Early September in Boston. We have two things to say… humidity galore and HUBSPOT INBOUND! We’ve attended for several years now and honestly, believe it or not, each year is better than the previous. This year we sent three from our team; Marilyn Rogers, Emily Supernavage, and Lisa Miller, for the four days and they returned energized, full of ideas, and with nothing but wonderful insights to share.
While this is merely the tip of the iceberg for highlights, don’t worry, we’ll be sharing more learnings along with how they apply to our clients, regularly on our blog.
Ironically, the week before Inbound, we bolstered those very same team traits at our Channel Maven summer Innovation Day in Boulder, CO. We learned, convened, connected and built a stronger team through giving back to kids in need. Read more in our recent blog: What Happens When You Bring a Great Team Together
The entire keynote delivered by Hubspot founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah was (of course) compelling but in particular Dharmesh drew interesting parallels between parenting and growing a company, and highlighted the launch of the Customer Code, a slide share of HubSpot’s mechanism for creating a company that customers love. It’s worth a look as the principles he delivered can easily be applied to all business scenarios; Vendors who want to create a Channel team your Partners will love, managers who want to build departments your team will love - you get the drift!
It’s no mystery there is a glut of content online and the vast majority goes virtually unconsumed. As content creators whether you’re speaking to or through your Partners or directly to customers, it’s crucial not only to stand out but to deliver content they can relate to. While this might seem simple, it’s a challenge for most writers.
In this session, Gabriella highlighted the importance of understanding your brand’s storytelling objectives for example, do you want to come across as a “regular Joe” aimed at being “relatable” or are you more aligned with a “hero” archetype, a brand your audience aspires to become? Taking the time to really understand how your audience wants to see you positioned, is key to creating engaging content. For more information, Gabriella, has a ton of useful information on her website - DIY MFA.
The big takeaway from Marcus’ presentation was all about trust. Trust is the one foundational element of business growth that’s been around since the dawn of time. And his advice? Build trust elements into your content, answer negative or difficult questions with honesty. Let your prospects know how you will handle outages, mishaps and other stumbling blocks of business, before they sign on the dotted line. And don’t forget, the same goes for speaking to Partners.
Talking about flaws or roadblocks may sound counterintuitive to growth or like an opportunity for the competition to swoop in and steal your ideas but in actuality, sharing your “secret sauce” is a major trust builder. Prospects and Partners want to see (and believe) you’re going to help them build their future.
Next up, get personal. Not just a Hi [first name] in your automated emails, but take time to actually find and highlight something specifically related to them or created for them. Make it your goal for a prospect or Partner to become impressed with your attention to details about what matters to them. Trust is earned and content is a powerful medium for building it. When you sit down to write, develop a practice of focusing the delivery from a trust-building point of view.
When you’re ready to binge watch marketing and sales ideas, tons of recorded sessions are available online. And they’re not just from 2018, some are relevant evergreen topics from years past too. It’s a treasure trove of information to spark your creativity!
Content creation is one of our specialties. If you’d like more information on how we develop engaging content for technology and other companies, let us know, we’re happy to share content strategy tips as well as takeaways we brought back from #Inbound18.