Podcast appearances and mentions of sam mallikarjunan

Empowering Marketers with AI – Sam Mallikarjunan – agent.ai Discover how Sam Mallikarjunan, Growth Lead at agent.ai transitioned from being an AI skeptic to an advocate, and learn about the innovative platform that allows anyone to build and customize AI agents, regardless of their technical skills. Mike and Sam explore what AI agents are, share real-world examples of how marketers can use them for tasks like research and content creation, and discuss how AI is reshaping the future of marketing roles. About agent.ai Agent.ai is the #1 professional marketplace where users can build, discover, and deploy trustworthy AI agents that deliver real-world value. Founded in 2024 by Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, and led by Sam Mallikarjunan, Agent.ai empowers professionals to revolutionize their workflow across sales, marketing, and customer service through intelligent automation. Since its launch at HubSpot's INBOUND 2024, the platform has experienced explosive growth, amassing over 1.5 million users and hosting more than 1,200 public agents by early 2025. The platform distinguishes itself with its intuitive low-code agent builder, access to cutting-edge AI models, and a vibrant developer ecosystem. About Sam Mallikarjunan Sam Mallikarjunan is a growth strategist, entrepreneur, and the Growth Lead at agent.ai. He is the former CEO and co-founder of OneScreen.ai, a marketplace for out-of-home advertising, and previously served as Chief Revenue Officer at Flock.com and Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, where he drove significant customer acquisition and revenue growth. Sam is a former professor at Harvard University, where he taught Advanced Digital Marketing and Innovation, and he currently shares his expertise as a LinkedIn Learning Instructor. He is also the co-author of the bestseller Inbound Commerce - How to Sell Better than Amazon and frequently offers insights on AI, marketing, and business strategy Time Stamps 00:00:18 - Guest Introduction: Sam Mallikarjanan from Agent.ai 00:01:41 - Overview of Agent.ai and Its Features 00:02:45 - Understanding AI Agents in Marketing 00:04:10 - Practical Applications of Agents for Marketers 00:10:34 - Target Audience: Individuals vs. Enterprises 00:12:57 - The Importance of AI Confidence in Marketing 00:17:27 - Future Changes in Marketing Roles Due to AI 00:19:59 - The Shift from Performance to Brand Marketing 00:22:44 - Best Marketing Advice Received by Sam 00:24:07 - Career Advice for Aspiring Marketers 00:27:15 - Conclusion and Closing Remarks Quotes "The more focused you try and make an AI, the more effective it's gonna be at whatever the task is that you're trying to have it do." Sam Mallikarjunan, Growth Lead at agent.ai "The biggest challenge is getting people to become AI curious and AI confident." Sam Mallikarjunan, Growth Lead at agent.ai "It was an interesting project because it's what helped turn me from an AI doomer into an AI boomer." Sam Mallikarjunan, Growth Lead at agent.ai   Follow Sam: Sam Mallikarjunan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallikarjunan/ agent.ai's website: https://agent.ai/ agent.ai's on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pulsar-platform/ Follow Mike: Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/ Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/ Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/   If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform. Want more? Check out Napier's other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547

What if AI could do more than just chat—what if it could take action on your behalf? In this episode of the Pragmatic Product Chat Series, host Rebecca Kalogeris sits down with Sam Mallikarjunan, Growth Lead at Agent AI, to explore the transformative potential of AI agents. Unlike traditional generative AI, these AI-driven agents automate workflows, enhance productivity, and reshape customer interactions—without requiring coding expertise. Sam shares real-world applications, from AI-powered business development and customer service to automated research and personalized communication. He also unpacks the AI-operator model, a concept shaping the next wave of AI capabilities, and explains how leaders can balance automation with human oversight. Tune in to learn how AI agents can streamline operations, enhance personalization, and drive innovation—while keeping leadership aware of the ethical and strategic implications of these tools. For detailed takeaways, show notes, and more, visit: www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resources/podcasts Pragmatic Institute is the global leader in Product, Data, and Design training and certification programs for working professionals. Learn more at www.pragmaticinstitute.com.

In this episode of The Backstory on Marketing and AI, host Guy Powell sits down with Andrei Oprisan and Sam Mallikarjunan from Agent.ai to explore how AI-enabled market research is transforming marketing, sales, and customer experience.

SEASON: 5 EPISODE: 1Episode Overview:Ever feel like your company's stuck in a rut? This week, we're talking with an expert who helps even the best companies get unstuck. He's worked with some of the biggest names out there, and he knows that sometimes, it takes an outsider's perspective to see what's really going on. He'll be sharing his insights on why even seasoned teams need fresh training and guidance in today's rapidly changing business world. Get ready for some game-changing advice with author, speaker and coach, Sam Mallikarjunan.Guest Bio: Sam Mallikarjunan is a growth strategist, entrepreneur, and the Growth Lead at agent.ai. He is the former CEO and co-founder of OneScreen.ai, a marketplace for out-of-home advertising, and previously served as Chief Revenue Officer at Flock.com and Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, where he drove significant customer acquisition and revenue growth. Sam is a former professor at Harvard University, where he taught Advanced Digital Marketing and Innovation, and he currently shares his expertise as a LinkedIn Learning Instructor. He is also the co-author of the bestseller Inbound Commerce - How to Sell Better than Amazon, and frequently offers insights on AI, marketing, and business strategy.Resource Links:Website: https://agent.aiWebsite: https://www.mallikarjunan.com/Product Link: https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Commerce-Sell-Better-Amazon-ebook/dp/B00C2TJQ16/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3I9DG7WJFAM14&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.0j-S9y_pz53zSIRcMxA7a4p2Pg6Qd-2LXlECmsaKizDGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.K8McvllKtWR9LY41Sa0O0FcqjnehotQUAvCwBJTBGXA&dib_tag=se&keywords=inbound+commerce+sam+mallikarjunan&qid=1739840370&s=books&sprefix=inbound+commerce+sam+mallikarjunan%2Cstripbooks%2C123&sr=1-1Insight Gold Timestamps:01:50 I ended up working at HubSpot for about 7 years04:35 B e willing to kill ideas really quickly05:08 Appreciate the independence of a team05:42 The smaller team of higher quality people is going to win every time 06:13 Whoever chases two rabbits is going to catch neither09:29 I t's remarkably hard to get people to change their habits10:28 F ear and greed are just great motivators of human behavior12:02 I n your bestseller, Inbound Commerce13:33 What was the most critical digital marketing concept? 18:02 You probably have a pricing problem more than you realize18:26 If you get somebody to pay up front, they're less likely to cancel long term

AI agents represent the next frontier in artificial intelligence. Unlike traditional AI, which requires explicit instructions, AI agents can take actions on behalf of users and solve semi-complex tasks. This democratization of AI allows businesses of all sizes to compete on a level playing field and innovate in ways that were previously unimaginable. Sam Mallikarjunan, a growth strategist, entrepreneur, and the Growth Lead at agent.ai, shares the importance of making AI accessible to everyone.

Are you using AI to its full potential? In this episode, host Kirsten Tyrrel discusses the transformative power of AI with Sam Mallikarjunan, Growth Lead at Agent.ai and a seasoned entrepreneur with a rich background in startups. Sam shares how AI is revolutionizing the way businesses operate — highlighting its potential to enhance creativity, efficiency, and human connection. From practical applications like inventory management and personalized marketing to creating AI-powered tools that streamline tasks, the sky is truly the limit! Sam emphasizes the importance of embracing AI as a learning tool, a creative partner, and a force multiplier to help entrepreneurs and businesses stay ahead in an increasingly competitive market. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, AI can empower you to innovate and pivot faster than ever. Don't miss Sam's tips on leveraging AI agents, being bold in the startup world, and using technology to stay authentic in a rapidly changing landscape! What we discuss with Sam: + AI as a "force multiplier" for efficiency + Faster learning and skill refinement with AI + Automating tasks like sales and content creation + Bold pivots with lower risks using AI + Combining AI with human creativity + Custom AI tools via Agent.ai + Context-specific solutions for better decisions + Amplifying human potential with AI + Gaining competitive advantages through AI + Focus on go-to-market strategies Thank you, Sam! Check out Agent.ai at Agent.ai. Watch the video podcast of this episode! And follow us on: Instagram Facebook Tik Tok Youtube Twitter To get exclusive offers mentioned in this episode and to support the show, visit millionaireuniversity.com/sponsors. Want to hear from more incredible entrepreneurs? Check out all of our interviews here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Sell Better than Amazon... yes you read that right.We welcome Sam Mallikarjunan to That Entrepreneur Show- where founders of companies and brands share their  journeys, lessons learned, tips for success, and more each week since 2019.Brought to you by speaker coach, Cesar Cervantes - Specializing in helping you get your transformative message to the TEDx stage. Guaranteed. To schedule your free brainstorming session, visit CesarCervantes.tvCheck out Sam's episode on Writing with Authors here.A  areas of discussion include:Why he handed out 50k to small businesses Warning signs for burnoutNot being reliant on one source of marketing Why he started, challenging areas of entrepreneurship WEEKLY SPOTLIGHT STORY: As we have an all-star in the Amazon world on the show today, we will look at an article titled, How Selling On Amazon Can Make You A Better Entrepreneur, and then get Sam's take on it. Follow along here.Meet Mallikarjunan : I help build organizations that drive growth. Enduring companies build engines of growth and teams with the right muscles to test, experiment, and challenge assumptions. Growth isn't a mysterious magic, it should be intentionally and methodically executed.When I look back on my career, it's not the impossible goals I've personally hit or big competitors I've personally beaten that make me the proudest. My greatest definition of professional success is that if I were hit by an asteroid today, I could go to that great CRM in the sky knowing I'd still had an immeasurable impact on the world because of the incredible impact the people I've helped grow will have on the world.Email: PodcastsByLanci@Gmail.comListen to A Mental Health Break here: https://AMentalHealthBreak.Buzzsprout.comWebsiteLanci's BooksYouTubeInstagramFacebookLinkedInFor Digital Editing / Potential Podcast Guests Inquiries, email PodcastsByLanci@Gmail.comAdventure by MusicbyAden | https://soundcloud.com/musicbyadenHappy | https://soundcloud.com/morning-kuliIf you enjoyed this week's show, click the subscribe button to stay current.Listen to A Mental Health Break Episodes hereTune into Writing with Authors here

This week on the Digital Velocity Podcast, Sam Mallikarjunan of OneScreen.AT joins Erik and Tim to discuss the opportunities of Out of Home advertising and how it can facilitate revenue growth. https://www.digitalvelocitypodcast.com/episodes/41-the-opportunities-of-out-of-home-advertising-sam-mallikarjunan

In our SaaS Fuel™ Expert Series this week, Sam Malikajanon, CEO and co-founder of OneScreen AI, joins Jeff Mains to discuss the benefits and challenges of out-of-home advertising. Startups with limited resources may find traditional advertising channels challenging to optimize. Sam suggests targeting areas where the big incumbents are not yet sophisticated, and utilizing experiential marketing, which is more effective than focusing solely on ROI. SaaS companies have an advantage when it comes to being creative with their marketing, but the challenge is still innovating in a crowded market. Sam emphasizes the importance of having people around us to help us grow and learn, and that being around smarter, more talented people can make us better.Don't miss out on this insightful episode of SaaS Fuel!Key Takeaways[00:07:52] The internet is crowded and highly optimized. [00:10:36] Using data to reach target consumers in the real world, and continually improving marketing campaigns through analytics.[00:13:06] Traditional marketing methods have been exhausted, thus context and creativity are now essential.[00:17:00] Out-of-home advertising is a cost-effective way to align with financial objectives and reach audiences in a fun, creative way. [00:19:41] Traditional ad mediums are dying out, but out-of-home advertising is still growing. Marketers need to find new channels of growth and create experiences for customers. [00:24:40] The challenge of marketing a category that people think they already know about, and the difficulty of getting them to see it as a meaningful marketing medium.[00:31:38] Out-of-home advertising has creative potential and small businesses benefit from owning most of the inventory. The next frontier is people controlling how their data is used to monetize and have an impact on the real world.[00:40:05] Ads aren't bad, it's the way they're inserted into consumer consideration that's problematic. Creating a unique and memorable media experience is more effective than cold calling or spamming. Billboards and content marketing can make people go "wow." [00:47:07] SaaS companies have an advantage because they can afford to be creative and take risks due to the elasticity in their acquisition costs.Tweetable QuotesMonetizing Offline Advertising: "I think there's a brilliant concept, and you're right."— Jeff Mains 00:07:28The Future of Advertising: "But if you do what everyone else does. You'll get what everyone else gets. Our job is to be exploring new mediums, the internet." — Sam Mallikarjunan 00:07:52"How physical advertising is becoming more effective: 'I think you've solved the problem then of kind of the big two hesitations for thinking about physical advertising is it's going to be for the masses we can't really target? And you've solved that. And the other is attribution how do we know if it worked?'" — Jeff Mains 00:10:17Innovative Marketing Strategies: "Being able to have the context of what you're seeing and when you're seeing it be part of the brand experience." — Sam Mallikarjunan 00:13:06Creating Memorable Marketing: "And I think as marketers...

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Sam Mallikarjunan, Co-Founder & CEO of OneScreen, an offline advertising platform that's raised $10 Million in funding, about why in an oversaturated marketplace confronted with regulatory limits and suspicion from the public, it might be time to take advertising back into the physical world. Bridging the digital divide by providing their clients with real-time analytics about their physical advertising strategies, Onescreen helps to deliver the measurable metrics that marketers crave from traditional media that might have once been considered dead. We also speak about Sam's unique career trajectory, his years at HubSpot and the lessons he learned about what it takes to make it in the tech sector, how the pandemic provided the original impetus for OneScreen's innovative strategy, and why taking the leap into the startup space might not be for everyone unless you're ready to do a lot of independent learning Topics Discussed: How working in the cigar industry eventually brought Sam to a dynamic career in marketing Sam's time at HubSpot, from the unique job application strategy that got him in the door to the lessons he brought with him when he left How the pandemic provided the impetus for a marketing innovation which would eventually become OneScreen Why measurable indicators are the thing that modern marketers crave above all, and how OneScreen provides them from physical marketing strategies Why, unless you're ready to do a lot of independent learning, the startup adventure might not be for everyone Why an oversaturated digital marketing space is limiting the ROI for targeted advertising, and what other options are available

Hey thanks for listening! Our guest is Sam Mallikarjunan, the CEO and co-founder of OneScreen.AI. Sam, a former instructor at Harvard and former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, emphasizes the need for innovative thinking and building close customer relationships. In this episode, Sam shares his thoughts on the biggest advantage that small businesses have over large corporations. The importance of self-care for entrepreneurs. And why investing in your people is crucial for scaling your business. Let's get to Sam's tips for powerful customer marketing and practical self-care advice for entrepreneurs… My Links:  https://linktr.ee/thinktyler  https://thinktyler.com/podcast_episode/outperform-large-corporations-sam-mallikarjunan/ https://thinktyler.com/  Podcast: ThinkBusinesswithTyler.com  Host: Tyler Martin Business Coach  Linkedin  Instagram  YouTube  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sam Mallikarjunan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallikarjunan/OneScreen.ai Website: https://www.onescreen.ai/contactJoin our Facebook group for business owners to get help or help other business owners!The Business Ownership Group - Secrets to Scaling: https://www.facebook.com/groups/businessownershipsecretstoscalingLooking to scale your business? Get free gifts here to help you on your way: https://www.awarenessstrategies.com/

Sam Mallikarjunan is CEO and co-founder of OneScreen.ai, the marketplace provider for buying and selling out-of-home (OOH) advertising. He was Chief Revenue Officer at Flock.com and Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs. Sam taught Advanced Digital Marketing, SaaS Economics, and Innovation Management at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education. He is co-author of the bestselling book, "Inbound Commerce - How to Sell Better than Amazon,” and is an avid podcast guest and industry speaker.   Want to find more from Sam Mallikarjunan?  Check out… https://www.onescreen.ai/   Want more Business Choreography?  Check out…   Website: Bizchoreo.com Growth Strategy Analysis Call: https://calendly.com/business-choreography/analysis BC Group: https://bizchoreo.com/group  

As the decade-long digital advertising boom is screeching to a halt, brands are faced with the painful reality that clicking on ad links is no longer an efficient way to “buy” customers. Audiences are digitally fatigued, unengaged, and strapped for cash. Sam Mallikarjunan, joins our host, Diane Helbig, to introduce listeners to a less competitive, more efficient marketing medium that transforms the real world into a performance marketing goldmine. Sam is CEO/co-founder of OneScreen.ai, the marketplace provider for buying/selling out-of home (OOH) advertising. He was Chief Revenue Officer at Flock.com and Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs. Sam taught Advanced Digital Marketing, SaaS Economics, and Innovation Management at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education. He is co-author of the bestselling book, Inbound Commerce - How to Sell Better than Amazon, and is an avid podcast guest and industry speaker. If you are a small business owner or salesperson who struggles with getting the sales results you are looking for, get your copy of Succeed Without Selling today. Each episode of this podcast provides insights and education around topics that are important to you as a business owner or leader. The content comes from people who are experts in their fields and who are interested in helping you be more successful. Whether it's sales challenges, leadership issues, hiring and talent struggles, marketing, seo, branding, time management, customer service, communication, podcasting, social media, cashflow, or publishing, the best and the brightest join the host, Diane Helbig, for a casual conversation. Discover programs, webinars, services, books, and other podcasts you can tap into for fresh ideas. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and visit Helbig Enterprises to explore the many ways Diane can help you improve your business outcomes and results. 

Sam Mallikarjunan, CEO & Co-Founder of OneScreen.ai, and former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, shares insights from building and sustaining a 100% remote team during a global pandemic. Learn how to create a more cohesive culture and evolve your communication style and tools to meet the challenges of a distributed workforce.Visit our website Follow us on LinkedInFollow us on Twitter

In this episode of Startup Hustle, Matt Watson and Sam Mallikarjunan, CEO & Co-founder of OneScreen.ai, talk about the Out-of-Home Advertising industry. Find out how Sam developed a tool for advertisers to help them be more efficient and sell more out-of-home ad spots.   Find Startup Hustle Everywhere: https://gigb.co/l/YEh5   This episode is sponsored by Equip-Bid: https://bit.ly/3EX4xi3   Learn more about OneScreen.ai: https://www.onescreen.ai   Learn more about Full Scale: https://fullscale.io   Meet all of Boston's Top Startups: https://link.chtbl.com/bostontop2022  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the final episode of season two of the Recession-Proof podcast, Alex and Kimia discuss the most impactful insights from previous episodes with Sam Mallikarjunan of OneScreen.ai, Geoffrey Woo of Anti Fund Investment Fund, Dan Chen of Deltec, Anup Singh of Illumio, Keith Masuda of Modern Treasury, Liz Christo of Stage 2 Capital, Kelly Battles of DataStax, and Ken Suchoski of Autonomous Research.Each of them share advice on how to overcome the challenges of the current state of the market, prioritize investments, and grow your business through the end of 2022 and the start of 2023.Here are a few highlights, check out the full episode for the rest… Why Sam Mallikarjunan, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of OneScreen.ai emphasizes the importance of connecting the finance and marketing functions“I will say there is an adversarial relationship between finance and basically every other part of the company. But to treat the finance team and the finance leadership as if it's an adversarial relationship or to not actually proactively reach out to them, to me, that therefore has always been like, you're yelling at the person who's sitting in the top of the ship's sails being like, Hey, there's an iceberg up ahead, or, Hey, there's land over there that's just like filled with random gold. Why are we ignoring it? And we're not creating clear lines of communication in alignment with a partner whose objectives are fundamentally aligned with our own.”Geoffrey Woo, Co-founder and Partner of Anti Fund Investment Fund explains why attention is more valuable than capital“We all have 24 hours in a day times 8 billion people. That is the max limit of attention that exists in this world. You can print money, do weird financial engineering with money, but literally, the max attention cap of humanity is some 8 billion times 24 hours a day. Anything that can wield attention, I think, is going to be increasingly powerful over time.”How Kelly Battles, a Board Member and Audit Committee Chair for DataStax, Arista Networks, and Genesys thinks you can become a more well-rounded finance professional by…“Get on a board if you can, even as a full-time executive, because it makes you a better executive. When you're a full-time exec, especially in an intense startup or private company scaling company, you can get tunnel vision. And I think having another company and seeing from a bird's eye view what they're going through gives you perspective, context, and learnings, and you start building your pattern recognition.”Learn more about our season two guests: Sam Mallikarjunan on LinkedIn Geoffrey Woo on LinkedIn Dan Chen on LinkedIn Anup Singh on LinkedIn Keith Masuda on LinkedIn Liz Christo on LinkedIn Kelly Battles on LinkedIn Ken Suchoski on LinkedIn Check out the full transcript here.For more episodes from Recession-Proof, check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our RSS or your favorite podcast player. Instructions on how to follow, rate, and review Recession-Proof are here.

Sam Mallikarjunan, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of OneScreen.ai, believes that in 2022, it is more important than ever for startups to be prudent about their marketing spend if they want to grow over the long term. In this episode of Recession-Proof, Sam shares the power of out-of-home advertising, what you should do with your marketing budget as interest rates rise, and why every business should develop cross-functional alignment between finance, marketing, sales, and operations.In this episode, Sam and Alex discuss: The surprising cost efficiency of OOH Marketing with higher interest rates and CAC How the current fundraising environment should impact your marketing budget Out-of-home advertising opportunities OneScreen.ai focuses on out-of-home advertising, a type of advertising that focuses on visual advertising seen outside of the home, such as on billboards, benches, bus shelters, etc. Though it's more complex than digital marketing, Sam notes that out-of-home has enormous potential and is extremely popular among new crypto, FinTech, and direct-to-consumer companies.“There's this assumption that anything that's not internet-based eventually is going to die or it's not worth spending time on. In reality, the real world is significantly more complicated”.Adapting your marketing budgetMarket dynamics are changing, inflation has resulted in soaring costs, and many companies are struggling. To tackle the challenge of operating in uncertain market conditions, it's necessary to adapt to a new normal. “The best weather to fight in is terrible weather”.Adapting to higher interest ratesThe pandemic resulted in many companies recalibrating their finances, through measures such as cost-cutting and reforecasting. But Sam believes many of these changes could have been prevented. “Many people used 2020 as an excuse to forget that we are professionals and have financial operational discipline, and should know what we're doing”.For more episodes from Recession-Proof, check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our RSS or your favorite podcast player!Instructions on how to follow, rate, and review Recession-Proof are here.

What do billboards, car wraps, and TVs in bars have to do with inbound marketing? They're all part of the category of “out-of-home” - or OOH - marketing, and an incredibly powerful tool for inbound marketers to use in generating brand awareness and driving inbound interest. On this week's Inbound Success Podcast, Onescreen.ai CEO Sam Mallikarjunan pulls back the curtain on OOH and shares examples of where it fits within the marketing funnel, and how marketers can use it to disrupt their industry.

Sam Mallikarjunan, CEO & Co-Founder of OneScreen.ai, and former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, shares insights from building and sustaining a 100% remote team during a global pandemic. Learn how to create a more cohesive culture and evolve your communication style and tools to meet the challenges of a distributed workforce.

In today's episode, Sam Mallikarjunan, the CEO & Co-Founder of OneScreen, an AI-powered Market Network, joins us to share his insights on what a market network is, and how it bridges the gap in today's marketing and advertising. He speaks about: --> The clever campaign that got him hired at Hubspot back in the day --> What a market network is, and how it works? --> How Out of Home (OOH) advertising can bridge the marketing and advertising gap --> What are micro-moments? How to capture them and why it's important, and a lot more..

Have you written off traditional media?  Perhaps you've been focusing in on online traffic, not really considering that offline could be just as valuable. Joining me to discuss that on episode 263 of Digital Marketing Radio is a man who taught Advanced Digital Marketing, Innovation Management, and Strategic Economics at Harvard University. He's the former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs and the current CEO & Co-Founder of OneScreen - a pandemic-produced startup set on overhauling the archaic out-of-home advertising industry. Welcome to DMR - Sam Mallikarjunan.

Sam Mallikarjunan is the Co-Founder and CEO of OneScreen.AI. He was the former Chief Revenue Officer at Flock.com, Labs at HubSpot, Instructor at Havard, and USF. Sam helps to build the organizations that drive growth. Sam invested in OneScreen.AI on Nov 1, 2020. This investment - Seed Round - OneScreen.AI - was valued at $847K. He is also the author of “How to Sell Better Than Amazon''. Listen to this podcast and know Sam's interesting entrepreneurial journey and he also shares his one concept to be successful in life. Please Enjoy! If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider being 1% and leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/ iTunes? It takes less than 30 seconds, and it makes a world of difference in reaching new interesting guests! To sign up for Kevin's Podcast email Newsletter and to view the show notes & past guests please visit-https://officialkevindavid.com/podcast Follow Kevin: https://mmini.me/@FollowKD

Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Sam Mallikarjunan. In the previous episode, we discussed how to market ourselves and how to get a job with our dream company. Sam shared a creative strategy he used to get a  recruiter from his dream company to contact him within 3 hours and 26 minutes.     Sam is the co-author of the book, Inbound Commerce: How to Sell Better Than Amazon, which is ironically the number one bestseller in its category on Amazon. In today's episode, we'll discuss inbound commerce and the buyer's journey.    Inbound Commerce   In Sam's book, he explores e-commerce applications of inbound marketing and emphasizes the importance of using content and engagement to create likable marketing.    Inbound marketing is a business system that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences targeted to them (Source: HubSpot). Inbound marketing attracts customers while outbound marketing interrupts them through methods such as sales calls or ads on social media.    “What if instead of being as obnoxious as possible, marketers actually tried to create experiences that people wanted to have? Instead of interrupting people, could you create something that drew them to you instead of cold calling? For example, could you create content that educated them?” Sam said.    Sam first discovered HubSpot because he was drawn to their educational content. A great way to get customers is through the methods of inbound commerce. We should be creating value our customers will naturally want instead of imposing products or services on them they aren't really interested in. Our content, services, and products should bring our customers to us, not the other way around.    “If you just cold call people, you're not going to be nearly as effective as if you're really good at educating them and creating that inbound experience to bring them to you,” Sam said.   Sam saw a survey in which marketers were rated as less trustworthy than car salesmen, politicians, and lobbyists. This is the exact opposite of what we want to see. Customers should feel they can trust us. Inbound marketing forces us to create products or services our customers will actually value. This will build trust and strengthen customer relations.   Jeff Bezos, founder, and CEO of Amazon said,    "One thing I learned within the first couple of years of starting a company is that inventing and pioneering involve a willingness to be misunderstood for long periods of time. One of the early examples of this is customer reviews. Someone wrote to me and said, 'You don't understand your business. You make money when you sell things. Why do you allow these negative customer reviews?' And when I read that letter, I thought, we don't make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions."   This is a core goal of inbound marketing. We need to create an experience that our customers like and that provides them value. We need to create an experience that builds trust. The goal needs to be about helping our customers make a decision on their stages of the buyer's journey, and then continue to drive their repurchase cycle.    The Buyer's Journey   When I asked Sam to share one of his monetization strategies, he said it is to understand the marketing funnel and the buyer's journey.    We have to solve problems for each of the different stages of the buyer's journey: awareness, consideration, and the decision stage. We can't only focus on building awareness and staying dialed in on website traffic and leads. We also can't only focus on the final purchase decision. We need to have the entire buyer's journey in mind if we want to optimize conversions and gain lifetime customers. One of the biggest mistakes Sam sees is people getting too focused on only one part of the marketing funnel.    To really understand what our customers' needs are at each stage of their journey, we need to do research. We have to take the time to look at the data and combine that with analysis to get an accurate understanding of who our customers are.    The first stage of the marketing funnel or the buyer's journey is awareness. Building awareness should be focused on inbound marketing, not outbound. To raise awareness, we shouldn't be cold calling or constantly using targeted ads necessarily. We want our customers to come to us because they are interested in what we have to offer. We should be doing research and getting good at providing valuable education for our consumers. Throughout the consideration stage and decision stage, we should educate our customers—it should be a continuous cycle of education.   “Once [customers] buy from you, it means they have purchased one thing from you, but they are back in the awareness and research [stage of] a buyer's journey for whatever they're going to buy next,” Sam said.    If we want to gain customer retention, we need to remember that a one-time buyer is not a customer. They should go back to the first stage of the buyer's journey, and we need to treat them as if they are a first-time buyer again. We need to educate them all over again.    Sam explained that if we make the incentive for our products about price, Amazon is going to “kick our butt.” But, if we make it about a continuous cycle of education and awareness, we'll win customer lifetime value.    A Challenger's Mindset   Part of focusing on the buyer's journey includes having a challenger's mindset. If we don't adapt to tectonic shifts, we're not going to make it, and so it is essential we constantly challenge our methods and systems to make sure we are doing things in the best way possible. Sam advises we challenge our core principles frequently.   “I can be a $100 billion company today, but it is not guaranteed that I'm a company at all five years from now,” Sam said. “Create that challenger mindset inside your own organization. . . . [Ask yourself,] is there anything I don't know about my customer that somebody could create value for them in a way that I wasn't expecting and kill [my] company really, really fast?”   We need to make sure we are always providing value for our customers because if someone else solves a problem for our customers that we didn't know about, we'll have lost a portion of our audience.    We need to make sure we are researching every part of the buyer's journey all the time. We need to be looking at the data, analyzing it, pulling insights out of it, and then making a change where necessary. If we can adapt to the changes in our market and the changes in our customers' needs, we'll be much more likely to survive in the business world.    Millennials make up about 30% of the American population and they are the most diverse generational cohort in US history (Source: Deloitte Insights). Not only are they diverse, but they have constant, changing needs. They are constantly looking for new, fast, and easy ways to solve their problems, and if someone solves their needs before we do, we'll lose their loyalty. One-third of adults aged 23-38 are quick to drop a brand that doesn't meet expectations (Source: Brightpearl). We need to make sure we are quick to meet their changing needs.    If we have a challenger's mindset, we will be more likely to solve a potential problem, before an actual problem arises. This will help our businesses stay ahead of the game and increase our customer lifetime value.    Key Takeaways   Thank you so much Sam for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:   Instead of interrupting our customers through methods such as sales calls or ads on social media, we should attract them by creating valuable content and experiences targeted to them. We need to have the entire buyer's journey in mind if we want to gain a lifetime customer.  Our buyer's journey should be a continuous cycle of providing education and value.  A one-time buyer is not a customer. They go back to the first stage of the buyer's journey after they have made a single purchase.  We need to have a challenger's mindset. If we don't adapt to tectonic shifts, we're not going to make it. It is essential we frequently challenge our business methods and systems.    Connect with Sam   If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Sam or connect with him, you can find him on his LinkedIn or visit his website, www.onescreen.ai.    Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?   Did you like today's episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:   Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.  Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.   Share Your Story  Do you use inbound marketing? If so, what is your best inbound marketing strategy? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.   Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/125-understanding-inbound-commerce-and-the-buyers-journey/ 

Sam Mallikarjunan is the co-author of the book, Inbound Commerce: How to Sell Better Than Amazon, which is ironically the number one bestseller in its category on Amazon. Sam is the CEO and founder of OneScreen.ai, an Internet of Things (IOT) enabled ad marketplace for the physical world. He is also the former Chief Revenue Officer of Flock.com and the former head of growth at HubSpot Labs. Sam taught advanced digital marketing innovation management and strategic economics at Harvard University. He is also the faculty chair for the digital marketing department at the University of South Florida.    In today's episode, we're going to discuss Sam's journey, how we can market ourselves, and how to get a job with our dream company. Sam shares his story of how he got a  recruiter from his dream company to contact him within 3 hours and 26 minutes.    Sam's Journey   While Sam worked as a talk radio host, his team asked if he could build their website and find a way to make money off it. He didn't know much about websites so he started Googling things and came across HubSpot. As Sam downloaded and read through HubSpot's educational content, he decided he wanted to work for them.    “I built a website called HireMeHubSpot.com, and I got the free credits you get when you sign up for Google, LinkedIn, [and] Facebook ads, and I ran ads targeting people who worked at HubSpot to sign up for the free webinar about why they should hire me. Ironically, it's the best campaign I ever ran. Three hours and 26 minutes later, I got a call from the recruiter,” Sam said.    At HubSpot, Sam helped the company build a software that lets e-commerce companies, such as themselves, beat Amazon.   Sam worked at HubSpot for eight years before leaving to work for Flock. Then, in March 2020, he started his own business building a digital marketplace to connect people who own ad inventory with the brands that value them the most.    Marketing Ourselves   Sam's biggest home run happened because he was able to market himself to HubSpot. Once he decided he wanted to work for their company, he created a free webinar where he marketed his talents and abilities. He did this so well that HubSpot reached out to him less than four hours later, and he got a job working for them. How can we market ourselves like this?   In today's marketplace, it is becoming more and more important to market ourselves. When someone buys our product or service, they are also buying us. Consumers want to feel connected to whoever they are buying from and so we need to learn how to not only market our business, but also ourselves.    When we market ourselves and provide value to our customers, we become the asset. A customer will be more likely to buy from us if they like who we are and what we stand for, if we give them good value, and if they trust us.    3 Ways to Market Ourselves   Here are three ways we can market ourselves.      Know Our Target Audience     Sam researched HubSpot and read their educational content before he created the website, HireMeHubSpot.com and started marketing himself. Before we can start to market ourselves, we need to know who our target audience is. This means we should do research before we start.    Nate Elliot said, “If you want to create messages that resonate with your audience, you need to know what they care about.” When it comes to our customers, we need to understand their needs, values, hobbies, and wants. Who are we trying to sell ourselves to? Are we trying to market ourselves to a customer or a business partner? We should ask, “How can I serve my audience?” The only way we can know this is if we know them.    Once we know who our target audience is, we can determine what value we can offer. Gary Vaynerchuk said, “The best marketing strategy ever: CARE.” The more we care about our audience and understand what they need, the more likely they are to convert to our brand.    It may seem backwards, but it is true. When we focus on our customers instead of ourselves, we can actually market ourselves better. The conversation shouldn't be about how amazing we are, but how we can help our customers in a way that will amaze them.      Show Personality and Stand Out     When we market ourselves, we need to make sure we show our personality. What makes us different from everyone else? What makes us unique? What can we offer that no one else has? We need to have a unique selling point.    Emma Stone said, “What sets you apart can sometimes feel like a burden and it's not. And a lot of the time, it's what makes you great.” We shouldn't be afraid of being different. Our interests and passions show that we're human. We're not just trying to sell a product to our customers, we're also trying to build a relationship. Remember, businesses are shifting to becoming more and more personalized.    According to recent reports, 71% of customers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal and 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides a personal experience (Source: Forbes). When we show more of our personality and become more personalized with our customers, our chances of success increase substantially.    Sam uses his passions to help market himself and his business. He said, “I am really passionate about how we [can] create a world in which small businesses are a viable economic model 20, 30, 100 years from now, given the fact that everything currently is favoring larger and larger companies [with] more and more consolidation.” Since his passion reflects the goal of his new business, OneScreen.ai, he can share it with his audience to show his personality and stand out. It will also help him build trust and credibility with his audience members.    Coco Chanel, a French fashion designer and businesswoman, said, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”     Build Trust and Credibility     Credibility marketing is one of the biggest tectonic shifts I've seen today. Customers simply don't trust advertisements the way they used to. We have to market ourselves in ways that show we are trustworthy and credible.    One way to build trust is to admit when we don't know something or when we are wrong. If a customer asks us a question we simply don't know the answer to, that's okay. Instead of pretending to be perfect and all-knowing, it's actually beneficial to accept that we don't know everything. We are more likely to trust someone who admits when they are wrong compared to someone who pretends to know it all. Admitting we are wrong actually helps us gain trust. People admire others who are willing to acknowledge their mistakes and take responsibility for their actions.   Another great way to build trust and credibility is by being reliant. If we say we're going to do something, we better do it. If we tell a customer we have great customer service and will listen to their feedback, we better do that. If our website promises a response to a question, we better respond. If we don't fulfill the promises that we give, our customers aren't going to know what they can trust us with. People will begin to doubt if we are committed to any of our promises.    Finally, another great way to build trust is to communicate with our customers and simply listen to them. Listening shows that we respect and care about what our customers say.   Key Takeaways   Thank you so much Sam for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:   When someone buys our product or service, they are also buying us. We need to become a personal brand and learn how to market ourselves.  Customers are more likely to make a purchase when a brand provides a personal experience.  Before we can start to market ourselves, we need to know who our target audience is.  If we want to share messages that resonate with our audience, we need to know what they care about. We need to show our personality. What makes us different from everyone else? We need to provide a unique selling point.  We can build trust with our audience by being reliant and admitting when we are wrong or don't know something.    Connect with Sam   If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Sam or connect with him, you can find him on his LinkedIn or visit his website, www.onescreen.ai.    Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?   Did you like today's episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:   Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.  Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.   Share Your Story    How do you market yourself? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.    Sam Mallikarjunan is the co-author of the book, Inbound Commerce: How to Sell Better Than Amazon, which is ironically the number one bestseller in its category on Amazon. Sam is the CEO and founder of OneScreen.ai, an Internet of Things (IOT) enabled ad marketplace for the physical world. He is also the former Chief Revenue Officer of Flock.com and the former head of growth at HubSpot Labs. Sam taught advanced digital marketing innovation management and strategic economics at Harvard University. He is also the faculty chair for the digital marketing department at the University of South Florida.    In today's episode, we're going to discuss Sam's journey, how we can market ourselves, and how to get a job with our dream company. Sam shares his story of how he got a  recruiter from his dream company to contact him within 3 hours and 26 minutes.    Sam's Journey   While Sam worked as a talk radio host, his team asked if he could build their website and find a way to make money off it. He didn't know much about websites so he started Googling things and came across HubSpot. As Sam downloaded and read through HubSpot's educational content, he decided he wanted to work for them.    “I built a website called HireMeHubSpot.com, and I got the free credits you get when you sign up for Google, LinkedIn, [and] Facebook ads, and I ran ads targeting people who worked at HubSpot to sign up for the free webinar about why they should hire me. Ironically, it's the best campaign I ever ran. Three hours and 26 minutes later, I got a call from the recruiter,” Sam said.    At HubSpot, Sam helped the company build a software that lets e-commerce companies, such as themselves, beat Amazon.   Sam worked at HubSpot for eight years before leaving to work for Flock. Then, in March 2020, he started his own business building a digital marketplace to connect people who own ad inventory with the brands that value them the most.    Marketing Ourselves   Sam's biggest home run happened because he was able to market himself to HubSpot. Once he decided he wanted to work for their company, he created a free webinar where he marketed his talents and abilities. He did this so well that HubSpot reached out to him less than four hours later, and he got a job working for them. How can we market ourselves like this?   In today's marketplace, it is becoming more and more important to market ourselves. When someone buys our product or service, they are also buying us. Consumers want to feel connected to whoever they are buying from and so we need to learn how to not only market our business, but also ourselves.    When we market ourselves and provide value to our customers, we become the asset. A customer will be more likely to buy from us if they like who we are and what we stand for, if we give them good value, and if they trust us.    3 Ways to Market Ourselves   Here are three ways we can market ourselves.      Know Our Target Audience     Sam researched HubSpot and read their educational content before he created the website, HireMeHubSpot.com and started marketing himself. Before we can start to market ourselves, we need to know who our target audience is. This means we should do research before we start.    Nate Elliot said, “If you want to create messages that resonate with your audience, you need to know what they care about.” When it comes to our customers, we need to understand their needs, values, hobbies, and wants. Who are we trying to sell ourselves to? Are we trying to market ourselves to a customer or a business partner? We should ask, “How can I serve my audience?” The only way we can know this is if we know them.    Once we know who our target audience is, we can determine what value we can offer. Gary Vaynerchuk said, “The best marketing strategy ever: CARE.” The more we care about our audience and understand what they need, the more likely they are to convert to our brand.    It may seem backwards, but it is true. When we focus on our customers instead of ourselves, we can actually market ourselves better. The conversation shouldn't be about how amazing we are, but how we can help our customers in a way that will amaze them.      Show Personality and Stand Out     When we market ourselves, we need to make sure we show our personality. What makes us different from everyone else? What makes us unique? What can we offer that no one else has? We need to have a unique selling point.    Emma Stone said, “What sets you apart can sometimes feel like a burden and it's not. And a lot of the time, it's what makes you great.” We shouldn't be afraid of being different. Our interests and passions show that we're human. We're not just trying to sell a product to our customers, we're also trying to build a relationship. Remember, businesses are shifting to becoming more and more personalized.    According to recent reports, 71% of customers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal and 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides a personal experience (Source: Forbes). When we show more of our personality and become more personalized with our customers, our chances of success increase substantially.    Sam uses his passions to help market himself and his business. He said, “I am really passionate about how we [can] create a world in which small businesses are a viable economic model 20, 30, 100 years from now, given the fact that everything currently is favoring larger and larger companies [with] more and more consolidation.” Since his passion reflects the goal of his new business, OneScreen.ai, he can share it with his audience to show his personality and stand out. It will also help him build trust and credibility with his audience members.    Coco Chanel, a French fashion designer and businesswoman, said, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”     Build Trust and Credibility     Credibility marketing is one of the biggest tectonic shifts I've seen today. Customers simply don't trust advertisements the way they used to. We have to market ourselves in ways that show we are trustworthy and credible.    One way to build trust is to admit when we don't know something or when we are wrong. If a customer asks us a question we simply don't know the answer to, that's okay. Instead of pretending to be perfect and all-knowing, it's actually beneficial to accept that we don't know everything. We are more likely to trust someone who admits when they are wrong compared to someone who pretends to know it all. Admitting we are wrong actually helps us gain trust. People admire others who are willing to acknowledge their mistakes and take responsibility for their actions.   Another great way to build trust and credibility is by being reliant. If we say we're going to do something, we better do it. If we tell a customer we have great customer service and will listen to their feedback, we better do that. If our website promises a response to a question, we better respond. If we don't fulfill the promises that we give, our customers aren't going to know what they can trust us with. People will begin to doubt if we are committed to any of our promises.    Finally, another great way to build trust is to communicate with our customers and simply listen to them. Listening shows that we respect and care about what our customers say.   Key Takeaways   Thank you so much Sam for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:   When someone buys our product or service, they are also buying us. We need to become a personal brand and learn how to market ourselves.  Customers are more likely to make a purchase when a brand provides a personal experience.  Before we can start to market ourselves, we need to know who our target audience is.  If we want to share messages that resonate with our audience, we need to know what they care about. We need to show our personality. What makes us different from everyone else? We need to provide a unique selling point.  We can build trust with our audience by being reliant and admitting when we are wrong or don't know something.    Connect with Sam   If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Sam or connect with him, you can find him on his LinkedIn or visit his website, www.onescreen.ai.    Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?   Did you like today's episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:   Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.  Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.   Share Your Story    How do you market yourself? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.    Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/124-how-to-get-a-job-with-your-dream-company/ 

When I started #oohinsider, it was so I could learn.13 months later, I'm still learning but have been able to connect some of the dots of OOH along the way.This connection was kicked off by Mike Suh, Director of Strategic Partnerships at LGHAUS.Mike had reached out with some nice things to say about the show (thanks Mike!) and the tumblers fell into place..."you guys should totally connect with Sam Mallikarjunan and Greg Wise at OneScreen.ai".So the introduction was made and now they're making history.Imagine a world where you can create a digital screen network where, instead of costing you money, the value prop is that you will MAKE money...and the tech to do it comes standard on your LG screens.Join Mike Suh and Tim Kang from LGHAUS, and Sam Mallikarjunan from OneScreen to discuss how their partnership is like Uber for #dooh where Uber gives you the car to get started and the direct line to revenue to not only pay for the car but to make a bunch of money along the way.Check out LGHAUS at...https://www.lghaus.com/And learn mroe about OneScreen.ai at...https://www.onescreen.ai/Support the show (http://oohswag.com)Careers for OOH Talent! Are you looking for your next home in Out of Home? Need top talent? Check out OOHTalent.com

Today's guest is Sam Mallikarjunan.Sam is the Co-founder and CEO of OneScreen.ai, a performance marketing marketplace that connects brands with people, not screens.Along with two fellow Hubspot alum, OneScreen.ai is taking the matter of measurability head-on with their Facebook-like goal optimization allowing marketers to choose between phone call, physical visit and onscreen conversions...in the real-world.Not only are Sam and his team changing the game in how out of home is discussed by performance marketers, they're putting money back into the pockets of small business owners and acting as great ambassadors for the industry. Special thanks to our sponsor, LED Truck Media, for making today's show possible.Be sure to check them at...LEDTruckMedia.comInstagram.com/ledtruckmediaTwitter.com/ledtruckmedia#advertising #oohadvertising #oohinsiderAs always, you can grab your very own I ❤️  OOH swag at...oohswag.comBe sure to use promo code INSIDER for 10% off your first order!Special thanks to LED Truck Media! LED Truck Media specializes in hyperlocal, street-level campaigns. Support the show (http://oohswag.com)

In addition to teaching at Harvard and being one of the most sought-after digital marketing specialists around, Sam Mallikarjunan is a an author, speaker, and consultant. You can learn more about him at his website >>

In this episode of Ecommerce Disruptors, Noel is joined by Sam Mallikarjunan, the former Head of Growth at Hubspot, co-author of Inbound Commerce - How to Sell Better Than Amazon, and Business Growth Expert. They discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has opened opportunities for small businesses with a personable approach. Large companies lost their advantages during the pandemic, like not being able to ship next day. This is not survival of the fittest, it is the survival of the adaptable. It is easier for small businesses to change their approach rather than a large corporation. Small businesses can't sell more than Amazon, but they can sell better than Amazon. People feel a connection to smaller businesses when the impact of their money makes them feel good. Businesses do not need to be everything to everyone. Understanding your consumers' lifestyle is important to sell more. The lifetime customers are so beneficial to a business. This is a time of connecting. The Ecommerce Disruptors Podcast - Presented by Electric Enjin is your go to source for ecommerce digital marketing tips, techniques, and insights to be a disruptor in your industry. To stay up to date on all future episodes – subscribe to the show and follow us @ecommercedisruptors on Instagram and Twitter. Contact us at podcast@electricenjin.com

On this installment of the Cardwell Beach Marketing Podcast, we ask, "What will marketing look like in a post-Covid-19 world?" We're joined by Sam Mallikarjunan, an experienced SAAS marketer who has worked with Flock and HubSpot Labs, as well as taught digital marketing at Harvard. Together, we discuss how Covid-19 is changing marketing strategy, how to balance short-term customer acquisition with long-term thinking, and how the post-pandemic world will value marketers with financial acumen.

Whether you're a sales rep or a sales leader, a sales manager or a business owner, we can learn valuable lessons from the study of how Hubspot grew from 50-1500 individuals.  Sam Mallikarjunan has sold for a variety of organizations, from the five-person startup to the Fortune 500 company, so he has seen the sales story at a couple of stages. He's a fellow at Hubspot and he teaches digital marketing at Harvard University.  New revenue Sam loves the idea that whoever chases two rabbits catches neither because it's a reminder to him to focus. He has spent the last year focused on teaching, speaking, and research. He points to doing one thing at a time and doing it really well before moving on.  A weird pivot exists for startups that are growing from “we'll take anybody's money” to losing cash faster than you can acquire new cash. The core pivot occurs when you reach the point where you're struggling for customer retention, because the economics of your model will break down.   It's a matter of sales reps making time to ensure that they are bringing in new revenue. One new customer was upset because she couldn't access her email after signing on with Hubspot. She had cancelled her Internet provider because she thought that's what Hubspot was.  It cost the company money because they had to service the issue. The problem didn't arise because the seller was a bad person. He just didn't verify that the customer was going to be successful. Healthy revenue The company implemented clawbacks which withdraw commissions from sellers if the customer cancels their account within a certain window. Sellers are heavily incentivized to ensure that the person they are bringing on will result in healthy revenue.  Because Hubspot is a SAS, a recurring revenue model, the company loses money acquiring customers. The company doesn't break even for some months. If the customer cancels too quickly, the business loses money.  Cashflow is more important than your mother.  Keeping customers Many companies miss the core principle, which is that you can't spend money to get customers unless you're good at keeping them. If you're selling iPad covers that are cheap, people will likely only buy from you once. But if you're really good at keeping customers, it's not necessarily how much they pay in the first transaction, but rather the lifetime value.  If you're good at keeping those customers, you can pay your sales reps really well. You can give them lots of collateral to help them close deals. You can also spend a lot of money on marketing to tee them up for good conversations or on training for their reps. Sales sequence Sam recalls being a cell phone salesman in a mall. He asked his customers questions about cell phones, but he didn't listen to their answers because it didn't matter what they said. He was going to ask the next question in his sequence. Either they would sign on the dotted line or walk away. It didn't matter to him.  The company had more than 50 percent cancellation rate coming out of the kiosks, but the sellers never missed quota. He got big bonuses for his teams because they always met their quota. It cost the company a lot of money in support costs, lost device costs, and refunds, so they shut down the entire unit and retrained the reps.  The company was designed as a subscription model, which meant they would lose a little bit of money to acquire customers.   Platinum rule The platinum rule goes a step farther than the golden rule, which only requires that you treat people the way you want to be treated. The platinum mindset demands that you treat people the way they want to be treated.  Trust is core to the sales process, and trust begins by taking the time to ask questions and understand who you're selling to. People like to be personalized.  Sam points to Netflix's business model as an ideal one because it has motivated him to rate more than 800 movies. He said he does it because he knows that Netflix will use the information to improve his experience. He points to the fact that prospects will volunteer their information when they know it's being used to help them make better decisions.  Negative reviews When Jeff Bezos of Amazon first added negative reviews to the Amazon website, his investors thought he was crazy to include information that would discourage people from buying things. His response was that you don't make money when you sell things, but rather when you help people make purchase decisions.  He said that sellers often lose sight of the fact that it's more important to help people make the decision that's best rather than making the decision the seller wants them to make. It's sometimes powerful to not sell to a buyer when you can't find the value proposition. They may figure it out themselves because you've built that trust and then buy from you anyway. You aren't costing the company money and you'll improve your retention. Talking least He points to the fact that he always thought if he talked the most, he would leave with the most. He discovered, though, that when he asked meaningful questions, he talked the least, and he did well. Sam discovered that holding his meetings at a cigar lounge helped him monitor how much he talked, because if his cigar went out, it meant he talked too much and didn't listen enough.  Candle problem A famous psychology study challenges people to fix a candle to a way in a way that it doesn't drop any wax when it's lit. People try melting the candle to the wall but nothing works. The right answer, he said, is to dump out the box of tacks, tack the box to the wall, and then add the candle.  If you give people the right incentive, you fire up the part of your brain that excites them. If you need someone to turn a wheel, the best way to accomplish that is to give them a dollar for every revolution they make. The hardest thing to do is to convince people to give something a fair shake. When what you're doing isn't working, you tend to do more of the same with greater intensity.  People are driven to change when there's impetus, which is usually when things are going poorly. When you shift your conversation and slow down your sales cycle and ask more questions and give more answers, you'll make it easy for people to reach out to you. “Hubspot Grew” episode resources Connect with Sam Mallikarjunan on his website or on LinkedIn.  Connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that.  Tools for sellers This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. 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Hey everyone and welcome to The Weekly Marketer podcast. Every single week we interview deep dive experts in one of the many fields of marketing to drop huge knowledge bombs from the best of the best and teach you how to take your marketing skills to the next level. This is episode 013 and I'm sitting with Sam Mallikarjunan. Sam is a former Head of Growth for Hubspot Labs, Harvard Instructor, and international marketing speaker. He runs us through the right way to think about building markets that don't yet exist for your product and how to create a cult following for your company.

Sam Mallikarjunan is Head of Marketing at BirdEye.com, a SaaS startup enabling small businesses to win at online marketing by leverage their most powerful content of all -- their happy customers. Sam is the former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs and has taught Advanced Digital Marketing at Harvard University as well as Innovation Management and Marketing Analytics right here at the University of South Florida. With his energetic approach as a digital marketing instructor for multiple universities, Sam strives to provide students with a curriculum focused on frameworks for building modern growth engines. As a consultant, he brings an outsider's fresh perspective to guide seasoned teams to identify areas of opportunity and develop specific plans with attainable goals. Sam is also co-author of the book How To Sell Better Than Amazon which is, thanks to the publisher, ironically available for purchase on Amazon. What you'll learn about in this episode: How Sam's career path led him to his current position as the head of marketing at BirdEye Sam shares the amazing story of his unconventional application to his previous employer, HubSpot Why Sam chose to leave his great job with HubSpot because he felt he "had it way too easy" What defining moments in Sam's life shaped his career path and his personal drive to succeed Sam's thoughts on the controversial Nike marketing campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick How hunger and desperation caused Sam to buy a "$36 burrito" before he found financial freedom Why Sam wrote and shares an article, "A Horrendous Record of Failures You Won't Find on My Resume" Why Sam values the mistakes he's made throughout his career and the lessons he learned because of them How Sam began helping Syrian refugees go into business selling their own handmade crafts Why Sam attributes his successful career to developing the skills of simplification and focus Additional resources: Website: www.mallikarjunan.com Website: www.birdeye.com Twitter: @Mallikarjunan LinkedIn:www.linkedin.com/in/mallikarjunan/  

On this episode, I speak with Sam Mallikarjunan about online reputation management and how healthcare patients have more choice when it comes to who will be treating them than ever before. We touch on consumerism in healthcare, medical practices as feedback systems and the power of voice online.   Produced by Dennis Yoo and Daniel Kivatinos. Hosted by Oleg Koujikov.

In this episode, we hear from the CMO of BirdEye, former marketing genius at HubSpot and cigar & scotch aficionado… this guy has quite a story. Lucky for me, I've been a part of his story for about 7 years now. Today, Sam Mallikarjunan shares with The Storytellers Network his storytelling craft, his passion for story and more… in other words, HIS story.Sam's story include world travel as a professional speaker, traveling the United States in a van with his bride, and experimental marketing at sales giant HubSpot. The power of Sam's story is the impact of the stories he's had the privilege of hearing. Sometimes the pwoer of story is all in the perspective.“I was in Pakistan at a conference, talking to an entrepreneur. He told me ‘I used to leave the house everyday not knowing if I would make it home to my wife. I think I can handle the stress of pitching to investors.' That's a short story… but wow.” - Sam Mallikarjunan on the power of perspective

Marketing Strategies Revealed in this Episode: How to determine the LTV of your customers Forming long term relationships with customers Adding subscription services Coming up with complimentary products and services

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.

Get in touch with the guest, Sam Mallikarjunan: On Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mallikarjunan On his website: http://www.mallikarjunan.com/ RESOURCES: MSPOT - tool used at HubSpot - https://thinkgrowth.org/mspots-the-secret-to-focus-and-alignment-4a1510d9b3db Decay of knowledge (Deloitte) - https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/deloitte-review/issue-21/changing-nature-of-careers-in-21st-century.html The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2615.The_Innovator_s_Dilemma Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption (HBR) - https://hbr.org/2013/10/consulting-on-the-cusp-of-disruption Run Your Career Like a Startup - https://thinkgrowth.org/run-your-career-like-a-startup-41ea2993b02b McKinsey Enduring Ideas: The three horizons of growth - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/enduring-ideas-the-three-horizons-of-growth McKinsey - Why implementation matters - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/why-implementation-matters Dharmesh Shah, Founder & CTO at HubSpot - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/undisrupted-hubspots-reflections-disrupted-dan-lyons-dharmesh-shah/ The jobs to be done framework - https://jtbd.info/ and https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done T-charts - the pros and cons list, a template from the Berkeley University - https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Plan/Pros%26ConsTable.pdf HubSpot research - https://research.hubspot.com/ Other articles by Sam - https://thinkgrowth.org/@Mallikarjunan Sam's posts on Medium - https://medium.com/@Mallikarjunan

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Have you worked on optimising your customer conversion process of late? Are your blog posts directed at convincing your ideal client that they need... The post Lifetime Value of a Customer, Ideal Clients, and Getting more Clients with Harvard Professor Sam Mallikarjunan PoP 295 appeared first on How to Start, Grow, and Scale a Private Practice| Practice of the Practice.

Sam Mallikarjunan is an Executive Strategist at HubSpot. He hustled his way into the organization with a landing page and ads - and ended up leading the Experimental Marketing team, the Ecommerce Marketing team, the South American internationalization team, Hubspot Labs and more. Today, Sam also teaches Digital Marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education and the University of South Florida's Muma College of Business. He is also the co-author of the book "How To Sell Better Than Amazon". Sam joins us to share his story, how he got into marketing, what it’s been like leading a few of these teams at Hubspot, what some of the biggest challenges were, how he approaches solving problems, his mindset around growth and disruption, and much more.

In this episode we talk to Sam Mallikarjuna, Executive Strategist at HubSpot and teacher of advanced marketing at Harvard University Division of Continuing Education. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallikarjunan/

Sales professionals, sales leaders, sales owners – you can get a lot from this episode today. How can you scale your organization? And what better organization there is to look at than HubSpot. Today's guest is Sam Mallikarjunan. He's a marketing Fellow at HubSpot and former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs. He's going to […] The post TSE 723: How HubSpot Scaled From 150 to 1500 People and Significantly Increased Sales in the Process appeared first on The Sales Evangelist.

Sam Mallikarjunan is a Marketing Fellow at HubSpot and former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, the somewhat-secret experimental arm of the world’s #1 Sales & Marketing platform. Sam teaches Advanced Digital Marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, and he is also the co-author of the book How To Sell Better Than Amazon (which, thanks to the publisher, is ironically available for purchase on Amazon).   What you’ll learn about in this episode: The way the internet has changed selling so that there’s almost too much information How salespeople can help consumers sift through the breadth of information out there Structuring sales calls so they’re all about asking the buyers questions about their business The power of inbound: competition where no one else is competing Learning to say no to bad revenue Why you need to build buyer personas -- both for your ideal customers and customers that you don’t want to do business with because they’re going to cost you money Why clients need agencies to teach them what to do -- not how to do it Getting involved with your client’s complete business -- including the sales side of their business How to get your clients to treat your agency like a partner instead of a vendor Ways to contact Sam Mallikarjunan: Website: www.mallikarjunan.com Twitter: @Mallikarjunan Website: thinkgrowth.org We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

In today's episode of the Internet Marketing Podcast, Andy is joined by Sam Mallikarjunan, Executive Strategist at Hubspot and Instructor at Harvard University to discuss Artificial Intelligence. On the show, you'll learn: What's happening in the world of AI right now & the possibilities availableHow AI is being used to improve customer experience How AI is being used within sales How marketers are using AIThe downsides of AI and it's cultural impactPlus, Sam provides his top tip/key takeaway for the audience. If you'd like to connect with Sam you can find him on Twitter here and on LinkedIn here. You can also find his website here.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sam Mallikarjunan, Executive Strategist at HubSpot, and author of Inbound Commerce — How to Sell Better Than Amazon, joins me on this episode.

Bro. Sam Mallikarjunan, an Executive Strategist at HubSpot and Harvard professor teaching Advanced Digital Marketing joins us to talk about first impressions, websites, facebook pages, SEO, and how you advertise and market a business is very similar with how you market and advertise both your lodge and Freemasonry.

Sam Mallikarjunan, a Marketing Fellow at HubSpot, shares insights from his experience as the former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, the somewhat-secret experimental arm of the world’s #1 Sales & Marketing platform. Learn how to make inbound marketing an integral part of your customer acquisition strategy.

Sam Mallikarjunan is a Marketing Fellow at HubSpot and former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, the somewhat-secret experimental arm of the world’s #1 Sales & Marketing platform. Sam teaches Advanced Digital Marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, and is the co-author of the book “How To Sell Better Than Amazon” (which, thanks to the publisher, is ironically available for purchase on Amazon).” What you’ll learn about in this episode Using online marketing in creative ways that cost nearly nothing Cutting down on your “cognitive calories” to focus on useful tasks Motivational techniques derived from evolutionary science What cognitive science researchers have learned about human needs Mitigating the toll taken by stress or pressure from work and life Consistently challenging yourself on your values The latest social research from Deloitte Customer obsession and methodical empathy for enhanced business development Why HubSpot became the number one marketing platform based on customer focus How to best connect with Sam: Twitter: @Mallikarjunan Website: www.mallikarjunan.com Email: sam.mallikarjunan@gmail.com Book: How to Sell Better than Amazon

Sam Mallikarjunan, an executive strategist at HubSpot, is a developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing and sales. He teaches advanced digital marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing education.

In today's interview we speak to Sam Mallikarjunan a Marketing Fellow at HubSpot and Continuing Education Instructor at Harvard University.

Today I'm joined by a man who teaches Advanced Digital Marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education. He is the co-author of the book “How To Sell Better Than Amazon” and a Marketing Fellow at HubSpot. Welcome to DMR, Sam Mallikarjunan. [You can find Sam over at Mallikarjunan.com.] On this episode of Digital Marketing Radio we discuss why the world of marketing changing so quickly, with topics including: When you say the world of marketing is changing rapidly, do you mean marketing principles or just tactics and technologies? What aspect of marketing is changing the most rapidly and why? What kind of marketing traits do you tens to see between the most successful businesses nowadays? How should marketers and digital entrepreneurs keep up with the changes? How can you protect your business from being disrupted in this fast changing environment? When a business is trying to build a marketing team, what should they look for in new hires to help to future proof their abilities? Do you think that marketers need to be generalists or specialists? Is it still a good idea for a small business to try to appeal to a global audience nowadays or does being locally focused allow you to build a stronger buyer persona? [Tweet ""Comfort kills. Be the disruption you want to see in the world." @Mallikarjunan @hubspot"] Software I couldn't live without What software do you currently use in your business that if someone took away from you, it would significantly impact your marketing success? Slack [Team communication] What software don't you use, but you've heard good things about, and you've intended to try at some point in the near future? Snapchat [Social sharing] My number 1 takeaway What's the single most important step from our discussion that our listeners need to take away and implement in their businesses? Comfort kills. Be the disruption you want to see in the world. If you were going to beat your company, how would you do it? If you were going to deliver more value for your customers, how would you do it? It's a hard, emotional business strategic decision to say that "I am going to kill my own model, or test against my own model". And frankly it required courage. But even though you've survived 100 years, you may not survive the next 10 if you don't stay focused on that.

Sam Mallikarjunan, Principal Marketing Strategist at HubSpot and editor of ThinkGrowth.org, discusses how the site differs from the content HubSpot is best known for, why they built the site on Medium and how it’s helping them compete with established management brands like Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan, the role “skimmable” content and audio podcasts is playing in reaching execs, and how even in today’s digital marketing world most marketers still aren’t measuring the impact of their activities on ROI.

When I read Sam’s post “The Hard Choices Behind How Inbound.org Grew 5x” (they now have over 160,000 members) I knew I needed to get Sam on Experts On The Wire. We dissect many of the elements of their growth, including – why you need to ignore your earliest adopters, keeping a team focused on one […] The post 027: Growth Marketing Lessons From Inbound.org’s 5x User Growth w/Sam Mallikarjunan appeared first on Evolving SEO.

Despite the fact that ecommerce has grown 20% year over year, the ecommerce "gravy train" will be coming to a halt very soon for many ecommerce companies. If you want to keep riding then it's time to start investing in better experiences that provide value before asking for it. Sam Mallikarjunan is the Head of HubSpot Labs and the author of the book "How To Sell Better Than Amazon". HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. He is an expert ecommerce marketer and understand customer lifecycle marketing more than most thanks to his experience with inbound marketing at Hubspot. Key Takeaways from the Show The ecommerce gravy train is coming to an end. Why cart abandonment shouldn't be considered a bad thing...if you do it right. What closed loop attribution means and why you need to track it Why customers who abandon carts actually spend more than those who don't. What the greatest threat to marketing is, and why it's actually the greatest asset. How Berretta succeeds at selling firearms online, even though they can't sell firearms online. Links / Resources Hubspot's State of Inbound Report Sam's Personal Site Sam's Twitter Subscribe & Review To get more awesome Ecommerce Influence content sent directly to your device and into your ears as they become available, you can easily subscribe below. Also, ratings and reviews on iTunes (hopefully 5-stars!) help us tremendously a we’re very grateful for them. We do read all of the reviews and we’ll answer your questions or comments on future episodes. Cheers, Austin & Chad!   Follow on Twitter: Follow @chadvanags Follow @a_brawn

Sam Mallikarjunan, head of eCommerce & Marketing at HubSpot and author of How to Sell Better Than Amazon, is an expert getting your brand and store in front of potential customers. As ecommerce is quickly becoming the shopping method of choice for consumers, there is more competition than ever for driving traffic. The cost of being able to target consumers who are ready to buy is creeping higher and higher. Listen in, as Sam shares some valuable tips, success stories and his path to converting your traffic to customers and keeping them coming back time after time!   You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: http://bit.ly/1jRt4kE

Brent Leary Interviews Sam Mallikarjunan From HubSpot by Brent Leary and Small Business Trends