There’s an old Zen parable about a man riding a horse. The horse is running wildly around town and the man is holding on for dear life when he passes a friend on a street corner. The friend calls out – “Hey, where are you going?” And the man shouts back – “Don’t ask me – ask the horse!”
What a great metaphor for life! – at times it moves too fast and feels direction-less. But I also think it’s a great metaphor for the new world of marketing where more has changed in the last 5 years of my career, than the first 20. And I am holding on.
A modern marketing education
This marketing revolution is fueled by the need to make it easier for buyers and sellers to connect around common interests and through modern technologies. And it’s making it easier for companies to build their own marketing programs … But keeping up is overwhelming.
The modern marketing education we receive from HubSpot is one reason I love them so much. Until we signed on as a partner agency, we were struggling to keep up with the ever-expanding marketing landscape. Today, our team is Inbound, HubSpot, COS and Partner Agency-certified. We are strategically applying the Inbound Methodology with great results.
HubSpot also has an incredible educational library for any type of learner – from webinars, podcasts, and videos, to blogs, office hours, how-tos and downloadable PDFs. Whatever you need to learn next, HubSpot has the resource.
Sometimes you just need to talk about it
Sometimes, after scouring the HubSpot Academy, we still need to just talk through a big idea. Thankfully, that chat is only a call a way. With the HubSpot help desk’s “Call me” option – I can request a call from HubSpot Support and my phone rings almost immediately. Plus, we have an agency support team that guides us through the ins-and-outs of on-boarding and supporting our clients. (A big shout-out to Buck Flather, Katie Henderson and Sarah Papachristos for keeping us directed and effective.)
Meaningful conversations
Today, when a new prospect reaches out through our website … they already know a lot about us. Before our first conversation, they’ve invested time in getting to know our thinking through blogs, portfolio examples, social media posts, and more. If they complete a form on our website, we also start to get a picture of what they are looking for in marketing agency.
All of this makes it easier to get to the heart of the matter quickly. Even if there isn’t a perfect fit, it’s still a new connection that may bear future fruit. Over time, prospects have “opted-in” to communications from Allegory and self-identified their role in an organization. With that information we’ve built clean, organic lists and gained the permission to personalize our outreach.
Measure it, baby!
Before HubSpot, we had to log into numerous dashboards – one to evaluate our web pages and SEO performance, another to see who was opening emails. One to track conversations with prospects and several others to monitor our social engagement. It was impossible to connect the dots.
Today, we are able to build and measure an entire strategy – by person, by persona, by buyer’s journey, by tactic, and by multi-faceted campaigns. Clients love being able to see progress against goals. We appreciate the view-in that allows us to tweak initiatives on an on-going basis.
HubSpot has given our agency a chance to take back the reins. Our company is better thanks to the help we’ve received mapping and measuring highly impactful marketing programs.
Thanks HubSpot. I love you.
