To be a better person or a better company, look to some of the best and brightest to see how they do it. Hubspot is a successful marketing company, based in Cambridge, MA. I recently had the good fortune to attend their Inbound Marketing Conference. My head is still reeling from all I learned and the new ideas that were generated.
As I gathered my thoughts about the conference, I thought it would be helpful to showcase some things any person and company can do to become more successful. Afterall, if you have a successful company, you will probably also have successful marketing.
MARK KILENS – Leader of Hubspot Academy, the place for training and educational programs.
Talk topic: “Keeping customers happy: the pillars of delight.”
* The eight customer delight guidelines:
1. Delight employees. Happy employees are the key to creating happy customers.
2. Educate employees.
3. Empower employees.
4. Listen to customers.
5. Ask customers open-ended questions.
6. Help customers.
7. Follow-up with customers.
8. Take action.
DARMESH SHAH – Co-founder and CTO of Hubspot.
Talk topic: “Writing your company’s culture code.”
* Culture is shared beliefs, values and practices.
* Culture is hard to copy.
* It’s essential that it be written down.
* Hubspot culture has nothing to do with marketing.
* Elements of culture:
1. Mission and metrics
2. Obsess over customers, not competitors.
3. Radically and uncomfortablye transparent.
4. Autonomy to be awesome.
5. Unreasonably picky about our peers.
6. Invest in individual mastery and market value.
7. Defy conventional wisdom.
8. Speak the truth and face the facts.
If you’d like to see the full presentation, feel free to go to:
MIKE VOLPE – Chief Marketing Officer at Hubspot MARK ROBERGE – Senior Vice President of Sales and Services at Hubspot.
Talk topic: “Smarketing – How inbound marketing and sales work at Hubspot.” Notice the combination of the words sales and marketing to smarketing.
* Align sales and marketing around common metrics.
* Inbound sales are the keys to inbound marketing.
* Communicate and manage for alignment.
* Clearly define funnel stages; go beyond the traditional sales funnel.
* Create Service Level Agreements for both Sales and Marketing.
* Create dashboards that are frequent, public and transparent.
(FYI – a software dashboard is a way of organizing information so that it’s readily available.)
* Inbound leads are radically different than the traditional cold call.
* Hubspot is aligned around buyer personas, NOT function. This helps to create a seamless customer interface. Most companies are aligned by function, yet customers don’t think or act like that.
* Market your marketing to sales.
More details of these talks can be found at:
Hubspot Inbound Marketing Talks.
My lessons learned from these talks is that successful companies have the following characteristics:
1. Strong customer and strong employee focus.
2. Strong company culture that is communicated clearly to all employees.
3. Excellent communication between all departments. This is most often achieved by setting common goals.
When you have a successful company, you will have successful marketing.
Photo is courtesy of Jurvetson’s Flickr Photostream, under Creative Commons Licensing.
Steven Cramer
September 18, 2013
Hi Nancy, Sounds like a great conference, would have loved to have been there! Thanks for providing some insights for those of us who live way down South! Cheers, Steve
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Nancy Loderick
September 18, 2013
Hi Steve,
I’m glad you enjoyed the post. I think you would have enjoyed the conference. And of course, you would have loved being in the Back Bay part of Boston.
Hope your week is going well.
Nancy
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Steven Cramer
September 18, 2013
It sounds like an intriguing part of Boston…..might get there one day in the future!
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Nancy Loderick
September 21, 2013
Hi Steve,
I hope you do get to visit our fair city! A word to the wise, I would visit in the summer or the fall. The winters can be pretty cold. It gets really windy in the city, with all the skyscrapers.
N
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Steven Cramer
September 21, 2013
Hi Nancy, thanks for the great advice! I’ve actually been really fortunate to get to Boston quite a few times already on business, it is a brilliant city! Cheers, Steve
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Professor VJ Duke
September 18, 2013
Yes, very nice post. The info is more than the professor can process!
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Nancy Loderick
September 18, 2013
Hey Professor,
You are not alone! It was way more than I could process too. 🙂 Every night after the conference day, my brain felt like it was going to explode!
N
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pflead73
September 26, 2013
I think companies are yet to exploit the behavioral aspects of the consumers. I have a feeling that psychology of consumers combined with corresponding data analysis can help firms to a large extent in their marketing.
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Nancy Loderick
September 26, 2013
Hi,
I agree with you. Big data is the next wave. If companies can figure out how to combine this with behavioral analysis and the human touch, they’ll be way ahead of their competition.
Nancy
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pflead73
September 27, 2013
Hey,
I sent u a message through that contact form on your blog. It would be really helpful if you go through it once and reply me back.
Abhijeet
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Nancy Loderick
September 27, 2013
Hi Abhijeet,
Thanks for your comment. I sent you an email. 🙂
Nancy
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WilderSoul
October 8, 2013
Great to hear what’s new! Very cool of you to share what you learnt at the seminar! 🙂
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Nancy Loderick
October 9, 2013
Hi,
I am so glad you enjoy these posts. I love going to conferences and learning new things. I also love sharing what I’ve learned with others. 🙂
Nancy
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Super Nate
October 14, 2013
Thanks for the update and information. Also thank you for stopping by my blog. Have a great week!
Nate $mith
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Nancy Loderick
October 14, 2013
Hi Nate,
You are more than welcome. I hope that you, too, have a great week.
Nancy
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