This is the transcript for episode 6 of HubShots.
Ian: Welcome to episode 6 of HubShots. How are you Craig?
Craig: I’m well, and we’re recording on Tuesday the 10th of November. And you know what that means Ian?
Ian: What does that mean, Craig?
Craig: It means only two days until I’m going to view Spectre, the new James Bond movie. I’m taking Thursday off, and I’m going to watch it. I’m looking forward to it, I’m a big James Bond fan.
Ian: Very good. I’m actually looking forward to it too – except I’m not as keen as you are.
Craig: Okay, sounds good. All right. Yeah, hey, you know what I got wrong last episode? I was talking about emoticons in subject lines.
Ian: Yes.
Craig: They’re actually emojis. So–
Ian: Yes.
Craig: Yeah, I know you knew that. I should’ve known that. But, anyway–
Ian: That’s Okay. I think- I think when you said that, people understand what you’re referring to so, it’s all good.
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: So let’s move on. So, inbound thought of the week.
Craig: Yeah, okay this is an interesting one from you.
Ian: And I really like this, it was from Lisa Turner at HubSpot. And it was how to triple your lead flow. So basically she went through and said, “Look, there are many ways to do this, and you can use things like LinkedIn Pulse, LinkedIn Groups, BuzzSumo, Blogsearchengine.org. And so, you use all these platforms to basically find who the people are who you need to connect with.
Craig: Right.
Ian: And it basically helps you perform effective outreach. So it helps you really research, see what they’re writing, see who your competitors are, see what’s going on. And then the next part is to actually to engage with them. So, interact, share their content, request a guest blog – and really become one of those voices in the industries. But also another really interesting thing that she was saying, “Have you kind of run a – co-run a campaign? So can you partner with them and run a campaign?” So, one of the really interesting things that she was saying was – setting clear expectations, which I though was really good. And getting sign off on the number of leads that you wanna get out of it. So have a clear goal, a target in place.
Craig: Right, yeah.
Ian: And the other 2 things I really loved about it. She said, “Have a really clear execution timeline, and promotion plans. So document what’s going to happen, who’s going to do it, when they’re going to do it.”
Craig: Cool, yeah very cool. Yeah, I’ve seen HubSpot doing a lot of the co-branding piece lately. Very effective so–
Ian: Yeah, it’s great. I mean, they’ve been doing one with Twitter. And I think that’s been fantastic. Because it gets – again, it gets people who are interested in Twitter, but might not be using HubSpot – to actually be able to understand, “Oh, hang on, I didn’t realise that this actually does it.”
Craig: Yeah, very cool.
Ian: Alright, so, there we go, so that’s the inbound thought of the week, and we’ll post more of the show notes over there so– Now, let’s talk about the tip of the week. And uh, I think you were asking – where is the HubSpot content calendar…
Craig: I know this. I’m putting this under tip of the week. Because my question was, how do you get to the HubSpot content calendar? And I asked you this before, because I normally have to go through Social Inbox, and then find it down the left hand side and that. And I’m just kinda like, “Where is it?” And then I asked you and so, do you want to explain where, how you get the–?
Ian: And I said it was on the top bar, just to the right of the search field. A little calendar icon.
Craig: A little calendar icon. I’m just like, “Oh my goodness, how have I just not seen that? I’ve been staring at it.” So, that’s why it’s tip of the week. Because, if you’re like me, and you’ve just missed it – even though it’s blatantly obvious. Then this is a great tip for you to get to the content calendar. And if I’m the only person in the world that didn’t notice that, well, so be it. But anyway, there you go.
Ian: And you know one thing Craig, I think – again – we were talking before. Now I use that calendar to even communicate with clients on tasks that need to be done. So if they need to review some content, I’ll stick a task in there for them to get it done.
Craig: Yeah, right.
Ian: And if we’ve got any schedule we can actually see it on there. So we use it as a bit of content calendar plus task calendar with people that we work with. Now I understand that you use it in a slightly different manner. Do you want to tell me how?
Craig: Yeah, so basically I like looking at it for seeing – monitoring our social scheduling. And in particular I like it, because it shows whether our social messages are linked to a campaign. And generally we want all our social sharing to be linked to a campaign, and it highlights it, nice color coding. So yeah, that’s how I use it. And I guess how you use it, I guess makes sense and that’s probably why it’s not under the content menu. Like I was always, been wondering – I think of it as the content calendar, why isn’t it under the content menu? But yeah, you use it for creating tasks and scheduling and stuff so that totally makes sense.
Ian: Yeah, so I think- like and here we are. We’re both using the same product and using 2 things very differently.
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: So I think I can learn a lot from what you’ve just said, and I’m sure you can learn a lot from what I’ve just said too.
Craig: Yeah, exactly and vice versa, cool.
Ian; Yeah, so excellent, so now challenge of the week this week – and believe it or not I don’t have a challenge.
Craig: Well, our challenge is we don’t have a challenge this week so–
Ian: Let’s challenge our listeners to actually send us some challenges that they’re having that we can discuss and talk through.
Craig: Yeah, that’ll be really cool.
Ian: So yes, so please put an inquiry through on the form on the website and – or tweet us, and we will get to that challenge.
Craig: I’m looking forward to reading those, yeah.
Ian: Now Craig, opinion of the week. This, I believe this is yours, taking industry trends from Business Insider.
Craig: Yeah, so this is a really interesting slide deck put together by Michael Wolf, he’s a – kind of a well-known business strategist. And he’s just predicting what’s happening in the tech industry. Now this isn’t specific to marketing and it’s definitely not related to HubSpot. But the reason I’ve just wanted to include it, cause I think it’s a very useful read for marketing managers about the trends in tech. And in particular, if you start reading through some of the early slides you just – he highlights how much attention is being captured by things like messaging and the increase in messaging apps and things like that. And because as marketers, I guess this does relate in some ways – because we are competing for attention when we’re trying to reach people with content. There’s limited attention and almost unlimited content to try to get that attention. So, messaging is a key part. So it’s linked there in the show notes, have a read of that, but–
Ian: Now, interesting you talk about that, Craig. Because I read something on Simply Measured this week, which is the top 10 social stats for the week. And it said instant messaging is more popular than social in the Asia Pacific region. And this came from an e-consultancy roundup post, right?
Craig: Right, yeah.
Ian: They basically said that in our region, mobile first markets like APAC, there’s a high daily use of instant messaging. China being 69%, Malaysia 77, and in stark contrast to the UK and the US, which was 39 and 35% respectively.
Craig: Right.
Ian: And they said really, brands that are active in APAC need to find ways to integrate social channels with messaging apps. Become relevant (7:34?) and vital.
Craig: So yeah, have you seen this in effect? How have you sort of–
Ian: So I have experienced this indirectly. So one of the people I work with, who happens to have a friend who is – who’s on WeChat, which is a Chinese version of chat. We’ve actually got 2 jobs out of that. So someone on WeChat has put a message out saying, “Does anyone know of someone who would do any PR or write content for us?”
Craig: Wow.
Ian: So we responded to that through her, and we’ve had the opportunity to do some work. So you know what? It definitely works and I think there’s a level of trust on there between people. So, I tend to find that whatever comes through those channels seem to be pretty qualified and definitely leads to business.
Craig: Wow, fascinating.
Ian: So don’t discount it. So you know, if you’re looking into these markets or you know people – tell people that are outside of your circle of influence, tell them that you can do those things. Because you never know what might come your way.
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: So yeah, there you go. So – encourage you to have a look at that. And I think one of the other things that you will find interesting is that – and I don’t know if you’ve seen this. On some websites you can actually leave (8:48?) in like a instant message or voicemail.
Craig: Right, no, no, I haven’t seen that.
Ian: And I’ve seen this in varying degrees, but that’s – again, is another avenue and channel for people to leave you a message or get in touch with you if they don’t want to fill out a form.
Craig: Right. Oh, so when you say messaging, it’s like those live chat things, is that what you mean, or is it something different?
Ian: No, so there is live chat, which is also messaging. But also, through – it’s like leaving a voicemail on a website. So you basically, it’s like talking on the phone, but you talk through the website, and it sends a voice file to the person which–
Craig: Oh, really? Very cool.
Ian: So there you go.
Craig: Nice one. Alright, so let’s move along. So this is an interesting one, our general tip of the week. So, this is kind of a bit thinking outside the box and so yeah, I’ll hand it over to you, I thought this was a really interesting example that you had.
Ian: Yes so I’m going to say, we are all very focused on what we’re doing. And we’re thinking about all the processes and all the things we need to sort out on a weekly basis. And one thing that I did once was I went – I’ve got a friend that is a coffee roaster. And I went and spent a day with him. I figured out how he tastes the coffee, how he selects the coffee, where the coffee comes from. And what he did, what was his decision process as he went through the day? How did he roast it? So what was he looking for, even packing the coffee – what are the systems in place? And it really opened my eyes to just a whole ‘nother world that’s out there that we don’t think– Because often – we’ll head down to our local coffee shop, and we’ll go, “Yes, I’ll have a cappuccino or a latte or whatever it is.” But you don’t understand the process that someone’s gone through to get there–
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: But I think if I relate that to content, there’s a process that we have to go through to get that content somewhere. We don’t just click our fingers and it appears, right? But I think – take yourself outside your space, and see what other people are doing. And gain some inspiration from there for your own self to think, well, “I saw that production line of how they were roasting the coffee and how it was getting packed. What in my process can I change or make better? Can I have an automated packaging machine, so I don’t have to hand pack everything?” So I encourage you to actually think about it, and think about what we’re doing and see what you can change that will make a big difference to you
Craig: Yeah, I love this idea. Well putting aside the fact that I’d just love to go work in a coffee roasters for a day. I just think that’d be cool as well. I’m assuming you’re a big coffee drinker, are you?
Ian: Yes, I am.
Craig: Yeah, so that makes it even better.
Ian: And you know what, Craig? I think I’ll organise that for you one day.
Craig: Alright, that’d be great. And then if you could also organise a day in a single malt Scotch distillery, that’d be good as well. So we can do that as a followup. Big single malt lover as well. But yeah, I really like the idea, because just that – just giving your brain I guess new pathways to think through, just kind of – and get creative about stuff. And then you come back, and then even though you might not apply that specific process back to your company – just the fact that you’ve been forced to think another way does open you to new ideas in your own business and things. So I really like that. Yeah, great tip.
Ian: So yeah, do that, and you know I guess I’ll tie this back. At Google, when I’ve been to their offices and I’ve seen they’re really big on spending 20% of their time being something else that’s a project that you might love, and as I was walking through the Google office, I actually noticed somebody building a big Star Wars ship Lego on their desk. Right?
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: But again, to me, that was somebody exercising their ability to do something constructive in a different manner and who knows what can be born out of that? But that’s helping them be better at what they’re doing so I’m totally for spending time doing other things that are outside of what we’re talking about in marketing.
Craig: I’ve gotta be honest with you and say, I think I would struggle if someone was building a Star Wars Lego thing in the office. I’m probably not as optimistic as you, I’d probably just be thinking “That’s cool.” Then wondering if that’s actually improved their job though. But I take your point, totally.
Ian: Well there you go. Alright.
Craig: Oh that’s cool.
Ian: Alright, State of Inbound. So, this report that we love so much that we’ve been talking about and dissecting
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: let’s start with obviously some of the marketing part of it–
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: On page page 22–
Craig: Actually can I just– Should we just explain what it is in case some of our listeners haven’t seen what it–
Ian: Yeah, go for it.
Craig: Yeah, so State of Inbound, it’s an annual report that HubSpot put out, and you can go and download it. It’s just a PDF, it’s 70 or 80 pages, at stateofinbound.com. And it’s basically the results of surveying 4000 odd marketing professionals around the globe, and compiling some of the trends. And each week, yeah we’ve been pulling out a little bite from it. So yeah, what’s this week’s marketing tidbit from–?
Ian: So I thought well – this is on page 22, it said they were having an increased use of freelancers and outsourcing to create content. So marketing content curation is no longer limited to in house writers. So what I can tell is that obviously is that people internally are getting busier, or they’re finding that they don’t have the right people to do it – so they’re actually looking outside. So if we look, freelance has increased by a percentage, and they’re also doing more content creation. But what really surprised me was executives–
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: has increased from last year to this year. Now, in saying that, I’ll use a little example, and this is not purely inbound related. But, we’ve done a lot of public relations over the years, and about a year and a bit ago we – when Yokohama were launching a new tyre, with orange oil in it. We actually got in front of the director here in Australia, and we actually said, “You need to be the face of this, this product launch.” And we wrote some content, which we then distributed to press and various other magazines. The amount of coverage he got from it -because I don’t think anybody had ever heard of the guy who runs Yokohama in Australia.
Craig: Right.
Ian: It was quite amazing. So people were like, “wow.” So imagine the director of Yokohama in Australia talking about this tire, and we put a picture of him. So people were really, relating to that, and I really loved that because– He was this person that was a bit shy to be out there, but just doing that one bit of content or two bits of content really changed how he felt about what his role was, but also about what the market was perceiving business to be.
Craig: Yeah, I really like that. That’s a really solid example because if you stop and think about how often executives at your company have actually been putting themselves out in the spotlight – you actually realise it’s pretty low. So when you hear about examples like that, your first reaction might be, “Yeah well of course, I do see CEOs all the time.” But actually when you think about, if I’m just thinking about the clients I work with, I don’t– I’m just quickly going through in my mind. I don’t think any of them have had their CEO out in front doing any kind of content in that regard. It’s always been a marketing function. So I think that’s a really good example. And I guess I’m interested too in how you made that happen. Because you said, he’s a shy person, and he’s probably not used to it. I guess that was a bit of a process that you had to work through with him, about the benefits and then–
Ian: Yeah, definitely. So I think one thing – we had to convince, obviously the people in marketing, so that was the first challenge and a hurdle to overcome. And then once we actually got in front of him, we actually just kind of made it a very informal interview style.
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: And, and we basically used that and formatted the content from those key statements that he was talking about.
Craig: Cool.
Ian: So we went away and did the work.
Craig: Yeah, nice.
Ian: But a great way to do things, and I’ll– to tie this into content – again – and I was talking to a client today. You don’t have to make things hard, like don’t make things hard for yourself. What I was saying, “Look, get some testimonials for yourself. Look, what (17:49?) are people you’re working with– If they’re too–” It was too hard to do it, just interview them on the phone, write it down, and then send them an email saying, “Here’s what we discussed.” Or, “Here’s the – here’s a bit of content, is this okay? Change it if you like. Or just say ‘okay’ and send it back to me.”
Craig: Yeah, I like that. Yeah–
Ian: So there you go.
Craig: Okay, cool, yeah. Yeah, and I guess– So coming back to that marketing piece or the point that raised that. Is was who writes your marketing content? And the trend is that it’s, there’s– well the majority, more than 50% seems to be, moving away from internal and it’s external. Although executives I guess are still internal. But yeah, definitely the – it’s on the decrease in terms of staff writing the content. They used to write 46%, now it’s down to 41% and it is moving externally. But yeah, that point about executives, they’re now – almost 20% of content is being written by executives, so that’s a really interesting stat. Yeah.
Ian: You know what, I think that over time, all that’s going to increase. And I think more people actually are going to do content curation and get better at it.
Craig: Yeah. I agree. Okay, so the sales challenge, this is– Yeah, totally different.
Ian: Yeah, do you want to talk a bit about that, Craig?
Craig: Well I’ll just mention what it was. This was on page 65 through to page 67 of the report, and it’s just talking about what’s the number 1 challenge that sales teams have and it’s– I guess it– When you hear it, it makes sense, but if you were to try and think about it without me telling you what it is, what would you say it is? Think about that for a second. The number 1 challenge is manual data entry. And, isn’t that crazy? It’s kind of like manual data entry is the biggest challenge that sales teams have. But this was across the board, really -executives, and the sales people in the teams, and their managers, and that kind of thing. It was kind of common ground. And it’s just because they spend so long typing in bits here and trying to find bits of information from other sections, and just trying to get data compiled. It just seems really bizarre. But yeah, what are your thoughts around that, Ian?
Ian: You know what? I think that that’s a big challenge, Craig. And I even went into a business today, who we’re doing some website work for. And I noticed that they had a system. And the marketing guy was actually taking the data and put into an XL spreadsheet and using it. Because that’s how he found it easier to go through information. So again here we’re getting this duplication of all this effort going on. And not only that – that’s his system. So if he’s sick or he leaves tomorrow, there’s no consistent effort. Because no one’s going to know that he actually called or emailed somebody. Which – what he was doing. The guys in sales and service will have no idea that he’d done that.
Craig: Right, yeah.
Ian: So I think this is a key point. If – (21:02?) things in a central place, everybody’s on the same page, and everybody knows what’s going on. Then it just makes it really easy for them to then do the rest of the things that they’re doing.
Craig: Yeah, well that’s right. And we won’t go into it now. But in previous episodes we have discussed all the benefits of a CRM and getting a proper process around a CRM, and how it pulls in other data as well. But yeah, just really interesting that that is the number one challenge. So if you’re struggling with that in your own business, don’t assume that oh this is just specific to you. This is a common challenge, and this report also then goes into highlighting some of the ways people are overcoming that around better technology and better systems as well. So, and we’ll build on those in coming episodes.
Ian: So Craig, in saying that, I think it also comes down to people– I think people in the high level or in the organisation decide on direction tools – actually saying, “Look, we’re going to go this way and we’re going to use this tool.” ‘Cause I think if you have a system and people are not using it, that’s where everything’s breaking down.
Craig: Right. So not, so you need – you need management buy in. Is that what you’re alluding to? That that that–
Ian: Yes.
Craig: Yeah, so they’ve got to be on board, it’s– Yeah, totally.
Ian: Yeah they’ve got to be on board, and I think there’s got to be systems in place to manage that. So, checks in place or audits in place to make sure things are happening. Because I think – I’ve seen this quite a few times. People start using something. They go, “Oh that’s too hard, I’ll go back to the way I was doing it before.” Not understanding the impact on the business as a whole. They’re – they might be helping themselves, but really on a business perspective they’re actually being a detriment to what’s going on. So I think that’s really the key. So yes, it might be hard sometimes, but I think it’s to keep – keep the focus and keep– Put a process in place.
Craig: Exactly. Motivation of the week.
Ian: HubSpot results. So–
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: So, since spoke last time, they’ve announced their results.
Craig: Yeah, we won’t dwell on this. Just to mention that they’re growing. So they’ve now – their – total customers 16 854. Which is up 35% from the same time last year. So there you go, HubSpot’s growing.
Ian: That’s fantastic, and they’re agile, which I love.
Craig: Yeah, exactly.
Ian: Not afraid to try new things out.
Craig: Yeah, that’s right.
Ian: So yeah, that’s good.
Craig: Alright, let’s finish with our resource of the wee,.
Ian: So you want to talk about our Facebook advertising tips, right?
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: There’s a really good article on Moz, which is a very trusted source for search content.
Craig: Yeah. And it was a good article, just – it wasn’t– It’s not super in depth. It’s not super techy or anything. It’s just 10 things I’ve learned while learning Facebook ads. So we’ve got a link in the show notes. Just some really good high level tips. I’d recommend if you’re getting started with Facebook ads – and really that’s where a lot of people are putting time and money these days. So you’ve got to be on there testing it out. This is a good little overview, some really good tips. Learn from someone else’s mistakes. So I always love those, when you can learn from others.
Ian: Yes. I really like that. Now, talking about Facebook advertising. A couple of episodes ago, you had a client that actually didn’t want to try it out. So you’ve installed the pixel, and you’re going to see whether you can build the audience.
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: How is that going?
Craig: So that’s – it’s actually gone well. So what we’ve done, just to recap for people that didn’t hear it in a previous episode. I was saying a challenge I had with a client was – I wanted to do– I wanted to test some Facebook ads with them. And they were like, “Oh no, we don’t want to do anything with Facebook. We don’t think that’s a channel for us.” And I was like, “Oh.” That was my challenge of the week. And so what we did, is we just installed the tracking pixel so we could build a custom audience. ie. Match people that have been to their website, who are also on Facebook. And then based on that audience we can say, “Oh well actually there’s quite a number that are.” And so, it’s only been a couple of weeks. But yeah, we’ve got a reasonable sized list. So that – and certainly large enough to say, “Yeah, this is worth testing.” So we’ve been able to get to that point without spending a cent. Just having the custom web audience growing, and highlighting the – I guess the opportunity there. So yeah–
Ian: So Craig, what’s a reasonable list size?
Craig: Well that’s a good question. I don’t know what benchmarks are, but I think if you’ve got a thousand people in a re-marketing list or a custom web audience list, that’s certainly enough to start testing with if you’re on a – just a medium sized B2B business. I think 1000 is plenty.
Ian: Yeah, and is that something over 30 days?
Craig: Yeah, so I normally like to build it up over 30 days, just to see what’s kinda there. I – this is probably going a bit off topic from the point. But I generally have a whole bunch of different lists. I have a 1 day list, I have 7 day list, and 14 and then a 30 day list.
Ian: Yeah.
Craig: But the 30 day list is what I generally use as a benchmark to see whether it’s worth doing. So yeah.
Ian: That’s really good. I think that’s a great, great outcome for you.
Craig: Yeah.
Ian: Demonstrating that there is and what is there that you can tap into.
Craig: Yeah exactly. And I guess the action item for any people listening to this, that maybe they have similar challenges internally with their companies. Where maybe senior management aren’t into Facebook, and they don’t see the benefit. Well here’s an easy way. Just set up your custom web audience, see how large your list grows over a month. You don’t even have to spend a cent, and then you’ve got real data to take to them and say, “Look, it’s worth testing.” So, yeah, give it a go.
Ian: Absolutely. Well, it’s been a great episode, Craig.
Craig: Yeah it’s been good, and great to chat with you and I – as I said at the start, I’m – I’ll touch base with you after I’ve seen James Bond and yeah we can trade Spectre notes.
Ian: Maybe you can pick up a tip or 2 for next week’s episode?
Craig: Yeah, that’s right.
Ian: Alright Craig.
Craig: Thanks Ian. Good to speak with you.
Ian: Bye.
Craig: See you mate, bye.
Thank you for listening to this episode of HubShots. For show notes, resources, HubSpot news – including practical strategies you can implement. Visit us at hubshots.com.
