marketing automation for small business AWS
Bonus Conversa,on
MARKETING AUTOMATION FOR SMALL BUSINESS
Bob The Teacher, Manager of Marke1ng Educa1on at LeadPages®
BONUS CONVERSATION: HUBSPOT Bob The Teacher and Isaac Moche Note: The following transcripts have been created to assist you in implemen:ng the lessons of this course. Since they are essen:ally verba:m, these transcripts should be read with a “speaking” English perspec:ve, as they may contain slight gramma:cal errors due to the nature of recorded training.
Welcome to this bonus module of Marke,ng Automa,on for Small Business. Once again, this is Bob the Teacher, the manager of Marke,ng Educa,on here at LeadPages®. This bonus module is a fantas,c conversa,on with Isaac Moche, the senior inbound professor at the HubSpot Academy. He and I had a fantas,c conversa,on around the ideas of inbound marke,ng, of lead nurturing, and marke,ng automa,on and marrying them all together. Now a quick introduc,on of Isaac. He ini,ally joined the HubSpot support team in 2013 where he worked with over 4,000 HubSpot users to move the needle for their organiza,on using best prac,ce inbound marke,ng techniques. Since joining the HubSpot Academy team, Isaac has used his experience helping HubSpot customers and partners to develop educa,onal content around scalable marke,ng automa,on, e-‐mail marke,ng, and lead nurturing strategies. I know you're going to learn a ton from this conversa,on, so let's get to it. Bob:
Hey, Isaac. Welcome to this bonus module of the Marke,ng Automa,on for Small Business course.
Isaac:
I'm really happy to be here. Thank you for giving me the chance to chat with you today about lead nurturing.
Bob:
I can't wait to hear your answers to some ques,ons I have and whatever comes out of our conversa,on. Before we get too deep, I just would love to have the listeners know a liVle bit more about you. Tell us your favorite thing that you get to do over at HubSpot.
Isaac:
HubSpot has thousands of customers. That means that people come with this really diverse and interes,ng background as far as what their business does and what their challenges are with lead nurturing. What I love is just that crea,ve process of hopping into the trenches. I like to say that lead nurturing and automa,on is really about experience design.
What are the goals of these people that I'm working with and how can we kind of get fun, and crea,ve, and effec,ve with lead nurturing? That's always different for every group of customers. I really like that crea,ve component of doing lead nurturing.
Bob:
Excellent. We do know that lead nurturing and marke,ng automa,on go hand-‐in-‐hand. I know that HubSpot has a preVy clean and clear flag in the sand when it comes to a lot of these things. Let's start from the higher level first and talk about lead nurturing as how it fits in to the rest of our marke,ng.
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Isaac:
It's a really interes,ng thought, and people look at this as various different degrees of integra,on. I think if you could really boil it down to one thing, it's the fact that, Bob, through a number of different ways, your database of contacts is going to decay by about 25% every year. That's from people op,ng out or changing jobs or marking your content as spam. Sadly, that does happen some,mes.
Your database is shrinking, and there are best prac,ces and there are things that you can do to mi,gate that. It's really important that your lead nurturing is part of this larger strategy to aVract people to your web site and you know whether you're using LeadPages® to capture those leads or you're using some other plaaorm to actually capture those leads, that you're filling the top of your funnel back up. I think that's one of the things that I'm sure you folks recognize, since you focus on that as well, is just such an important part that lead nurturing doesn't exist in a vacuum.
Bob:
Yeah, absolutely. I know that content plays an extremely important role in what you do over at HubSpot, what we do here at LeadPages®. Can you speak for a moment about the role content marke,ng is playing, how is it moving your lead nurturing from before they're a lead to aber they're a lead? Where does content play a role there?
Isaac:
What's so awesome about content, and understanding the importance that that does have in your marke,ng automa,on, is that once people actually say, "Huh, I'd like to automate this experience of talking to my prospects, talking to my customers," it's really quick and easy to figure out where your gaps with your content is.
When you think, "How do I move people through this path to purchase? How do I educate these folks so that they are prepared to talk to someone in sales?" That's actually really quickly going to help you guide the content that you create. If you're being smart about repurposing content and really figuring out who you're trying to talk to, it ends up being preVy simple to say, "The content that I'm going to use to aVract someone and convert someone doesn't end up being that different from the content that I use to nurture them with."
People can interact with your company at all different stages of the buying process, so content that you're using on your blog to let people get up close and personal with your product or your service, a liVle bit further through that path to purchase, is the perfect content to send somebody if they've subscribed to your blog and they're a liVle bit earlier. That content dances between the two.
I don't want to say it's dangerous, but I think you're selling yourself short if you treat the content that you create for your blog as totally separate from the content that you use to nurture folks.
Bob:
One of the big things that I see as a mistake is people saying, "I've got to make content fresh every single ,me I make a lead nurturing campaign."
Isaac:
Right, right.
Bob:
There's so much great, valuable stuff that's been created over the last year or two or three of your own that's likely extremely useful in that.
Isaac:
Yeah, it's like, "Wait a minute." Half of the value of crea,ng all this content is that it's like compound interest. You can just start to put it in a bunch of different places and reap those dividends.
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Bob:
The next thing I'd love to have you talk about, Isaac, is what are some common mistakes that you see people making with their nurturing campaigns?
Isaac:
Yeah, I think the number-‐one mistake, and I'm sure we'll get to this a liVle bit later about aligning your marke,ng and sales team, is that people have this en,re sales force, for some reason they have this concept that they're going to send people a series of e-‐ mails and turn them into customers, that this becomes a channel that they can just create a touchless sales process.
That ends up shoo,ng them in the foot when it's like you have this whole team of sales reps that exist for that express purpose, and even if you are a marke,ng team of one, or you run your own business recognizing the role that lead nurturing actually plays in your business, and that at a certain point sending these e-‐mails probably could be supplanted by or moving to the next step of either calling them on the phone or reaching out individually.
Bob:
Yeah, one of the things we talk about in the course quite a bit is the idea that some,mes, a person is the automa,on tool, that it's really about a rou,ne, and that human element can be a factor that leads to more sales. I'm glad that that's on your radar, too, as a major factor to put in place.
You men,oned this idea of the sales team, and yes, there are, of course, companies of one in their marke,ng department. Many listeners of this course will be in that situa,on, and a lot of others will also have teams of five or twenty or eighty that are going out and doing their thing. How important is it to get your marke,ng and your marke,ng automa,on and your sales on the same team, to have that effec,ve nurturing program?
Isaac:
I would say that maybe that's number one, right? If you're going to go into it, what your marke,ng team is doing is making a commitment to rethinking the way that they drive revenue for the business and the way that they think about growing the business. Most helpful thing that you can do is have sales along for that mission as well.
It's important that people don't start poin,ng fingers at each other, right? This is a bit of a shib, and that involves educa,on and that involves buy-‐in, and that some,mes sales reps don't really know "What the heck am I actually supposed to do with inbound leads?" That's very different than this en,re model of prospec,ng and reaching out that folks might have been doing in the past.
I think the simplest thing that can make this really simple and really underscore how important that is for the business, for people to be on the same page, is that defini,on of a marke,ng qualified lead. I think that stands to the earlier point, which is where are you actually looking to nurture these folks towards? If you folks can agree this is marke,ng's domain, and then once we get people that are a good fit that are interested enough, then it's sales's turn to give them a shot. I think giving both teams their ,me in the sun and actually having some communica,on around "When is this lead ready for the sales team to take over?"
Bob:
Some folks, they might not have heard of that term of "inbound marke,ng" before. Can you clarify that real quick, since you guys have pioneered that over at HubSpot. Can you talk a liVle bit about what "inbound" really means, and put it into other terms?
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Isaac:
Yeah. We've actually seen, just to ... Before we dive in here, is that inbound is about more than marke,ng. Inbound, now, it can be sales. It can be services. I think what we're talking about here is a more human and lovable approach to marke,ng. Marketers tend to get preVy bad rep because a lot of what we've done in the past has been interrup,ve.
If outbound makes less sense from a visceral perspec,ve to people, then I think interrup,ve marke,ng is a nice swap that you can have there, because a lot of that is inser,ng yourself into people's day. It's calling them during their dinner. It's an ad when they're trying to watch television. People are geeng increasingly good at tuning that stuff out, because they've changed the way that they shop and they've changed the way that they buy and they've changed the way that they consume content.
It's really easy for folks to set up filters now. Inbound is about pulling people in. It's about providing helpful and relevant content that in some way, provides value. Your business exists for a reason, because it makes somebody a beVer spouse, employee, brother, sister, son, daughter. Whatever it is, your business gives value in some way. I don't think it's too high of a standard to say that our marke,ng should do that as well, and that our sales process should do that as well.
Bob:
One of the things I love about that is it adds that level of credibility, right? Most inbound traffic is coming from some authority or referral or some kind of ac,ve search for content that you have, or a rela,onship that's being passed on from one person to the next. Is that an accurate classifica,on?
Isaac:
Yeah, I would say so. Now, the informa,on moves so quickly. I'm sure you folks have seen this at LeadPages®, but trust is just really important, and transparency, too.
Bob:
Once you do have someone in place, somebody comes in to your marke,ng campaign, how do you and your customers marry inbound marke,ng with marke,ng automa,on?
Isaac:
Marke,ng automa,on starts at that point when you actually convert folks, right? There's this en,re process before that happens that can be very inbound as well. Pos,ng content that is going to help people make the decision, the way that we like to treat that is this concept called the buyer's journey.
That's just the path to purchase that people make, and that's not something that's just specific to online. This is the way that people shop and buy. They first recognize that they have a problem. That might be a liVle bit like, "Oh, man. I'm not feeling well. I wonder what's going on." That's the awareness stage. They're aware that they have a problem.
Then the considera,on stage is they iden,fy that and they say what sort of solu,ons. "Oh, I have a cold. There are a couple things that I could do. I could go to the doctor. I could get some rest. I could get some vitamin C. I could get some chicken noodle soup." There are a bunch of different things that they might think of doing to solve that problem, and then you've got their decision, which is, "Okay, I picked that I'm going to have chicken noodle soup." Then there's Campbell's chicken noodle soup, and there's a place down the road.
People move through that process and you want to treat your business as something that's willing to receive people at whatever stage they might be in. Whether that's offers that you have gated behind landing pages, whether it is the content that you put
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out, it's really about making sure that your presence online spans across the way that people shop and buy so that you can pull people in at the right stage.
Then nurturing is when you start to have a conversa,on with people based on where they're at. Figuring out where they're at could be as simple as they filled out a form for a demo, which means that they've figured out their problem, they've figured out their solu,on, and they're actually looking at my company as the provider of that solu,on. They wouldn't be trying to get up close and personal with my brand unless they were considering us as the solu,on to their problem.
It's just that really basic sen,ment analysis to say, "What do we know about this person based on how they've interacted with us beforehand?" Then nurturing marries that so you can have a conversa,on with people based on what you know. I know I went on a liVle rant there, but that's the way I think about it, at least.
Bob:
Yeah, and I know how passionate you are, and HubSpot in general is about this, because without this there's such a missed opportunity to speak to people in the language that they are listening to, that they can hear. We'll talk about this idea that you have over there called progressive profiling in a couple of minutes, but that plays a big role in the success that your customers are having and the way that you're looking at marke,ng. It's not just a one-‐size-‐fits-‐all type of approach.
Isaac:
Yeah, I think you nailed it. What's nice about the way that all this fits together is it gets us a liVle closer to that marke,ng holy grail, which is that segment of one. Based on this informa,on, it ends up looking a liVle bit more like a conversa,on. You wouldn't walk into a store, get on the plaaorm, or if someone tried to have a conversa,on with you in the store, say, "Hold on for one second, I'm going to try and get four or five more people to listen to what I have to say so it's worth my ,me." Right?
Bob:
Right.
Isaac:
Get up on your soapbox and be, "Hear ye, hear ye." No, you want to have that conversa,on and make that person feel heard and understood.
Bob:
One of the core philosophies we have at LeadPages® as part of this course is that marke,ng automa,on really is an aVempt to emulate a one-‐on-‐one conversa,on as much as possible. For somebody who's totally new to marke,ng automa,on and lead nurturing, but they're not new to business. They know most of the concepts of marke,ng in general, but they're new to marke,ng automa,on. What would you say are the first two or three processes that they can automate and do so effec,vely?
Isaac:
Such a great ques,on, because we don't have to reinvent the wheel. You've been doing business, so you know how that works and you have things that exist right now, whether they're offline, like a trade show or an event, that's perfect for lead nurturing. Just import the list of people that aVended your event, and start to communicate with them that way, or that they registered online.
You can build a work flow that says, "Hey, this event's coming up in three days. Here's how you prepare. The event's tomorrow. Hope you had a good ,me at your event. Here's the recording.”
That's a perfect lead nurturing flow, and an example of taking something that you're already doing and making your life a liVle bit easier by nurturing it, but also pueng all
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the stuff in one place so you can do some repor,ng. If you already have a web site, and you have a "contact us" form, hey, that counts as marke,ng automa,on too, to send that person an e-‐mail that says, "Hey, thanks. Here's what you put in this form, and we're going to get back to you in 24 hours."
I think just doing a quick survey of the way that your business talks to people right now, your head'll explode when you start thinking about all the different ways where your life might be a liVle bit easier if you had some sort of system to talk to them.
Bob:
Yeah, and how much ,me did that save? How much of a capital cost can that save when you put those pieces in in the right places?
Isaac:
Totally.
Bob:
How about for a business that's a liVle bit further along? They've been doing some automa,on, they've been doing some lead nurturing, and they got those basics locked in. What's another process that business owners oben forget that they can do or just aren't aware that they can automate, that drive significant results in their marke,ng?
Isaac:
Yeah, as you get a liVle bit more advanced I think you want to start breaking it out in two ways, which is that lead nurturing, how we're really moving people through that path to purchase, and then the second op,on would be the actual business process automa,on.
To give you a really simple example, let's say that somebody fills out a request for a free consulta,on. You could actually combine those into one automa,on task, where you would have internal no,fica,on, external no,fica,on, you're upda,ng your contact database. It might look a liVle something like this.
Somebody fills out a request for a free consulta,on, and you have an e-‐mail that goes out to them that says, "Hey, thanks for signing up for a free consulta,on. Here's the things that we'd love to know from you that'll help us have a successful call. Here's how you can best prepare." A bunch of stuff, and you can actually nurture these people, maybe even have them pick a ,me. Real easy to start a conversa,on with them.
On the back end, what you could be doing is no,fying the sales rep. Say, "Hey, you just had a request for a free consulta,on. Here's the informa,on about these folks." You could set up a new opportunity in other sobware that you're using. You can set up integra,ons to have that stuff talk to each other. You can change the life cycle stage of this person and say, "They're not just a lead anymore. They're a marke,ng-‐qualified lead. They've moved through that path to purchase and we want to make sure our database recognizes that."
For people who are more advanced, I think it's star,ng to marry both the lead nurturing component with all of the opera,onal stuff that you need to do to be successful and to help your team go faster.
Bob:
You men,oned a few different trigger points along the way of the customer's journey here. I'd love to dive in a liVle bit more about those ideas of trigger points. What are some key trigger points in an automa,on system that you see over at HubSpot amongst your customers, maybe even in your business, that have the biggest gains? What are those inflec,on points that say to people, "Yep, they're ready to go"?
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Isaac:
The first one that's a no-‐brainer is offers. It's landing pages, right? We talked about that a liVle bit beforehand. So much of your business is based on that. That's a reason that HubSpot and LeadPages® have that integra,on, is because we recognize that the offers that you put up give value to people, and that they are raising their hand and saying, "I would like to learn more about that. I am interested in what you're offering."
Any ,me that somebody does something explicit, like filling out a form or subscribing or interac,ng in a really explicit way, is going to be the best thing that you can use to start a conversa,on with someone. If you have a central database that's pulling in other informa,on like how they've interacted on social media or specific pages, so if someone views your pricing page or a product demo page, those are also really great ways to start conversa,ons with people.
You could send them a product video or you could send them a breakdown of your different pricing packages based on what they viewed. I think the really simple way is explicit is great, but we don't want to neglect implicit too.
Bob:
That brings me to what I think will be, I hope, my favorite ques,on of this interview, because we can start to really geek out on some of the cool things that you do at HubSpot specifically. You had this conversa,on around LeadPages® around the concept of marke,ng funnels and sales campaigns and so forth, and the general concept that most people have is that there's this straight path. There's this linear pathway from, "I don't know anything about you," to "Now I know about you," to "Now I know more about you," to "Now I become a customer."
The reality is that most marke,ng campaigns just aren't like that. They're more like pinball machines or some other type of ... A random assortment of things. You've developed at HubSpot something called progressive profiling, and I'd love to know more about that, and this idea of if-‐else logic that drives automa,on seems to be at the core of what you guys do.
Isaac:
Love that you brought this up, because what I think is behind this is a switch from a marketer-‐centered view to nurturing to a prospect view of nurturing, which is that as much as we'd like to build these laboratories where we can shuffle people through and basically manipulate them into our choose-‐your-‐own-‐adventure story, that's not really the way it works.
Again, we're not reinven,ng the wheel here, but when you go to buy a couch, you might go to a couple different places, you might poke around, your friend might men,on something that was good, you might have sat on it at their house, you might have seen it in a magazine. There are so many different ways that you can capture that informa,on. To assume that people go about doing that in the way that you want, and then even one step beyond that, that everybody buys a couch in the same way, ends up being crazy. We wouldn't expect that offline, so I don't think we should expect it online either.
The way that if-‐else logic works is that it allows you to set up these checkpoints in your nurturing, and say, "Hey, before we send anyone anymore e-‐mails, we should probably check in to see what's going on here. Are they a customer now? We probably don't need to keep sending them this." Or, "Have they signed up for a demo? It's not necessarily right for us to con,nue to send them white papers, because they're past that stage. They're not here to learn about the problem anymore, they want to hear
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what our product and service can do." What I like about if-‐else nurturing, and even having your different workflows talk to each other, is that it's really compassionate towards how people make these purchase decisions. Bob:
This idea of progressive profiling, can you dig a liVle deeper into that, just from the terminology standpoint, so people can understand what's the best prac,ce, I guess, around that concept?
Isaac:
Progressive profiling, at least within HubSpot, refers to the forms that we have. The first ,me that someone fills out a form, they might give you first name, last name, and e-‐mail address. I think that's understandable. We don't want to overwhelm people. We want to get informa,on from them that's appropriate for the amount of value that we're given. As we build this rela,onship with folks, and as we gather more informa,on from them, hopefully we set the precedent that if you tell us the right stuff, we can build a beVer experience for you and we can be more helpful to you.
The way the progressive profiling works is once somebody's filled out a form, gives you certain informa,on like first name, last name, we don't think it necessarily makes sense to keep asking them that on every form. Progressive profiling allows you to start swapping out the informa,on that you ask people automa,cally. First name ... If someone filled it out the first ,me, the next ,me they go to fill it out, that field might say, "Biggest marke,ng challenge."
Your forms don't expand from five to ten to thirteen fields as you want to learn more. It's always going to stay at five fields and what progressive profiling allows you to do is to gather more informa,on from folks so that you can help them, so that you can educate them in a liVle bit more of a seamless way than having this bloat on your forms and expec,ng people to fill out informa,on that ... No one wants to fill out a 20-‐ ques,on form.
Bob:
Yeah. I think that's just such a cri,cal element of more complex, more powerful marke,ng automa,on, where you do have that extra informa,on. You're not asking for all of it at one ,me. You're able to keep on adding to this contact record and have an ability to speak to people in combina,on with that if-‐else logic that you have, and making sure that you're delivering the things that are going to maVer to that person and not miss the mark.
Isaac:
Sure. You can speak to that at LeadPages®, how important ... Nurturing really starts on the landing page. It's like, "Am I asking the right informa,on that I can start a good conversa,on with that?" I know you folks probably have a whole philosophy on when do you ask these ques,ons, what's appropriate to put on a form? I think that's really where nurturing starts, is "Do I have enough and have I asked the right ques,ons on these forms to actually have a valuable conversa,on with these folks?"
Bob:
Yeah, there's always this perfect balancing act of conversion rate based on fields and then quality of lead based on enough informa,on, right?
Isaac:
Right.
Bob:
We're always dancing with that quite a bit. We talked a liVle bit about what's important to know about marke,ng automa,on and lead nurturing today. One of the things I am really excited about asking all of our experts on these bonus training modules about is what's next? What's the future of automa,on look like? What do you see, Isaac, for a
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year or two down the road in this space that's not available today within marke,ng automa,on, lead nurturing, et cetera? Isaac:
It's a tough one. I think really taps into part of the struggle of being a marketer today, which is that knowledge in our field and the capability of this technology just moves lightning quick. It's tough to stay abreast of that and I think that's why it's so important that we have these educa,on modules and that we're helping people get a grip on what's going on.
I think when I look a year or two ahead, it's not something that's totally new and came out of nowhere. I think that we're star,ng to build more robust contact profiles. By that, I mean you've got this central hub. You need someone's e-‐mail address to contact them, and that usually exists in a database. More and more, we recognize that people don't communicate with us in a vacuum. They interact on social media and we've got integra,ons between sobware like HubSpot and LeadPages®, that one plaaorm doesn't necessarily do it all.
I think in the future, what we'll see is that as people change the way that they use the internet and they start doing chat ... Chat's huge. It'll be important to be able to communicate with people on mobile in a seamless way. If you have an app, to make sure that that exists in your nurturing, and that if you're running webinars or you're doing something offline, or you have a physical store ... There are all of these different ways, and I think what we'll see in one to two years is even ,ghter integra,on.
A beVer way to use that informa,on, so that maybe the marketer isn't even having to build the segments himself, that the sobware will build segments for her. You don't have to do that. I think to wrap that up, I think we're going to see beVer data tracking. I think we're going to see it exist in one place, and make it easier for the marketer to pull that all into one place. Then I think we'll start to see the sobware start to do some prescrip,ve stuff for people, to make having that conversa,on even easier, even more fluid, even more human.
Bob:
I love it. I love it. It's all about fric,on, right? Reducing fric,on, reducing the difficulty that a business owner has to match their message with the right audience member. It's incredible. I hope that that comes true sooner than later. I know that we're pioneering some things here and you are as well, and I love that we get to collaborate on that moving forward.
My final ques,on today is HubSpot has put inbound marke,ng on the map, and I'd love to have our audience know a liVle bit more about how they can discover more about inbound marke,ng and become experts in this area.
Isaac:
I work on HubSpot Academy, and our en,re mission, our en,re team, is focused on helping marketers understand this landscape, sales reps understand this landscape, and get a beVer understanding of these key principles of doing business online and not just online, doing business in the 21st century to align with the way that people shop and buy.
We have a number of resources to do that, but I think our cornerstone one and the one that's available for everyone is the inbound cer,fica,on. This is just one course that you can go through in your own ,me that's got a great cer,ficate at the end that has helped people get jobs and helped them feel confident about what they need to be a
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modern marketer. The reality is is that there's this huge skills gap between what you need to know to be effec,ve in your job, and what they teach you in school or what you might have learned in your last job.
What we've tried to do is build a resource that is completely HubSpot agnos,c, so has nothing to do with our sobware but is more about how do you aVract the right people to your web site and iden,fy who's going to be a good long-‐term fit for your business? How do you convert them and show them value so that they are willing to start a conversa,on with you? How do you engage with them through lead nurturing and then hopefully turn them into customers, and then delight them so that they s,ck around for a while.
We've built this inbound cer,fica,on that has video component to it, it's got quizzes, it's got resources to help you get a beVer understanding of what it means to be an inbound company, and then a really nice cer,fica,on at the end to help let people know that you've been able to understand, synthesize, and act on that knowledge.
Bob:
I think that is a great resource for folks. We've set up a link for you to go to check that out at leadpages.to/inboundhubspot, all lowercase. Again, leadpages.to/inbound will get you straight over to the page that Isaac's talking about and take a look at that program.
I think a moment ago I said that was my last ques,on. I actually lied. I do have one more ques,on for you. What is one ques,on I may not have asked you that you want to make sure that you get a final word in about?
Isaac:
The big one is what's next? The hardest thing that we've seen on Academy and that I'm sure you've seen as you've tried to educate folks, is they sit, they say, "Oh, wow. This is inspira,onal. I learned a ton," and bridging that gap to actually doing is the thing that's really tricky. I think what I would recommend and the ques,on that wasn't asked here is what's next?
I think the simplest thing that people can do is say, "What am I doing today that I could be doing a liVle bit smarter?" That runs the gamut of what we talked about. If you're a more advanced business and you want to set up lead rou,ng and send different leads to people in different territories, that is a great thing to look into. It's probably something you're already doing today. It might be "How can I beVer communicate with people when I do this trade show next quarter?"
Then, like you said, there are folks who aren't new to business but maybe they're new to inbound. People get very afraid and they say, "Oh, man. Bob and Isaac just talked about that a ton, and I heard about landing pages and I heard about nurturing and I heard about e-‐mail and I heard about content," and they can quickly just become really overwhelming. I think that people need to remember that it's a journey and that you start looking at this and you say, "Hey, what am I doing today that I could do a liVle bit more smarter, a liVle bit more human?"
Then you go from there, and that's how you understand how this all fits together, that it's really easy to get paralyzed by it but that it doesn't happen overnight.
Bob:
Isaac, thank you so much for that great wisdom and for all your specific answer through our conversa,on today. I really appreciate it, and I look forward to seeing what comes out next for you, too.
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Isaac:
Without a doubt, Bob. Thanks so much for having me. You can tell I love to talk about this, so great plaaorm to hear how you folks think about it and be able to share what I think about all day.
Bob:
Thanks so much, Isaac.
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LeadPages® Marke,ng Automa,on for Small Business -‐ Bonus Conversa,on: HubSpot | Bob Jenkins
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MARKETING AUTOMATION FOR SMALL BUSINESS
Bob The Teacher, Manager of Marke1ng Educa1on at LeadPages®
BONUS CONVERSATION: HUBSPOT Bob The Teacher and Isaac Moche Note: The following transcripts have been created to assist you in implemen:ng the lessons of this course. Since they are essen:ally verba:m, these transcripts should be read with a “speaking” English perspec:ve, as they may contain slight gramma:cal errors due to the nature of recorded training.
Welcome to this bonus module of Marke,ng Automa,on for Small Business. Once again, this is Bob the Teacher, the manager of Marke,ng Educa,on here at LeadPages®. This bonus module is a fantas,c conversa,on with Isaac Moche, the senior inbound professor at the HubSpot Academy. He and I had a fantas,c conversa,on around the ideas of inbound marke,ng, of lead nurturing, and marke,ng automa,on and marrying them all together. Now a quick introduc,on of Isaac. He ini,ally joined the HubSpot support team in 2013 where he worked with over 4,000 HubSpot users to move the needle for their organiza,on using best prac,ce inbound marke,ng techniques. Since joining the HubSpot Academy team, Isaac has used his experience helping HubSpot customers and partners to develop educa,onal content around scalable marke,ng automa,on, e-‐mail marke,ng, and lead nurturing strategies. I know you're going to learn a ton from this conversa,on, so let's get to it. Bob:
Hey, Isaac. Welcome to this bonus module of the Marke,ng Automa,on for Small Business course.
Isaac:
I'm really happy to be here. Thank you for giving me the chance to chat with you today about lead nurturing.
Bob:
I can't wait to hear your answers to some ques,ons I have and whatever comes out of our conversa,on. Before we get too deep, I just would love to have the listeners know a liVle bit more about you. Tell us your favorite thing that you get to do over at HubSpot.
Isaac:
HubSpot has thousands of customers. That means that people come with this really diverse and interes,ng background as far as what their business does and what their challenges are with lead nurturing. What I love is just that crea,ve process of hopping into the trenches. I like to say that lead nurturing and automa,on is really about experience design.
What are the goals of these people that I'm working with and how can we kind of get fun, and crea,ve, and effec,ve with lead nurturing? That's always different for every group of customers. I really like that crea,ve component of doing lead nurturing.
Bob:
Excellent. We do know that lead nurturing and marke,ng automa,on go hand-‐in-‐hand. I know that HubSpot has a preVy clean and clear flag in the sand when it comes to a lot of these things. Let's start from the higher level first and talk about lead nurturing as how it fits in to the rest of our marke,ng.
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Isaac:
It's a really interes,ng thought, and people look at this as various different degrees of integra,on. I think if you could really boil it down to one thing, it's the fact that, Bob, through a number of different ways, your database of contacts is going to decay by about 25% every year. That's from people op,ng out or changing jobs or marking your content as spam. Sadly, that does happen some,mes.
Your database is shrinking, and there are best prac,ces and there are things that you can do to mi,gate that. It's really important that your lead nurturing is part of this larger strategy to aVract people to your web site and you know whether you're using LeadPages® to capture those leads or you're using some other plaaorm to actually capture those leads, that you're filling the top of your funnel back up. I think that's one of the things that I'm sure you folks recognize, since you focus on that as well, is just such an important part that lead nurturing doesn't exist in a vacuum.
Bob:
Yeah, absolutely. I know that content plays an extremely important role in what you do over at HubSpot, what we do here at LeadPages®. Can you speak for a moment about the role content marke,ng is playing, how is it moving your lead nurturing from before they're a lead to aber they're a lead? Where does content play a role there?
Isaac:
What's so awesome about content, and understanding the importance that that does have in your marke,ng automa,on, is that once people actually say, "Huh, I'd like to automate this experience of talking to my prospects, talking to my customers," it's really quick and easy to figure out where your gaps with your content is.
When you think, "How do I move people through this path to purchase? How do I educate these folks so that they are prepared to talk to someone in sales?" That's actually really quickly going to help you guide the content that you create. If you're being smart about repurposing content and really figuring out who you're trying to talk to, it ends up being preVy simple to say, "The content that I'm going to use to aVract someone and convert someone doesn't end up being that different from the content that I use to nurture them with."
People can interact with your company at all different stages of the buying process, so content that you're using on your blog to let people get up close and personal with your product or your service, a liVle bit further through that path to purchase, is the perfect content to send somebody if they've subscribed to your blog and they're a liVle bit earlier. That content dances between the two.
I don't want to say it's dangerous, but I think you're selling yourself short if you treat the content that you create for your blog as totally separate from the content that you use to nurture folks.
Bob:
One of the big things that I see as a mistake is people saying, "I've got to make content fresh every single ,me I make a lead nurturing campaign."
Isaac:
Right, right.
Bob:
There's so much great, valuable stuff that's been created over the last year or two or three of your own that's likely extremely useful in that.
Isaac:
Yeah, it's like, "Wait a minute." Half of the value of crea,ng all this content is that it's like compound interest. You can just start to put it in a bunch of different places and reap those dividends.
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Bob:
The next thing I'd love to have you talk about, Isaac, is what are some common mistakes that you see people making with their nurturing campaigns?
Isaac:
Yeah, I think the number-‐one mistake, and I'm sure we'll get to this a liVle bit later about aligning your marke,ng and sales team, is that people have this en,re sales force, for some reason they have this concept that they're going to send people a series of e-‐ mails and turn them into customers, that this becomes a channel that they can just create a touchless sales process.
That ends up shoo,ng them in the foot when it's like you have this whole team of sales reps that exist for that express purpose, and even if you are a marke,ng team of one, or you run your own business recognizing the role that lead nurturing actually plays in your business, and that at a certain point sending these e-‐mails probably could be supplanted by or moving to the next step of either calling them on the phone or reaching out individually.
Bob:
Yeah, one of the things we talk about in the course quite a bit is the idea that some,mes, a person is the automa,on tool, that it's really about a rou,ne, and that human element can be a factor that leads to more sales. I'm glad that that's on your radar, too, as a major factor to put in place.
You men,oned this idea of the sales team, and yes, there are, of course, companies of one in their marke,ng department. Many listeners of this course will be in that situa,on, and a lot of others will also have teams of five or twenty or eighty that are going out and doing their thing. How important is it to get your marke,ng and your marke,ng automa,on and your sales on the same team, to have that effec,ve nurturing program?
Isaac:
I would say that maybe that's number one, right? If you're going to go into it, what your marke,ng team is doing is making a commitment to rethinking the way that they drive revenue for the business and the way that they think about growing the business. Most helpful thing that you can do is have sales along for that mission as well.
It's important that people don't start poin,ng fingers at each other, right? This is a bit of a shib, and that involves educa,on and that involves buy-‐in, and that some,mes sales reps don't really know "What the heck am I actually supposed to do with inbound leads?" That's very different than this en,re model of prospec,ng and reaching out that folks might have been doing in the past.
I think the simplest thing that can make this really simple and really underscore how important that is for the business, for people to be on the same page, is that defini,on of a marke,ng qualified lead. I think that stands to the earlier point, which is where are you actually looking to nurture these folks towards? If you folks can agree this is marke,ng's domain, and then once we get people that are a good fit that are interested enough, then it's sales's turn to give them a shot. I think giving both teams their ,me in the sun and actually having some communica,on around "When is this lead ready for the sales team to take over?"
Bob:
Some folks, they might not have heard of that term of "inbound marke,ng" before. Can you clarify that real quick, since you guys have pioneered that over at HubSpot. Can you talk a liVle bit about what "inbound" really means, and put it into other terms?
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Isaac:
Yeah. We've actually seen, just to ... Before we dive in here, is that inbound is about more than marke,ng. Inbound, now, it can be sales. It can be services. I think what we're talking about here is a more human and lovable approach to marke,ng. Marketers tend to get preVy bad rep because a lot of what we've done in the past has been interrup,ve.
If outbound makes less sense from a visceral perspec,ve to people, then I think interrup,ve marke,ng is a nice swap that you can have there, because a lot of that is inser,ng yourself into people's day. It's calling them during their dinner. It's an ad when they're trying to watch television. People are geeng increasingly good at tuning that stuff out, because they've changed the way that they shop and they've changed the way that they buy and they've changed the way that they consume content.
It's really easy for folks to set up filters now. Inbound is about pulling people in. It's about providing helpful and relevant content that in some way, provides value. Your business exists for a reason, because it makes somebody a beVer spouse, employee, brother, sister, son, daughter. Whatever it is, your business gives value in some way. I don't think it's too high of a standard to say that our marke,ng should do that as well, and that our sales process should do that as well.
Bob:
One of the things I love about that is it adds that level of credibility, right? Most inbound traffic is coming from some authority or referral or some kind of ac,ve search for content that you have, or a rela,onship that's being passed on from one person to the next. Is that an accurate classifica,on?
Isaac:
Yeah, I would say so. Now, the informa,on moves so quickly. I'm sure you folks have seen this at LeadPages®, but trust is just really important, and transparency, too.
Bob:
Once you do have someone in place, somebody comes in to your marke,ng campaign, how do you and your customers marry inbound marke,ng with marke,ng automa,on?
Isaac:
Marke,ng automa,on starts at that point when you actually convert folks, right? There's this en,re process before that happens that can be very inbound as well. Pos,ng content that is going to help people make the decision, the way that we like to treat that is this concept called the buyer's journey.
That's just the path to purchase that people make, and that's not something that's just specific to online. This is the way that people shop and buy. They first recognize that they have a problem. That might be a liVle bit like, "Oh, man. I'm not feeling well. I wonder what's going on." That's the awareness stage. They're aware that they have a problem.
Then the considera,on stage is they iden,fy that and they say what sort of solu,ons. "Oh, I have a cold. There are a couple things that I could do. I could go to the doctor. I could get some rest. I could get some vitamin C. I could get some chicken noodle soup." There are a bunch of different things that they might think of doing to solve that problem, and then you've got their decision, which is, "Okay, I picked that I'm going to have chicken noodle soup." Then there's Campbell's chicken noodle soup, and there's a place down the road.
People move through that process and you want to treat your business as something that's willing to receive people at whatever stage they might be in. Whether that's offers that you have gated behind landing pages, whether it is the content that you put
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out, it's really about making sure that your presence online spans across the way that people shop and buy so that you can pull people in at the right stage.
Then nurturing is when you start to have a conversa,on with people based on where they're at. Figuring out where they're at could be as simple as they filled out a form for a demo, which means that they've figured out their problem, they've figured out their solu,on, and they're actually looking at my company as the provider of that solu,on. They wouldn't be trying to get up close and personal with my brand unless they were considering us as the solu,on to their problem.
It's just that really basic sen,ment analysis to say, "What do we know about this person based on how they've interacted with us beforehand?" Then nurturing marries that so you can have a conversa,on with people based on what you know. I know I went on a liVle rant there, but that's the way I think about it, at least.
Bob:
Yeah, and I know how passionate you are, and HubSpot in general is about this, because without this there's such a missed opportunity to speak to people in the language that they are listening to, that they can hear. We'll talk about this idea that you have over there called progressive profiling in a couple of minutes, but that plays a big role in the success that your customers are having and the way that you're looking at marke,ng. It's not just a one-‐size-‐fits-‐all type of approach.
Isaac:
Yeah, I think you nailed it. What's nice about the way that all this fits together is it gets us a liVle closer to that marke,ng holy grail, which is that segment of one. Based on this informa,on, it ends up looking a liVle bit more like a conversa,on. You wouldn't walk into a store, get on the plaaorm, or if someone tried to have a conversa,on with you in the store, say, "Hold on for one second, I'm going to try and get four or five more people to listen to what I have to say so it's worth my ,me." Right?
Bob:
Right.
Isaac:
Get up on your soapbox and be, "Hear ye, hear ye." No, you want to have that conversa,on and make that person feel heard and understood.
Bob:
One of the core philosophies we have at LeadPages® as part of this course is that marke,ng automa,on really is an aVempt to emulate a one-‐on-‐one conversa,on as much as possible. For somebody who's totally new to marke,ng automa,on and lead nurturing, but they're not new to business. They know most of the concepts of marke,ng in general, but they're new to marke,ng automa,on. What would you say are the first two or three processes that they can automate and do so effec,vely?
Isaac:
Such a great ques,on, because we don't have to reinvent the wheel. You've been doing business, so you know how that works and you have things that exist right now, whether they're offline, like a trade show or an event, that's perfect for lead nurturing. Just import the list of people that aVended your event, and start to communicate with them that way, or that they registered online.
You can build a work flow that says, "Hey, this event's coming up in three days. Here's how you prepare. The event's tomorrow. Hope you had a good ,me at your event. Here's the recording.”
That's a perfect lead nurturing flow, and an example of taking something that you're already doing and making your life a liVle bit easier by nurturing it, but also pueng all
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the stuff in one place so you can do some repor,ng. If you already have a web site, and you have a "contact us" form, hey, that counts as marke,ng automa,on too, to send that person an e-‐mail that says, "Hey, thanks. Here's what you put in this form, and we're going to get back to you in 24 hours."
I think just doing a quick survey of the way that your business talks to people right now, your head'll explode when you start thinking about all the different ways where your life might be a liVle bit easier if you had some sort of system to talk to them.
Bob:
Yeah, and how much ,me did that save? How much of a capital cost can that save when you put those pieces in in the right places?
Isaac:
Totally.
Bob:
How about for a business that's a liVle bit further along? They've been doing some automa,on, they've been doing some lead nurturing, and they got those basics locked in. What's another process that business owners oben forget that they can do or just aren't aware that they can automate, that drive significant results in their marke,ng?
Isaac:
Yeah, as you get a liVle bit more advanced I think you want to start breaking it out in two ways, which is that lead nurturing, how we're really moving people through that path to purchase, and then the second op,on would be the actual business process automa,on.
To give you a really simple example, let's say that somebody fills out a request for a free consulta,on. You could actually combine those into one automa,on task, where you would have internal no,fica,on, external no,fica,on, you're upda,ng your contact database. It might look a liVle something like this.
Somebody fills out a request for a free consulta,on, and you have an e-‐mail that goes out to them that says, "Hey, thanks for signing up for a free consulta,on. Here's the things that we'd love to know from you that'll help us have a successful call. Here's how you can best prepare." A bunch of stuff, and you can actually nurture these people, maybe even have them pick a ,me. Real easy to start a conversa,on with them.
On the back end, what you could be doing is no,fying the sales rep. Say, "Hey, you just had a request for a free consulta,on. Here's the informa,on about these folks." You could set up a new opportunity in other sobware that you're using. You can set up integra,ons to have that stuff talk to each other. You can change the life cycle stage of this person and say, "They're not just a lead anymore. They're a marke,ng-‐qualified lead. They've moved through that path to purchase and we want to make sure our database recognizes that."
For people who are more advanced, I think it's star,ng to marry both the lead nurturing component with all of the opera,onal stuff that you need to do to be successful and to help your team go faster.
Bob:
You men,oned a few different trigger points along the way of the customer's journey here. I'd love to dive in a liVle bit more about those ideas of trigger points. What are some key trigger points in an automa,on system that you see over at HubSpot amongst your customers, maybe even in your business, that have the biggest gains? What are those inflec,on points that say to people, "Yep, they're ready to go"?
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Isaac:
The first one that's a no-‐brainer is offers. It's landing pages, right? We talked about that a liVle bit beforehand. So much of your business is based on that. That's a reason that HubSpot and LeadPages® have that integra,on, is because we recognize that the offers that you put up give value to people, and that they are raising their hand and saying, "I would like to learn more about that. I am interested in what you're offering."
Any ,me that somebody does something explicit, like filling out a form or subscribing or interac,ng in a really explicit way, is going to be the best thing that you can use to start a conversa,on with someone. If you have a central database that's pulling in other informa,on like how they've interacted on social media or specific pages, so if someone views your pricing page or a product demo page, those are also really great ways to start conversa,ons with people.
You could send them a product video or you could send them a breakdown of your different pricing packages based on what they viewed. I think the really simple way is explicit is great, but we don't want to neglect implicit too.
Bob:
That brings me to what I think will be, I hope, my favorite ques,on of this interview, because we can start to really geek out on some of the cool things that you do at HubSpot specifically. You had this conversa,on around LeadPages® around the concept of marke,ng funnels and sales campaigns and so forth, and the general concept that most people have is that there's this straight path. There's this linear pathway from, "I don't know anything about you," to "Now I know about you," to "Now I know more about you," to "Now I become a customer."
The reality is that most marke,ng campaigns just aren't like that. They're more like pinball machines or some other type of ... A random assortment of things. You've developed at HubSpot something called progressive profiling, and I'd love to know more about that, and this idea of if-‐else logic that drives automa,on seems to be at the core of what you guys do.
Isaac:
Love that you brought this up, because what I think is behind this is a switch from a marketer-‐centered view to nurturing to a prospect view of nurturing, which is that as much as we'd like to build these laboratories where we can shuffle people through and basically manipulate them into our choose-‐your-‐own-‐adventure story, that's not really the way it works.
Again, we're not reinven,ng the wheel here, but when you go to buy a couch, you might go to a couple different places, you might poke around, your friend might men,on something that was good, you might have sat on it at their house, you might have seen it in a magazine. There are so many different ways that you can capture that informa,on. To assume that people go about doing that in the way that you want, and then even one step beyond that, that everybody buys a couch in the same way, ends up being crazy. We wouldn't expect that offline, so I don't think we should expect it online either.
The way that if-‐else logic works is that it allows you to set up these checkpoints in your nurturing, and say, "Hey, before we send anyone anymore e-‐mails, we should probably check in to see what's going on here. Are they a customer now? We probably don't need to keep sending them this." Or, "Have they signed up for a demo? It's not necessarily right for us to con,nue to send them white papers, because they're past that stage. They're not here to learn about the problem anymore, they want to hear
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what our product and service can do." What I like about if-‐else nurturing, and even having your different workflows talk to each other, is that it's really compassionate towards how people make these purchase decisions. Bob:
This idea of progressive profiling, can you dig a liVle deeper into that, just from the terminology standpoint, so people can understand what's the best prac,ce, I guess, around that concept?
Isaac:
Progressive profiling, at least within HubSpot, refers to the forms that we have. The first ,me that someone fills out a form, they might give you first name, last name, and e-‐mail address. I think that's understandable. We don't want to overwhelm people. We want to get informa,on from them that's appropriate for the amount of value that we're given. As we build this rela,onship with folks, and as we gather more informa,on from them, hopefully we set the precedent that if you tell us the right stuff, we can build a beVer experience for you and we can be more helpful to you.
The way the progressive profiling works is once somebody's filled out a form, gives you certain informa,on like first name, last name, we don't think it necessarily makes sense to keep asking them that on every form. Progressive profiling allows you to start swapping out the informa,on that you ask people automa,cally. First name ... If someone filled it out the first ,me, the next ,me they go to fill it out, that field might say, "Biggest marke,ng challenge."
Your forms don't expand from five to ten to thirteen fields as you want to learn more. It's always going to stay at five fields and what progressive profiling allows you to do is to gather more informa,on from folks so that you can help them, so that you can educate them in a liVle bit more of a seamless way than having this bloat on your forms and expec,ng people to fill out informa,on that ... No one wants to fill out a 20-‐ ques,on form.
Bob:
Yeah. I think that's just such a cri,cal element of more complex, more powerful marke,ng automa,on, where you do have that extra informa,on. You're not asking for all of it at one ,me. You're able to keep on adding to this contact record and have an ability to speak to people in combina,on with that if-‐else logic that you have, and making sure that you're delivering the things that are going to maVer to that person and not miss the mark.
Isaac:
Sure. You can speak to that at LeadPages®, how important ... Nurturing really starts on the landing page. It's like, "Am I asking the right informa,on that I can start a good conversa,on with that?" I know you folks probably have a whole philosophy on when do you ask these ques,ons, what's appropriate to put on a form? I think that's really where nurturing starts, is "Do I have enough and have I asked the right ques,ons on these forms to actually have a valuable conversa,on with these folks?"
Bob:
Yeah, there's always this perfect balancing act of conversion rate based on fields and then quality of lead based on enough informa,on, right?
Isaac:
Right.
Bob:
We're always dancing with that quite a bit. We talked a liVle bit about what's important to know about marke,ng automa,on and lead nurturing today. One of the things I am really excited about asking all of our experts on these bonus training modules about is what's next? What's the future of automa,on look like? What do you see, Isaac, for a
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year or two down the road in this space that's not available today within marke,ng automa,on, lead nurturing, et cetera? Isaac:
It's a tough one. I think really taps into part of the struggle of being a marketer today, which is that knowledge in our field and the capability of this technology just moves lightning quick. It's tough to stay abreast of that and I think that's why it's so important that we have these educa,on modules and that we're helping people get a grip on what's going on.
I think when I look a year or two ahead, it's not something that's totally new and came out of nowhere. I think that we're star,ng to build more robust contact profiles. By that, I mean you've got this central hub. You need someone's e-‐mail address to contact them, and that usually exists in a database. More and more, we recognize that people don't communicate with us in a vacuum. They interact on social media and we've got integra,ons between sobware like HubSpot and LeadPages®, that one plaaorm doesn't necessarily do it all.
I think in the future, what we'll see is that as people change the way that they use the internet and they start doing chat ... Chat's huge. It'll be important to be able to communicate with people on mobile in a seamless way. If you have an app, to make sure that that exists in your nurturing, and that if you're running webinars or you're doing something offline, or you have a physical store ... There are all of these different ways, and I think what we'll see in one to two years is even ,ghter integra,on.
A beVer way to use that informa,on, so that maybe the marketer isn't even having to build the segments himself, that the sobware will build segments for her. You don't have to do that. I think to wrap that up, I think we're going to see beVer data tracking. I think we're going to see it exist in one place, and make it easier for the marketer to pull that all into one place. Then I think we'll start to see the sobware start to do some prescrip,ve stuff for people, to make having that conversa,on even easier, even more fluid, even more human.
Bob:
I love it. I love it. It's all about fric,on, right? Reducing fric,on, reducing the difficulty that a business owner has to match their message with the right audience member. It's incredible. I hope that that comes true sooner than later. I know that we're pioneering some things here and you are as well, and I love that we get to collaborate on that moving forward.
My final ques,on today is HubSpot has put inbound marke,ng on the map, and I'd love to have our audience know a liVle bit more about how they can discover more about inbound marke,ng and become experts in this area.
Isaac:
I work on HubSpot Academy, and our en,re mission, our en,re team, is focused on helping marketers understand this landscape, sales reps understand this landscape, and get a beVer understanding of these key principles of doing business online and not just online, doing business in the 21st century to align with the way that people shop and buy.
We have a number of resources to do that, but I think our cornerstone one and the one that's available for everyone is the inbound cer,fica,on. This is just one course that you can go through in your own ,me that's got a great cer,ficate at the end that has helped people get jobs and helped them feel confident about what they need to be a
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modern marketer. The reality is is that there's this huge skills gap between what you need to know to be effec,ve in your job, and what they teach you in school or what you might have learned in your last job.
What we've tried to do is build a resource that is completely HubSpot agnos,c, so has nothing to do with our sobware but is more about how do you aVract the right people to your web site and iden,fy who's going to be a good long-‐term fit for your business? How do you convert them and show them value so that they are willing to start a conversa,on with you? How do you engage with them through lead nurturing and then hopefully turn them into customers, and then delight them so that they s,ck around for a while.
We've built this inbound cer,fica,on that has video component to it, it's got quizzes, it's got resources to help you get a beVer understanding of what it means to be an inbound company, and then a really nice cer,fica,on at the end to help let people know that you've been able to understand, synthesize, and act on that knowledge.
Bob:
I think that is a great resource for folks. We've set up a link for you to go to check that out at leadpages.to/inboundhubspot, all lowercase. Again, leadpages.to/inbound will get you straight over to the page that Isaac's talking about and take a look at that program.
I think a moment ago I said that was my last ques,on. I actually lied. I do have one more ques,on for you. What is one ques,on I may not have asked you that you want to make sure that you get a final word in about?
Isaac:
The big one is what's next? The hardest thing that we've seen on Academy and that I'm sure you've seen as you've tried to educate folks, is they sit, they say, "Oh, wow. This is inspira,onal. I learned a ton," and bridging that gap to actually doing is the thing that's really tricky. I think what I would recommend and the ques,on that wasn't asked here is what's next?
I think the simplest thing that people can do is say, "What am I doing today that I could be doing a liVle bit smarter?" That runs the gamut of what we talked about. If you're a more advanced business and you want to set up lead rou,ng and send different leads to people in different territories, that is a great thing to look into. It's probably something you're already doing today. It might be "How can I beVer communicate with people when I do this trade show next quarter?"
Then, like you said, there are folks who aren't new to business but maybe they're new to inbound. People get very afraid and they say, "Oh, man. Bob and Isaac just talked about that a ton, and I heard about landing pages and I heard about nurturing and I heard about e-‐mail and I heard about content," and they can quickly just become really overwhelming. I think that people need to remember that it's a journey and that you start looking at this and you say, "Hey, what am I doing today that I could do a liVle bit more smarter, a liVle bit more human?"
Then you go from there, and that's how you understand how this all fits together, that it's really easy to get paralyzed by it but that it doesn't happen overnight.
Bob:
Isaac, thank you so much for that great wisdom and for all your specific answer through our conversa,on today. I really appreciate it, and I look forward to seeing what comes out next for you, too.
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Isaac:
Without a doubt, Bob. Thanks so much for having me. You can tell I love to talk about this, so great plaaorm to hear how you folks think about it and be able to share what I think about all day.
Bob:
Thanks so much, Isaac.
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