The HubHeroes Podcast: Recent Episodes
George B. Thomas
We cover the HubSpot and Inbound topics that help you streamline your processes, communication, and revenue streams to grow your business, impact the world, and become the Hubhero of your organization.
This episode is brought to you by Inbound Back Office.
Months ago, when we were first brainstorming topics for what would become the HubHeroes Podcast, Max threw out a term he was really excited about that made me go, "Wait a minute, what did you just say?" (But in a good way!)
Inbound physics! ⚛️
What the heck does inbound physics mean? I'm glad you asked, because that's exactly what we're digging into, in this very special episode of HubHeroes.
🔎 Related: What is the HubSpot Flywheel, is the funnel dead? (HubHeroes podcast)
You see, each week, we typically devote our time to discussing explicit tactics and inbound strategy, or the nitty-gritty details of the HubSpot technology itself. In this episode, however, we're taking a step back and unpacking the mindset you need to possess overall when thinking about inbound for your organization.
Because "inbound physics" isn't a cutesy term we dreamed up to be clever. Rather, it's a powerful way of thinking about the inbound methodology and the HubSpot Flywheel that will radically change how you think about inbound ... and the results you see from it.
As a HubSpot user, you can never forget that one of the best ways to get most out of inbound is to understand the connective tissues that bind the methodology and the platform itself together. And inbound physics will help you do just that.
What we cover in this episode
- Why is it even important for us to be rethinking how we look at the inbound methodology overall? Isn't inbound ... well, just inbound?
- OK, what the heck is inbound physics? What does that even mean?
- Why did you come up with this? What problem does this really solve?
- We've had a few debates on HubHeroes about the Flywheel, but how does the motion of the Flywheel figures into inbound physics?
- What do most folks still get wrong about what inbound really is?
- What are examples of the laws of inbound physics?
- Why not inbound biology or inbound chemistry or inbound AP anatomy and physiology? Why inbound PHYSICS?
- What are the ways in which an inbound physics mindset can improve how you practice inbound as a team or an organization for better results?
Make sure you check out the HubHeroes special offer at Inbound Back Office offer at https://www.inboundbackoffice.com/hubheros
Ask anyone who knows me, one of my favorite nuggets of wisdom to share is, "Sometimes you don't have the day you want, but you have the day you need." In a way, the same holds true for this episode. Did we talk about what I wanted for this episode of HubHeroes? Nope. Not even close. But do I now see we recorded the episode we needed to record this week? Absolutely.
I had zero intent of recording anything for HubHeroes that even remotely resembled a Thanksgiving-themed episode. Let's be honest, while there are exceptions, most branded Thanksgiving content is more self-serving in nature rather than truly focused on expressing gratitude.
However, after a twist of fate, a Thanksgiving-themed episode is exactly what we created.
In this week's atypical episode, it's just Liz Murphy, me, and our mics. (The rest of our crew will be back next week, don't worry!) Looking ahead to Thanksgiving and everything we're currently grateful for, we talked honestly about painful lessons learned, how uncomfortable moments shaped us as humans, the people who have brought us to where we are today, and how important it is to be open to pivots in life.
I've gotta tell you, much of what I talk about in this episode I would have never dreamed of sharing before now. But as I tell anyone who is considering working with me, the humans always come before HubSpot in any client relationship. So, it was only a matter of time before I was willing to share my goals and my fears, as well as the experiences that created the man many of you know now.
Next week, we'll return with our usual HubSpot-fueled shenanigans. For now, however, I'd ask each and every one of you to listen to this episode whenever you find it in your feed – as you're traveling to see family, as you're prepping your turkey, or maybe when you're trying to find a moment to center yourself and refocus as we look ahead to a new year.
This isn't a fluffy episode. This episode both my way of opening up to you, as well as a challenge – every single one of you has a unique human experience that informs how you show up in your personal and professional lives. And guess what? So do your customers.
For those of you who celebrate, Happy Thanksgiving. 🦃
In this episode of the HubHeores podcast, we talk about INBOUND 2022, what to do to prepare, how to survive in-person and virtual event styles, as well as a quick walk down memory lane. We also leave you with some post-INBOUND event action items and strategies to consider along your Inbound and Hubspot educational journey.
In this episode of the Hubheroes podcast, Devyn, Max, and George break down their thoughts on buyer personas around marketing, sales, list segmentation, tactical and automated processes, and so much more. Listen in as they share when to create, tweak, and even blow up your personas and why.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
Coming soon ...
This episode of the HubHeroes podcast talks about the buyer's journey. We hit it from the marketing, sales, and even customer side of what it is, why it's essential, and so much more. Heck, we even take time out to debunk some buyer journey myths.
TRANSCRIPTION OF THE SHOW:
George B. Thomas (01:09):
So I'm unsure how to start because I'm still giggling. Just so everybody on this episode knows, I will clip out what happened during that intro. It just put it on the internet because, oh my gosh, it's crazy. Speaking of crazy. It's funny to think about that. We're gonna have a conversation around buyer's journey or the buyer's journey today because if you've been doing inbound since 20 10, 20 11, 20 12, whenever you're like, oh my gosh, I've heard about buyers journey or the buyer's journey so much and so many times, but have you heard about it? How we're gonna talk about it, cuz we're gonna bring out some things that we don't think are stated enough or maybe even thought about. And honestly, here's where I go with this gentleman. Today is somebody's day one. Today somebody purchased HubSpot. They just learned about the inbound strategy, like the buyers. Woo. And we're gonna help 'em out right here right now. So let's start very at the top of this conversation, kind of the foundational piece, historically, when you two were training folks, and you had to talk about this framework, this methodology, the buyer's journey, how did you teach it? What did you talk about?
Max Cohen (02:33):
Yeah. And I'm hoping for anyone listening to this; if you haven't listened to episode two first, listen to episode two, then listen to this one. Cause we talked a lot about the idea of what you're doing and attract and the idea of what good content is, goals, challenges, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We might have even mentioned buyer personas at some point. The way that I always kind of framed up the buyer's journey is a tool to help you explain what your content should be doing? What is the change in mindset? What is your prospect's mindset, and what do you need to do with your content versus just making sure it's valuable. Cause the idea of solving a goal or a challenge at every stage of the buyer's journey. Yeah. You want to make sure your content's doing that, but there's this mindset shift that you have to facilitate with your content to get someone to a place where it makes sense for you to eventually say, Hey, we got this product that solves for a problem. But if you haven't already figured out that you have that problem, marketers don't have a right to say, Hey, you should buy our product. The buyer's journey is kind of like utility. You can kind of; it's like an extra layer. You can put all your content to gut check yourself and say, what am I trying to do with this content? What mindset change am I trying to facilitate? So and so forth.
George B. Thomas (03:49):
Well, and it's interesting, right? It's interesting because max, if I unpack just for two hot seconds, the fact that you went marketing and content, okay. I wanna sum that up for a second now, Devin; when you think about the buyer's journey, where does your brain go? How have you historically talked about it?
Devyn Belamy (04:08):
I usually talk about it from a sales perspective. Mm-hmm
And then the consideration phase is when we're talking about the different ways you can solve the problem because, you know, we're all HubSpot fanboys here. We're gonna talk about HubSpot until we're blue in the face. But the fact is there are several different ways and tools you can use to solve your problem. And there are a lot of methodologies and different things that you can implement to get you to your goal. Of course, we, as HubSpot fanboys, always say HubSpot's the best because it is. But you know, that's just our bias, professional and expert opinions. So, you know, take it for what it's worth. But then there is the decision phase. So now we've talked about and identified what the problem is. We've talked about different ways to go about solving the problem.
Now let's talk about what tool we will use to solve this problem. If you want to talk about using generic tools, you have a piece of wood that you want to Fasten to another piece of wood; that's the awareness problem. And then the consideration is like, how can I do this? I can use a hammer and nail, or I can use a drill and a drill bit. And then we talk about the decision phase where it's like, yeah, we can go hammer and nail, but you know, if we use a screw, it's gonna hang onto the wood better. So you know what? I'm gonna buy a screw that is, in a nutshell, the buyer's journey.
George B. Thomas (06:30):
So here's the thing: I love that you went max into marketing and content dev. And I love that you went into sales, and I love that. We kind of did this high overarching awareness consideration decision because here's the thing I don't talk about it either way. Like yes, it's all of those things. But when I talk about the buyer's journey, I say it's something we all do. It's not HubSpot specific, but I love to map it out in HubSpot, but it's something that we all do. It's an unconscious thing that human beings do. Let me explain, for instance: I got a couple of little stories. I like to tell you you're on vacation with your other half. You are at the beach; there's a sunset. That ocean is soft and beautiful, and it's just like beautiful.
You lean in to get a kiss. And all of a sudden, you get the Heisman. Woo. You are aware that you have a problem. That's right. Bad breath. Yes. Lord black hits again, bad breath. So what do you do? You run to the local store and consider mince, gum, or something else. But you then go to the cashier. You put the mince on there, and you make a decision. You hand them your money. Now that's a very small thing. It's like a dollar 25, $2. I don't know. Now maybe $7 for some mince pretty soon, but it's a, it's a small purchase, but you were aware, the bad breath you considered, what do I need to fix it? You decided you got your wall out and paid the same amount on an extremely large purchase. You're driving down the road.
You happen to be driving in your 1989 Toyota. And all of a sudden, you're aware that you have a problem because there is a transmission on the freeway behind where you once were driving. Now you are aware I am not going anywhere anytime soon. So do I just start walking? Do I get an Uber? Do I call the tow truck? What do I do? Also, your brain then goes into, well, do I wanna get it repaired? Do I wanna buy a new car? You're considering all of these things, and you decide, Hmm, maybe I want a new 2022 Lexus. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know what you decide you want to do, but small or large, it is about the consumer. It is about you, the human. It is a thing that we unconsciously do. So should sales be leaning into it? Yes. Should marketing be leveraging it? Yes. Should the service be paying attention to it? Yes. And by the way, I haven't even mentioned that there's an emotion you're feeling across each one of these phases that you're going through daily. I'll pause there. Yeah. Where do your guys' minds go next?
Max Cohen (09:12):
So I think it's a good thing to remind all of ourselves, and you just illustrated it well. George is that the buyer's journey is not rocket science. It is just a blown-out version of fundamental human decision-making. And you go through probably millions of buyer journeys every day in your own life. You go, ah, something's not okay. You figure out what's not okay. You make the quick decision on how you wanna solve the problem. And then you choose the thing that's gonna do it. So like sometimes it's very fast. Sometimes certain parts are very quick, and others are longer, but all it is is a basic human decision, making those two examples of gum and buying a car. Same idea. The other is like a big thing to kind of think about here. A lot of marketers are only operating in that decision stage.
Going back to your gum example in the consideration stage, you were like; I could get gum, or I could get mince, or I could go by toothpaste; whatever you ended up choosing, that's your consideration stage in the decision stage. That's why you're saying, okay, I've decided I want to mince, but am I going to go with TAC or Mentos depending on how good the marketing and Mentos are in the decision stage? That might help you make your choice. The problem with most marketers these days is they spend 99% of their time on the content creation and marketing they're doing. Just talking about the decision stage because we're all trained to make content, media, or whatever about how fantastic our product is and why it's better than our competitor and all this other stuff. Cuz traditionally, that's what we've been doing traditionally.
That's what, that's what advertising has been forever. The problem is the number of people already in their decision stage, where they've already figured out their problem. They've decided on the way that they wanna solve it. Now they're saying who does this specific thing, the best, the number of people already there is minuscule compared to the number of folks in your audience or potential audience that are in those awareness and consideration stage phases where they don't even know they have a problem. They don't know the way to solve it. The thing that I always kind of come back to is the idea of earning the right. I haven't earned the right to tell you my product is better than my competitors. Until I have shown you that our type, our kind of solution or product or go chewing gum or whatever is the best way to solve your problem compared to the other ways you could solve it.
And I have no business or any right to tell you that this is the best way for you to solve a problem. If I don't know, you already have that problem yet. And I haven't done the legwork to help you figure out your problem. So it's like these layers of earning the right to communicate in a certain way because people are in all different stages of it. But the vast majority are awareness and consideration, so you need to stop focusing on your decision stage content and shift your focus up that buyer's journey into the awareness and consideration.
George B. Thomas (12:13):
It's good. No, because I, as you're talking, imagine going into the doctor's office and the doctor's like, I think we should amputate yo, oh woo. Let's back up, doc Devin. What are your thoughts?
Devyn Belamy (12:25):
My thing is that when we're talking about, and this was something I, that I mentioned in the last episode where, uh, we're talking about not getting, you know, just focused and getting hyper-focused on the problems that you solve, but talking about the, uh, industry in general and being a thought leader on the industry. That is huge regarding awareness level content. So true. I mentioned earlier that the problems that they might be aware of are adjacent to the problems you're trying to solve. They might not be aware of the problems you solve. You might not know that you have bad breath; you might be walking around burning people's eyebrows off. And they're just too polite to say anything. The thing is, is that creating, if you're talking about content, creating content that talks about industry challenges, in general, might bring someone to a point where they're like, oh my goodness, I didn't even think about that as an issue I like to talk about.
I did, uh, a specific buyer's journey-focused campaign, uh, some years ago. And, and I'm kind of proud of it. What happened was that the goal was to get auto repair shop owners to buy this piece of software that gives these millennials access to seeing what's wrong with their cars on their phones. We could tell them, " Hey, you need to start sending out a text with PDFs of inspection reports. And they could have told me what to go do with myself.
So that was like the awareness. Here's how you market to younger people as an auto repair shop on social media. Was it the problem that we solved? No, but it was what used to be called the top of funnel content, where it was just content that made people aware of an issue. Even if it's something that's not directly related to the problem we solve, the thing is, is that what we brought it down to was the next step was, oh, Hey, you know, there are ways other ways that you can connect with these young people as well, not just using social media. So now they're considering how to connect with young people. We made the, a problem awareness that you know, there are issues connecting young people. Now we need to talk about the different tools you can use and then the decision phase; oh, by the way, this is one of the tools you can use.
Here's how it solves your problem of connecting to these people, which was the awareness that we brought up initially, which had nothing to do with what we sold. That's the path. And it worked well and made lots of money, and people came and bought stuff and lived happily ever after; the point is, is that when you're dealing with content when you're talking with people, you have to be more open-minded about what they need, what they need to solve as a problem. And yes, by leading them down the buyer's journey, by leading them down that path, you can bring them to how you're solving the problem. And then also help them become more aware of the larger picture mm-hmm
Max Cohen (15:54):
If I could add something in there too, you don't have to overengineer it to think that I have to have an awareness piece of content. That's like totally trying to get them to change their mind, to perfectly slot them into this arc that I have in the consideration stage, which is going to mold their brain, then go to a place where they have to buy something. You could make a piece of awareness and stage content. That's just helping someone like figure out a problem in their industry that doesn't have to directly tie this down the line selling 'em something. Again, a big piece of this is building community, building thought leadership, and genuinely educating people. So you have trust built. You don't have to say this must lead down a perfectly clean arc to a purchasing point. Mm.
George b. Thomas (16:37):
Are we gonna have our first disagreement on the actual hub hero's pocket? No, no, no, no. I haven't opened my mouth yet.
So here's the thing disagree. So here's the thing. So here's the thing I'll say. Yes. And because I don't like disagreements and agree with your max, sometimes it can be a standalone article. Mm-hmm, however, as a marketer, as a strategist, as a business owner, as somebody that understands the power of story for the humans that are going through a journey called the buyer's journey, there is a magic place that you can get when you start to think about content in threes, by the way, I do this with blog articles, I do this with videos. I do this with lead generation opportunities. I think to myself, how can I craft a fantastic piece of awareness content that the end or somewhere in that article links to the consideration, article the act two of part one. And once they're in that consideration piece of content, how can I get them to act three?
In act three, the happy ending is they find the princess, the prince, and the solution to their problem. And it's because I've taken the time to craft three pieces of content threaded together. Tell the entire story that they've been able to either sit and do at one sitting or bookmark and do over multiple sittings. And again, think about your lead conversion opportunities. When I talk about a pillar page, I talk about ensuring you have an awareness lead conversion opportunity. Make sure you have a considerable lead conversion opportunity. Make sure you have a decision towards the bottom of the pillar page conversion opportunity because now we're mapping to their needs and where they are in the journey they're placing. Yeah. So not disagree. Not every piece has to have that, but I think people need to lean into that content model.
Now, I also am gonna backtrack off that for one hot second because Devon, you said, and I love this, and we always go in this direction, a problem they solve. I can tell you in the multiverse, there is another type of buyer's journey that I wish people would start to think about creating because it doesn't always have to be about a problem. Many times it can be about aspiration. Where are they trying to get? And what awareness problem is stopping them from getting to the mountaintop. Yeah. What do they have to consider to pack in their backpack and put on their feet to climb that mountain to what they're trying to get to? How do we get them to that decision phase now? I am a professional speaker. Now I am a business owner. Now I am 100 pounds lighter, whatever it may be. Yeah. How do we start thinking about the problem and aspirational buyer journeys we can put people through?
Devyn Belamy (19:37):
My thing is that when you start there and, and I do, uh, encourage people looking at that, one of the things that you have to take into consideration is that you can open a can of worms in a good way where you can by pointing out or setting a goal. Then what happens is that you have more goals, or if you're pointing out a problem, then you have more problems that are like a subset from this, it's like, so, okay, I want to get here. So I need to accomplish B, C, and D. Now we're back to the awareness phase on ABC and D. It's one of those things when you're doing a content exercise. HubSpot has an excellent tool for it. When you are trying to identify topics, what you can do is you can start looking at your core topic and then branching off of that topic and looking at things that are related to it.
The point of the exercise is to identify long-tail keywords and, you know, get into your little SEO rabbit hole and push up on your glasses. And, but what you want to do is look at what's related to the goals and the aspirations or the problems you're trying to solve, understanding that it's not a linear process. Or, uh, I heard George say, it's spaghetti. You started in one place, and then you have so many different paths you can take. And so many different things you can address just come from that one thing.
George B. Thomas (21:08):
Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, it's spaghetti. It is spaghetti. We are all crazy, weird, unique human beings that Bob and weave and twist and turn, and it is, oh God, it is not a linear path.
Max Cohen (21:23):
Couple things. One, I don't think you can make an honest attempt to understand what people are searching for or concerned about within the awareness and consideration stage. If you don't do that, we discussed the idea of goals and challenges. All this comes back to building your buyer, persona people, and over-complicate buyer personas like crazy. I can't tell you how many people have been here. Here's a little template, go build a buyer persona or whatever. And they come back and say like all the information they have, like, this is how much money we think they make a year and they're this educated, and this is their job title. And their goal is that we wanna sell them software. That's the challenge. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. For anyone watching this, a buyer's like a very easy way to get started with a buyer persona.
So you can get that out of the way and start creating content is a list of goals and challenges. And that's it because that ultimately informs what people are searching for online. They have a goal they're trying to achieve. So that aspiration, you just talked about George, they're on the way to achieving that goal. They're hitting a bunch of challenges that are getting in the way. They're also trying to figure out ways that they could hit that goal faster or just figuring out what the path is. All those things would fall into awareness, stage content around getting to that goal, or consideration stage content around solving a particular challenge. So I don't think you can start touching the buyer's journey without thinking about those goals and aspirations because that should inform what they would be doing. So for example, instead of paying some marketing firm to go out and do a bunch of like research if you know, you're selling to the owners of small mechanic companies, you can probably, or mechanic companies, small mechanic shops, I don't know, auto body shops, whatever.
Let's say you sell software to auto shops. If you know that you're trying to reach the owners of auto body shops, you can probably come up with some pretty good educated speculation around their goals and aspirations. They're trying to run a successful auto shop like an auto body shop. That's like one of their bigger goals. You know, maybe some of them want a franchise. Maybe some of them just want to get cut; in general, you can safely assume they want to grow and operate as successful, whatever type of business it is from there. You can start thinking, well, it's like, all right, what potential problems someone might face going there? Even if they don't even know that those are problems and what are some symptoms of an issue they might face trying to achieve that goal. That's where all your inspiration for awareness and consideration comes from again. That aspiration piece is like; you can; I don't think you can do it without that. Like you have to have that and your, your buyer's persona or whatever you wanna call it, your ideal customer profile. Like I don't care that should heavily inform all of this from goals and aspiration perspective.
Devyn Belamy (24:06):
I wanna jump in real quick. People will turn around and ask. So, so then why are the demographic questions on there? If they're not necessary, they're not necessary for the topics, but what you have to consider. But the most important thing with that content is how you say it. You don't talk to a mechanic like you talk to a doctor. And that's when that information comes into play, regardless of the person's education level, colloquialisms, vernacular jokes, whatever cultural norms may apply to this person, be it racial identity, professional identity, whatever it is. You're missing a step if you aren't solving their problems. You need to know what you're solving for before you figure out who you're talking to and how.
George B. Thomas (24:58):
Yes. Yeah, yes. And listeners, fellow hub heroes. Let me just say this. We dipped our toes into buyer personas, and we're gonna come real quick back out of it because today's conversation is the buyer's journey. By the way, I flipped to our notes and hashtag strategy for the win. Next week's episode is actually about buyer personas. Who are they anyway? Where I'm going to get a chance to talk real deep about how I teach people to do personas when they're starting with HubSpot. And it's gonna be a really exciting conversation, but getting back on today. The buyer's journey, why, and all of the things we've talked about might be the answer to this, but I wanna dig a little bit more profound; by the way, this whole, almost 30 minutes conversation has been based on the, what the Harkers, the buyer. Why is it vitally important for anybody listening to this to pay attention? Is that a question for us? Well, there's nobody else in the room.
Max Cohen (25:52):
Well, it's a structural sort of guardrail for you to view, okay? What am I tactically doing with my content? And I think the only other thing I want to make sure I, I like to get in here is an easier way to synthesize what you should be doing when you think about these different stages. Because it's one thing to understand the definitions of each stage. And I think we've done a pretty good job about that. So far, to recap for anyone who hasn't caught it, I don't know my problem in the awareness stage, but I have symptoms. I'm trying to figure out the consideration stages. I know my problem and want to figure out the best way to solve it. Decision stages. I know how I'm gonna solve it. Who's gonna do it best.
It's one thing to like, know those three stages, but I've still had people know the stages but then get confused on how that should guide them. Something that I've preached about for a long time to try to simplify this is that there are two sorts of mindsets you need to be thinking about when you're using the buyer's journey. There's the mindset your potential customer is in that's doing all this research, going through this whole phase, and then knowing that there's the mindset of how you should act as the marketer when creating the content. What's the introductory sentence you can tell yourself to ensure the content you're creating does its job. So in the awareness stage, the mindset of that buyer is, I don't know what my problem is yet, but I'm trying to figure it out. So you, as a marketer, when you create content, you should be saying this piece of content should be helping them figure out what their problem is.
And if it's not doing that, that content that is gonna do that in the consideration stage, they're going all right. I know what my problem is. Who does it best? So your content as the marketer, your, your mindset as the marketer is I need to create content that helps people figure out the best ways to solve those problems. This is how you should solve your problem, not why our products are great, our category is outstanding, or how we solve the problem. And then, in the decision stage, the buyer's mindset is I know how I want to solve it. Who does it best for you as the marketer should say, this is why we do it? The best marketers are already pretty good at that. Or maybe you're not so good at it, but the marketers are the majority already doing this. They're comparing their product to other things, all that other kind of stuff. They're saying why the features are so good, da, da, da, da, all this stuff you're used to doing. So that decision stage should be pretty easy for people, but it's the mindset of the first two. It's tougher.
George B. Thomas (28:07):
I'm going to jump in here for a second because I want to piggyback on something that came to my brain when you said, well, it should be the easiest because it's what you've already been doing. But since it's already what you've been doing, it's also the most accessible place to get better. And so the pro tip on this decision stage that you've already been doing is I would give these words to you please, by all that is holy learn, the subtle sell. There is a way to have other people talk about you. There's a way to say things that aren't the two-by-four moment where the customer is picking themselves off the ground going well, that didn't feel well at all. Let me see if somebody else talks about this more eloquently, customer-focused way; instead of just telling all of the features, talk about the benefits again; it is about the buyer.
It is about the ideal client profile. It is about humans. And if you position the excellent things you do in a way that is in it for me, from the human perspective, then suddenly, this subtle cell becomes much easier to pull off. Max. I love that entire section, by the way, I would say maybe that's a rewind section where people listen to that again because there's so much there. And I can't wait to get it, I'm gonna give Devin some time to unpack his thoughts on what just went down, but I wanna make sure we spend five or 10 minutes kind of debunking the buyer journey, myths that we hate. We'll get into that because I'll backtrack your conversation. And I wanna talk about how there are layers two, three, and four of what you just unpacked. So listeners rewind, re-listen to that, jot down some notes, and get ready for exciting conversations moving forward. Still, Devyn, unpack where your brain is right now on the buyer's journey conversation.
Devyn Belamy (29:56):
Cool. So the buyer's journey, Max hit it on the head from the marketing side. Let me talk a bit about it from the sales perspective. I know it's cliched as salespeople. You hear you don't ask for, uh, wedding on the first date, but so many do, and mm-hmm,
They need to be better off after that interaction with you; when conversing about awareness, the most important thing you can do is listen and ask probing questions. Even if they tend to go on a tangent or outside of what it is that you're trying to solve, talk to them and then help them understand what's wrong and not just understand what's wrong from the perspective of what you do but understand what's wrong, period, from the perspective of your expertise, because you know what's going on in your field because you are a student of the game. You read your marketing department's content. That's how you get through with the awareness. Then consider having a candid conversation where you are not the hero of this story. Have a candid conversation where you're talking about the problems themselves and the different ways to solve them.
Your first instinct is to talk about why you're so awesome and why this thing is the best thing on the planet. Oh my goodness, you need to be doing this because this is how I make money. That's not the case. The number one place you see this done wrong is in email or going past email. Now it's InMails and LinkedIn. When some random person is going to ask you about buying a list or saying, Hey, I noticed you don't have a logo, dude. I work at HubSpot. We have a logo. I don't know what you were looking at, but you just came and told me about everything you do. And you're an accountant. You can do all of my accounting for me. You don't even know what my problems are. My problems aren't accounting. My wife graduated with a degree in finance. We have a budget spreadsheet that goes back to 2012; I met her in 2015.
No, I don't have a problem with calculating any of that. But you might have found a different thing if you had bothered to converse with me instead of just bashing me over the head with all the cool stuff you do. That is an issue that I have that you can solve. Or, and this is the hard part, know someone else that can solve my problem, because the thing is is that with the consideration phase, I know now know how to solve my problem. When we get into the decision phase, even if, let's say, I'm talking about email marketing, I have several different options to choose from. I can choose HubSpot. I can also choose MailChimp, constant contact with Clavio. The thing is, talking to you in the amount of value that you've added to me, I'm gonna trust you. And wherever you're coming from is the direction I need to go. So that's why I'm going to get your service as opposed to the other ones that could solve my problems very well. Probably not as well as what you're offering me because you have given me so much value during our conversation. That's how you successfully transition from the decision phase to being a customer and delight throughout the entire process.
George B. Thomas (34:05):
There are two things that I have to unpack out of this because one is a dirty little secret that everybody needs to know. I love when they go on a diet tribe, when they just start going into left field, when they just start talking because, many times again, dirty little secret, if you let them go, they will uncover the actual problem they couldn't see. But because you're an expert, you can see swing it back into the actual conversation that everybody thought we were having and just knock it out. The park. The other piece that was just screaming in my brain was I have found historically that, especially on the sales side, if your focus is how do I help this person get one, five, 10% better from where they are right now. And you do it in a way where you're worried about their pocketbook or their wallet more than you are yours.
And you have enough self-awareness to realize what their pockets are and not sell out of your pocket. Have that ability to be like; I know this is valuable to you. I know that it's in the right place for you. And I know that it's gonna get you to where you need to go instead of, and you mentioned it, Devyn, the quota and the gold medallion and the ring and the what? No, no, no, no. All of that will come. If you have basic human principles in place to move you forward. All right, let's use the next like maybe five-ish, seven-ish. I don't know; minutes to talk about some myths we wish we could debunk on this episode before we send people back to their regularly scheduled days.
Devyn Belamy (35:49):
I got one. The myth is that the buyer's journey is a one-way road. We've talked about how finding one problem can lead you to another. One of the things that we didn't discuss so much is that the problem they're trying to solve isn't the problem at all. They could be trying to make iterative changes to their website. It turns out that it's not about your calls to action color. It's just the fact that your copy is horrible. It's the fact that no one knows what you do. So you can be AB or multivariate testing until you're blue in the face on your UI. But it's an entirely separate issue that requires a separate set of skills to accomplish because you're not a writer, and you have blinders on when it comes to your customers, and you know what you do. And so you look at the website, it makes sense that that isn't always the case. And so that would take them as far as the buyer's journey, back to square one where we're making them a whole new level of awareness and taking them down that journey.
Max Cohen (37:03):
Again, if I had to look at something from like a mythical perspective, I can't tell you to like how many people I've seen in the inbound community who like to create content and get clicks on, oh, the buyer's journey is dead, or there are six steps to the buyer's journey. And it's called this different thing. Or its demand generation inbound is debt and like all this stuff. And then they go and explain their strategy. And it's like, literally the same thing, call this what we're talking about, whatever you want. Fundamental human decision-making will never die. It's physics that's grained just into how we all operate. We all have problems, issues, challenges, goals, whatever. We look for ways to figure out how to solve them. And then sometimes we buy something to help us do it. You can break that down into any number of steps, call those phases, whatever you want.
It just exists. Humans are humans, and they're always gonna human. As long as you're looking at it from that perspective, I don't care what you call it. I don't care about any of that. Just make sure your content supports that basic human decision-making process. And I think it's not always just a selling motion. Yeah. It's called the buyer's journey because maybe some people will eventually buy from you, but not all of 'em are; that's also just marketing. Just keep that in mind. Don't look at this as such a rigid thing. Also, don't use any of this to say why I can't make that next piece of content again; get good at creating content first, and then use this to get better.
George B. Thomas (38:21):
I have two that I'm gonna do. One's real short, sweet, and straightforward. One myth that I wanna debunk is that the buyer's journey is the be-all end. All, this is a great place to jump off and start the conversation. But what is the customer journey if you're not also thinking about it once they turn into a customer? And having that mapped out through the rest of your organization, which by the way, maybe customer journey and journey mapping. They might potentially keep tuning in. They might be future episodes that will talk about, but here's the thing I wanna double down and Devin, I thought you were going in this direction. I love the direction you went in, but I want to double down on where you went, but this idea of spaghetti and max circling back around to the conversation you're having.
And here's what I'm gonna say, busting the myth that it's a linear path, but the action item tip is to plan for the pivot. Hmm. Plan for the pivot. Let me explain. I wake up in the morning and make a pot of coffee. Oh, the coffee pot is broken crap. I go to let my dog out. Ooh, the dog ran away. Uh, oh, crap, time to go to work. I go get to go in my car. Ooh, the car got stolen. The human being is always going by the way. If that's your morning, I am sorry. And I will pray.
But the point is the human, and God max, I love that. You said this, human are humans, and they'll always human. Well, what is that? Humans will pivot. Humans will transition into the thing they are given and try to do their best with it. And so if you, as a salesperson, as a marketing person, as a service person, as a business owner, start to think about everything that we've talked about today and plan for the pivot of the human in the journey that they're on your content strategy, your sales strategy, your email strategy, your chat strategy, all of your strategies, which I hope you have
Devyn Belamy (40:22):
Stop sending me and mills about trying to sell me stuff. I hate it. If you want to have a conversation with BDRs, stop trying to book calls just to meet a quota and meet with someone and find out their needs. And if they're a good fit for the AE before you book the call and AE, stop hitting me over the head with a demo before you even get to know me. And if I haven't said it before, stop sending me InMails.
Max Cohen (40:52):
It kind of sounds like you're reiterating the idea of earning the right to do those things. I mean, that's like a good thing. It's like one piece of advice I'd say is like, you know, a good, a good gut check for yourself is like, have we earned the right to tell this person this yet? If I haven't done the legwork to say this is the best way to solve it, why should I be telling you my product? So great. I think that's a big piece. I think the other thing use all these tools that we're talking about, you know, the whole idea of a track gauge delight buyer personas the buyer's journey, layer it in, in the right way, but never let it get in the way of you creating content. And that's the most challenging, fundamental, and significant shift, but use all these tactics to mold that clay. Once you've become good at making ugly statues, the more complex part is like getting that statue built first, and then you can make it better over time and more times you do it. And the more you implement these different strategies, the better over time. Don't feel like you have to do all this stuff overnight cuz it's never gonna work if you overwhelm yourself.
In this episode of the HubHeores Podcast, Devyn, Max, and George B. Thomas dive into the Inbound strategy, attract, engage, and delight, by first diving deep into attract. This leads them into an amazing conversation around what the hell is great content anyway. No worries, no buzz words were used to explain what we really mean by "GREAT" Content.
TRANSCRIPT OF THE SHOW
George B. Thomas (01:11):
Devin, I have to agree with you that junk PO me up, dude. Like I just, I, I wanna listen to that almost every time before we start, because it's like, yes, yes. And by the way, the socials gentlemen have said things about the artwork. They've said things about the intro episode one, and people are already pulling out quotes from things that you said that impacted their lives. And I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm super excited and blessed because usually you don't see that till episode 10 episode, 20 episode 30, so community. Thank you. Thank you, hub heroes for letting us know that you're enjoying what we're doing on the socials. Keep it coming because all of this, all the value that we're adding is coming because we love you. And we wanna see you become the hub hero of your company. Now, today we're actually diving into a conversation that is around the attract phase inbound methodology.
We're gonna kind of backtrack and Devon and max, and I will unpack this whole larger philosophy of attract engage, convert, but then we're gonna dive in deep to the attract and answer the question, what the is great content anyway, because man, there are some buzz words and some conversations that happen on the internet that make me just wanna hide my head in sand or hit it on a brick wall. Or anyway, gentlemen, let's start with the larger philosophy historically, when you've trained people on this attract engaged, convert, how do you take them from, I think I know, or I have zero clue to, oh,
Max Cohen (02:46):
If we're bringing it back to the inbound methodology, right? Like we're talking about attract today. I think one of the biggest reasons this should have been an early episode, which it is, and I'm glad we're doing it as an early episode, is that like, this is the most important part of inbound or at least one of the most important parts of inbound that is really difficult to do. And a lot of people ignore it because it's very hard. And I think also people have some like misconceptions about what it actually is. My kind of fire around obsessing around this stage very much comes back from like my days of doing onboarding when HubSpot was primarily a marketing tool, the, the problem was, is like a lot of people wanted to use HubSpot, but they didn't want to create content, which was literally when it comes to an inbound marketing strategy.
That's the gas in the car, getting marketing software
George B. Thomas (04:17):
It's literally honey, I shrunk the elephant, uh, episode 57 or movie movie trailer, 57 Devin. I am gonna kick it over to you for a second, but I love max that you're bringing up this idea of gas. I've actually gone a layer deeper when I talked about this historically, because it's like without the engine content literally is your engine. When I talk about content is your engine. I'm literally talking about three different layers of this engine, right? You've got like a VA to V6. This is a V3. This is the engine for social. This is the engine for sales. And this is the engine for SEO. So you need to understand content comes back to everything that you're actually gonna do. So imagine max talked about the Ferrari minus the gas, imagine the Ferrari minus the engine. You look sexy in your driveway, but Hey, you ain't going nowhere. You ain't making an impact. And so you have to think about content being the engine of your marketing sales and social efforts. Devin, go ahead and wax poetic for us a little bit.
Devyn Bellamy (05:16):
Don't mind if I do the thing is with content is I don't care what vertical you're in. I don't care what you do. I don't care what your company does. There are content opportunities, my little secret sauce for getting content. The very first thing I do, I go to the sales people and I say, what's the one question you're answering over and over again. What's the one question that comes up on every call. The one slide that's in your slide deck. Just so you can answer the question ahead of time. That is, to me, one of your first steps is getting content there. Another thing that's important with content is that it's not about you. The, about you is further down the line right now. This is about the industry. This is about problems in general, and this may come as a shock to you.
They might not even be problems that you solve as a company. They might just be things that you're writing about, but Devon you say, why would I write about something that doesn't involve me or that I can't fix? What you're doing with content is you're positioning yourself as a trustworthy thought leader. You're positioning yourself to say, Hey, when people look at me, they know that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to their industry in general, not just my little niche section, I always talk about two different industries. I talk about car mechanics and, and repair shops. I always talk about showers because I've had to do so much research on these subjects. It's annoying. I've worked for a SAS company, had nothing to do with social media, had nothing to do with marketing. We put out an ebook about social media and it blew up. And not only did it blow up, but our lead flow increased so much. We had to increase the size of our sales team. And they knew that we weren't doing anything about social media, but the way we were pushing them down the buyer's journey into actually talking about the problem that we were actually solving. This is what got them in the door. This is what attracted
George B. Thomas (07:27):
Them. Yeah. There's so much there that I wanna unpack. And max, I'll kick it back to you here in a second, but there's literally a term that we use for what you're talking about. And it's literally drafting. Like if you know anything about NASCAR, the car behind the car in front of it is, is drafting. It's being pulled. It's using less gas and there's a way that you can literally pull to the side and you can draft around them. And when you think about the topics that are around the problems that you solve, the topics that are around the aspirations that your potential client might have, and you start to write around those, you draft into the winner circle because it is content that is useful to them. But also is a side piece of where you're going in, what Devon said. And I will say even less pushing them down the buyer's journey, but pulling them into the center of you, the buyer's journey.
But if I go one level back for a second before I kick it back over to max is I want everybody to realize we already use the word trust, attract equals trust, attract equals thought leadership. Why is that important? We haven't used this word yet. And everybody needs to understand that it is a real thing. Trust me, as somebody who has recently started their own business reciprocity is real. If you add enough value to the world, if you create content that evokes an emotional response, if you focus on these topics that draft people into what you can actually help them do, they're like, of course I would work with you. Why wouldn't I we'll talk about more pieces that I just listed out. But max, where is your brain thus far on this conversation we're
Max Cohen (09:04):
Having. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I wrote down three things that Devin said that I wanna drill into with the most ferocity here. He said at the beginning, no matter your industry content works, this is something a lot of people lose sight of. I can't tell you how many times I've worked with a company. That's like, we sell to businesses. So we're not gonna do this funny blog thing. We sell to businesses. So we don't do any social media market. They keep away from all this like funny sounding internet marketing stuff in their eyes. It's almost as if they're literally forgetting that they don't sell to sentient buildings with arms, right? When you're selling to a business, you're selling to people. That's why like you hear me go around all the time saying, oh, you know, there isn't B2B there. Isn't B2C. There's only B to H I've been saying that forever because it's true.
No matter what, you're always selling to humans. So you need to kind of keep that in mind. Content is something for a human being to consume human beings, work at the companies you're trying to sell to. Okay. There, isn't a concept really of selling to a business. I'm sorry. You sell to humans. And that's why content's super important. Devin. You also said your content's not about you and yeah, sure. It's not about what you're interested in. It's about the goals and challenges that your customers have. But to take that idea like a step further, when we say content's not for you, content should not just be seen as your lead generation machine. When I hear people say, oh, I got a lead magnet. I wanna vomit because the second you start thinking of content as just something that's gonna help you get leads, you've completely lost.
Focus on why you're creating it in the first place. You both talked a lot about building trust with your content and being positioned as a thought leader. If you're just putting out content out there to get people, to give you their email addresses, you've completely missed the book. Your content should be out there. And the mindset that you should be in when you're creating content is truly to genuinely educate people, getting leads, getting people that are interested, getting people to build trust with you. That should all be a byproduct of what your mindset should be as a marketer. And that's, I'm creating content. That's gonna help people get closer to achieving a certain goal that they have or overcoming a challenge that's in the way, cuz it's the only way content adds value. The last little thing that you kind of mentioned there, you were working at a SaaS company, but you went and created an ebook about social media.
There is such a valuable listed in here for all those folks that get analysis paralysis about what sort of content should I create? You should never under any circumstances say to yourself, we can't create content about X subject because we don't sell something that has to do with that or our product doesn't do that. That is like the best way to just make sure you never create content that people care about when you're only talking about stuff that your product actually does or have a very direct impact on you gotta remember no matter who you're selling to those folks, play some sort of role in their professional or personal life. And they have different goals and challenges around different things that may not have to yet be about what it is that you're selling. So when you pigeon your hole yourself into just talking about a very, very narrow sort of layer or chunk of subject matter, you're missing the potentiality of being able to like become a thought leader for all these other people.
I used HubSpots as an example for this all the time. Well before HubSpot had any sort of integration with Instagram, we created tons of content about how to market yourself on Instagram, because we knew marketers who we were trying to sell to wanted to know how to market themselves on Instagram. We didn't let the fact that our product didn't have an integration or didn't do anything with Instagram. Stop us from doing that. And neither should anyone listening to this podcast. If you have something valuable to say to the people you're trying to sell to say it, help them educate them. Don't hold back. The last thing you need to do is say, what's the content that we shouldn't make, right? Because it's generally not ever gonna be helpful.
George B. Thomas (12:54):
I love it. And Devin, I'm coming back to you. I feel like I'm like the net on the tennis court, the players back and forth here. A couple things I wanna unpack. First of all, ding, ding, ding, ding. We have our first Scrabble word of the hub heroes podcast. Max used the word. Might I say sentient because your, your sentient building with arms and legs. I absolutely love that part by the way. What I wanna do right now though is say listeners. I'm curious to your thoughts on what Devon and max has laid down so far. Make sure you use the hashtag hashtag hub heroes podcast and let us know we're gonna keep drilling down in further. I want to get into this. What truly is great content, but I've gotta pull out one word. I'm only pulling this one word out, max that used because it's so dang important for people to focus on.
And that is if you ever want to be successful, might I say just that business in general, but at the attract phase, the word max used that everybody should write down in their notepad is care. How do I care? How do I care with passion? How do I care with passion around the person? How do I care with passion around the topic? How do I care with passion about helping other people reach the success that they're trying to reach? Because if you come with an attitude of caring of empathy, of walking a mile in those folks, moccasins and serve them with the content that you create, it will be a victorious moment for your marketing team, your sales team, your business in general, Devon, what are your thoughts?
Devyn Bellamy (14:27):
The thing is, is that you have to demonstrate that you care about the industry and not your piece of it. And you care about solving your customer's problems and not just the problems that you know, how to solve. And just as a quick note, you might find something that you don't know how to solve, but you know, somebody who does know how to solve it. And so you white label the other person's services and boom, more money, but that's a whole separate conversation. You're not ready for that level of sauce. So we'll go back to talking about a track phase. The important thing is making sure that you are demonstrating that you are an industry thought leader. The thing is, is that as max was saying, people try and pigeonhole themselves because their industry isn't quote unquote sexy. I had a conversation with a customer once who said, well, we sell janitorial supplies.
There is nothing sexy about janitorial supplies. There's nothing right about it. It's like, listen, people love nerding out. Everyone nerds out about something. And for everything there is someone who is nerding out about it. You can talk about the different hand dryer options in the pros and cons. And what's so annoying about them, but talk about it through the lens of a maintenance person, not a user and the maintenance. Person's gonna read that and be like, oh my gosh, I know, right? Or you can talk about like a cost benefit analysis on different kinds of paper towels versus the kind of reusable cloth ones and all that stuff. Someone is going to find that interesting cater to those people. People think that, oh, I'm writing this blog. And it only got 700 views so far. It's like, are you kidding me? 700 views on niche content. That means that 700 people who are more than likely qualified to hear about what it is that you have going on and are more interested in the industry in general than someone who's gotten 10 million hits, 10 million hits. Those might be bots. Who knows, but I can tell you that not everyone's gonna be qualified, especially if you're doing something special, focus on nerding out.
George B. Thomas (16:45):
Yeah. It's funny cuz, and I'll talk about this later. You guys remind me to talk about a default state that your brain goes into when you get into the content mindset. But literally Devin, as you were telling the janitorial story, I was like, dude, that's seven pieces of XYZ equipment that the magic eraser clean that will blow your mind. Mr. Clean magic eraser. Like there are always ways to spin. What people think is boring into something that is juicy. And you just have to have this mindset of you'll be talking to your sales rep. You'll be talking to your CEO, you'll be talking to your wife. And all of a sudden you're like, oh SHS, that's a piece of content.
Max Cohen (17:25):
I think we should also remember that the discovery channel managed to make crab fishing sexy.
Devyn Bellamy (17:30):
Oh yeah. Dude,
Max Cohen (17:31):
If you can make crab fishing sexy, you can make literally any other industry sexy. The other thing you gotta remember too, is that there is so much stuff about being in that industry that you can talk about. And when someone is in a certain industry or they have a certain job, they're generally trying to figure out either how to do it better or how to overcome certain challenges or how to make things easier for themselves, no matter what it is. And guess what people aren't going to their local library to figure out how to do that. They're looking it up on their phone argument of all. I can't create content because of my industry is just like almost never true.
George B. Thomas (18:05):
So let's spin this and let's start to talk about because all of us, by the way, create content, when you sit down to either ideate or actually create or whatever it be in that process, what are the things that you think are vital for you and others to bring to the table when you're actually in that content creation spaced. So we can again, tie into that title, what the ha is, great content anyway, the word great could be anything. What do we truly mean? And what are the elements that have to be at play? This
Max Cohen (18:37):
Is where everyone really, really needs to start listening. I think because oftentimes you will see marketers just say, oh yeah, make a piece of content and then do all these other crazy things. Here's 40 different ways you can share it. Here's how you can cut it up and turn it into a TikTok here's you can send it to an emails, blah, blah. And they never like address making the piece of content to begin with. And that is always gonna be 10 times harder than any other strategy to distribute it. And like all these marketers, they never wanna approach that subject. All they want you to do is to get you to buy some book that shows you how to cut up this magical piece of content you pulled outta your ass and all of a sudden make money from it. Guess
George B. Thomas (19:13):
What? Guess what? We're approaching the conversation right now. People so tune in. Yeah.
Max Cohen (19:19):
Let's talk about it. So I talk a lot about marketing physics, right? I keep saying that all the time, but the physics discussion really does come down to the content piece. When you say like, what is a good piece of content? What does that actually mean? First thing you should do completely remove the idea of what format it is. I generally don't care if it's a blog post. If it's a video, if it's a newsletter, if it's a whatever, ultimately the format does not mean anything. If the substance isn't good. So what makes good substance of the content good content helps someone when they consume that piece of content, no matter the medium, when they consume that piece of content, it gets them closer to achieving a goal or overcoming a challenge. When that happens, that's where someone actually receives value. Why do we wanna make sure we're doing that with our content?
Two big reasons. One, it doesn't matter how well you optimize that piece of content. If you do not create what people are looking for, they have no reason to find you in the first place. So let's talk about that. You could hella optimize your business' website to be the most optimized from an SEO perspective about the specific product you sell and your brand name. Well guess what if people never heard of you, why would they be Googling you? Why would they be looking for you if they haven't been specifically told by somebody that you exist and they already have a problem that they know that you can solve. There's no reason for them to be searching for you. That's very small amount of people who are already doing that. So good content. You wanna create that. So people are actually like looking for people, use search engines to overcome goals and challenges, no matter how micro or how macro they are.
Pizza near me is a goal. E even though it's like more broad, why is my sales team not hitting its quota in a specific industry? That's more specific, but that's a challenge. Your goal is to hit your sales quota, your challenges that your sales team isn't doing it, no matter how specific or broad it gets, there's always some sort of underlying goal or challenge. So that's the first piece people that need to be looking for it. The second reason it's important to focus on goals and challenges is that when someone actually consumes your piece of content to get them in that second, to like dedicate their time to actually read that content, you probably, you know, either advertise it in a certain way or had some sort of tagline or subject line or whatever that got them to think, Hey, I'm gonna get something valuable.
If I give some time to consume this, if that content doesn't get, 'em closer to achieving that goal or overcoming that challenge and you've taken away time, they've spent on it. You've created clickbait. You've broken their trust. You've actually detracted. They're seeing you in a negative light now. So you wanna make sure this is where that trust is built. You're presenting something, Hey, read this, watch this, listen to this. You will learn X, Y, Z. They go, oh, okay. That sounds great. And when they consume it and they actually do it, the trust is built because they said, Hey, they said it was gonna be this and what I got matched, what I expected and I am better for it. Now I now trust you a little bit more and it's really important. Your content does this in the attract phase. Because when we talk about the engagement phase later, that generally happens after you've captured someone's information. And they're not gonna give you your information if they don't trust you, or they're gonna give you fake information. That's a whole nother conversation past that. Again, you want to think like what makes good content, something that gets someone closer to achieving a certain goal or a challenge, or oovercome it a challenge because of those two big reasons.
Devyn Bellamy (22:40):
My goal is to be selfless in the content that I create, because I know that as much as I want to generate a lead, as fun as that is, and as good as that feels, the more important thing just like max said is to add value and give someone the opportunity to grow after interacting with you. And the only way you can do that is being selfless in what you offer in my community. We have a, a saying that says the game is sold and not told the thing is, is that it's okay to tell the game, because especially when you operate on the level that we operate in most businesses that are successful operate, as soon as people start seeing how it's done, they're like, I don't want to do that. You can do that. If you're talking about, for instance, shower manufacturing, if you're showing people what to look for in a shower, the qualities of the shower, the important things to avoid when you're looking at showers, even if, even if some of those shortcomings are in your product, that's okay. They will respect your honesty and integrity. And they will. What's that word trust you. You got make sure that every interaction that you have with a customer, be it content, be it personal, whatever it is, they're the better off for it. It can't just be about you and generating leads and making money. That's gonna come. If you get your customer closer to their goal,
George B. Thomas (24:18):
I have to unpack a couple things. One max, when you're talking, do you guys remember the movie, Tommy boy, Tommy boy. He talked about a guaranteed turd. They used a different term, but like I can guarantee anything. I can G you want to guarantee turd, max. I went there because you're talking about optimized. Are you optimizing a turd or are you actually got SEO going on? Something that's actually magical and ready to, to be leveraged to impact the world? But here's the thing, fundamentally, I think about this way different than most people, because we've even mentioned if I generate a lead. Well, here's the thing. Everybody needs to know that I don't think of HubSpot forms or any forms tool as a tool for lead generation. I look at any forms tool for a conversation starter. So if my focus is about starting conversations, that means I'm starting conversations with potentially friends.
And what do I do with friends? Will I help friends? And if I think of them as friends, that I'm going to eventually have a conversation with, then I lean in with caring again, the word care. But what I want everybody to realize is unfortunately, when it comes to content creation, people care about the wrong things and don't care about the right things. Meaning when I step in front of the camera, ladies and gentlemen, I don't care what you think about me. I don't care if you think I'm fat. I don't care if you think I'm thin. I don't think if you care, if I have big nose, a large ears and a really weird voice, but what I do care about is I care about if you're gonna be successful. I care about if this piece of content is gonna help. I care about the value that is coming out of my mouth, into the world.
That one five, 5,000, 20,000 people will watch over the next 2, 8, 10, 12 years. That's what you need to care about is the impact over time of the information that you're educating or entertaining or just leveraging for helping people. It will circle back around because you're talking to your friends to start a conversation into revenue, but you can't come from this conversion revenue mindset and it ever be great content. Now you might get lucky here or there, but I'm telling you the businesses that lean in on the human side, the businesses that lean on the side of actually putting good into the world, what you sow, you will reap. Those are the companies that won't have a problem getting to this next level, content creation, having the V8 engine in their Corvette or their Viper or whatever vehicle it is that you love. So care about the right things. Don't care about the wrong things. The other piece that I need to put in here is that again, not to get Woohoo on anybody here, but if you can take this word caring and truly understand what I mean, when I say that is, I am talking about love and empathy. If you have love for others and empathy for others, and you want to help them get 1% better each and every day and have conversations with your friends that are valuable, you're gonna win. Yeah.
Max Cohen (27:19):
Yeah. The other thing I wanna like put out there too, is that there might be some folks out there listening, being like, oh, these, these girls are talking about just caring for people and, and just doing right by people. And they're forgetting that they're marketers and they have a job to do, which is like generate revenue for the business. Here's the thing. If you just wanna generate leads, that's all you're gonna do. You're not gonna build a community. You're not gonna build trust. You're not gonna position your company as a thought leader. You're not gonna create customers that love you. You're not gonna create customers that will recommend you and sing your praises on the mountain tops and, and be delighted and build that word of mouth. You're just gonna generate leads. And those leads probably aren't ready to talk to your sales team. And those leads probably don't trust you enough to talk to your sales team, which means you're putting stress on your sales team to do, have to do a lot of that extra legwork to prove why you should pick up my cold call, cuz you read a fricking ebook. That's all you're doing. If you don't care, it's very easy for your customers to kind of know that you don't give a shit about making them successful. It comes through all of this stuff that we're talking about. Isn't just like, Ooh, woo kumbaya. Let's just be great educators and help people. There's tactical value behind all of this. Just keep that in mind. Like there's a tactical value for doing all the things that we're talking about. It's not just feel good marketing.
George B. Thomas (28:39):
So it's funny because my brain's going a certain direction. I wanna touch base on that. Then I probably think we should probably talk about the buyer's journey and how awareness consideration decision actually come into play to attract in great content and all that. But there's a part that I have to lean into because you haven't heard us mention it and I'm gonna kick back to the know what not to care about. You don't have to have the best camera. You don't have to have the best computer. You don't have to have the best mic. It's not about equipment. It's about what do I have in my hand, at my disposal to actually create the content, the most important tool, the vital piece of equipment. I'm gonna let you in a secret that you have to purchase that you have to have that has to show up when you're gonna create great content is your cranium. And that's not a new software people don't go ukrainian.com and look for it. I'm talking about your brain, bring your brain and bring your heart. Those are the pieces of equipment that you need.
Devyn Bellamy (29:39):
One thing that is a hole that marketers can fall into, uh, just as anyone with their company is that I spoke earlier about nerding out. That's great. What you don't want to do is nerd out about the wrong thing. It's like if there's engineers, sorry. Uh, I'm sorry for what I'm gonna say, but they're
And, and that really like engage you and, and, and, and that's fine. They don't have to be, what you don't want to do is just basically get all Pokemon to someone. Who's is like over the age of 50 and has never watched a single cartoon in their life. And it's like, gotta collect, oh, what, what do you mean? This boy is still a preteen? How, like, you don't, you don't want to basically go off on someone who could potentially be a good customer, but you've turned them off by making all your content too niche. That's what I was saying. You, you don't want to be, uh, just the expert on the problem you solve. You want to be an expert on the problems they have and not just the problems they know they have the problems. They don't even realize that they have yet. Yeah. And the only way that you're going to get there is by using empathy, by asking questions and by listening, when you're having conversations with people,
George B. Thomas (31:40):
Oh, Devin, you just totally unlocked something in my brain brother, because I have to say one thing that creates great content is understanding that you don't have to sound like a genius. What you need to do is focus on simplifying the complex because it is a genius who can actually make something that's difficult, seem easy. It's a genius that can make something that is difficult. Sound easy. Yes. I said that twice, there is not a riff in the matrix. You have to figure out how can I talk about how can I teach? How can I communicate in a way that mirror mortal human beings will understand what I'm saying versus I'm gonna get on this platform of audio, video, or text and make myself sound a certain way. No simplify, simplify the complex. I had to unpack that max.
Max Cohen (32:33):
Well, this is why, uh, buyer personas are still important, everybody. Cause you gotta know what are the goals and challenges that the people that you're creating this content for have. Cause again, that's the only thing that's gonna tell you if your content's adding any value. That's the only thing that's you're gonna do to ensure that you're creating stuff. People are actually looking for. You know, there may be a bunch of people that say, oh, new buyer personas or ideal customer profile or this or that or whatever. I, I don't care what you call it. The people that you are are, are attempting to have an impact on through your content. You gotta have an understanding what their goals and challenges are. The other thing you need to remember is that it's not always gonna be the ultimate decision maker. I can't reremember, I can't even like tell you how many times I've had a little challenge that have given a customer saying like, Hey, next week, when we talk, I want you to come back to me and tell me who your buyer personas are, give us some resources to go figure it out.
Kind of use it as a little bit of thought exercise. And nine times out of 10 people come back to me and say, it's a C level executive with purchasing authority and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what they forget is that it's not always a C level executive or someone in a big authority position experiencing the problem or having symptoms of an issue or doing the research. So you gotta remember when you're creating content, you're creating content, not only to chains, hearts, and minds, but also you're creating content that you're hoping someone's actually looking for. You may be creating content for someone who's not a decision maker. You should be creating content for someone who's actually experiencing the problem and can then be your biggest internal champion that can be inside that organization. You're trying to sell to saying, Hey, these people really know what they're talking about.
They help me with a whole bunch of stuff I was going through. They clearly know what they're doing. I trust them. We should consider buying from them and they go and say that to their internal decision makers and make all the intros that sales team wants and all that kind of stuff. Consider the fact that your buyer personas are probably not your lit to role buyers in a lot of cases, especially when it comes to B to B, it's not always the person signing the checks that you're creating content for, but again, get a really good understanding of who that is. And then start thinking about the buyer's journey, which I'm sure we'll get into
George B. Thomas (34:37):
Devin. You had multiple visual
Max Cohen (34:40):
Visceral
George B. Thomas (34:41):
Responses to what, like I, I was like homies about to explode homies, about to explode.
Devyn Bellamy (34:47):
Yes.
George B. Thomas (34:48):
So fine, sir. Please step up to your pulpit and preach to the community for a hot minute on what was going on in your brain.
Devyn Bellamy (34:56):
What was going on is the fact that people are so hungry to get to a decision maker, not realizing that the decision maker doesn't have the background education or expertise in order to make an educated decision on whatever it is that you have going on. You could have the best thing going since slice spread. If the decision maker isn't the one who's involved with it, it's not gonna matter case in point. I love telling the story about how I started using HubSpot in the first place with me. I told the story last episode about how I went to the website website looked great. Sorry, got in, went to a grow event. I didn't talk about what happened in between then in the grow event, I'm on the website and I'm just seeing so much fantastic content that has to do with me now, keeping in mind that I'm an individual contributor, very low level making entry level money.
And there are three degrees of separation between me and the actual decision maker, who is the CEO of the company. What they did is they educated me, gave me opportunities through academy to learn about inbound, about the process, and then how that would apply to the HubSpot product. I became such a HubSpot fanboy, even before I started using HubSpot. Now it doesn't hurt that James Stone got me really drunk at the grow event. That helped too.
Max Cohen (37:11):
And for anyone out there who's saying, well, hubs boat has this big academy. We don't have that. All you need to do is educate people. Anyone can educate people. Don't let, oh, we don't have X, Y, Z academy thing make you argue against what Devin just
George B. Thomas (37:22):
Said. Not to mention who cares if you don't have it right now, you can have it in the future. It's literally one brick at a time. People like just create that piece of content. And dare I say, Devin, when you were talking in that last section, it's funny because I always like to talk about how great content is educational. Great content is entertaining and to hear you and the journey that you're going through with the HubSpot blog and content is, and not that you're designing it this way, but great content becomes episodic, meaning you can't wait to read the next one. You can't wait to watch the next one. And so start to think about how you enable that. By the way, the, the tip here is emotion and understanding. So think educational, think entertaining and think episodic, how can we thread these together? Where all of a sudden we're creating a piece of content in the awareness stage that then leads them to a piece of content in the consideration stage.
That then leads them to another piece of content in the decision stage. And we have dope CTAs and URL links, anchor links for all of you nerds out there that actually take them to that next piece of content that they just keep going and keep going and keep going. And pretty soon they're like, I love this people and they don't know what to do in themselves. Now, speaking of that, because we have added a ton of value, but I wanna start to end these episodes with action items. So if you think about this topic around great content and the conversations that we've had inside of it, if you had to boil it down to one action items that people listening to this podcast should think about or take as they move forward, where do you guys' minds go
Devyn Bellamy (38:53):
Absolutely chill with the negative talk. The first thing that you need to do is what you need to stop doing. You need to stop telling yourself that what you do, isn't sexy and no one cares about it. If no one cared about it, you wouldn't have a job. Cause a company wouldn't exist. Clearly someone cares about it because they're giving you money to solve a problem. That's the first thing you need to do is dead. The negative talk. The next thing you need to do is you need to start talking to your sales people. You need to start talking to your favorite customers. You need to start talking to your least favorite customers. You need to start talking to X customers, find out what the problem is and not just what the problem is with pertains to your company. But the problem in general, talking about automotive repair had nothing to do with our product, but we stayed in the flat rate versus hourly debate, even though it had nothing to do with what we did, because it was a challenge that resonated with our audience. We talked about marketing to millennials, cuz it was a challenge that resonated with our audience. Didn't have anything to do what we did, but because we presented ourselves as thought leaders, we generated trust, start talking to people both internally, externally, take 'em out to Starbucks, send them a gift card if you're gonna do it virtually, but get in contact with people to understand who you're talking to. Cuz if you create content in a vacuum, it's gonna fail
Max Cohen (40:14):
Two things. I would say like if you're gonna walk away from this conversation, one do not under any circumstances hyper-focused on search engine optimization. If you haven't already got good at creating content in the first place that is like trying to land a kick flip before you can pump a skateboard. Okay? Yes. There's nothing to optimize if you haven't created it yet. So just get really good at putting content out there. If you're sitting over there saying which keyword should I be optimizing for? And you haven't even written a blog post yet, you're losing already just get used to creating the content first. Then you can focus on making it better. Then you could focus on optimizing it. You gotta remember Google wants people to find the good content. That is a thing. So optimize all you want. Just don't let that get in the way of you actually creating the content in the first place.
Now in terms of like, what content, what should we create? And maybe what's like a simple mindset that we can follow. Say what you want about Gary Vaynerchuk. But he's a really great tactical thinker when it comes down to this. And I remember watching a little interview. He did with someone where it was some service company that kind of walked up and asked him like, where should we get started with content? And he said, one of the best things I think I've ever heard when it comes to just having like a mindset of what content you should create. He said, I would be creating every sort of piece of content that I could to get that person not to hire me. Essentially give away all your secrets, educate people. Now I'm not talking about like company specific information when I say secrets, but I'm saying ways people can solve their problems.
That don't make it seem like their only option is to hire. You put content out there that helps people figure out what their problems are and gives them concrete steps on ways they can solve those problems. And here's the deal. When you do that, there's really only two to maybe three sort of outcomes of one. There's gonna be plenty of people that see that content and then never buy from you. And you never hear from 'em again. Guess what? That's already happening. That's marketing baby. It's a game of numbers. But then the other two possible situations is that someone is going to read or consume or watch or listen to whatever they're gonna consume your content. They're gonna go out and they're gonna solve their problem without you. And they're not gonna buy from you. But guess what happens when that happens, you create a promoter of your content.
You create Goodwill in that community. You get yourself positioned as a trust leader and you get someone else out there saying maybe they're friends privately or more publicly, or by sharing their content on social or whatever saying, Hey, these people really know what they're talking about. They're doing that in one way, shape or form social proof that your content helps. And it's actually educational. The other folks are going to look at that advice and either try it or just go, wow, that's hard. I should probably hire the people who clearly know what they're talking about. And maybe that other person is gonna recommend that content to someone else. They're gonna go consume it. And they're gonna do the thing that the second person does, which is end up saying, this is too hard. I'm gonna have someone do it for me cuz you clearly know what you're talking about.
So there's a tactical reason behind give away all your secrets. And it's a very unorthodox way of thinking about content, do something to make them not hire me. But like that's a great sort of framework you can use in terms of saying, what should we be trying to do with the content we're actually creating? The biggest thing is most marketers are completely focused on the decision stage. If you know what that is great. We're not gonna go too deep into it right now, but not enough. People are focused on that more awareness and consideration stage content where you're educating folks. That's where you're missing. If you're a marketer and you're not building a lot of demand and generating a lot of demand, it's all in those awareness and consideration stages.
George B. Thomas (43:38):
Yeah. I love that so much because listen, ladies and gentlemen, there is no secret sauce. We all know that it's thousand islands. So just talk to us about the thousand island. Okay. Just, can we skip the bullshit and get to reality?
In this episode of the HubHeroes podcast, we launch the conversation by talking about "starting with (Your) why". We chat about goals, KPIs, leadership, and what all that means when starting with the HubSpot software and the Inbound strategy.
TRANSCRIPT OF THE SHOW:
Do you live in a world filled with corrupt data, are you plagued by siloed departments, are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack? Lack of time, Lack of strategy, and Lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero toolbelt… Knowledge? Never fear HubHeroe!
Get ready to dawn your cape and mask, move into action, and become the HubHero your organization needs! Tune in each week to join the League of extraordinary Inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. HubHeroes, it’s time to unite and … activate your powers!