The first time I attended Inbound, Hubspot sent me to help with some workshops and onsite trainings. The whole event went by in a flash. I was running from meeting to meeting catching up with colleagues and clients both day and night.
One of the hardest parts of working in marketing is keeping your skills up to date. I have made this slightly easier for you by listing several recomended learning resources in this post. This is reflected in the latest State of Inbound Report where 19% said training was the company's top challenge. Most of us spend time implementing, planning and executing campaigns. Leaving little room to brush up or expand your skill set. However, this is a dangerous tactic if you want to grow your career and become a successful T Shaped marketer (see Buffer's or Moz's diagram below).
Inbound is an increasingly popular approach that organisations are using to attract customers. For some on the outside looking in, it can be difficult to know where to start with Inbound marketing. Content offers, blogging, personas, social, email? The list goes on. You might have seen companies being successful with Inbound but you often don't see the whole journey from the begining. Success doesn't magically happen with Inbound. You need substantial effort, the right tools, resources and process in place to really be sucessful.
I delivered a workshop in Sweden recently where the team were spread across multiple time zones, in different continents, operating in different languages and markets. The company had found themselves with a whole new marketing team due to exponential growth. The challenge was to get all the new hires trained up and the entire global team working cohesively and productively.
This week I have had several calls with clients and prospective clients. In preparation for those calls I generally do some online research. I take a look at their site, social media, blog etc. A lot of the time, I cannot tell what their business is actually about until I speak with them. Often this still dosn't help me. Why? As they still can't clearly explain what they offer and to whom. I'm not perfect, I find this difficult also.
After I left hubspot in February 2017, I set up my business, my own business bank account, my logo, secured my first clients and delivered my first 2 day onsite within a very short space of time. It's funny, I had delivered dozens and dozens of onsite workshops in the last few years. I trained upto 160 people in my last year at hubspot alone. However, this workshop felt very different and special. It was my own business that I was representing this time.
These learnings are based on an Inbound Marketing training workshop in Dublin I ran for a group of 10 individuals from a multinational organisation in mid 2016. Only a few people in the room had any previous marketing knowledge. Most didn’t understand what Inbound Marketing was and how it could impact their day-to-day or their organisations goals. By the end of the day there was a clear transformation. They were excited by the possibilities. They understood how to use Hubspot tools to build Inbound Marketing Campaigns and had clear next steps in place.
Maybe you thought email marketing automation would solve the worlds marketing problems?
It would end the hassle of remembering to send out all those pesky follow up emails to the right people at the right time. That somehow this marketing automation software you just persuaded your boss to invest in would finally do everything for you. That once you created a miraculous recipe you could sit back drink coffee and watch the leads roll in? until ....they didn’t?
Well, all is not lost folks I have compiled a list of effective optimization strategies to help you make the most out of your marketing automation campaigns.
This is the time of year when annual marketing plans are put in place, your inbound marketing goals are defined, and timelines are structured.
As a marketer your focus can be spread accross many different areas. Your manager wants you to produce more ROI metrics on your monthly report, your monthly email newsletter is due and you havn't got sign off yet, you need to produce content for your blog and the social channels need updating.
