we have to figure out our plan. What does a category design strategy look like? Kathleen: So along those lines, let's talk a little bit about somebody who's listening and they think, "Yep, this makes sense for me. Okay, I'm going to set my expectations. I understand I need to get top to bottom buy-in." What are the elements that you've seen in your experience from the companies that you've studied that have done this that contribute to successful category design efforts. In other words, what would be a part of a company's plan if they were looking to move forward with this? John: Yeah. So I'll mention two things that come to mind. So one I touched on a moment ago, but it's making sure that the CEO and the leadership team are involved and to the extent that they feel like they have a stake in the success of the project. What I mean is it's not enough for them to say, "Sure, that sounds great. Category sounds great, Mr. or Mrs. CMO. Go for it. Let me know how it turns out." That's not sufficient for getting buy-in. So getting them to be a stakeholder and have a real level of participation, that's absolutely key. And there's an interview I did with Chris Orlob of Gong.io, where we talk about that in more depth. So if you want to link to that, I'm happy to- Kathleen: Yeah, that would be great. I would love that. John: Yeah. The second thing is category design, it's all about talking about a problem that you're solving and less about the product. And so one thing I always like to say is that problem... Let's see, so your solution, your product. Solutions don't exist without problems, right? And then problems don't exist without people. And so you have to go back and understand the people that you're trying to work with and serve, and understand the problem you're trying to solve and the language they use to describe that problem, and the context for which they're trying to solve that problem or maybe they're not even aware that it is a problem or they think it's unsolvable. The point is you have to really understand the problem first and use that to lead your messaging. If your category is all around, here's why this specific product is so great and it's called this category, you're kind of missing the point. When you look at the language and the marketing that companies like Drift, for example, do, 80% of it is on the problem. Drift likes to talk about how the buying process has changed. Buyers are not interested in waiting hours or days or weeks for someone to respond to them. They want a response now. And you even see that word, "now", used.  Kathleen: Yes. That word, that one word... I went to HYPERGROWTH. I think it was not this year, but the year before. I went this year too. John: Okay. Kathleen: The year before, their whole keynote at HYPERGROWTH was all about the one word, "now." And it was so powerful, the way they distilled that down I thought, really, really simple but effective. John: Yeah, yeah. And they've written a book around conversational marketing. If you've used Drift products, you can kind of see some tie-ins but it's really about the problem that they're trying to solve. And people smarter than me have said lots of times that if you can articulate that you understand the problem better than anyone else, then people will assume you have the best solution. You don't have to work so hard to talk about every single little feature or benefit that you offer. Showing that you understand the problem creates empathy with your audience, and then again, they'll assume that you have the best solution to address that problem. Kathleen: Yeah, that's interesting that you talk about that because I think that's a really easy mistake for marketers to make, which is to say that, especially when you talk about B2B technology, it's really easy to fall into the trap of talking a lot about what the product does, how the product works. And I think many times, that's facilitated or even encouraged sometimes by the customer asking, "What does the product do? How does it work?" John: Right. Kathleen: And yet, I think the challenge as a marketer is to try to really get ahead of that and take control of the conversation and steer it towards not only the problems as you say and really deeply understanding them, but the outcomes that come from the use of the products. There's problems, and then there are what is the outcome for the user? How does it make their life better? How does it change them for the better? If you think of those as two different poles, and in the middle, lies the product and all the stuff it does, if you can keep the conversation more at the periphery on those poles, then I think you can be really successful. But that's tough. John: No, I've never heard it described that way, but that's a really clear way of describing that. And it's funny you mention that because I was having the opposite experience just this week. I was there was looking for a new email client for my computer. And that's a pretty established category. There's a million email clients. And in that context, you don't need to talk about the problem of communicating with people. Kathleen: Right. John: You know what email is. You don't need to talk about the outcome so much. There were a few features I was looking for and I was trying to find a client that had those features. And so you can talk about that a little bit more upfront when the category is established and people know what the category is, what it isn't, what it's supposed to do. But to your point, Kathleen, if that category doesn't exist and you're really trying to sell a vision around solving a problem, emphasizing what the problem is and then emphasizing the outcomes are really what's necessary to get people interested in just having a discussion around this new idea. And then from there, they're probably going to ask, "Okay, this sounds really good. Tell me about that product itself. What does it actually do?" Then you're in a perfect position to go into those details because they're ready for it. And they get the larger idea. Kathleen: Yeah, and that's where I think the traditional framework of top, middle, and bottom of the funnel comes back into the discussion, right? When you do get towards that middle to bottom of funnel stage, you can get into the weeds of how it works. And I know in our case, for example, it might not even be the same person we're having the conversation with. Our ultimate buyer isn't going to ever care so much how it works. They're going to hand that part of the decision off to somebody on their team and say, "Validate this for me." And it's almost like we've talked about it. We just need a spec sheet, but that... It's kind of like when you're going to a conference and you get the convince your boss letter, but in reverse. We're selling to the boss and the boss needs a convince their engineer letter that they can just hand to them and say, "Here, take this. It's in your language. It'll answer all your questions." Right? To me, that's the steps that we need to go through, but if we get too stuck in the weeds of convincing the engineer early, we're never going to get to convince the boss. John: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Building your category design go-to-market plan Kathleen: Yeah. Well, have you seen... So there are those foundational elements of how you talk about what it is you're doing, how you talk about the category, how you begin to gain share of mind. And then there's the actual go to market. And I've seen a lot of information written. For example, in the book, Play Bigger, which we've mentioned a few times, which is kind of like the Bible for category creation and other places. They talk about the concept of a lightning strike, which is just really a big kind of splashy go to market. It could be an event. It could be some other, something else that really makes an impression on the market and gets it talking about your thing. What have you seen or have you seen anything that has worked really well as far as like quick, well, I don't know if quick is the right word, but very high impact kind of strategies for really making an impression on the market? John: That's a great question. I'm not sure that I've seen a ton of really great examples beyond the few that we've discussed. So back to HubSpot, I don't recall a big... They have their INBOUND event, right? I don't recall that having a huge kind of blow up the world moment at the time when that conference first came out, but they've certainly been consistent and they made it a very conscious decision not to call it the HubSpot User Conference or even put the word HubSpot in there. It was about inbound, something bigger than themselves. I've seen Terminus, they have focused on this idea of a community of people who are interested in account-based marketing. Sangram told me they started with a fairly small event, relatively small event. And they've kind of built it from there. But that's more of an ongoing exercise, I guess, an ongoing process. Drift has their HYPERGROWTH conference. They came out with a book called Conversational Marketing. That's probably the biggest kind of high profile thing they did that was explicitly around that category. I think one of the things around lightning strikes is that, at least the way they're described in the book, is that they feel like they could be appropriate for a VC-backed company, or maybe a publicly traded company who's launching a new category and wants to really make that big splash and can afford to do that. I would say if you're earlier on and you don't have millions to drop on a big event or a massive campaign of another nature, it seems like other companies can can be successful with more of a process-driven approach of who are we trying to get to care about this category? What are they interested in? Where do they spend their time? And how can we just have these conversations with them on a repeatable basis? Because, like we were talking about earlier, it's not like once you name your category, the whole world suddenly cares about it and there's all these... Gartner doesn't give you a ring and say, "Hey, I guess we're going to create a Magic Quadrant because we saw your lightning strike. That's good. This is so great." Everyone who I've talked to anyway, who's done it well, has had to dedicate consistent resources over time to really get people to understand it and think about it. Kathleen: Yeah. You're talking about something that strikes very close to home for me because I've looked at those examples too and I had an opportunity... I've interviewed Kipp Bodnar. I've interviewed Nikki Nixon, who was one of the first leaders of the FlipMyFunnel community for Terminus. I interviewed Dave Gerhardt at Drift. So I've had a little bit of an inside peek into some of those companies. We didn't talk about this topic specifically, but what did strike me about all of those conversations and all of those examples is, as you say, consistency but also not just consistency, volume. There's a difference between, "Hey, we're going to consistently blog once a week, and it's going to be a great blog," and that's just an example. All of these companies not only have been super consistent, but they have turned the volume dial way up in terms of the amount of content they're creating around their category. I think every one of them has written a book actually, because Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah wrote the book, Inbound Marketing. You mentioned the book that Drift wrote. Sangram has written a couple of books. I don't know if that's a requirement or it's just a coincidence, but I think it certainly has helped. But it's also a reflection of that turning up the volume. We're not just going to write a bunch of blogs and use this keyword on them. We're going to write the book on our topic and really own it. And to me, there's something to that. If you're going to do a category creation play, you don't necessarily have to have the biggest budget in the world. Maybe you're not going to throw a HYPERGROWTH type conference, which is a cool conference. But you are going to need to really be prepared to just saturate the market with content, flood people with educational content around what is that problem you're solving, why it matters, why it's new, and why the new approach is better than the old one. John: Yeah. And that comes down to having patience and the right time horizon. And like you were asking about earlier, if your expectation is that category design is something maybe you can do for a few months and then you can go about business as usual, that's a wrong time horizon. And it will take months or probably years for people to really get what you do and talk about it, independent of conversations with you. And you have to have the content to support that, whether that's an event or a blog or a book or a podcast. And I think you also have to make sure that your investors understand that vision. They understand that you want to create something big, you want to create a category that you can dominate and design to your favor. And then if you do that, five to 10 years from now, you will be in a very good position. But also understanding that the first few years will have a different trajectory than someone who's just really trying to scale growth right off the bat at a very high level. Kathleen: Yeah, I feel like you just brought the conversation perfectly full circle because we started talking about how important buy-in was, top to bottom. And you can think of top to bottom as like CEO to the bottom of the organization. But honestly, if you have investors, that's really the top. Your board has to be totally bought-in because you'll get a ton of pressure. I mean we do have investors. We just got a series A round, so I'm dealing with this right now. And we're very fortunate that we have a really bought-in board, but I completely agree with you. It's also fascinating, you mentioned earlier analysts. That's another thing. If you're working with the analysts, what are the expectations you should have there? Because I recently read a quote that was like, "Gartner will never create a new market if there's only one player in it." Right? Because what's in it for them to build a Magic Quadrant for one company? They're not going to do it. So by definition, if you truly, truly are creating a new category, your thing is new and different and not like anything else and you "don't have any competition" which is like the bad words to ever say... Because even if you don't have competition, you have perceived competition. There's nothing in it for an analyst to say, "Well, this is a new category because a lot of work to produce a Magic Quadrant or a Forrester Wave." They're not going to do it for one company. So that goes back again to the conversation around time horizon. So it's such an interesting play and not for everyone certainly. You mentioned a couple of really good examples from the marketing world, Drift, HubSpot, Terminus. Can you think of any examples from outside of the marketing technology world that are really great examples of category creation? So if somebody is listening and they want to kind of look out in the wild and see who's doing this well, who would you point to? Examples of category creators John: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. Once you understand what category design actually means, you start to see new categories all over the place. So I'll mention two. So in high school, Kathleen, I drove a minivan. It had wood siding, I hated it, and it was just the dorkiest car you could drive. But at the time, I didn't know- Kathleen: We have to come back and have a conversation about that in a minute. John: So at the time, I didn't know that minivans were actually representative of a new category in the market. And I can't remember when they first came out. I think it was maybe the mid-80s, and I mean there were these full-size work vans, but people didn't conceive of this van that you would use to haul your family around. It was a completely new category. And it continues to be... I've come full circle. We've got a minivan today, another one. And so anyway, that's kind of a great example. You see that in automotive all the time, so hybrid cars. The Prius was a great example of designing that category. Tesla now for electric cars, SUVs as well. So that's one. And then another one is, I was actually thinking about this on the way to work this morning, the way that Apple and Spotify have really created, I guess, a new category around how music is distributed, I think, is another interesting example. And I think it's a... The reason I bring it up is category design isn't so much about a specific name or a specific taxonomy or a word that Gartner has capitalized. It more has to do with the business model and the way people look at a space. So when Apple launched iTunes, they completely changed the way music was distributed from buying a full album to buying individual songs and to needing to have the physical copy of the media to having a digital copy you could take anywhere. And now, I would argue that maybe Apple or iTunes created that category. They are the first to do that. But I would also argue that it's really Spotify, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think their user number is larger than Apple's for Apple Music, they're the ones who have actually designed the category. They're the ones who said, "This is what streaming music looks like. This is what you're supposed to pay. This is about how many artists or songs we're supposed to have available. This is how we're going to curate music to you." And that's a completely new way of using music or listening to music. I don't know what the official name for that category is. Maybe it's just called streaming music. It's not something I'm an expert on, but that was a very long answer to your question but those I think are two that come to mind for me. Kathleen: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I do feel like we're surrounded by category creation. And it's happening even faster than I think it used to because of the pace of technological change. We just don't necessarily recognize it as such. But when you have that framework through which to think about it, you do start to see it everywhere and it's really interesting to watch. And I think it's kind of like the whole frog that boiled in the water analogy, which is actually a terrible analogy when you really think about what you're talking about. But the notion that- John: Who's actually tried that by the way? Do you know anyone? Kathleen: No, God, I hope not. That's like, don't they say serial killers start by torturing animals? No, no, no. Do not boil any frogs. But the whole idea being it's happening to us. We are experiencing category creation. It's just that it's happening at a pace that we don't like see it. It's not like a yesterday it didn't exist, and today it does. That by the time the category has happened and has become commonplace, it just feels like it's been there all along kind of. It's really interesting. I think there's probably a whole psychological aspect to this that hasn't even been mined in a way that it could. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: But all right, shifting gears because I could talk about category creation forever, but we don't have forever. Inbound marketing. We talked about really what the podcast is about, and I love talking about category creation as part of it. Because when you talked about consistency and HubSpot and Drift and Terminus, really they were all phenomenal examples of companies that really did inbound marketing well. So when you think about inbound marketing as it is today, is there a particular individual or company that you really think is killing it? John: I'm going to say that it's really like a style of inbound marketing that I think is starting to get a lot of attention and it's this idea of having an evangelist be a voice for the company. And the reason I think this is so interesting is because, like our world is, there's so many messages we get from brands today, both on the consumer side and on the B2B side, that I think people have a real... They started to see that you can have a brand say anything, right? It's a construct. But when you have a person who's a real human being talking about the vision and the values and what their brand represents and how it might be able to help, to me, that's a much more authentic way and it's just very relevant in the world today because I feel like people just crave more human-to-human interaction. So a three examples of that. We've mentioned a couple already, so Sangram and Terminus does that very well. Dave Gerhardt does that. He doesn't have the title of evangelist, but he's much more of the face of the company I think even than David Cancel or others. And then, Ethan Beute at BombBomb is doing that really well. Kathleen: Yeah. John: I know you had him on a previous episode, and yeah. I know there's others out there, but those are the three that come to mind. I see their content very regularly. They all do a different job. They have their own styles. They have their own voice, but they're very authentic. And I think they're adding a lot of value for the respective companies through what they do. Kathleen: I totally agree. Those are three great examples. And picking the right person or settling on the right person to fill that role is such a critical decision for the company. It has to be somebody that truly, deeply understands, as you said, the problem that the audience is experiencing, but that also can come across as charismatically and passionately believing in that shift that needs to occur to create that new category. So it's an interesting mix of skills that you look for when you try to find your evangelist. John: Right, right. So does this mean you're going to step up and be the evangelist at Prevailion? Kathleen: I don't know. We actually... I'm really lucky. And one of the reasons I joined the company is that we have this amazing team of really smart people, who are also very invested in participating in marketing. So our CEO is unbelievable. He could sell ice to the Eskimos, not that he would. That makes him sound like he's a smarmy sales guy. He is so smart and he really has been in the market a long time and knows it, and he's also incredibly well-spoken. So while I would love to get up and talk about it, I think I'm really lucky that I have an executive team that is full of people who could probably fill that role better than I could. John: And you know what? I don't think it's entirely an either or situation. Some of those companies I've mentioned, they have someone who's maybe has the largest following or the loudest voice, but there's others on the team who can contribute to that. And I think that's what's really exciting, is it's not just one person, but you can have a whole series of people on your team evangelize for the company. And I don't know about you, there's something about when I just see the people behind a product that I'm thinking about using. I feel so much more comfortable having that conversation and and exploring what they do than I would if I was just reading pure brand messages. Kathleen: Absolutely. It all comes down to trust, right? And if you feel like you can trust that person who is the chief spokesperson, somehow or another there's a halo effect from that that shines down on the brand. And it really saturates the brand with that feeling of trustworthiness, that makes you want to buy from them. John: Yeah, that's right. Kathleen: Yeah. I love it. Well, digital marketing is changing so quickly. This topic of category creation is so fascinating because conceptually it seems like something that will stand the test of time, but then how you implement it obviously will change over time. With everything changing so quickly, how do you personally stay up to date and stay educated on all things marketing-related? John: Yeah. For me, both listening to and hosting podcasts has been a big driver of my growth. And so conversations like this one with you are really helpful because you and I could swap ideas. The episodes I've done... So I co-host a series on the B2B Growth show around category creation. I also did a series on FlipMyFunnel. That's given me the chance to talk to people who have done more category design work than I have and learn from them in the process. And for me, that's been so much more valuable than anything I could read or stumble across in a newsletter, not that those things aren't valuable. But having one-to-one access to experts, there's few things that are... I'm not sure if anything is going to beat that. Some of those conversations have led to ongoing relationships, where I've been able to ask questions and dive deeper into other topics. And so that's where I found the most valuable use of time, is just having conversations. I love to read, love to listen to podcasts, but anytime I could just talk to people and listen to them and then talk through my own ideas, man, I'd do that every day if I could. Kathleen: Amen. I just filmed a LinkedIn video about this, about how I learn. And the number one way I learn is through hosting this podcast, which when I say that to people, I know that that's not something that's going to be feasible for everyone. Let me just spin up a podcast so that I can learn. But it is the most amazing vehicle because you get to meet such incredible people like yourself, pick their brains, really get into detail that you can't get into in other ways. And it's amazing how much I take away from it. Second for me is I love to listen to Audible business books on 2X speed as I do my commute. John: What are you listening to right now? Kathleen: I am finishing Crossing the Chasm. And then before that, it was Play Bigger, From Impossible to Inevitable, and I come back. I'll listen multiple times to books because I feel like you absorb more the second time. John: Right. Kathleen: So yeah, lots of good ones. There's never too many books to read or never too few books, I should say. I always have more. John: Right, no shortage of content, yeah. How to connect with John Kathleen: Thank you. That's what I was trying to say. Well, if somebody has questions about category design and they want to reach out, learn more about what you're doing, or ask you a question, what's the best way for them to get in touch? John: Sure. So you could email me at John@FlagandFrontier.com. So that's J-O-H-N@FlagandFrontier.com. You can also just put in John.Marketing in your browser, and it'll bring up a really simple page with just my contact info. Sometimes that's easier to remember. Kathleen: So smart. That's great. I love that. John: I can't believe no one bought that domain, but it was there so why not? Kathleen: Genius. John: It's easier than spelling my last name. And then you can find me on LinkedIn as well. I won't attempt to spell my name here, but if you want to link to it in your episode- Kathleen: I'll put that in the show notes, absolutely. John: Yeah. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Great. Well, I have really enjoyed this. I've learned so much. I feel like I probably could have made this podcast three hours long, but nobody wants to listen for that long. If you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learned something new, I would really appreciate it if you would take a minute, go to Apple podcasts, and leave the podcast a five-star review. That is how other people discover us, and that is how we get in front of a bigger audience. So take a minute and do that. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Thank you so much, John. This has been fun. John: Yeah, my pleasure, Kathleen. And hopefully, we can have another conversation later on as you go further into your own category design process. Kathleen: Yes, about that and also about the minivan that you drove in high school. John: All right, sounds good.

Ever wonder what it's like to be a CMO of a sales and marketing behemoth? We just got a pretty good idea of what it's like from HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar. What better place to catch up with Kipp than INBOUND 2019? In this episode, we cover: Staying true to your convictions Investing in your most vital resource Analyzing data The #1 responsibility of a CMO To listen to this episode and more like it, subscribe to #FlipMyFunnel on Apple podcasts or listen on our website. Call me crazy but here's what I am doing - Text ABMisB2B to 33777 to receive a copy of Sangram's newest book. This is gift to YOU as a listener for a limited time! All I ask is for a review of the book on Amazon when you are done reading. Deal?

Marketers aren't trusted because more often than not, they don't take time to develop relationships. Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot, has over 10 years of experience in the field with results to prove that taking the time to make real connections online leads to real results.

Marketers aren't trusted because more often than not, they don't take time to develop relationships. Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot, has over 10 years of experience in the field with results to prove that taking the time to make real connections online leads to real results.

The Inbound Success Podcast launched on August 28, 2017 and today marks the 100th episode, and 100 straight weeks of publishing interviews with high performing marketers. On this week's Inbound Success Podcast, I'm taking a break from interviewing guests to share with you 13 trends that I've observed from the 99 interviews I did throughout the last two years. Listen to the podcast to learn more about the 13 things that the world's top-performing inbound marketers are doing, and get links to the specific episodes where you can dive deeper into each topic. Transcript Welcome back to the Inbound Success podcast. My name's Kathleen Booth. I'm your host, and this is the 100th episode of the podcast. I thought this was a great opportunity for me to take a break from the usual routine of interviewing some of the incredible marketers that I get to speak to every week and look back on the last 99 episodes and try and digest some lessons learned. I've had the incredible good fortune of speaking to some really amazing marketers in the last two years as I've done this podcast. It's given me an opportunity to meet people I otherwise never would have met, to learn some things that have really kind of made a difference for me in the way I think about marketing, and have prompted me to take a second look and reevaluate the way I've been doing some things. So, thought it was a great opportunity to share some of those lessons learned with all of you. How The Inbound Success Podcast Got Started But first, I wanted to just take a moment and tell a story about why I started the podcast. It was about two and a half years ago that I had my own marketing agency, Quintain Marketing. I had had the agency for 11 years. I'd gone to a lot of marketing conferences and listened to tons of podcasts, and watched webinars, always looking to make myself a better marketer. I had a lot of clients that I wanted to help. I also wanted to market my own agency and do better every day. I always would listen to these folks talk about the marketing work they were doing and the incredible results they were getting, and so infrequently felt that there was anything really tangible that I could take away from it and immediately use to improve my own marketing. This podcast was really an attempt to solve for that. It was me trying to scratch my own itch, and in doing so hopefully helping some of you. The interesting thing about this has been that it has certainly done that for me, and it has also done so much more. I already mentioned that it's enabled me to meet so many people I otherwise would never have met. There are a lot of people in the marketing world that I really admire and respect. And having the excuse of saying, "Hey, would you like to come on a podcast?" is a great way to meet someone new and to meet and to form that relationship, so that's been great. I've also met some really incredible people that I didn't know about through my guests when I ask them who else is doing a really great job with inbound marketing. And those relationships have been amazing. One of the most amazing and incredible things about this is that it changed the entire course of my career. One of first people I interviewed when I started the podcast was Bob Ruffolo, who is the founder and CEO of IMPACT. Now, I work at IMPACT. The reason is that before we started to hit the record button for the podcast interview, we were just talking about how things were going. I was telling him that I thought I might be ready to make a change, and that led to me selling part of my company to IMPACT and joining the team. That's been a really major shift in my life and a great one. I've learned so much. I get to work with some really smart people every day and do very, very interesting work. All this has come out of this little podcast. And most importantly, I've learned a lot about marketing. As I said, that was my original goal. 13 Lessons From Interviewing 99 High Performing Marketers So without further ado, I looked back through the 99 episodes I've done before today and really saw 13 themes emerge. That's what I'm going to share with you today. 1. There Is No "Secret Sauce" The first one ... And some of these, by the way, are going to seem like no-brainers, but they're important because it's important to remind ourselves of the things that we kind of already know. First one is, in most cases there really is no secret sauce to being an amazing marketer. The folks that I interviewed who were the most successful have a few things in common. Number one, they are voracious learners. They're always trying to improve their knowledge. They're always hungry for more. And they're consistent. That's huge, the consistency. A great example of that is Goldie Chan. I interviewed her. She's often referred to as the green-haired Oprah of LinkedIn. She has the longest running daily channel on LinkedIn. She's posted a new LinkedIn video every day for I think it's about two years. It's incredible. It doesn't matter where she is, what's happening, whether she's feeling well, whether she's traveling, what her access to Wifi is, she finds a way to do it because consistency is so important for her. And it's really paid off. They also do a few things and do them really well. A great example of that is Rev Ciancio who I talked with about Instagram marketing. Rev has an incredible Instagram presence. Which by the way, do not look at it when you're hungry because his pictures are all of mouthwatering hamburgers, french fries, pizzas, chicken wings, nachos, essentially everything that's bad for you, but that tastes so good. But, Rev has a fascinating strategy for how he approaches Instagram and has built an entire business around it. He does one thing, and he does it really well. Alex Nerney talked about Pinterest similarly, just a platform a lot of inbound marketers overlook, but he's really figured out a way to make it sing for him. The hungry learners who are consistent and who pick a few things and do them really well, that's really the secret sauce, which essentially isn't so secret. That's number one. 2. Listen To Your Customers And Prospects And Use What You Learn in Your Marketing Number two is they really listen to customers and prospects and use that in their marketing. Again, sounds like a no-brainer. We always talk about the need to do persona research and to build buyer personas, but I think what happens is we get very often so caught up in building the actual persona that we forget the big picture, that it's not about having this fictional profile of a person. It's really about understanding the way our audience thinks, what their real pain points and needs are, and the language they use to talk about that. A couple of the interviews I did were great examples of this. Barron Caster at rev.com who uses their own transcription product to transcribe all of the conversations they have with customers and then pull actual words that customers have used out and feed that into the copy on their website and landing pages, and that's gotten them amazing results. Val Geisler and Joel Klettke, two of the most accomplished conversion copywriters out there, both also talked about this type of research and understanding deeply, deeply the needs of customers and prospects. Paul Blamire at Atomic Reach, who is head of customer success and makes it a point to speak to new customers shortly after they've onboarded and really understand what brought them to the company and how the product is solving their needs. And he feeds that back in not only to marketing but to product development, to every aspect of the business to deliver a better customer experience from first touch in the marketing process all the way through the experience of using the company's product. 3. You Don't Need Fancy Tools Or A Big Budget Number three, you don't necessarily need fancy tools or a big budget to get incredible results. There are some really great examples of this. Oli Billson who I recently interviewed about the small events he's doing that are delivering tremendous amounts of revenue to his business. Chris Handy who talked about marketing for a Pre-K school, really small campaigns, but they just really ... They understood their audience, and they used the available tools that they had and got terrific results for the school. Adam Sand, who's using direct mail in conjunction with inbound marketing, super old school, but very effective for him. And Harry Campbell, who's The Rideshare Guy, and he's probably the top content creator in the ridesharing space. So think Uber, Lyft, Lime, Bird. He just started blogging and has created some great content and a big following. You really don't need fancy tools or a big budget. You can do it on your own with what you've got, if I go back to the first thing, if you're consistent, if you pick a few things and do them really well, and if you're a hungry learner who is willing to roll your sleeves up and apply what you're learning. 4. Connect With Your Audience On An Emotional Level Number four, the best marketers connect with their audiences on an emotional level, another thing that might seem obvious but that I think a lot of marketers get wrong. We tend to put our marketing hats on and make our marketing all about ourselves or we fall back into that comfortable place of corporate jargon, and kind of robotic speech, and use words like leverage and synergy. Nobody talks like that in real life, or not at least the people that you want to hang out with. The people who talked about this were Kieran Flanigan of HubSpot who shared their hearts and minds strategy for creating content with two types of content, content that solves a person's problems and tells them how to do something, that's really that mind's content, and then the heart's content, which taps into a pain and emotional need that the audience has. Then, Katie Stavely from Mautic. This is ironic that these are the two examples I'm giving for this one because HubSpot and Mautic could be considered two different sides of the same coin, HubSpot being a paid marketing automation, CRM, customer service platform, and Mautic being a completely free open source alternative to it. Katie talked about how important it was to be authentic in your marketing, especially with their audience, which it's all about community. It's opensource software, so your community is helping you develop your product. But regardless, the idea is to really make that emotional connection. 5. Sometimes The Biggest Wins Come From Content That Is Not Related To Your Products Or Services Number five, with content marketing, sometimes the biggest wins happen when you don't create content about your products or services. We as marketers, as inbound marketers, think a lot about top-, middle-, and bottom-of-the funnel strategies. We're always brainstorming what are the questions that our audience is asking as relates to our product or service. That often leads us to create content that is very much about us and not so much about our audience. But, I had two interviews that I thought really highlighted how successful you can be if you flip that script and talk nothing about yourself. What I mean by that is ... I'll start with Stephanie Baiocchi, who was actually Stephanie Casstevens at the time I interviewed her. She hadn't been married yet. And funny enough, she was not working at IMPACT. That's another great outcome of the podcast. Now she is. But, she talked about a campaign that she was running for a client that sold solutions for medical waste from physicians' practices. Originally, they were creating a ton of content around medical waste, and it just wasn't working. The reason is that their audience, which is really the office managers for physicians' practices, already has a medical waste solution. You can't be in business if you don't, so they weren't out there searching for any information about medical waste. They didn't even realize they needed to switch providers or that they had a problem. It was when she kind of took a step back and thought, "What are the biggest problems that office managers have? It doesn't need to have anything to do with medical waste," and she realized it was patient no-shows. They created a patient no-show policy template that office managers could use. That was a total home run. What it did was it opened up the conversation with their audience so that eventually they could begin talking about medical waste. But at that top-of-the-funnel level, they needed first to really open that conversation, and product- and service-related content wasn't going to cut it. Another person who did that really well was Ryan Bonnici, who is now the CMO of G2 Crowd, but at the time was working at HubSpot. HubSpot's a company that has a huge audience. Of course, trying to broaden the top of the funnel at a company like HubSpot is challenging. All the low-hanging fruit is gone, and so you really have to get creative. He was trying to target a small business audience. He really asked himself, "What are the problems that small businesses have?" And, again, doesn't have to have anything to do with HubSpot. He realized when you're starting your business or when you come to work at a small business, one of the first things you have to do is come up with an email signature. You're usually either copying one that somebody else in the company has created or you have to create it from scratch, and it's kind of a pain. He built an email signature generator, an online tool where you could type in some information about yourself and it would spit out a really nice-looking email signature. That tool generated a ton of traffic, leads, and revenues for HubSpot, and it cost them only $6,000 to build it, but the impact was enormous. So, great lesson learned about getting out of the habit of creating only product- and service-related content and thinking bigger. 6. Paid Ads Are An Essential Part Of Any Inbound Marketing Strategy Number six, the old myth that paid ads are not inboundy is dead, or it should be dead. This one was woven throughout almost every interview I did. It's funny because when I first started working with inbound marketing, it was back with my old agency. I had discovered HubSpot. We were following their original methodology of attract, convert, close, delights, for those of you who've been in the HubSpot world for a long time and all. I remember many times going to INBOUND and seeing Brian Halligan stand on stage and talk about how the old way, the old interruptive way of marketing was paid ads, and people didn't like being interrupted. I think we all read that as, well, paid ads are not acceptable if you're an inbound marketer. That myth started dying, I think, several years ago, but it's worth repeating that paid ads are, I would say, not even just inboundy, they're essential to an inbound strategy in this day and age. I'll just list off a bunch of names of my guests who've talked about it. This isn't even a complete list, but Mark Rogers, who at the time was with Carney and grew The Daily Carnage newsletter using Facebook ads; Sterling Snow from Divvy who's used ads to drive leads for their platform; Moby Siddique who has his own inbound agency and does some incredible Facebook ads work with Messenger bots; AJ Wilcox, who is a LinkedIn ads expert; Ali Parmelee, who's one of my coworkers here at IMPACT who does incredible things with Facebook ads; Anthony Sarandrea; Rick Kranz. The list goes on and on. All of them attribute the success that they're getting and the incredible results to some form of paid ads. Let that be the final nail in the coffin of that old myth. Let's really embrace ads, and not just checking the box with ads and promoting our posts, but really taking a full funnel approach to advertising. Because that's the other thing that these folks talked about is it's not about boosting something on Facebook. This is about really digging in and getting good at ads and thinking how ads can be used at every stage of the funnel. 7. Content Distribution Is Critical Number seven, it's not enough to create and publish your content on your website. You've got to promote it and distribute it. This is one that I've heard time and time again. A lot of the best marketers I've spoken to say you should spend twice as much time promoting and distributing your content as you do creating it. I think for a lot of us that equation is backwards. One person who talked about that was Kipp Bodnar who is the CMO of HubSpot, probably one of the companies that is the best at inbound marketing. He talked about what a game changer it was in the last year when HubSpot really threw some muscle behind content distribution and how that impacted their traffic. This is a company that already had amazing traffic, by the way. Then, Phil Singleton. I loved my interview with Phil who is an SEO expert and an author. Phil talked about this great strategy he uses for clients where he's creating e-books, just like lots of inbound marketing agencies do. But then he takes the e-books that he makes for clients, or he takes a collection of blogs, for example, and compiles them into any book, and he publishes them as Kindle e-books on amazon.com, and also in some cases as hard copy books through Amazon direct publishing. It is so simple, and straightforward, and inexpensive. It blows my mind that more marketers are not doing this. It was a cool episode, so definitely check that out. But yeah, the lesson is don't just like write those blogs, create those e-books. Think about what are you going to do with them once they're published. How are you going to get them out in front of the world? 8. Original Research Can Drive Tremendous Results Number eight, original research can have amazing results. I had several interviews where people touched on what has come of original research. One of the people I think that that is most famous in the marketing world for doing this is Andy Crestodina. He has been doing a blogging survey for several years and really credits that with bringing a lot of attention to his agency, Orbit Media, out of Chicago, giving him a ton of backlinks and press. It's a pretty simple survey. He does put quite a bit of effort into promoting the survey itself so he can get a lot of responses, and then once he gets those responses into packaging that content so that he can turn it into things like infographics and articles, et cetera. But, it's not just Andy. Michele Aymold from Parker Dewey uses original research and data to boost her marketing results. Clare Carr from Parse.ly, they actually don't even have to do that much research because simply by the nature of the product that they sell they have access to a lot of proprietary data. She's really productized that and used it to get a tremendous amount of press. In fact, she was able to dramatically cut back the amount of content she was creating while getting better results because the data itself was so attractive to their audience, and it also helped her reduce their PR spend. Then, Rebecca Corliss at Owl Labs. They produced the state of remote work, and that's gotten them quite a bit of traction. 9. Community Is A Powerful Tool To Fuel Growth Number nine, community is such a powerful tool for marketing. This is an interesting one because here at IMPACT we've been working really hard over the course of the last two years to build our own community called IMPACT Elite, which is on Facebook. We've learned a lot about community in the course of doing that. I would say it has been a game changer for our business, certainly. We now have over 5,000 people in that community. It's a delicate balance how you run it. You can't make it all about yourself. It has to truly be about helping the members of the community and getting them to the point where they're almost running it, if you will. I spoke to several other people who have built communities and had similar experiences in terms of the community being a fundamental tool in the growth of their business. One was Bill Faeth who is a marketer who specializes in the limousine and transport business. He has Limo University, and he has a big community around that of limousine companies. Frank Gruber, who started Tech Cocktail in the beginning and turn it into Tech.co, which was then acquired, he now has a company called Established. But, he began this grassroots community all over the country of startups and people interested in the startup ecosystem and wound up building a tremendous media business from that. Nikki Nixon who at the time I interviewed her was running the FlipMyFunnel community for Terminus. Ameer Rosic who has a community focused on blockchain called Blockgeeks. And Mark Graham, who is an old friend of mine doing amazing things, he's up in Canada and has a software platform called Commonsku and has built a great community around that. All of these folks doing incredible things with communities in very different niches, I should say. For Bill, it was limo companies. For Frank, it was startups. For Nikki, it's people who are ABM practitioners. For Ameer, it's folks in the blockchain community. And for Mark Graham, it's people in the promotional products world. All of these different niches need communities and people are hungry to connect with others who have similar interests as they do. 10. The Quality Of Your Content REALLY Matters Content quality. I had a couple of great interviews on this. This is one that I'd love to talk with more people who are focused on this. In this day and age, you can't just be creating content and checking the box. You have to really create great content that is better than anything else out there if you really want to get amazing results. One person who talked a lot about this was Oli Gardner and how he is putting a lot of effort into really making the content that they create be the best that's available on the Internet. Emily Maxie from Very talked about this, too, really digging deep and creating unbelievable resources for your audience. Both of these folks are getting great results in terms of traffic, and that traffic ultimately turning into leads, because they took the time to create in-depth pieces that really added value for their audience. Seems like it should be obvious, it's another one of these, but it's really not too a lot of us. I mean, you might think your content's really good, but is it the best? When you Google that topic that you created content about, is your piece the best thing that you can find in the search results? If not, go back and spend the time and make it better. I think one of the lessons I've learned is it's better to make less content that's better content than it is to create a high volume. 11. Creating A Podcast - Or Being A Guest On One - Is A Good Way To Build Your Brand Another theme that came out was podcasting. It's sort of ironic because we're on a podcast talking about podcasting. But a lot of my interviews, as I went back and reviewed, had to do with podcasting, beginning with George B Thomas, who I've had the privilege to work with over the years here at IMPACT. He's now at Impulse Creative. George is a prolific podcaster, and he's ... It might seem easy when you listen to him. It just seems like, "Oh, there's a guy that just has a great rapport with his audience," but he puts a ton of thought into how he does these podcasts, how he structured them so that they not only deliver value for the audience, but that they have naturally built-in incentives for people to share them and to grow his audience. That's really worth listening to if you're somebody who wants to start a podcast. Andrew Dymski is another person who's been podcasting for a long time and who I've been a guest on his podcast. He's been a guest on mine. He's got some great insights. Ryan Hawke, who has The Learning Leader podcast, Ryan blew my mind just with how prepared he comes to everything. He talked about this, too, how before he does an interview the amount of preparation he does, the amount of preparation he does when he even just invites somebody to come on his podcast. This guy is serious business, and that's why he's so successful. He really has put the thought into it and turned his podcast into a business. Dan Moyle came on the show and talked about podcast guest interviews. So not necessarily starting a podcast, but if you want to get the word out, going on other podcasts as a guest. At the time, he was with a company called Interview Valet. What's been really cool for me is seeing the other side of that. I get pitched a lot by companies like Interview Valet, and there are certainly other ones as well. They'll send me an email and say, "Listened to your show. Thought it was great. Here's a guest that I think would be really good for you." That's how I've gotten a lot of my more interesting guests. There's something to that podcast guesting strategy that really I think can help you get traction and raise your profile if you're trying to build a personal brand or trying to get the word out about a product or a service. There are plenty of companies like Interview Valet that, for a fee, will take care of that for you. It's kind of like having a talent agent. I also talked to Jay Acunzo about podcasting. He is actually a consultant to other companies and helps them create, produce, and get the best results out of their podcasts. One of his clients is Drift, which comes up a lot on my show. People love Drift, always cited as one of the best examples of a company doing inbound marketing really well, and they have a couple of podcasts. Then, Jeff Large of Come Alive Creative. Lots of folks talking about podcasting. It really stuck out to me that it's not just about, hey, everybody should have a podcast, and I don't think everyone should. It's not right for everybody. But, podcasting can play a role in almost everybody's marketing strategy for sure. 12. Video, Video, Video Number 12, video. Can't have a list of trends and things that are important in marketing without talking about video these days. Some of the guests that I've had that have spoken about this are some of the more impressive people that have been on this podcast. In 2019, I opted to kick the year off with an interview with Marcus Sheridan, who is an amazing man that is a big role model for me. I currently get to work with him at IMPACT. But, he's somebody that I followed for years and I have so much respect for because he sees things about marketing and about customer behavior that a lot of other people don't, even though they're staring us in the face. One of the things that he has really seen and committed to is that when it comes to marketing and selling, we can't just tell people something. We have to show it to them, too, and we show it to them using video. He talked about how important video was going to be in 2019. I know that he's out speaking at conferences and talking about video all over the world. Also, Eric Siu. I kicked off 2018 with Eric Siu doing predictions for last year. He talked about video as well and was like, "Video's going to be huge in 2018." So in both of my kind of yearly prediction episodes, the guests that I've had have cited video as one of the biggest things we should be paying attention to. And then, of course, I already mentioned her, but Goldie Chan, who is a LinkedIn influencer and creates a new LinkedIn video every single day, has made a career around those videos. She's amazing. She travels all over the world and is sought after as a speaker because of the LinkedIn video she creates. And Dennis Yu who has turned video into a formula for building people's personal brands. It's really impressive what he does. They're these short little videos that he films. Using that medium has helped countless people create brands for themselves. 13. Lead With Brand Which brings me to my 13th and last lesson learned from 99 interviews with incredible marketers, and that is that all of these strategies, and tactics, and approaches are powerful. But at the end of the day, the most important thing in marketing is brand. Brand is paramount. Without it, you can have some quick wins but you'll never have a true success that will last over the long term. I'm only going to cite one example here because it's the one that comes up the most. And if you listen to this podcast with any degree of regularity, you know that at the end I always, always ask my guests, "Company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?" There is one company/individual, the company and the marketer who's spearheading it for them, that by far comes up more than anybody else, and that is Drift and Dave Gerhardt, who I was very fortunate to have as a guest early on. I can't tell you the number of times people have mentioned Drift, and it's not just people from the marketing world. It's folks that have come onto this podcast from all different industries, and they all cite Dave Gerhart and his work building a brand at Drift as the one succeeding the most with inbound marketing. It's not for me to say what that brand is or to really try to encapsulate what Dave has done, but I think it's fair to say that they've built a brand that's incredibly authentic. There's no artifice. There's no fancy tricks about it. They, of everybody, really reflect everything I've said about the past, you know, this list of 12 to 13 trends I just spoke about today. When I look back through this list, they are doing a few things and doing them really well. They really listen to their customers. It's not about fancy tools or a big budget. The things that make them successful don't have anything to do with that. It's about connecting on emotional level. It's about creating content that sometimes doesn't have anything to do with your products or services. They do paid ads. And it's not enough to create and publish your content, you've got to promote it. They are so good at that. They've got a tremendous community, really high-quality content, a bunch of podcasts. They use video better than almost anybody else, especially on LinkedIn. Checkout Dave Gerhart's LinkedIn presence. And they just have a really strong brand. So my hat is off to Dave Gerhart and the team at Drift for ... If I had to give out an award for top inbound marketers, I think it would go to them. Thank YOU For Listening But really, everybody that I've interviewed over the course of the last two years has been so impressive. It is just my absolute privilege to get to do this every single week. I also wanted to say thank you to you for listening. Podcasting is a funny exercise. As I record this, it's Sunday morning, and I'm sitting in my home office, which is a tiny little room that actually had to be permitted as a closet because it's so small. There's chaos happening around me in my house. I'm by myself talking into a microphone. I'll go away, and I'll turn this into an episode. It'll go live tomorrow. You'll be hearing this Monday, if you get the episode right when it comes out or sometime after, and you're out there listening. But when I create these things, it's just me in a room. To know that there are people who choose to listen to this every week is just an unbelievable honor and a privilege to me. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to this content. I hope so much that you've learned something from it and that, even if it's in a small way, it's helped you get better results from your marketing and feel like a smarter marketer. If that has happened, then I feel like I've succeeded. With that, I will say I would love to hear from you. It's been a hundred episodes. If you are a regular listener, please take a moment and contact me. I always say at the end you can tweet me @workmommywork, which is my Twitter handle, but you can also message me on LinkedIn. You can email me at kbooth@impactbnd.com. You can send a carrier pigeon. However you want to do it, I would love it if you would get in touch and let me know what you like about the podcast and what's something that I can improve because I'd love to make the next hundred episodes even better. With that, I won't belabor it. Thank you again for listening, and I'll see you next week. Or not see you, I'll be talking to you next week for episode 101.  

Today, more companies understand the critical role that high-value content plays at every stage of the buyer’s journey, and in particular, the selling process.Want the full transcript? Visit the show notes page on our website:https://servedontsell.com/modern-sales/the-future-of-sales-content-with-hubspot-cmo-kipp-bodnar---Get a daily sales insight sent straight to your inbox:Subscribe to the daily sales insights newsletter Don't miss a single episode:Subscribe on SpotitySubscribe on Apple Podcasts Like what you heard?Help us get the word out by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of the #categorycreation series, John Rougeux interviews Kipp Bodnar, CMO of Hubspot. Kipp shares the story of how Hubspot took the idea of "inbound marketing" and helped turn it into the marketing discipline that the company is now so strongly associated with. Kipp also mentioned the brand Bevel as a recent example of category creation.

What marketing strategies is HubSpot's CMO using to drive the company's explosive growth?   This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, HubSpot Chief Marketing Officer Kipp Bodnar is pulling back the curtain on the company's marketing and sharing the details of four successful marketing experiments that have been game changers for the company in 2018.  Kipp covered this in his presentation at IMPACT Live 2018 and it was so fascinating, I asked him to come on the podcast so we could dig a bit deeper. Some highlights from our discussion include: HubSpot's marketing strategy for 2018 was focused on reducing friction and making it easier for customers to learn about, interact with, and engage with the company. By revamping their lead nurturing workflows for new contacts, HubSpot was able to go to a 67% open rate from a 37% open rate, and from a 17% click-through rate on the previous version of its lead nurturing workflow to a 61% click-through rate. By syndicating content that relates to high traffic, competitive keywords and republishing it on third party sites, HubSpot dramatically increased page authority for that content and as a result, traffic grew considerably (up to 16,000% for one article!). Building on the success of its content syndication program, HubSpot is now working on getting accepted as a publisher in Google News in order to experiment with the impact that exposure in news aggregation sites will have on traffic. A new strategy to connect with its audience via Facebook Messenger is also paying off, with prospects converting on a Messenger-based quiz. The company is in the early stages of a new play to cover more breaking news and has added a full time writer to work exclusively on this. In 2019, Kipp foresees HubSpot devoting more resources to video and to marketing via Instagram. Listen to the podcast to learn more about the marketing experiments HubSpot conducted and the results that they generated. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host):Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth, and I'm your host; and today my guest is Kipp Bodnar, who is the CMO of HubSpot. Welcome Kipp. Kipp Bodnar (Guest): Hey, thanks for having me Kathleen, I really appreciate it. Kipp and Kathleen recording this episode Kathleen: I'm really excited to have you here. I had the opportunity to hear you speak at IMPACT Live in August. Click here to watch the video recording of Kipp's IMPACT Live talk. Kathleen: I've heard you speak before at INBOUND and so I'm personally very excited to get to pick your brain a little bit on some of the things you're doing at HubSpot. Before we dive into that, can you talk a little bit about yourself and just about HubSpot. I'm pretty sure most of my listeners know what HubSpot is, but just in case there's that random person out there who's never heard of it, maybe you could give us the two-minute version. About HubSpot Kipp: Sure, yeah. Well thanks for having me and to the audience thanks for taking a few minutes to listen. So HubSpot...we build technology for growing businesses and we started as a marketing and marketing automation tool, but really now we're a CRM with tools for marketers, sales people, and customer service folks. Whether you need to store your contacts, manage your pipeline, automate your marketing we've got the tools for you to do that. I personally have been here at HubSpot for almost nine years now. It's been a fun journey. We've got an awesome global team growing and an amazing network of agency partners, integration partners that really extend HubSpot's platform with their own application. It's a really awesome system we have here and I'm excited to talk a little about it today. Kathleen: Yeah, it's amazing to me how much the company has changed since you joined, I mean I haven't known of HubSpot for even as long as you were around. I think when I had my own agency we became partners, it was 2011. Kipp: Yes. Kathleen: And even just in that time it's unbelievable what's happened, so I can't imagine as someone who joined what was it? Would it have been 2007? Kipp: No I joined the end of 2009, so not- Kathleen: 2009, so- Kipp: - too soon before, about a year or so before you started coming through my office. But yeah, the company's been around since 2006. Kathleen: Yeah, unbelievable amount of change in that time. Kipp: Glad you remember and reflect on it. Kathleen: I feel like we could do a whole other podcast on just that. But we won't so we'll save that one for another time, and for this time, you know, one of the reasons as I said I was really excited to talk to you was that I think a lot of us in the marketing world have heard HubSpot's story of growth. It's incredibly impressive, but it also - to the average marketer or to the small or medium-sized business owner - it can kind of seem unattainable or unrelatable because the growth is so dramatic. What I appreciated so much about what you discussed at IMPACT Live was you pulled back the curtain on HubSpot's marketing and rather than try and give us the secret to success, you gave us a couple of very discrete, actionable, specific things that HubSpot has done in the past year, that have really made an impact in terms of the results that you're seeing in your marketing. It seems to me that all of those were very doable and attainable by the average company and so I would love to spend today breaking that down and talking about that for listeners. Kipp: Let's do it. HubSpot's Marketing Goals Kathleen: Alright. So maybe you could start by just talking about what your goals for the year were, 'cause I know when you started talking at IMPACT Live a lot of these changes that you put in place had to do with really achieving the objectives you set out as far as HubSpot's marketing. Kipp: Yeah, this year we wanted to build off of the momentum we've had and we wanted to really solve for our prospects and our customers, which has kind of always been our core DNA. But when we thought about this, like man we've got this awesome flywheel, we've got a business that's really going up but there's a lot of friction in it, and how do we reduce that friction and make it easier to learn about us, interact with us, engage with us? And so we really wanted to drive awareness with HubSpot and how we think about getting people to adopt our free products, which I think are a really great way to engage with us. We wanted to make it easier for our customers to be advocates for us. We believe that word of mouth is one of our best marketing channels, and so we wanted to really rethink how we thought about customer marketing and communicating to our customers, and how we enabled them to tell a better story. We wanted to make shopping with us and buying with us easy, friction-free, on our own prospects' time schedule and how they wanted to interact with us. And so that involved telling better stories, educating them, but also doubling down on things like automation and chat and different strategies like that. Kathleen: Yeah, and all of those I think are goals that any business that is at all down the path of pursuing an inbound marketing strategy probably share. I know for myself, we would love to reduce friction and solve for the customer and make it easier for our prospects to engage with us, so how'd you do it? I know you ran a bunch of tests, and there were some that worked and worked particularly well. 1. Revamping HubSpot's Lead Nurturing Strategy Kipp: Yeah, so there's a ... We'll talk about one of the things I shared at IMPACT Live which is really about how we improved our automation and nurturing. Once we were able to bring somebody into our community I would really take them to the next level and help them understand our products, address their pain in the right way, and really we've been, as a company that's been in the marketing automation system, we've been doing automation for a long time and we continue to try to iterate on it over and over again. Like any marketing tactic or strategy I feel like you always, the first iteration is always just full of assumptions, right? It's the marketer trying to guess and making a bunch of assumptions as- Kathleen: Right, as people like to sound fancy and scientific they say, "It was my heuristic analysis." Kipp: I'm not that fancy at terms. Kathleen: That's just a way of sounding really smart when you're saying, "I made a bunch of assumptions." Kipp: Yeah, and so that was basically like our automation, two to three years ago, that's kinda what it was like, right? We'd assume based on what the topic that person downloaded that they wanted more stuff on that topic, right? And we wanna try to keep giving them more of what they wanted and it worked okay, like we had a 30% open rate on that automation, about 14% click-through rate. It was respectable. Nothing to be frustrated about. Kipp: Then we were like, "Oh well it's good that they want that stuff, but actually they're looking for this information 'cause they have this bigger holistic set of problems, right?" They either need to get more traffic to their website, they need to get more leads for their business, they need to turn those leads into customers at a high rate. There's kind of a refined subset of problems that all these folks have, and so what if we do our best job to kind of segment those people based on those areas of focus and kind of what their core marketing challenge was? Kathleen: Yeah, I seem to recall you gave an example in your presentation of somebody would download a social media playbook and at first on the surface it would appear that their problem was they wanted to learn how to do social media better, but really that was the symptom of a larger challenge that they were facing, so I thought that was interesting. Kipp: Yeah, and so we looked at that and we said, "Okay, well let's then do this different point of segmentations, instead of giving them a bunch of social media content, let's give them content around how they can get more leads to their website," for example. And that improved our performance. We went from a 30% open rate to a 37% open rate. We went from a 14% click-through rate to a 17% click-through rate. It's an improvement I think a lot of people would be happy with. But then we really did something pretty obvious that we should've done two years earlier, which is we asked people ... We basically made a "pick your own adventure," choose what you really need to know about right now. And so if you, basically if you downloaded that same social media ebook for example, you get that first kind of welcome email after that was, "Well what challenge are you trying to tackle? Do you need more leads? Do you need to grow your revenue? Do you need to manage your sales pipeline? Or do you need to do all of these things?" But some people write. Some people it's, "Hey I'm just getting started, I need to make all these things happen," and based on which one you picked, we had a really customized set of followup content that really aligned really tightly with that. And the response rate on that was way better than we could've ever imagined. We went to a 67% open rate from a 37% open rate, and we went from a 17% click-through rate on the previous version to a 61% click-through rate- Kathleen: Wow! Kipp: ... on the newer version, which is a massive, massive improvement. Kathleen: That's amazing. Kipp: It's awesome, and our team did an incredible job on that, and I think it came back to, "Well when you finally get segmentation and the value you need delivered for your perspective customer, and you marry that with good content, good information, you can really drive remarkable results. Kathleen: Yeah, what's so interesting about that change for me is that it kind of mirrors what you're taught as a salesperson. I spent some time on IMPACT Sales Team, and before I came here I was an agency owner. I kind of was my main salesperson and you're always taught in sales, if somebody comes to you for example and says, "I need help with social media," the best salespeople don't just say, "Well great, how can we help you?" Or "Here's how we can help you." They say, "Well why do you need help with social media. What are you really trying to achieve with that?" So you kind of peel back the layers of the onion and figure out, you know, don't let the customer self-diagnose necessarily. Figure out what they're real motivation is and I like the way you guys went with the pick your own adventure. I mean the customer is still self-diagnosing to a certain extent. Kipp: Totally. Kathleen: But you're taking it to a deeper level by asking them really, why? Why are you here? What's behind it? So that tracks very nicely with how I think the buying journey happens. In my head when you said that you went from a 30-something percent up in rate to a 60, or whatever the increase was, I felt like it was you doubled everything, all I could picture was the marketing team popping a bottle of champagne that day 'cause that is such a huge increase. Kipp: Yeah. No, I mean that's the biggest thing, like, for anybody, when you have big milestones you've gotta celebrate them, right? Kathleen: Yeah. Kipp: So we do all kinds of fun things. Sometimes you'd have a bottle of champagne, sure, sometimes you get a bunch of cupcakes, sometimes it's like a big joke that's a symbol of the progress. Kathleen: Right. Kipp: Whatever it is, celebrating those milestones are super important. Kathleen: Yeah. Now from a very kind of nitty-gritty technical standpoint, when you present people with this. So somebody converts on something, we'll go back to our example of the social media playbook, and they're sent either an email or they're sent to a thank you page, you're giving them this opportunity to say, "Here is the direction that I wanna go." Is that as simple as they're clicking a button and then that button sends a signal in HubSpot to put them in a certain customer segment and it kicks off the workflow? Kipp: Yeah. Yeah. So basically there's essentially four different workflows and based on which button you click in that email you're gonna get enrolled in that workflow. Kathleen: Okay, and I think I have some screenshots of some of that, so I'll include that in the show and that's for anyone who's curious to see what those examples look like. Kathleen: I love that and that's something that's really easy for I think anybody to implement, is really what's your problem, and based on the problem to then put in place the nurturing. Kipp: Anything you can do to get a clearer understanding of what your prospect is looking for, their core problem, so you can deliver on that is going to drastically improve your marketing results. Kathleen: Now am I right to assume that if I do come to your website, I do convert on that social media playbook, that's my first conversion, I then enter into one of these four workflows -- am I right to assume that you have some suppression in place so that if I then, five minutes later go and download something on something else entirely that I'm not gonna then start to get five different emails? Kipp: Yeah, these are basically like the master workflows, so once you've had that first conversion you're gonna get enrolled in that workflow and regardless of what else you do you're gonna stay in that workflow and not get enrolled into anything else. Kathleen: Until it ends? Kipp: Until it ends. Kathleen: Yeah. Okay. Well that's so interesting and there you go, there's one great actionable tip. 2. A Strategy to Rank for High Traffic, Competitive Keywords Kathleen: One of the other things you talked about at IMPACT live I recall was a massive increase in traffic to the website. Kipp: Yup. Kathleen: Would you talk a little bit more about that? Kipp: Yeah, so when I think about, it's kinda tough to be a marketer today and the whole host of reasons, and one of the reasons it's tough is because it's just been a lot of consolidation of audience. And man Google and Facebook earn so much of the audience, and so when we think about how we grow organic traffic to our websites, man, Google is the top priority there. One of the things that we really learned is that there's some powerful stuff we could do to really get better distribution through Google, and one of the plays we did there was the content syndication play. So basically what happened is content syndication essentially is a process of taking some content we've published and republishing it on third-party sites for broader reach around that point of view and thought leadership. That's the base thing. And so we would create content for sites like Fast Company or The Muse, or Thrive Global, or other sites where at the end of that article we've got attribution that this article was originally posted on the HubSpot site. So Google knows that that article is not the canonical, the one on our site's the canonical article, so we're not messing Google up in anywhere there. When we first did that we thought, "Oh this is gonna be a play to get good referral traffic from those websites. Oh people are gonna see that and they're gonna click that little link in that article and get back to our site." And what we found is that that just wasn't true at all. You know an article for the Muse got us eight clicks, and that's just basic laws of conversion rate. But what we saw, what was interesting though, is even though that post did not get a ton of traffic from the Muse for example, it started jumping up the rankings for a bunch of different key words. And the views from organic search really started to climb, and wow we saw that as a pretty awesome and interesting opportunity. What we figured out is that syndication - instead of getting that direct traffic from the syndication partners - what it was actually a tool for was building authority in terms of linking and recency of traffic and everything else to those pages. Kathleen: Okay. Kipp: And it gave us some authority to basically increase the rank of those pages, and that was a really powerful revelation for us because we were able to figure out that, "Wow we need to use syndication as a tool in our organic search tool belt." This is a play that I think anybody can run and kind of, if you wanna think about how you apply this it's you've got to look at the content you already have and what of that content has high search potential? So, maybe it's already on the first page of Google, maybe in the bottom of the first page for example, so it has some resonance. It's got some credibility, it's on a topic that you care about, topic that has real search volume, and then you wanna go and you wanna promote that content through syndication partners, whether it through email, through Facebook. That additional promotion gets you additional inbound links and sends a signal to Google that this is a really quality piece of content, and then you're gonna see your organic ranking increase and have a much longer month-to-month tale of traffic and visits to that page because of that promotion effort. Kathleen: And that strategy presupposes obviously that you're able to find syndication partners that are open to republishing content that has appeared somewhere else, 'cause I know a lot of them are ... A lot of the big ones are really picky about that. Kipp: Yeah, and sometimes it might be a repackaging of that content, it might be a new twist on that content, that is, you know, maybe you've got an article on your site that's really in depth, that you take one portion of it and you kinda add to it and you make it a syndicated article that points back to that original article for a more in-depth look at that issue. Kathleen: That makes sense. Kipp: There are couple different ways that we've tried to do it. Kathleen: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And your traffic increase, if I remember correctly, it was something like 16,000% increase? Kipp: Yeah, so for one blog post, yeah, we ... The example I gave is we had one blog post that went from I think it was 500 views a month to over 69,000 views per month. 'Cause we were able- Kathleen: Wow. Kipp: ... to really change the dynamic of how that post ranked and how we were able to promote it. Kathleen: That's amazing. Now, just out of curiosity, have you looked at all or is your team looking at all at the impact that news aggregator sites could potentially have on gaining visibility for your content? I'm thinking like Apple News, Flipboard ... We're looking closely at that for ourselves 'cause we're kind of establishing ourselves as a publisher and I've read a lot about that but I haven't ... Kipp: Yeah we have, and so for us our big focus, those aggregators the key word of the statement you said is news. Kathleen: Yeah. Kipp: Right, and so it's a really different type of content and so what we have is we have, right now we have one person dedicated to news in our industry, and we actually, we are close to applying and getting into Google News for example, being able to include it in Google News results and then that paves the way to having that news content listed in those different aggregators. We have seen that to be, early signs are very positive. It is really gonna be, I think, until we are listed in Google News 'til we really know the extent of how valuable that play is and is it, "Wow we need to put more people on that because that's working really well," or is it kind of incremental on top of what we're doing. So that's kind of where we are in that process. We're just like you, we think there's some interesting opportunity there. There's a few technical things and everything we need to do to kind of finalize our play there to see how it actually works long term. Kathleen: Yeah I think you're right about being very specific on the news side, 'cause we are covering news as well but I think we made a strategic error, 'cause we applied for Google News as a publisher and initially got rejected, but that's I believe because we submitted our main RSS feed, which includes a lot of non-news topics along with the news, so I think we might need to go back. Kipp: They like you to have a whole separate feed and section of your site, how you structure the site matters a lot for those aggregators, so- Kathleen: Yeah. Kipp: We're in the process of fixing that and then we're doing real news. The woman who does that for us is traveling to events, she's covering stuff in real time. We've got a slack channel where she jumps in and asks people internally for comments. She's got some great external sources. We're really trying to treat it very much as a news outlet, much more than an educational content or how-to content outlet like a lot of our other content that is currently positioned. Kathleen: Yeah it's a really interesting shift and I'm looking forward to seeing where you guys take it and the impact that it has onsite traffic and a lot of these other things. So maybe we can do a followup next year on that. Kipp: We could. That'd be awesome. 3. Generating Leads With Facebook Messenger Kathleen: Great, well the other area that you talked about was Messenger, and particularly- Kipp: Yeah. Kathleen: ... Facebook Messenger, which I think is so interesting that something that's accessible to a lot of companies but very few I am seeing use it well, so maybe you could dig into that a little bit? Kipp: Yeah, it's interesting, there's been an increased ramp of the talk of website chat and live chat in the market, right? We've been doing live chat on our website for about five years at HubSpot, it's been a great channel for us. We're continuing to innovate there and really grow it's- Kathleen: You guys have a great product for that, too, I mean- Kipp: It's a great product, it helps with conversations, it's free if you wanna .... If you aren't using it check it out, but there's a ton of value there. I highly recommend it. If you don't, if you're not using any live chat on your website you really wanna start doing that. There's gonna be real benefit there. Kind of tangential to that, we also have this strong belief that we wanna remove friction, like I talked about earlier, and one of the ways you remove friction is to go where your customers are, where your prospects are, and there's just a huge part of our community that is on Facebook. So why are we gonna ask them to leave the Facebook ecosystem to engage with us on our website, chat with us on our website? Why can't we have them do that within the Facebook ecosystem, is essentially our kinda core hypothesis here. And you've got, we had a big Facebook book print, right? We have ... we're getting closer and closer to two million Facebook fans. We've got millions of Facebook video views, but man it's been ... we were kinda struggling, like how do we actually monetize this audience? How do we better engage with this audience? And we've done a bunch of different Facebook Messenger tests. The one I shared with you and the folks at IMPACT Live was around comment to messenger, which is a specific feature where basically you can set a keyword in a social post on Facebook, and if the person comments with that specific keyword -- for us we had an SEO tutorial video. If you commented SEO on that video, it opened a Messenger dialogue with an SEO quiz for you to test your SEO knowledge. That's the basic mechanics of it, and that quiz was awesome. It asked you some information about yourself, had some great questions for you- Kathleen: And the quiz happened in Messenger? Kipp: The quiz was all in Messenger, so delivered via a bot in Messenger, and then once that quiz was done we connected you with other pieces of content, so maybe an in-depth ebook on SEO. But man if you care enough to take an SEO quiz and you're feeling pretty good, maybe you wanna learn some more, and that SEO book, you could load it as a Facebook instant article, so you still didn't have to leave Facebook. And the interesting thing is from a form information perspective, if you wanna check out that ebook, we just asked you, the bot asked you a few form questions, you never needed to visit a webpage, fill out a form, and then we just automatically sink that back into HubSpot so we had all of your information. You could do great automation, customize your experience with us, and everything, as well as re-engage you via Facebook Messenger after you've consumed that quiz and that ebook. You know, follow up with you the next day to see, "Hey now that you've read that ebook do you have questions? Are there ways that we can help you?" Kathleen: How do you avoid people feeling like you're in their space on Facebook Messenger? 'Cause I feel like traditionally that's been such a private space, you know a friend-to-friend space and it's a fine line but brands walk if they go into that space. How have you guys handled that in terms of the frequency of messaging, the nature of it, et cetera? Kipp: Yeah, so we found it works most effectively when it's really anchored against something that they have real high in turn around. So the fact that we -- for this example, right -- the fact that we even kick off that Messenger interaction with a quiz that they have to opt into and they're doing in real time, and any followup is really around that quiz and around that topic, and then we really try to kind of hold off on much engagement until they actually proactively reengage, because you're right. We wanna be sensitive to the fact that it's often a space for friends and family, but man I think business has a great space there. Well if you are contextual and you're really trying to provide value and be helpful to them. And so it was pretty awesome in that of of the people that watched that SEO missed video on Facebook, about a little over 2% of them opted in and commented to take the quiz, which is a pretty good conversion rate. That's, I think a similar click-through rate, conversion rate, you would find on your website- Kathleen: Yeah. Kipp: ... and other places. SO I thought that was pretty good and I thought what was really interesting, if they opted in 95% of the people who opted in actually finished the quiz. So- Kathleen: Oh wow, that's actually very surprising. Kipp: - engagement of that platform, right? And the power of that platform, and the really crazy thing is that the quiz got them interested enough that of the folks that took the quiz 68% of those folks actually downloaded our ebook. Kathleen: Wow. Kipp: They were really engaged, really wanted that next step. We were able to teach them some really interesting stuff from the quiz and they wanted to take the next step of their education. Kathleen: That's pretty impressive and what interests me the most about this one is that for a lot of companies there's a feeling of frustration that they spent years building up their page likes for their company page in Facebook, only to have Facebook pull the rug out from under them and basically make it so that nobody saw anything unless they paid to play, and this is an interesting way to derive value out of people who've liked your page or people who are interacting with it that I think it's a way to drive value in those legacy fans if you will. Kipp: I think that's right. I think that's a very astute observation on your part. Kathleen: Is this something that's really hard for the average business to set up? Is it super techy complicated or is it pretty accessible? Kipp: No, you know it's getting much more accessible every day. You could do some of this with the HubSpot Conversations product I talked about. Many Chat is a really great product. They've got a great HubSpot integration as well. There's a few other platforms out there, but if you just wanna go and create a free account on either HubSpot or Many Chat you can get something like this up and running pretty quickly actually. Kathleen: That's great. And you also have some other ways you've used Facebook for conversion, I think you mentioned you have some native lead forms in there as well? Or- Kipp: Yeah, so as part of this quiz or any of the Facebook Messenger engagements we do kinda natively forms within Messenger instead of sending people to an HTML form on a website, and we've found that the conclusion rates, conversion rates are really strong there as well. Kathleen: So they don't have to go off of Facebook or off of Messenger, they can stay where they are and it all syncs back into the platform. Now, technical question. Kipp: Sure. Kathleen: When you take this approach, are you sacrificing the ability to cookie that person? Kipp: You are. You are. We believe that the number one thing is to deliver that prospect a remarkable native experience wherever they are to the extent that we can do that for them, right? And that's why we format our search content for answer boxes so that if they don't need to click through then they don't have to click through. We're trying very hard to get them the information that they're looking for as quickly as possible, and knowing that if we do a great job of that, that we're gonna build great brand awareness, we're gonna build great trust with them, they're gonna take the higher-intent actions that we're hoping for as they continue to interact with us. Kathleen: Yes. Kipp: But you're giving up the right to cookie, but you ... I don't know actually say you're trading off the right to cookie for the right to have a Messenger exchange with them, right? And you can retarget them on Facebook, there's other advantages, but what you're really sacrificing is cookie-ing for interactions kind of across the web and exchanging that for deeper interactions in the Facebook ecosystem. Kathleen: Yeah and it almost seems to me, maybe you're not trading off or giving up the ability to cookie, you're postponing it- Kipp: Yeah, exactly. Kathleen: ... because if you do your job well, they will eventually come to your site and- Kipp: Totally. Totally. Kathleen: ... convert on something, and you'll get them anyway. So, yeah, I guess it all depends on the quality of that first interaction and the value that you're delivering. Kipp: You've gotta bring the value, first and foremost, before anything else. 4. Growing Traffic Through News Coverage Kathleen: Yeah, so going back to the topic of news. Kipp: Yes. Kathleen: You touched on this earlier, this has been a big play for you guys. I heard you mention this. I think I heard Matthew Barbey talk about it when he spoke at INBOUND. Kipp: Yup. Kathleen: How did this start? Kipp: It started, we've always kind of covered news a little bit because even in the early days of our HubSpot blog it was because ... In the early days of social news content got you a lot of social traffic, and we're like, "Oh cool. This is a sweet way to get different people to discover us and get cool discoverability on social," and as social's kind of matured that's become a little less true, but now we've seen it as a unique way to get to a different type of audience through search news aggregators like we were talking about a little bit ago. For example, one of the things we've noticed is that on average our news posts have a lot more links coming into them and more page authority than our non-news posts. Kathleen: Huh. That's interesting. When I think about the traffic impact of news, it almost seems like a food analogy comes to mind. I feel like news can be a bit like a sugar high, you get that big initial spike and then you drop because obviously news gets old quickly, and more traditional content, like being on the protein diet, you get the long slow burn. Kipp: Close. Kathleen: Is that kind of what you've seen with your traffic? Kipp: Some, but not completely. We try to take an editorial commentary on the news that makes it more evergreen. And you also have a lot of research all on past news events, it's less like that. I think it's certainly partly like that, but it's less severe than I think you're kind of outlining it to be. What we've seen is that you get a mix of social and search traffic to that news content, and you attract in ... You're really bring in people at kind of a different point in their process, right? When you're getting people to do a search they have an intent for one very specific thing. News you're bringing people with much more passive intent, they didn't know they were looking for this thing but now that they've found it they're interested in it and they're engaging with it and maybe engaging with follow-along content and stuff from that. Kathleen: Is part of your strategy to also go back and update older news posts when there are developments? Kipp: Yeah, I mean news and non-news posts. We try to keep our best content always up to date. Kathleen: Yeah. Kipp: With a lot of time doing that, I'm sure you all do as well, it's just an important thing in today's internet, 'cause like you said, stuff changes and stuff can get out of date pretty quickly. Kathleen: Yeah, absolutely. Well it's super interesting to me because some of what you guys are doing I think we're testing out at a much smaller and maybe less ambitious level but it's great to be able to have some insight into the approach you're taking and the results you're getting. Kipp: Yeah, good. I'm glad. Kathleen: I'll be really curious to see what happens with the news aggregations, that's one that I'm- Kipp: I know. Kathleen: ... personally very interested in at the moment, so ... Kipp: Me too, and I'm a little impatient on it. Hopefully - Kathleen: Yeah, I know. There's nothing like sitting back and waiting for Google to approve you. I ... we applied and did get accepted to Flipboard, but it took like- Kipp: Oh nice. Kathleen: ... a month-and-a-half, which was incredibly frustrating. I wanted to know like 24 hours later, so ... Kipp: Totally. Kathleen: We're all at the mercy of the platforms, right? Kipp: That is the world we live in right now. HubSpot's Marketing Plan for 2019 Kathleen: So my last question for you on this topic is just as we head into the New Year, can you share anything about where your focus is gonna be coming into 2019? Kipp: Well there's a lot of focus, but we want to ... Man, I'm pretty- Kathleen: And I'm springing this on you, I didn't tell you I was gonna ask you about this. Kipp: Well I'm pretty obsessed with reducing friction, just making the best buying experience possible. The best educational experience possible for our community and so, man, we're gonna continue to make even bigger investments in Messenger and live chat, and automation, so you're gonna see a bunch more stuff from us on that front. And then we're gonna continue to double down on the great educational content, but continue to evolve how we're telling the stories. More video, YouTube, things like that. We're gonna invest more there as well. Kathleen: So you're not scared off by ... Everyone's been saying in the news that the pivot to video was kind of based on a false premise because Facebook didn't have the right data, are you ... You're not rethinking your strategy because of that? Kipp: I think Instagram's growing like a weed. I think YouTube's a huge network with the ability to drive awareness, I think, only growing there. I think there's a big opportunity. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Well this has been great. I've learned a lot. I probably have a thousand more questions, but you only have an hour, so ... Kipp: No worries. Kathleen: Before we wrap up there's two questions I always ask all of my guests, and I would love to get your take on it. The first is, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Kipp: I love what our customer ezCater is doing. They're doing a really, really awesome job. Some folks who don't know, they are a platform that enables, they're kinda like an Uber Eats for catering for businesses. And they're doing a great job reducing friction in their buying process, they have a great website. They have an awesome blog creating content around catering and food trends and everything else. It's definitely a market you probably wouldn't think about for awesome inbound marketing, but I think they're doing a really, really great job. Kathleen: That's great and I love when people give me examples from outside of the marketing industry, because I feel like we can be a giant echo chamber so I can't wait to check them out. Second question is, as you know the world of digital marketing changes so quickly, how do you personally stay up to date and educate yourself? Kipp: Yeah, for me I try to have like a system of how I consume information so, Twitter lists for people who I really respect their opinion of, certain Flipboard magazines from people and sources that I think have really awesome information. I subscribe to some old-school email newsletters 'cause some of them are really good, like Brian Balfour's 'Reforge' newsletter. Kathleen: That's a good one. Kipp: Right? I love Brian. He used to work here with us and so I always want to know what he and that crew is thinking about. So really that's what I want to do. And then sometimes, honestly, sometimes I'll just see a piece of marketing and I'll think it's really good and I'll just go try to find out who did it and talk to them. Kathleen: Yeah. Kipp: Be like, "Hey this is awesome. How'd you do it? Tell me more about it," and I think sometimes just doing that is super valuable as well. Kathleen: Yeah, that's what my podcast is for me. It's my excuse to sponge all the knowledge from the people that I wanna learn from. How to Connect With Kipp Kathleen: Well this has been fantastic. If somebody is listening and they have a question or wanna learn more, what's the best way for them to connect with HubSpot or with you online? Kipp: Yeah, so HubSpot, go to HubSpot.com, chat with us, sign up for our free products, whatever you need there. And then to chat with me, just connect with me on LinkedIn, send me an email, happy to chat and connect and do whatever I can do to help. Kathleen: Great, and I'll put links to your LinkedIn profile and to HubSpot on the show notes, and thank you. This has been fascinating. You Know What Comes Next... Kathleen: If you're listening and you got value out of today's podcast, you know what to do. I would love it if you'd leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice, and if you know someone else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, Tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to interview them. Thanks Kipp. Kipp: Awesome, thanks Kathleen. Appreciate it.

The notion of a CMO building or rebuilding a marketing team is not an unfamiliar concept, especially on Renegade Thinkers Unite. Thinking back to the insights provided by Paige O’Neill, hiring a new team can be one of the first major tasks a CMO has to tackle in their first 100 days. When faced with this challenge, CMOs should always focus on designing a team that will align with the strategic goals of the company and that fills the current HR gaps. But one element of the process that is often overlooked is the interview—and more importantly, the interview questions. That’s where Kipp Bodnar comes in. As a wine enthusiast, mechanical watch aficionado, and host of HubSpot’s "The Growth Show," Kipp Bodnar, the CMO of HubSpot, loves learning from the people he interviews and encounters. Kipp’s recent article, “The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Interview Questions From HubSpot's CMO,” made waves in the marketing community, discussing the best questions to ask in a marketing interview. On this episode, Drew turns the tables by asking Kipp to respond to the questions he wrote. Drew and Kipp also explain the best ways to hire for senior-level leadership positions and share how new professionals can prepare for the hiring process. Click here to learn how to add these great insights to your own interviews. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - Stitcher- or Podsearch What You’ll Learn The best marketing interview questions achieve these goals Hiring top talent starts with asking the right questions. Kipp is an expert in sorting out expert applicants from the general pool, and he suggests CMOs use marketing interview questions that do the following: Encourage open-ended responses Identify if an applicant can problem solve Discover if an applicant can simplify a complex topic and notice great marketing in other brands The best applicants will demonstrate a high level of humility, motivation to learn, and an ability to listen. Getting great answers only comes from great questions. To hear the full list of marketing interview questions, be sure to listen. Follow this advice when considering a senior-level leadership applicant Hiring for a senior-level position is much different than hiring for marketing team members. Kipp shares his process for hiring leaders throughout his conversation with Drew. Kipp explains that during a 2-week hiring process, he will spend 20-30 hours with the applicant in a variety of settings (dinners, presentations, panel interviews, etc.) He says that if you’re going to be working closely with this applicant for the next few years, you must understand the essence of what that person is all about. How can new marketing professionals prepare for an interview? Preparing for an interview doesn’t have to be stressful. Kipp shares 5 main things an applicant can do to prepare for the interview process. Here they are. Become familiar with the company’s products/services Seek out and talk with existing company employees Do content research Understand the culture Come with questions of your own The hiring process is a “unique mix of buying and selling,” as Drew explains. These insights from Kipp on marketing interview questions can help make the process smoother and more effective. Timeline [0:29] Drew explains the format for this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite [2:51] The fine art of interviewing and hiring for a marketing team [4:00] Use this question to know if your applicant can problem solve [8:28] Use this question to see if the applicant puts the opinion of the customer first [12:14] This question determines if an applicant can pull info from a set of data [17:09] Is this applicant able to understand what good marketing is all about? [21:04] Can this applicant seek out and absorb information on their own? [28:16] Follow this advice for hiring a senior level position [30:20] These traits help people make the senior-level cut [34:24] Follow these tips for preparing for an interview [36:46] The main relationship between marketing and sales [39:20] This one question is what Kipp hopes for in every interview Connect With Kipp: Kipp’s bio on the HubSpot website Connect with Kipp on LinkedIn Follow Kipp on Twitter Resources & People Mentioned PODCAST: “The Growth Show/The Turnaround” PODCAST: “71: Drew Neisser: Marketing’s renegade talks strategy, story, and courage” ARTICLE: “The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Interview Questions From HubSpot's CMO” BOOK: “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice” BOOK: “The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results” BOOK: “White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism” BOOK: “Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike” BRAND: Walker and Company Follow Tristan Walker on Instagram APP: Flipboard Connect with Drew http://renegade.com/ On LinkedIn On Twitter On Facebook On Instagram

What is the single most effective - and least expensive marketing channel - available to all businesses? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, BirdEye Head of Marketing Sam Mallikarjunan shares why your customers are your best marketing channel and how BirdEye is developing a platform designed to help businesses leverage trust - via customer evangelism - at scale.  From his year's spent as "the face of HubSpot" to teaching marketing at Harvard to taking over marketing for BirdEye, a martech SaaS startup, Sam has gathered fascinating insights into what it takes to build a high growth business and the role that marketing plays in that process. Listen to the podcast to hear Sam's thoughts on leveraging customers for your marketing and to learn more about his plans for marketing BirdEye. Transcript Kathleen Booth (host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and today, my guest is Sam Mallikarjunan, who is the Head of Marketing for BirdEye. Welcome, Sam. Sam Mallikarjunan (guest): Thanks for having me. Sam and I recording this episode Kathleen: I'm excited to speak with you. You told me that this is going to be your first podcast since joining BirdEye, so I'm really excited to dig in and learn a little bit more about it and share that with the audience, but also talk about some of the things you've learned throughout your career because you have a really interesting background with many years at HubSpot, and you're doing some teaching now. I have a lot of questions that I want to ask you! Sam: I'm looking forward to it. It's been a weird ride, so we can go in whatever direction you want. Kathleen: Great. Well, why don't we start by having you tell the audience a little bit about yourself, and your background, and how you wound up where you are today. Sam: Sure. So my name is Sam Mallikarjunan. If you can't pronounce it, you can Google anything even close to it and you'll generally find me. For seven years, I worked at HubSpot, which if your listeners don't know, is a software company based out of Boston. For the last three or so years, I was teaching the advanced digital marketing course at Harvard University. And then for all of last year, as we discussed before we started recording, I lived in a van, both teaching at Harvard, and then also I was HubSpot's full time speaker. So I spoke in 49 US states and about eight other countries last year on a range of topics: innovation, and innovation marketing management, et cetera, marketing strategy. (to learn more about Sam's adventures traveling the world and living in a van, check out the "Sam from the Van" Facebook page) So now, however, what people thought would never happen is happening. They used to joke that we could change my name to "Sam from HubSpot," so that people didn't have to say Mallikarjunan. But no, I have left. I have left and taken over as Head of Marketing at birdeye.com, which is based in Dallas. So I'm moving from Tampa to Dallas, and I'm really, really, really excited because it feels ... First of all, we share some board members with HubSpot, so it's kind of similar in that way. But second of all, it feels like HubSpot did back in the early days. So I'm very, very excited. Kathleen: Oh that's great. So true confession, both times I've heard you say, "I lived in a van," in my head what comes up is Chris Farley. And I want to say, "Was it down by the river?" Sam: Many times it was down by a river. We posted on Instagram, everybody got their joke, ha ha ha, very funny. Kathleen: I'm sure it's not the first time you've heard someone say that. I'm not super original in that. Sam: In fact, if you bust out, "Do you like green eggs and ham," based on my name, between those two jokes, you'll have hit about 50% of the recurring jokes that I've heard in my life. Kathleen: Oh, I didn't even think of that. Sam: Yeah. Kathleen: Alright. Well, fascinating kind of journey to where you are. Can you share what was it that prompted you to leave HubSpot after so many years? Because you were there for a long time, and I mean, when I hear what you've been doing - you were Head of Experimental Marketing, you were the full time speaker - I mean some of those gigs sound like dream jobs. What got you to move on? Sam: So here's the weird thing about dream jobs, is that once you do it long enough, it becomes work again. And then also, I had an enormous privilege being at HubSpot and getting to work with and under some incredible people. HubSpot was the same size when I joined it as BirdEye is now, but I always had Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, the two co-founders. I had Mike Volpe, the former CMO, Kipp Bodnar, the current CMO ... I always had them to fall back on, right? It was never ... There was always a limit to how much damage I could actually do to the long term success of the company. HubSpot's huge now. I think it crossed the five billion dollar market cap rate, 2300 employees and something like seven or eight global offices. It's absolutely huge and to be honest, I could have spent the rest of my life at HubSpot and been absolutely happy. But what I wanted to see is if I could do it if I didn't have Volpe, and Kipp, and everybody else to fall back on. Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: So now I'm the Head of Marketing for a company that's the size that HubSpot was when I joined it, and if I fail I have nobody to blame but myself. HubSpot's always had this role where if you have good trust with your manager you should be able to tell your manager when you think it's time to move on. So Kipp, and Dharmesh, and everybody always said that to me, "If you eventually want to leave the company, let us know and we'll help you find something awesome." And so I did, about six months ago I told them that, "Hey, I really want to try and do this on my own." So I had a freelancer make me a list of 144 different start-ups in the U.S., post-Series-B, pre-IPO, either MarTech SaaS, blockchain or AI. I shortlisted those into three categories of pretty cool, really cool, and insanely cool. And then I got introductions, and feedback, and everything else from my bosses, from the people on the Executive Team. From those 144, I chose BirdEye. Kathleen: That's amazing actually. I mean, it says a lot, first of all, for HubSpot's culture that they've created an environment where you can go and feel safe saying basically, "I'm mentally getting ready to leave." That's a scary proposition for anybody, but I think it's wonderful that that environment exists there.  Sam: It's good both ways, right? Because it's a good retention mechanism. So I have turned down two formal CMO offers in the last several years, and many, many more opportunities and it's because they've made me really snobby. I would look at it and I would be like, "I bet Brian, and Dharmesh, and Kipp, between us we could find something even better." So it was never a surprise to them, it always gave them an opportunity to move me internally. Almost every time you see a job in the last five years that I've moved internally at HubSpot on my LinkedIn profile it's because Sam was thinking about leaving, and we figured out a way to make it better for me to stay. And, obviously, it's good for the employee, right? Probably the most interesting opportunities in my professional career was a couple months ago. I'm literally sitting at breakfast with my boss, texting back and forth with my new boss negotiating comp. Most people hide the fact that they're looking for a new job from their boss? My boss helped me negotiate comp. Which is good, because I had never heard of things like single option triggers and stuff like that. Kathleen: Yeah. That's amazing and it's also really smart on the part of the employer because, especially if you're talking about key personnel. I mean, really in the technology space any personnel it seems like is key, but particularly someone like yourself who's been there so long. You're the kind of person who's hard to replace, and so having that ramp or that runway to know that you're ready for that departure as an employer is really great as well. Such an interesting process that you went through. What an incredible opportunity to get introductions - warm introductions - to all those companies. Now you have me dying to learn more about BirdEye because I want to know what it is about this company that made it the one, right? I feel like you were on The Bachelor and there are all these companies handing you roses and you chose this one. Sam: Yeah. So first off, you're right. They functionally got six month's notice, so it was a little sad actually, by the time I left they no longer needed me because they had a replacement. So I didn't have that ... you know. I don't know, it was both good and bad. Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: Yeah, so BirdEye. There was a couple of things I was looking for, right? One was I wanted to work for a company where solving the problem was meaningful. What I loved about HubSpot in the early days was inbound marketing felt right. You know? The way the world was was that you made money by pissing people off. I used to train ... Those annoying people in the mall who try and sell you cell phones? I used to train them, so that was my background. But it felt wrong. I was never happy about it, the work that I was doing. Inbound marketing felt right. You should be able to build a big, profitable business off of creating an experience that people love on the internet and in all of your market. What I love about BirdEye was that it felt right too, which is - the website we're still working on, clarifying our value propositions - but the way that I think about it is if you're a world class dentist, or a lawyer, or autobody repair shop, or whatever, you should not also have to be a world class internet marketing professional. You should be able to just be good at your job and empower your customers with a framework that's going to help you grow your business. Obviously the opposite is true, which is that if you ask your local mechanic how they feel about the local big dealerships, they're going to say the work is subpar and overpriced. Same thing if you asked most dentists, or lawyers, or whatever the small business is. So I loved that bit of it, where every day I come into work, my team comes into work, the better we do our jobs, the closer we are towards shifting the world of business the way that it should be. I also just like it too because I love things that are unfair advantages that really irritate large entrenched companies. So for a hundred years functionally, the business growth has been about, "Can my Sales and Marketing team beat up your Sales and Marketing team? Can we just sell better than you?" In this day and age, I think as we've seen with companies like United, right - great Sales and Marketing team at United - but if you piss off the customers there's no defense from that anymore. Kathleen: Oh yeah. Sam: Right? So it's not this marginal battle anymore. Companies like BirdEye came and flipped the table over and it says that, "My community of empowered community fans can just obliterate your Sales and Marketing team." That's what I loved about it. So it was the mission, it was the brand. I mean, it's a MarTech SaaS company with executives that I love and it's a very comfortable fit. But for me, I wanted to do what Brian and Dharmesh and Mike did for inbound marketing, which is create that movement. I wanted to do that for what I honestly think ... We haven't finished defining it yet, but this has got to be the next wave in growth, right? The only thing that matters about you is how empowered customers are that like you. Because you don't want the only empowered customers to be the ones that don't like you. Kathleen: You know, it really resonated because you talk about doctors, and dentists, and lawyers, and people like that. I owned an agency for 11 years and I had many of them as clients, and the best campaigns we did - in fact we won HubSpot's first ever Client Campaign of the Year award back in 2015 for work we did for a LASIK eye surgeon. The reason it was so successful is, it was kind of like what you're talking about mixed with a little dash of influencer marketing. We found a guy that happened to have a really strong Facebook presence, and out of nothing but dumb luck figured out that he wore glasses, would love to have LASIK. We paired him up with a doctor, they agreed to do the surgery at no cost if he would just blog and talk about his experience, good, bad, or otherwise, there was no requirement that it could only be positive. He had a great experience; he went and vlogged, and blogged, and just spoke to his audience about it and that campaign far and away crushed anything else we've ever done. Especially with things like healthcare and attorneys, you really trust your friends and those people in your network so much more than you trust an e-book, because we did plenty of those too. But it wasn't the e-book that killed it for us, it was this guy telling his story and personally endorsing the doctor and the procedure that was the lightening in a bottle. So I can totally see how that's so important. Sam: Yeah, now the question is, can you do that 100,000 times, right? Kathleen: Right? Sam: Especially for local marketing, there's not always local influencers who you go to to determine what dentist you go to. For dentists it's funny, it's the old joke, it's a cliché. It's, "What do you call the person who graduated last in their class in medical school? You call them doctor." Kathleen: Right. Sam: So the only way that I, as a patient, or whatever, can tell the difference between Dr. A and Dr. B is what their patients say about them online. And yeah, we trust them way more than what people say about themselves. I think the other thing that's changed is the passionate relationship we have with certain brands. It feels new. I don't have data on this, but it feels super new. I love using Uber as an example, because Uber in 2011 was banned by the state of Massachusetts for 23 hours. It's the fastest I've ever seen government move. And it's not because Uber had a bunch of lobbyists then like they do now, it's because ... We literally got a phone call from the mayor of Boston's office at the HubSpot office asking us to stop slamming them on Twitter. It was a decision by the governor's office, not the mayor's office, and we just didn't know that. Uber got hundreds of people to show up to the Cambridge City Council meeting, which is used to a dozen or so people showing up. When I see that and I see things like what happened with United, or I see things both good and bad, communities of customers rising to your defense, or communities of customers tearing you down, there's something there. Kathleen: Oh, it's incredibly powerful. I was going to say Uber is a study in and of itself of both dynamics, like how it can go well and how it can go not so well. You said a word that I think is so important, which is trust. You know, one of my colleagues at IMPACT is Marcus Sheridan. I've seen him speak numerous times and he has this one thing he always says that I find so powerful, which is that, "Every company is in the same business, whether you're Uber selling rides, or you're McDonald's selling hamburgers, or whether you're HubSpot selling software." When you boil it down, they're really selling trust, because if somebody can't trust you they're not going to buy from you. Just like my campaign, even though we had an influencer, it's really no different than if I go on Facebook and ask my friends. It's about who do I trust, who's opinion do I trust? So it sounds like what you're building is something that helps you leverage trust at scale. Sam: I like that, "Leverage trust at scale." Kathleen: There you go, you can put that on the website. Sam: When I teach at Harvard there's a metaphor I like to use, which is about how all economists, of which business is a subset, of which marketing is a subset, have physics envy, right? In physics, I can drop this pen a hundred times out of a hundred, and it's going to fall and hit the ground. I can stand in Harvard Square handing out a hundred $1 bills and at least 20 people will make the irrational decision, they'll call me a "chowda head" and keep walking, right? We work in a profession where it's not this simple, "If this, then that, zero in one binary value," marketing is a social science, economics and all of business is a social science and the definition of social science is, "A science about which we are very uncertain." Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: The most important variable, by far, is exactly what you said, which is that trust. That's what separates us from all of the other professional disciplines, is our dentists, or lawyers, right? Whatever, they know there's something objectively true that they can work against. We have to work in an environment where that's never the case, things are always changing. The one constant is it doesn't matter how compelling the argument is, or how cheap it is, or how cool it is, whatever, if there's no trust that's the deal breaker. Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: Fell out of your hand while I'm standing in the square. Kathleen: Yeah. So, I would love it if you could talk a little bit about how you see this playing out for companies, whether these are dental practices, law firms, any other type of company in terms of trying to leverage trust at scale. What does that really look like and how does that manifest in terms of a company's marketing? And you using that at all with BirdEye or planning to use it at all? Sam: Yeah, well first of all, you should always drink your own champagne, eat your own dog food, whatever metaphor you want to use, so we definitely are ... That's really important to us because people want to buy from a company that sells to people like them. So we're not done with this yet, but you'll notice that soon, if you come to the BirdEye website from one of our dental ad campaigns it's all going to show you reviews and stories of dentists versus lawyers, right? That would be very different. I will say one of the cool things, again, about how this is like HubSpot was in the early days is you remember how easy blogging was back in 2011? 2010? Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: I mean, it was great. If you had a blog, you were light years ahead of the curve, right? If you were blogging frequently, you would win your market, right? I had a toenail fungus remover company, I had knee scooters, I had mortgage companies, if you just did the work, you'd be fine and absolutely crush it. Now that's really hard, growing your traffic, your acquisition engine off of blogging is really, really hard because it's a very crowded space. The good thing about reputation marketing, reviews, and leveraging your customer base like that is almost universally everyone is really bad at it.  The large companies, like T-Mobile sends me an NPS survey, right, which is one way to begin the conversation about leaving a review, and whenever a company does it I always give them a zero because I know I'm not going to mess with their data that bad. I want to see if there's follow up. If I send you a zero ... If I send you a 10, right, yes, I'm absolutely going to recommend you, you should send me a link. Say, "Hey, here's an easy way to do that." Kathleen: Right. Sam: If I send you a zero, I would expect that a company would have that mentality of following up with me to find out way. Almost no one does. T-Mobile, Verizon... you know, as much as I hate to admit, even at HubSpot it was still a very basic implementation of no, somebody gave you a bad NPS score whether or not they'd get a follow up. You know, if you do it at all, you're going to be in good shape. Asking your customers for reviews is still innovative as weird as that sounds. We don't feel that way because we see everybody moving in this direction. You and I see lots of people are talking about this sort of thing, but the vast majority of businesses and the vast majority of markets don't even ask their customers for reviews. If their customers say something negative, they don't follow up, and if their customers say something positive they don't use that in any way. They don't put it in their email. They don't put it on their website, they don't put it in their ads, so the- Kathleen: Why do you think that is? Sam: Well, you know, the bell curve of adoption, right? So you've always got the people who are the innovators and the early adopters who are going to try everything just because it's new, and they're worried about being second place, and you know, we just haven't got there with some of the technologies and behaviors that are new. Stuff like Bird Eye is new. How important reviews are may not feel new, but it's relatively new to the world of business. It's not been around for 30 years. The underlying concepts have, but the websites - Yelp hasn't been around for 30 years sort of thing. The other thing is that, you know, if you've read 'The Innovator's Dilemma' by Clayton Christensen it's a really great book. I have a different concept of the innovator's dilemma, which is that it's really, really easy to be innovative when things are going well, because you have lots of breathing room. It's really, really easy to be innovative when things are going really poorly. So like, when I first applied to HubSpot I didn't apply. I built hiremeHubSpot.com and ran ads targeting people who worked at HubSpot to register for the free webinar on why you should hire me. It's because I was a college drop out with no previous experience, so you know, when you have no chance of success it's easy to be innovative. It's the middle area where things are going okay, but if you mess up they could go off the rails really quickly where it's hard to be innovative, and that's where most of the world of small business is right now. You know, if you're a dentist or a lawyer, auto repair shop, whatever, you're running on pretty thin margins. You're having to fight pretty hard to get your customers. You're already behind the curve, because you don't know the highly technical things, like local SEO and PPC. You generally don't have a sophisticated understanding of the marketing engine behind that, and you don't have the luxury to be innovative, so that's, again, one of the things I loved about Bird Eye was we try and take some of the hard work out of that and make it a little more attainable. Kathleen: So focusing on reviews for a second, because that seems like it's a big part of this, you know, you want to get a customer to review you, and I've worked with different companies and talked to them about this, and you know, some of the times it seems like they don't do it because they're just afraid to ask. Other times, they don't know how to ask, so can you talk about what is the right way to ask for a review? How do you navigate that process in a way that doesn't seem too pushy and doesn't seem like you're placing too much of a burden on the customer? Sam: I mean, so NPS, the net promoter score, is sort of an easy cheat, because it asks on a scale of zero to 10 how likely are you to refer us to a friend or colleague. If they give you a zero through six you should follow up immediately, right? Sevens and eights are passives, and nines and 10s are promoters. You would really only tell the people who would give you a nine or a 10, "Hey, that's awesome. I'm glad you were happy. Can you share your story with the world?" Then, everybody who's less than that you would put them into a service remediation process, right? Just send a text message to the business owner or whatever you want to do to follow up with this customer because they're unhappy. I definitely think you're right, which is that people are somewhat afraid of the answer, because it is, especially for small businesses, highly personal. This is ... I put my blood, my sweat, and my money, and my risk and everything into this business that I built, and then to actively solicit anybody to say anything negative about it is hard. It's a hard thing to do emotionally. There's a humility in that, which is that you've got to know that you're never going to be perfect, and as we say here it's not about being the best. It's about being the best at getting better. We have a tool that tells you all of the things that your customers hate in a market. You can look at it just by your company or you can look at it by your entire industry. Kathleen: Oh, that's really interesting. Like if you're a dentist, is it the anonymized aggregate feedback from all the dental- Sam: Yeah. Cool thing about our industry is most of the data set we're working with is public, so I call it our blue ocean finder for the business strategy nerds who are listening to the podcast, because you can literally plot what's important to my customers and which competitors are bad at that? You can adjust your strategy accordingly. Also, on the more micro level you can say what's important to my customers that I'm bad at? What's important to my customers that I'm good at? Then, you make the decision. Do I fix the things that I'm bad at or do I stop doing those things entirely, or what, right? The exact same process you'd follow going through a blue ocean strategy canvas. Yeah, it's about listening but not just about hearing, right? It's actually listening and making change based on that. Kathleen: And what industries do you currently have that for? Sam: So the really good ones for us so far, the people who have been willing to take a risk, are people like dentists and lawyers and auto body repair shops. We're working on our own buyer persona exercise right now, so you'll forgive me. I don't have a nice "Marketing Mary" to show you like we had at HubSpot. The key variables for us are people who their customers don't want to be their customer, so like divorce lawyer, collision repair shops, etc. People for whom differentiation is very difficult, like dentists. And then people for whom the consequences of the decision are extremely severe, right? Kathleen: Surgeons. Sam: Surgeons. Well, wedding venues, that sort of thing, right? You mess that up you can't get that back, right? Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: So those are generally the three psychographic categories of businesses that we're looking at right now. Kathleen: Interesting. So for example, if I were to go on and I wanted to get that industry-wide view of what customers are and are not happy with, could I get that right now for marketing agencies for example or is there a certain pick list I need to choose from? Sam: I don't know if we have marketing agency ... We should. We have advertising and media as one of our categories in our database, but we're a startup, so you know exactly what that means- Kathleen: Oh yeah. Sam: -which is that odds are all of the data exists. It's just a question of if anybody has asked that question before. That'd be a fun follow up to do for the podcast.  Kathleen: I mean, I have a feeling I know the answer, but you know, you can't assume. It would be interesting to look. I'd love to play around with that at some point, so if you ever want a beta tester for agencies, you know who to call. Sam: Absolutely. Yeah. Kathleen: I think that kind of competitive intelligence is really interesting, and one of the things you said really struck me, which is that it's not just about understanding how to change your messaging and your marketing. You could truly use that to make very fundamental decisions about your product offering, your service offering, what you want to do as a company, you know? Do we cut certain services because we're just never going to be great at it and it's a huge pain point? There are some really interesting potential in terms of how that data can be used. Sam: We haven't even begun to tap into this, but you're right. It's the lipstick on a pig. If you're changing your sales and marketing but not changing who you really are, in 2018 you're going to be found out, and you're going to be found out because your customers are going to sell you out hard. Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: They're going to hop on Google, Facebook, and everything else like that and tell people that your marketing does not match up with the customer experience. I will say man, you're getting me excited here, because it is super fascinating. You know, when we think about the world of disruptive innovation and - forgive me for the Harvard jargon terms here, right - but you think about things like the extendable core, which is what's the thing that a business should lean on to survive the disruption of its market? The classic example here is, like, hotels, right? Have you ever stayed in an Airbnb? Kathleen: Oh yeah. Sam: Yeah, have you ever attended a conference in an Airbnb? Kathleen: No. Sam: Yeah, right? So there's some things that Airbnb simply can't do without adopting the same cost structure. Turns out they're really important. So business travelers, there's a reason Airbnb's never really nailed business travel. It's because of the standardization. You can look at what is important to the customers who are leaving me and what is important to the customers who are staying around? You can look at some of those mappings, and you know, if I'm Marriott hotel group right now, I'm not actually worried about spending too much time solving for the destination vacation traveler, right? I'm really focused on events. I'm focused on business travel. I landed here in Palo Alto at 12:30 in the morning, didn't matter. I walked into the Sheraton. I know exactly what the lobby looks like even though I've never been to this hotel. That's what I value. I don't have to think about it. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. Sam: So yeah, you're absolutely right. There's a lot of interesting data that can come from the fact that we now have the ability to listen to our customers at scale and make decisions. Kathleen: I'm always struck by how many companies have that information - like have it in their hands, not just have access to it, but have been given it - and don't do anything with it. Sam: Most of them. Kathleen: Yeah, it's kind of shocking actually. Sam: So this is going to sound super weird I guess, but I don't work at HubSpot anymore, so I'm allowed to say nice things about them. HubSpot was so humble by the way that we never felt comfortable bragging about ourselves. You know, in DC they have the beltway syndrome, right? Everybody in DC thinks everybody else in the world sees things the way people in DC do. At HubSpot we had "sprocket syndrome," which is we thought everybody in the world was just as sophisticated in their concepts of economics and growth and business as we were, which isn't true, right? You know, things are changing so fast. What was the Deloitte research? The average life span of a knowledge stock, a competitive piece of information like a knowledge that you own, is down to like five years. Whatever it is you own that you're basing your business on, much less your career on, you can expect to be a differentiator for something like five years as opposed to we literally used to name our families after what we did. You were Smith, you were a Wainright, you made wagons, whatever. Now, it's like you can't even name your company after what you do, right? Like you know, it's hard to even have a job title after what you do, because everything changes so fast. The mechanisms for perpetual learning and keeping up with all of that, I just don't think most professionals and definitely most businesses haven't figured out. Kathleen: Yeah, you know, it's so funny that you just said that about the pace of change, because as I was telling you before we started, I just came back from a two week vacation, and I'm going to fly my geek flag now. On vacation, I decided to read 'Becoming Steve Jobs'. There's probably a lot I could have read, but for some reason I was really into that. And you know, I lived through the whole evolution of Apple. I'm old enough that I was working pre-Apple, but yet I had forgotten how quickly all of that happened - how we went from we didn't even have personal computers to "wow, we have a laptop," to "oh my gosh, now we have a little music player and iTunes," and then "we have phones that are full screen and tablets." I mean, rereading it was really both exciting but also kind of frightening. I have an 11 year old, and all I could think was "wow, I just have no idea what the future holds for him when I read this book." It's true. When I think about any business, you know, my company that I used to own, we were EOS practitioners, the entrepreneurial operating system, and they talk about having your long term plan. I don't know how you could ever have more than a ... You could have a three year plan, but it's going to change dramatically, right? I don't even know how you could have a five year plan anymore. It used to be when I graduated from business school it was all about the rolling five year plan. I just think that would be a piece of fiction today if I created it. Sam: Yeah. There's somebody ... I don't remember who it is. They had this great graphic of the pace of change, and if you went back to 10,000 BC you could bring somebody forward in time to 5,000 BC before they saw something that fundamentally challenged their world view, and then 5,000 BC, okay, to 2,000 BC and then 2,000 BC to zero BC. You're starting to see some innovation. Zero BC to like 1,000 BC, very different world. 1000 BC to 1500 - hugely different world, and now if you brought somebody from the early 1900s to just 100 years later it's nuts. If you brought somebody even just from the 60s or the 70s- Kathleen: Totally. Sam: -right just with no context, they saw everything new, this is dark magic, right? It's incredible. That pace of change is accelerating, and the virtue of planning is being replaced by the virtue of adaptability. Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: It is not nearly as important to me. When I'm interviewing people, for example, it's not nearly as important to me for most roles whether or not you have deep domain experience. What matters to me is your ability to comprehend new concepts that you've never studied before and your ability to adapt to change, because you know, it's a cliché that the only constant is change, but that used to be true, and now it is not only true, it is the defining characteristic of what life is for all of us. If you can't be adaptable, if you can't wrap your mind around concepts that you've never even been presented with before, you're not going to survive - definitely not in the world of business. Kathleen: Yeah, and the other fascinating thing that came out of me reading that book was Steve Jobs talked about how there's a difference between people who are focused on improving what already exists - which he kind of looked at as the Microsoft model - and seeing what doesn't exist but what is fundamentally needed. That's what obviously he saw as the Apple model. It's a really interesting construct if you think about it, because if you're only working off of the existing reality and looking to improve it, you can only experience change so quickly, whereas if you kind of forget about the reality and are able to think about what's not here that should be, all of a sudden you get these leaps and bounds that start to happen. That's a tough ask for a lot of people though. I don't think there's a large percentage of people that are comfortable in that realm. Sam: Yeah, I mean, if you do what everyone else does you get what everyone else gets sort of thing, right? Again, it's one of the reasons I loved this company is, for a century it's sales and marketing versus sales and marketing team, and now it's we're flipping the table and doing something new. I think part of that is the way that we grow up, right? We grow up not learning how to think but learning what to think. It's this graded progression, right? It's still amazing to me when people come out of college and they come into their first role and there's all these stereotypes about them needing positive feedback. That's because that's how they were raised, right? Like "I do the thing, and then I get this" - it's an "If this then that" sort of world. Kathleen: Everyone gets a trophy. Sam: Yeah, I study ... Not everybody just getting a trophy, but it's even the high performers, the exceptionally good people were told that the way to be exceptionally good, okay, you study, you take the test, you get an A, and then the assumption was you get a job, which everybody who's graduated college in the last five years knows that's not true. You know, and now we live in a fundamentally different world where we have to take everybody who grew up in that universe and teach them something new. We also need to start teaching our kids and future generations it is not about knowing the thing. It's about knowing the way to think and knowing new ways to think and processing it that way. When I'm in an argument at a bar, it's not a question of whether or not I can figure out who was batting for the Red Sox in the 1986 World Cup or something like that. I can just ask my phone that. What matters way more is that I know that I should ask that question and why that question's important. Some of the stuff, it's not as clear. It's not this logical, linear progression. Kathleen: Yeah, man, that makes parenting sound more intimidating. Sam: It is. I don't have kids, but good luck, right? Kathleen: I'm not convinced I'm doing a great job, so ... No. It's a lot to think about, and it's pretty overwhelming, but love the philosophical bent that this conversation took, because this is all really important stuff, and it's easy to sink into just talking about tactics, because marketers love that, and it's easy to say, “Oh, give me a 10 point checklist of the things I should do to be successful,” but a lot of times the reality really is it's not a 10 point checklist, it's take a step back and think differently. Sam: For everyone listening to this, if you ever come across a blog article that says "here's exactly what you need to do," that means that it has been codified to the point, like "10 steps to do whatever," it has been codified to the point that everybody else in your industry knows it too. Right? This is why it's valuable, because it's hard. It's because it's not clearly defined. I can't just write a roadmap for you, I don't even have a name for this movement, yet. Right? What's my inbound marketing? We haven't figured that out yet, but I can tell you it's important, and you and I know intuitively we believe that it's important, and the people who are going to grow by leaps and bounds, 10-X, 100-X, are going to be people who work with people like you and me to figure that out, not the people who wait to, you know, AOL still makes what, 20 million a year, or something like that off of their dial up internet subscription? Those sorts of people are not going to be the ones who are going to figure this stuff out, and are going to make that big change. Kathleen: Unless everything old is new again, and dial up comes back just like record players did. Kidding. You have all these years of really interesting experience at HubSpot. I mean, you were with other companies before that. You've been in marketing roles for a very long time, you taught marketing at Harvard. You're coming into this role at BirdEye, I would love to just hear a little bit about what are you planning to do with BirdEye, what's in your roadmap that you think is going to really help you achieve the goals that you set out? BirdEye's Marketing Roadmap Sam: Yeah. This isn't like the cool thing to say, but what matters most is the fundamental mechanics, right? We have to execute consistently over time. We have to build a team that's aligned very closely with an inside sales team. That's why I'm moving to Dallas, by the way, that's where most of the sales team is, even though we have a Palo Alto office. I'm building the marketing team where the sales team is. We've got to measure the right things. We've got to train and empower folks. We got to build just the disciplined cadence. That sounds easy. That is not easy, right? Making sure that people are aligned. Making sure that people can execute. Making sure that the right people are on the bus, because there are some people at this company, and at all companies who help them get from zero dollars to the run rate they're at now. But the people who are going to help you get from $30 million dollars to $300 million dollars are not necessarily the same people, and the people who are going to help you get from $30 million to $300 billion dollars, are not necessarily the same people. Making that transition smooth, making sure that you're recruiting people who are good fits, that's all the basics, right? The next thing that I wanted to do is this is a community play. We have to build a movement here. We have to build something like inbound marketing. It was such a moment of pride for me, it was actually 2015 on Google Trends the phrase inbound marketing exceeded the phrase cold calling. Kathleen: Oh, that's awesome. Sam: We won. It was great. We need to figure that out. What that is on our end, and we need to... Again this is the innovators, the real innovator's dilemma, is things aren't going bad, but they're also, we're not like 10-Xing for no reason, so it's how do we make the time, and make sure that everybody on my team is carving out that bandwidth to do the things that for lack of a better term are end plus one, they're innovative. Right? How do we have a podcast that tells the story of peoples' favorite customers? So I used to host an AM talk radio show, AM/FM talk radio show about cigars, right? Kathleen: I was sniffing around online, and I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you once worked for a company called cheaphumidors.com, is that right? Do I have that right? Sam: Yeah. This was before that, but yeah. Kathleen: I totally wanted to ask you about that, but we'll do that in a separate conversation. Sam: This was before that, but every cigar lounge, like Cheap Humidors is another good example, but every cigar lounge in the country, I joke, has somebody named Rex who remembers Cuba before the revolution. He's usually a great guy to talk to, you can sit down and have great conversation, and what we are selling is that kernel, that relationship between the business owner and their favorite customer. That is just storytelling gold. Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: Right? We've really got to nail that. We've got to know the strategy better than everything else. On Cheap Humidors, by the way, don't judge me, because back then exact match domains were really important, so if you googled cheap humidors ... Kathleen: I was going to say it's probably a domain a lot of people would like to own. Sam: Yeah. Now, I mean, with RankBrain and everything it's more about the conceptual topic extraction from the search engines- Kathleen: Right. Sam: And stuff like that. You could call yourselves reallylowcosthumidors.com and somebody googles really low cost humidors they're not necessarily going to find you. Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: Marketing - it's hard. It used to be easy. Well, it used to be way easier. The problem is, is now we've got brilliant people, who their minds are working against yours, and you're really fighting, you know, at least if you're following the old sales and marketing team versus sales and marketing team you're following this optimization, this game of inches, sort of thing, and it's hard. I can't do seven eCommerce applications of LOLcats any more - it's one of my favorite articles I wrote. Kathleen: It's hard, but I've got to tell you, in some ways I think it's great for smaller businesses, because when it wasn't so hard, when you could game the search engines, you could basically buy your way to the top, and that favors people with deeper pockets. You could never compete against them. I feel like now, if you're willing to put in the elbow grease and really create awesome content, you have a shot, and that's a matter of time. Granted, time is always at a premium for everybody, but in some funny ways there's a little more of an even playing field than before, but I could be wrong about that. Sam: Not to sound too self promotional, but again there was a reason I chose to work for this company, all of the arch of history has bent - business history at least - has bent towards doing the right thing, being more profitable, right? You could never run a business model now based off of the horrible things that people used to do back in the day. The way they treated their workers, for example, much less the way they treated their customers, or their competitors. The cool thing is companies like Google - whether we like to admit it or not - have forced us to do better marketing. Doing the right thing is now good business. Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: And that feels great, right? Because when I talk about T-Mobile, I could do that sales pitch in Spanish, even though I don't speak Spanish, right? Because it didn't matter. I didn't care what you were going to say back to me, you were either going to sign it or you're going to walk away, so it didn't matter to me that I understood what I was saying. I didn't feel good about that, right? It was just the best way to make money at the time. Now, like creating a good value-added inbound experience is the best way to make money, and that's again what I love about this company, which is the best way to make money should be being good at your job, like serving customers well, and I think all of the weight and inertia of the history of business is driving us towards this point, where whether it's Google, whether it's Yelp, whether it's Facebook, or whatever, you're going to have to solve that bit, or you're never going to succeed in business. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: I want to ask you my favorite two questions that I ask everybody, because I think you've given me the perfect segue into it, and we've talked about how to be successful in business these days you have to right by your customers. When you think about the world of companies, and brands, and even individual marketers out there, my usual question is, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well, but I'm going to put a little twist on that, and say, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well by virtue of how they are kind of nurturing, and building, and leveraging that trust with the customer? Sam: Yeah. HubSpot does a good job, that's way to softball of an answer. You know what I really love, and this is one of my favorite business models in the world, is Netflix, because Netflix has scaled the relationship. I've rented more than 900 movies through Netflix, and I do that because I know that every time I give them that information, they're going to listen and use that to make my experience better. If the internet is about bringing together some of these groups of people with similar interests, Netflix does that beautifully, because it figures out, "Hey, listen, like you like Star Trek, I like Star Trek - people may not put the two of us next together on a demographics sheet, but Netflix will put us back together." The more information we give it, the more valuable that relationship becomes. I actually couldn't leave Netflix now, like let's say you launched your own streaming service for a $1.00 a month, I still wouldn't leave Netflix, because there's so much value in the history of that relationship that I have. They're probably my favorite from the customer delight, and customer retention perspective. From the actual using your customers to grow, Apple is still amazing, because there's three things you can never talk about at a party or at an office. Right? Politics, religion, and PC versus MAC, because no one can have a rational conversation about that, and - Kathleen: Or jiffy versus giffy, at least in our office. Sam: Whoa, that's true. You start talking about MAC, and the MAC fans will just like, they're so passionate, they're so ravenous. Right? And Apple actually does a pretty good job of leveraging those evangelists. So do companies like Uber. You know Uber grew enormously fast, because I told everybody to take Uber, you know, companies that did not have that like Lyft, Lyft started about the same time, if not slightly before Uber, but what they never nailed was that customer evangelism piece, and so that's why Uber managed to outgrow them. Those are some companies that I think do it right. Kathleen: Yeah. Those are great recommendations. You also touched on the fact that marketing is changing so quickly, and that you look for people who are able to keep pace with that change, and are able to embrace, and quickly learn and understand new concepts. Given that pace of change, how do you personally stay up to date, and educate yourself on everything that's happening in the world of digital marketing? Sam: Yeah. That is a difficult question, which unfortunately has a difficult answer, which is that we are, especially in this day and age, like our own businesses. My fathers generation, my grandfathers generation, could expect to work for one company their entire life, get a pension, and move on. We have to think about ourselves as businesses. We're generally not going to stay with the same company for our entire lives and then get a pension, and whatever, which we define ourselves that way. We have to start thinking about disruptive innovation the same way they do. There's a few core characteristics of that. One, is get ridiculously good at defining the value you bring. We call this the "jobs to be done framework." Henry Ford had the most famous quote, if he'd ask his customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.. Obviously he didn't found the Ford Horse Breeding Corporation. He founded the Ford Motor Company. Kathleen: That goes back to the Steve Job's thing- Sam: Yeah. Kathleen: Find the thing that's missing. Sam: Right now, if I asked my boss what he wants me to do, he's going to say, “Drive more leads for the sales team.” That's not really what it is. Right? That's not the value that I bring. The value that I bring is the coaching, and unique perspective, et cetera, so I have focused not on the tactics of marketing, but I'm focusing, and I'm ridiculously good at coaching, and ridiculously good at strategy, not, and that's sort of self disruption. That self disruption is the next piece, so you define your value, you need to be really, really paranoid. The best companies, like HubSpot Labs, for example, are those who are continually investing in testing whether or not they can provide more value for their customers than the core model. So the free version of HubSpot, right? For example, we knew somebody was going to do that eventually, and it might as well be us and not some random nerd out of MIT's basement who does it, don't fight, it's uncomfortable, but don't fight the change. Lean into that change, and be very, very, like... get comfortable with change. The value that I'm adding to business right now is probably not going to be, as you said, the value that I'm adding to five years, it's going to be something different. We have to be comfortable with that. Now, the flip side of that is adopting this mindset of continuous learning, which is, I hate when people ask me for book recommendations, because very rarely do I feel you have to read the entire book to get the point. Kathleen: Yeah. Sam: And it's way more interesting to me to see specific blog articles, like send me the three most interesting blog articles that you've read in the last six months on recruiting marketers. You could probably do that, and that would take a shorter amount of my time, and add more value than you telling me to read random books on hiring. That self selection comes from joining communities, not from going and getting a degree, not from trying to read a book a day, or something like that, but from joining communities and asking those hard questions, and never being afraid to ask stupid questions. That is my greatest pet peeve. We saw this on inbound.org, so I ran Labs, which built inbound.org, HubSpot's community site, people never wanted to use our "Quora for Marketers" that we built because they were terrified of looking like they didn't already know the answer, those are the people who are going to find it very hard to have long successful careers. The fear of asking stupid questions is how company's are killed, the fear of asking stupid questions is also how careers are killed. Where to Find Sam (and BirdEye) Online Kathleen: Yeah. That's great advice. Wow. There is so much to think about, and this was really fun. I'm so glad I got to be the first person to talk to you about BirdEye, and excited to check it out myself, and hopefully learn a little bit more about what people do and do not like about marketing agencies. If somebody has a question, wants to followup with you, and learn more, what's the best way for them to connect with you online? Sam: Again, if you Google anything close to my name you will find my website, my Twitter, my LinkedIn. I answer every website inquiry, every tweet, every LinkedIn message. Before you do that, if you're going to ask me for an opinion on something my one favor that I would ask you go check out the BirdEye website, and try to do something. I'm not trying to get you to buy here, what I want you to do, though, is play around with it, see what things break, see what things are interesting to you, and then let's talk about that, too. We're a startup just like HubSpot was back in the day. A startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable business model, so I want feedback from you all now that I don't have Kip and Volpe and Dharmesh and Halligan, and everybody else to hide behind. Yeah. Definitely, please do that, and reach out to me if you want. I'd love to talk. Kathleen: All right. Awesome. I'm going to put all those links in the show notes, so that if people don't know how to spell your name they can just go to the show notes, click the link, and find it, but we'll also of course put links into BirdEye, so that they can go and try to find all the bugs, and expose the weaknesses, and then make that the platform for their conversation with you. Great. Thank you so much, Sam. I really appreciate it. If you are listening, and you found some value in today's conversation, I would really appreciate it if you consider giving the podcast a review on iTunes, or Stitcher, or whatever platform you chose to listen on, and if you know somebody doing kick ass inbound marketing work tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. Thanks again, Sam. Sam: Thanks.

The first time HubSpot’s CMO, Kipp Bodnar, was fooled by AI hype he was in the 6th grade on an awe inspiring field trip to a local science museum, but it wouldn’t be the last time. In this session, Kipp will walk through a simple framework for separating AI hype from reality, share the lessons he learned the hard way about spotting AI hype, and make a few predictions about where the biggest AI opportunity is right now and what business leaders should be looking for next. Full video: https://youtu.be/RjRFp3c7oYM All about TNW Conference: https://tnw.to/conference

How can a marketing executive stand out in a crowded C-Suite? In this episode of CMO Confessions, Joe Hyland, CMO of ON24, chats with HubSpot’s CMO, Kipp Bodnar. Tune in to learn Kipp has to say about informing the C-Suite, how to go about writing a marketing book and why ketchup is the best condiment known to the world.Follow Kipp on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kippbodnar Learn more about HubSpot: https://blog.hubspot.com Buy Kipp's books:"The B2B Social Media Book": https://www.amazon.com/B2B-Social-Media-Book-Generating/dp/1118167767/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8"Inbound Marketing, Revised and Updated: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online": https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Marketing-Revised-Updated-Customers-ebook/dp/B00MIT7ALS Learn more about ON24 here: https://www.on24.com/ Follow ON24 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ON24 

Welcome to Episode 97 of HubShots! Welcome to HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers who use HubSpot hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems. Full show notes available here: https://hubshots.com/episode-97/ In this episode Ian and Craig discuss the need to be responsible marketers based on Kipp Bodnar’s recent post on how marketers ruin everything. Next up are the cool HubSpot tips including viewing field history, and the new HubSpot Teams setting in Settings. Then the news of P&G slashing their advertising spend and yet increasing sales. They provide a strategic overview of how accounting practices can use Facebook for marketing. There’s a good post from Databox featuring Inbound podcasts, plus a bunch of great resources including the new HubStrap landing page builder.

In this episode we spoke with Kipp Bodnar, CMO of HubSpot, to discuss how HubSpot do marketing for themselves.

Welcome to Episode 64 of HubShots! Full show notes are available here: http://hubshots.com/episode-64/ Welcome to HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers who use HubSpot hosted by Ian Jacob from Search and Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems. Recorded: Monday 19 December 2016 | Published: Friday 23 December 2016 Shot 1: Inbound Thought of the Year Thinking back on 2016 and some of the key inbound learnings: Craig’s biggest a-ha moment: Kipp Bodnar’s approach to: “solve for the problem” http://hubshots.com/episode-40/ It has fundamentally changed our approach to everything – in business and in personal activities as well Ian’s biggest a-ha moment: I have to say that “solve for the problem” has been it. But to give you something different I would say “be informed, read up and deep dive into topics” as that is how you learn and become a practitioner. Shot 2: HubSpot Feature/Tip of the Year Craig’s favourite new items in 2016: Lead Flows – quickest wins we’ve had lately Ian’s favourite new feature in 2016: HubSpot Projects Shot 3: Pro Tip (Reminder) of the Week Analysing content in HubSpot: - Check your Page Performance report (Under Reports menu) - Check the SEO optimisation of each page (start with your top 10 most popular pages) - Update the content for latest findings and accuracy - Update internal links to increase relevance and freshness - Update ‘Last Updated’ date - Add a tailored Lead Flow slide-in onto the page - Check the CTA results for the page and if needed create a variation to test the - - CTA against to increase click through and conversion Shot 4: Opinion(s) of the Week A look at: What has changed in 2016 What won’t change in 2017 How to combine the two – with examples Thinking about Artificial Intelligence Planning for the new year should include some analysis of what is new, but also what isn’t changing. What has changed in 2016 First, a look at 2016 in terms of marketing and what is changing: https://contently.com/strategist/2016/12/16/biggest-marketing-storylines-2016/ - Digital advertising overtook TV advertising for the first time. - Facebook dominates attention and marketing dollars - VR and AR take off (eg Pokemon Go) - AI starts changing from science fiction to reality - Enterprises are all changing to be media companies as part of the offering - Martech gets huge – Microsoft purchased LinkedIn - Privacy, fake news, data collection, Native advertising guidelines What ISN’T going to change in 2017 Thinking about what ISN’T going to change in the next few years. Recall Jeff Bezos’ advice: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/966699-i-very-frequently-get-the-question-what-s-going-to-change What things will remain constant for your customers?: Prospects and customers want help and value and answers and solutions - They want quick response (consider whether you should invest in chat tools and the costs of having them managed) - They want trusted advisors, they want to feel safe - They want to feel like individuals, so focus on anything that will help to personalise their experience and make them feel special - They want a good user experience Artificial Intelligence Paul Roetzer discusses AI in marketing: http://content.inbound.com/content/origins-of-the-marketing-intelligence-engine https://www.narrativescience.com/quill-engage https://www.quillengage.com/ IBM Watson is driving AI based products: https://www.ibm.com/watson/ Eg their Customer Support tool is an example of where the industry is heading: https://www.ibm.com/marketplace/cloud/cognitive-customer-engagement/au/en-au#product-header-top Shot 5: HubShots Resource of the Year Interviews with 7 Marketing Experts from HubSpot Sydney http://hubshots.com/the-hubspot-interviews We will be updating this in 2017 with more information! Shot 6: Quote of the Week “Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.” ~ Charles M. Schulz

Oilfield sales has fundamentally changed over the past 10 years. So has marketing. HubSpot's Chief Marketing Officer, Kipp Bodnar, discusses how to close business today. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW Background My guest today is Kipp Bodnar,

The post Death Of An Oilfield Sales Process with Kipp Bodnar – OGTW088.5 appeared first on Oil and Gas This Week Podcast.

In this episode I interview no other than Kipp Bodnar, CMO of HubSpot! Visit http://www.redpandas.com.au/ep19/ for complete show notes, full transcript & links, Kipp Bodnar is to Inbound Marketing what Michael Jordan is to Basketball - an inbound legend who knows how to win at Marketing. We riff on achieving Work / Life balance, staying on top of Digital Marketing, Snapchat, Marketing Attribution, Adblocking, the future of voice search and a whole lot more. Links: More about Kipp: http://www.hubspot.com/company/management/kipp-bodnar www.flipboard.com www.getpocket.com twitter.com/kippbodnar

Welcome to Episode 40 of HubShots! Recorded: Friday 24 June 2016 In this episode we interview Kipp Bodnar, CMO of HubSpot. In the interview we ask him about how he manages his work/life balance, how he thinks strategically about marketing, what tactical involvement he has in HubSpot's day to day marketing, and his thoughts on future technology opportunities. Show notes and full transcript available at: http://hubshots.com/episode-40/

Buzz 1: Using Tools as Evergreen Content a. Did you miss Grow With Hubspot? Never fear! Catch the replay here: http://offers.hubspot.com/thank-you/grow-with-hubspot-sydney-livestream b. How to use Tools / Software / Utility as Content. Three key considerations here. c. Good example mentioned by Ryan Bonnici @ Grow event: http://website.grader.com/ Buzz 2: Featured Resource + What marketing tactic do you people hate the most poll? a. Great online community and resource for Digital Marketers: http://inbound.org/ b. Featured Thread 'What Marketing tactic do you hate the most?'A really interesting one that caught my eye was: https://inbound.org/discuss/what-marketing-tactics-do-you-hate-the-most#comment-353356 Buzz 3: Facebook Live Updates, How to Get Great Audio When doing Facebook + More Newsfeed changes! a. Facebook announced even more updates on June 29 re Facebook Live @ VidCon: Two-person remote broadcasts, waitrooms & pre-scheduled broadcasts and MSQRD b. So my advice again is get in early. These things have a big first mover advantage! c. Good audio is very important with Facebook live and if you're more than a few metres away from your subject you will really struggle with audio and unforgiving audiences. d. I suggest getting the affordable Azden WMS-Pro Wireless lavalier system. Listen in to hear how I use it, link to product: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1048779-REG/azden_wms_pro_i_wms_pro_i_vhf_wireless_lavalier_handheld.html e. New Facebook algorithm released June 29: Algorithm will be adjusted yet again to favour friends and family over publishers in the newsfeed f. Tips on how to take advantage of the changes g. http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12055124/facebook-news-feed-algorithm-changes Stay tuned for next week where me and @hubshots are interviewing Kipp Bodnar! Also don't miss out on our next meetup on '10 Ultimate Lead Generation Hacks'. Will be held on July 19th @ 7pm. If you're in Sydney book your tickets here: http://aeona.com.au/event/the-10-ultimate-lead-generation-hacks-to-grow-your-business/

Talking Content Marketing and Social Conversions as Kipp Bodnar - Hubspots Director of Marketing chats with host Tim Ash about inbound content marketing, social proof, and getting the conversion though powerful in-context testimonials. Also, watch self-described cutthroat trivia maven Kipp get stumped by Tim on an ancient history question.