Why it's good to be aware about methodologies and concepts?

It can be very hard for me to keep a clear grasp of how all the different Methodologies, concepts, tasks and buzzwords relate to each other and where to focus my attention. This a big problem for me as it affects the balance of my marketing and also service delivery related activities.  At times, I get a sort of vertigo and get very confused about where I should focus my attention. 

If I loose sight of our goals and principles I am likely to fail in the long term. If I focus too much on the long term and miss out on the daily activities that keep our marketing machine running, I fail immediately . To ensure I find a balance between these two ways of thinking and working I have to be able to see the bigger picture. The framework  that I can place all these principles,  tasks etc. into so that I can actually use them to reach our goals.

At About Inbound, we focus heavily on knowledge and communication. Our clients depend on us to give them clarity, quality and peace of mind, so in short, if I am not clear about what I am doing or about how to apply the concepts we sell, I am kind off.. well... useless. 

To combat these moments of marketing research "vertigo" I often try to order my learning on paper or chat it through with Vourneen who is About Inbound's founder and ultimate super expert. This ordering of thoughts helps me make sense of it all and has over time allowed me to quickly grasp new concepts and approaches because I can visualize where they "sit" in the jungle that is modern growth marketing. I also noticed that many of our clients run into similar issues. They know many of the buzzwords and definitions but can't quite connect them together, or they are unable to apply them because they are too snowed under in their day-to-day tasks..

To help define some of the workings of a modern Growth strategy I decided to create a series of posts around it. I hope they can help you in your quest to keep your marketing growth stars aligned and making them work for you.

So, you are thinking about running an inbound marketing workshop. This means that you likely feel that your team is not getting the most out of your Inbound tools and processes. There might be several challenges to address. If you find a good training and strategy consultant, they should be able to help you define your need further and find the training solution that is the best fit for your business. At About Inbound, we always ask you to consider a number of questions (listed below) to help you flesh out your training and consulting needs. This will make sure you end up with the best advise so you can get the most value out of your investment of time and resources. In the interest of transparency and to help you define your need whomever you may choose, we listed out some of our qualification steps for your benefit. We address these during our free scoping consultancy calls. Read on to get started!

Hubspot announced some exciting new native video functionality across its marketing, sales and service hub tools recently. The announcement got us very excited at About Inbound, so we spent some time to see what the new video features do and how they can be utilised. The three main new capabilities in Hubspots' new video arsenal are interactivity, tracking and the ability for sales and service  to record and send videos to your customers using Hubspot native tools. We spent a few afternoons of reading, configuring and testing the new video marketing tools,  and this is what we found. 

The Service Hub is Hubspot's new Customer Service Software that helps your organisation focus on creating a better customer experience. In today's world, customers have shorter attention spans and higher expectations. They want more control over the process and often opt for a of a self-service solution. Wanting to do things in their own way and in their own time. 

Disclaimer: Just to let you know, both I and About Inbound have no affiliation to the INBOUND event. This is an independent guide with helpful information based on our experiences  and is meant for those travelling to INBOUND this year. Particularly first timers that are travelling internationally.  If you have any feedback or comments, we'd love to hear them. For official information visit inbound.com

We're well into summer and many of our clients are starting to plan their trips to  Inbound 2018., the annual event that is held from the 4th until the 7th of September. This is the time of year that the questions about planning and preparation for Inbound crop up again. To make life as easy as possible for everyone, we decided to write down some of the most asked travel and preparation tips for the Inbound conference in 2018 for easy reference.

Have you gotten stuck or felt restricted by Hubspot's email layout editing features? We know we have wished it to be more intuitive. We often see clients getting confused during the process of creating their email layouts using Hubspot. We recently spotted a very exciting feature in one Hubspot portal that might make these struggles a thing of the past!

The current options for group training and collaboration for remote teams/audiences can be divided in 2 distinct approaches. You can fly your team to a central location for one or more days to collaborate and learn the skills needed or, set a date and time and use one of the many remote meeting tools with video, audio and screen sharing for self paced training and collaboration. The second approach needs far less investment but often results in less engagement. We recently found out that there will soon be a third option that could provide a better balance between these time/cost and results trade offs. You will soon be able to get your audience into a virtual room using your existing devices and VR. 

Back in December 2017 we started having major issues with our Hubspot social integrated twitter accounts at About Inbound. We ended up spending a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on and lost a lot of time posting tweets that did not have any reach, so much so that we wrote a blog post about how API integration issues can cause major disruptions that we as marketers should be conscious of the integrations we depend on. Frustrated with our unsatisfactory workaround (as we'd have to guess when the problem might reoccur and on every occurrence we would loose time and followers) we kept a close eye on twitter development sources and Hubspot product updates. 

It was around 12 noon when we met with Jonny - CEO of meetingroom.io, to get a demo of the latest iteration of their interactive room. We already knew a bit about the concept and were excited to see what kind of scope the service might have for providing remote training and virtual meeting opportunities. Jonny warmly welcomed me into the meeting where he and Vourneen were already having a chat at a round table in the demo room. The space was fairly large, with two windows looking out onto an infinite plane of rippling water. The room’s four walls were covered with various screens and whiteboard surfaces. 

The startup world is so dynamic and different from the world of Enterprise, that it can be extremely difficult to anchor your growth with the appropriate processes. Bringing in quality leads and converting them into customers is always a top priority in business but any startup growth model is by definition very dynamic. This makes it extra difficult to build the right inbound sales team and put in place the right sales processes to support the rapid growth and flexibility needed for your startup to be successful.