Inbound Marketing Workshop - San Diego HubSpot User Group

The Chief Martech Officer Team and Dan Tyre kicked off with an Ellen-style photoshoot 

The first SD Inbound event of 2019 was a huge success! Almost 100 marketers from all over San Diego County converged downtown for a 4-hour workshop lead by Dan Tyre.  Dan is Hubspot's sixth employee and current Director of Sales, and a man with endless energy and talents. He acts as a mentor, advisor, speaker, and author of the recently published book - 'The Inbound Organization'.

In this blog, we share highlights from the event focusing on how leaders can build their company's future around inbound marketing principles.

1st #SDHUG of the year kicking off big with @dantyre leading the Inbound Organization workshop where attendees can become certified. @SanDiegoHUG #sdinbound @BeaconsPoint @Nicca619 @PortfoliumHQ #lifelonglearning pic.twitter.com/2Y9DOImxUY

— Hansen N Hunt (@unomos) April 3, 2019

Inbound Marketing: The difference 5 years can make 

After Dan delivered about 30min of quality stand-up comedy, he started the workshop by asking the audience what we thought had changed the most in business and marketing in the past 5 years. The four topics below were discussed.

• Customers are more involved

In the past, companies did more 'outbound' selling that included cold calling customers and educating them about a product or service over the phone to solidify the sale. These days the customer is more involved in the buying process, doing their own research and often times contacting sales when THEY are ready. Often times they don't need a sales person at all. Factoring in this change to the buyers journey can help you to start thinking about the shift of outbound to inbound marketing.

• Companies are investing more in marketing

Because this IS the foundation of inbound. Inbound marketing is what brings more qualified leads to your website, so you can nurture them down a funnel and present sales with people ready to buy.

• Challenges of growing a business in an online world

Competition is fierce.  In 2007, the average company had 6 competitors, in 2018 they have an average of 44!

• Employee retention

Adopting more inbound marketing principles to your entire organization can help you to retain employees. Dan stated that 97% of people will leave a professional relationship without notice in this era. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, these consist of millennials leaving in the heat of emotion.

Can you read that? “Everyone wants to grow, but no one wants to change.” That’s why we’re here. #SDHUG pic.twitter.com/WSTRA4gDH2

— Martin (@copy_martin) April 3, 2019

Facing the challenges of Inbound Marketing in 2019

In the world of marketing, inbound principles suggest that you need to build the foundation within your company that will sustain the relationship with your customers. This includes getting to know your customers. So how do you do this? Dan talked about the points below:

• Develop a new identity for your sales team

As the marketing role now gathers the majority of new leads for a company, the sales role needs to be redefined. Inbound marketing principles define the marketer's responsibility to attract visitors to the website with high-quality content. The goal here is to nurture these potential customers till the bottom of the funnel to make them sales qualified and ready to talk to someone. Once this happens, the sales team can take over and is speaking to an educated buyer that knows you can solve their problem. This changes the sales conversation quite a bit and helps sales to close more deals.

• Treat prospects as humans

This is a MAJOR inbound marketing principle as you want to be able to understand who your buyer is, what their challenges are, and how you can add value. This also helps you to understand which prospects are not an ideal customer, and why shortening the sales process and making it more efficient.

Treat people right. #SDHUG pic.twitter.com/DK2c1bYEAF

— Melinda Kolk (@melindak) April 3, 2019

• Be helpful in the sales process and offer something for free

This could be educational content, a consultation, a demo, or a sample product or service. These are all great ways to distinguish your company from the competition. It shows your human side and that you care about your buyer enough to provide them something of value at little or no cost. This small act of kindness can also help to retain customers in the long run, creating great testimonials and fans of your brand.

• Be experience-based

Your buyers priorities are not your product or service, they want to solve their problems and have an enjoyable experience while doing so. Ensuring that the entire buyers journey, from visiting the website, to talking to sales, to purchasing, and using your product or service is flawless will retain current customers and help you to gain new ones.

Your customers are more important than your sales team #SDHUG @dantyre #inboundorganization

— Xenia Moore (@moorepr) April 3, 2019

• Be data-driven

Using analytic reports will help you to understand how your visitors, leads and customers are interacting with your company online. This is instrumental in creating and maintaining a flawless customer experience.

• Be diverse and inclusive

Inbound marketing principles also state that a healthy, successful company is diverse in staff and inclusive of all genders and race. This is not only important for your company culture and moral, but it shows your prospects and customers that you respect all backgrounds and that your products and services can be a solution for a diverse range of people.

Nearing the end but not before we see the flywheel. @dantyre @HubSpot #SDHUG pic.twitter.com/G1o03PH8bT

— Courtney Hartmann Tisa (@mscourtneybeth) April 3, 2019

Creating an Inbound Marketing Company Culture

Retaining employees and growing your business have more in common with your company culture than you think.

Dan let us in on a little secret: HubSpot’s culture code is the most downloaded SlideShare in the history of SlideShare - demonstrating their commitment to creating great company culture, and then attracting an extremely large amount of applicants.

Because of this, Dan said it's statistically harder to get hired at Hubspot than to get into Harvard or MIT University! FUN FACT: HubSpot hires less than 2% of people who apply.

So why should you care?

Inbound marketing principles state that happy employees = more happy customers.

• Ge to know their values

When you know what values are important to the people you want to work with, you will attract and retain more of these types of people.

• Be committed to both mission and metrics

Commitment to your company's mission in addition to its bottom line will always help you gain the respect and devotion of your employees and customers.

• Inbound recruiting

The key to scaling a business in 2019 is not about the product or service you are offering, it’s about your people and creating great culture. Inbound marketing organizations are always hiring and on the search for great talent.

 

 

 

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Super fun, fast & fact-filled session on @inboundorg in San Diego, CA - thanks #sdhug for filling the venue & everyone who came out to support @hubspot & the Inbound Revolution 👊🏾

A post shared by Dan Tyre (@dantyre1) on Apr 3, 2019 at 3:57pm PDT

Key Takeaways of the Inbound Marketing Workshop

Dan wrapped up the workshop by reiterating the importance of adopting inbound marketing principles throughout your organization and why you should make sure your best customers become your advocates.

In 2019, your customers have more selling power and are trusted more by fellow consumers, than your sales team. By getting to know them, solving their problems and retaining happy, rockstar employees you will experience growth and success.

If you are a small to medium size company that would like help developing inbound marketing principles for your organization, book a complimentary consultation with us now.

If you want to learn different tactics to generate leads without landing pages on HubSpot, download our FREE ebook by clicking the download now button below.