Why go HubSpot Marketing Hub? (HubHeroes, Ep. 16)

TRANSCRIPTION OF THE SHOW

[00:00:00] George B. Thomas:

I just can't even right now, I, I, I don't even know how we move forward from that intro where Max is literal. Wearing a VR headset, and we're trying to be serious about

[00:00:10] Max Cohen:

marketing. I'm stepping into the metaverse. Oh

[00:00:13] George B. Thomas:

God,

[00:00:14] Liz Murphy:

what? He's either trying to experience this more deeply, or he's literally trying to run away, but he's trapped.

[00:00:19] Max Cohen:

I'm just trying to immerse myself in this conversation.

[00:00:22] George B. Thomas:

Oh, ba boom, boom, shh.

[00:00:25] Liz Murphy:

And on that note, welcome back ladies and gentlemen. It is another exciting, totally focused technology issue. Free episode of the Hub Heroes Podcast. I am Liz Murphy, a content strategist and your weekly nerd Wrangler. I am joyed, as always by Devin Bellamy and Max Cohen of HubSpot.

Hi gentlemen. Hello. Hi. And then there's George B. Thomas. How you doing?

[00:00:50] George B. Thomas:

I'm doing great. I'm, I'm, I gotta go buy a VR headset now. What is going on

[00:00:55] Max Cohen:

right now? Let's get, let's

[00:00:56] Liz Murphy:

get weird. Okay. Well, the boys play with their toys for once. I'm not the only female here because we have a special guest this week.

Who's behind door number three?

[00:01:05] Deanna Schwarz:

Well, hi Liz. My name is Deanna Schwartz and I am a product go-to-market Lead for HubSpot. And I focus on all things Marketing Hub. Um, I'm very, very broad in the marketing hub world, meaning that I am concerned with the commercialization of our product, making sure that we're building products that matter to you, our customers.

You are partners and you, the business, you, the people, um, and also making sure we're solving all those problems in the right order.

[00:01:30] Liz Murphy:

I am so excited you're here. I know we are gonna be digging into. Basically your sweet spot. We're talking all about marketing, HubSpot or Marketing Hub today with HubSpot.

But first I have a trivia question for all of you. Last week I went to the Wayback machine because I was curious. What was hubspot.com like in 2005? Get ready. One question only. True or false? I am going to read you a bit of. You tell me. Yes. This was on their front page in 2005 when HubSpot first launched, or false?

No, it wasn't your ridiculous

[00:02:09] George B. Thomas:

sunflower. Wait, wait. 2005, 2000. I haven't even graduated high school yet. Wait, I thought 2011 is when they, or 2010 is when they actually, man, holy crap. I went digging in the way

[00:02:20] Liz Murphy:

back Machine and hubspot.com, their first imprint as a. Was May 10th, 2005. Are you ready?

[00:02:29] George B. Thomas:

Oh, God, I'm, I'm adequately unprepared for this.

[00:02:33] Liz Murphy:

Good. I love it. I love making all of you look like experts in rock stars. All right, so on their website in 2005, they listed four things you could do with HubSpot. True or false? This was one of them. Number two. Build in individual extra nets, secure private internets for your customers.

Pop quiz: What did HubSpot do in 2005?

[00:03:00] George B. Thomas:

Oh, I'm gonna say true that so much.

Sounds like Darnest shot right there. Like back in the day when he was at m i t like or wherever. Yeah. I'm gonna say yes.

[00:03:09] Max Cohen:

I'm mean that with a hard false, I'm leaning

[00:03:12] Liz Murphy:

false. All right, gentlemen. George, guess what? What?

[00:03:17] George B. Thomas:

You're right. Yeah. Alright. You

[00:03:21] Liz Murphy:

defeated. The Yes, you exceeded the two hubs. Spotters. So Darmesh.

Brian, I want you to know Max and Devin were

[00:03:31] George B. Thomas:

wrong. Oh, and I w the George V. Thomas. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. It's knowing the brain of the man, the myth, the legend. Dharmesh,

do

[00:03:42] Liz Murphy:

you wanna hear what the other three things were on there, by the way, because this was just wild. Create a powerful internet for employees of your company to share information and collaborate.

Number two, build the inter individual extranets. Number three, manage your public internet website without knowing H T M L. And number four, create a website for your community group. What

[00:04:08] George B. Thomas:

about

[00:04:09] Max Cohen:

God? I missed, what about two? Where's keyword tracker? Wasn't that the first thing we.

[00:04:14] George B. Thomas:

Dude, that's, that's in like 2010, 2011.

This is way back before like even the understanding that there was probably a HubSpot back

[00:04:26] Liz Murphy:

when the dinosaurs and Cleopatra were going to happy hour. Super fun. All right, enough of this nonsense. Are we ready to talk about the big question today, which is why go HubSpot Marketing Hub? Are we. Oh yeah. All right.

Why are we talking about such a basic topic?

So what I love about this topic is that at first glance, the who of who we're talking to with the answer of this question seems pretty obvious, right? We're talking to people who don't have HubSpot wrong. We are talking to those people too, but we're also talking to any of you folks out there who have invested in HubSpot Marketing Hub already, because there are two times when you ask this question, Why go HubSpot Marketing Hub when you're making that initial sales decision, and then in the middle of the night when you're yelling and swearing at the workflow feature and going, why?

Why did I go HubSpot? And you are angry? And that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna remove the pain, we're gonna remove the mystery. We're gonna remove the mysticism. I mean, unless Max puts his VR headset back on, I don't know. It could be completely chaotic. Are you guys ready to record this conversation for the very first time

[00:05:31] George B. Thomas: ever,

Oh, see, I knew that was coming. I knew that was coming. I was about to throw out a dejavu joke like, Hey, anybody else having dejavu? Uh, anyway, let's just throw this out real quick and people who are listening to this right now, uh, we've done this once, uh, your boy George b forgot to hit record. And so here we are.

My favorite. I'm, I'm fe out

[00:05:52] Liz Murphy:

too. We got to the end of the whole thing and none of us noticed. And then we got to secret question at the end of the episode and Devin goes, I'd be happy to answer your question, Liz. But are we recording? And then the whole

[00:06:07] George B. Thomas:

world just shattered. It was, it was a moment. May cry.

It was my favorite after I turned my video

[00:06:13] Max Cohen:

off. It was my favorite conversation I've ever had about HubSpot ever. And you know what? Only the five of us of us will ever share that. And I still think that's special.

[00:06:22] Liz Murphy:

Well, maybe the internet God's knew it was just a personal moment between the five of us.

But are you ready? 17th times a charm. Go. All right. Second, I don't wanna hear from any of the gentlemen, Deanna. Hi. Oh, fabulous. Fabulous. Now that the boys are gone. No, I'm just kidding. I wanna kick off today's conversation with something that's actually tied back to the bit of trivia that I just shared.

What HubSpot Marketing Hub is today is not what it always. So I'd love to hear from you, what was that evolution like? What was HubSpot Marketing Hub then? What is it today and what do people still kind of get wrong about it?

What was HubSpot Marketing Hub back in the day, and how is that different from what it is today?

[00:07:04] Deanna Schwarz:

Yeah. Uh, so about eight years ago we were really focused on top of the funnel challenges.

So big into seo, big blogging tool. I feel like out there we were the blog tool. Um, we had some light forms in email tooling about eight years ago. We were one product company really thriving off of, in. Um, but if we flash forward to today, the year of almost 2023, we are multi-product serving, like the full front office of businesses.

We're thriving off of con of creating connected customer experiences, but really what we're trying to be every day. Is software that helps you get the most high quality leads, be the most efficient, and most importantly to make you better

[00:07:46] Liz Murphy:

over time. Fantastic. I guess we can all go home, guys. I think we're done.

That's it. Fantastic. Wonderful. Fantastic. Now, George, talk to me. I want you to paint this journey for me because as listeners should know, you have been drinking this orange Kool-Aid now for it used to be just a solid even decade. We're now about to hit your 11th year hugging the SP Rocket. So

[00:08:07] George B. Thomas:

talk to me about it.

I mean, the fact that you can walk into a room and be like, I've been using HubSpot for over a decade. There's like something to be said with that. I, I love that it's just a little bit of a, you know, a baller moment. But here's the thing, when, when we first got in with HubSpot, back when it was Wild Boy designed from Mass in Ohio, and Zach Basner and I had won tickets to Inbound 2012, it was.

A blogging tool like Deanna said, with like a little bit of a keyword tool that felt like you had like super ninja throwing stars and could like, mess with Google a little bit. And, uh, and, and the, it it, I'll just put, it wasn't quite as pretty as it is today to log into. It was a little bit like, but, but hey.

It allowed us to start to have this mindset around like, I don't have to Frankenstein something from the interweb together. It started to be like, oh, there's humans in here that are reading my content and I can see like what keywords are bringing them and the number of pages they're actually viewing.

And so really it was like this kind of cool tool that led to even cooler. Lead intelligence.

[00:09:24] Liz Murphy:

So what I find interesting about that is though, cuz you and I have talked about this before, right? We can look back and be like HubSpot, it was a blog platform, the end next. But I think the thing that's really important to recognize though, is that back then, , that's A B F D, right?

Back then, the idea of a company going on the internet and sharing their actual opinions and using content to, to move people through the sales process, to proactively empower their buyers with education and knowledge that was usually gaped. Keep behind a sales convers. That was big and freaking scary.

So I'm not even sure if HubSpot showed up on the scene the way it is today. It would even be embraced because I think what's been neat about the evolution, at least from my perspective, is that it's baby stepped us along the way. It hasn't been the guy at Inbound who's like, I. I made 10 million off of one piece of content.

Don't you want to know how? No, it probably went viral. It's not sustainable and scalable and don't pretend to be an expert who knows everything when you don't. And I think HubSpot has done a really great job of that, of positioning themselves as kind of like the, the. The beacon, the lighthouse that's like, we're gonna try to figure this out.

They're leading the charge, but they're not pretending they're already at the top of the mountain. It's willing to grow as the whole industry

[00:10:44] George B. Thomas:

evolves. Yeah, and you know what, Liz, let me jump in here cuz I totally agree with you and something that when you were talking hit my brain that I remember now, is that.

One thing that was fascinating to me and inbound 2012, and the where HubSpot was at that point was something that Brian Halligan said, and it was around the fact of that we are enabling the small guy to keep up with the big business. And so you could have like a tiny agency of like six people with almost zero budget, actually have a.

And actually be, be enabled to impact the world. And what's fun about that is I feel like that never left HubSpot because you asked Deanna like, where were we and where are we going? The idea of always enabling the team, sure it was small at first, but enabling the teams to do the best that they can do and impact the world is like a fundamental element that has been there for this entire decade journey.

What are the most common misconceptions long-time HubSpot Marketing Hub users have?

[00:11:42] Liz Murphy:

Devin, I wanna ask you a. that wasn't on the outline. Pop quiz. I know, I know, but it's cuz I trust you and I believe in you. You ready? What are what do long-term? I know. Don't screw this up. Your life depends on it. No pressure. So, okay, you're talking to me, just Liz. I have been using HubSpot now, not for 10 or 11 years.

Not everybody can make that flex, but eight. And that's pretty. , what are the most common misconceptions I have as a longtime HubSpot user about what MA Marketing Hub really is? What are the legacy things I'm still holding onto that are stunting my ability to maximize the platform with what it is today?

It's not just MailChimp on steroids and orange.

[00:12:30] Max Cohen:

Yeah.

[00:12:31] Devyn Bellamy:

Nope. It's so much more there. There are. who are still out there hanging their hat on the email functionality and, and are stuck on just an email first approach because it's what they learned. It's what they know. It's the success they've experienced in the world.

But it is so much more than that. It's, it goes even past just managing your entire conversion path. I mean, we've taken it to a next level. , like if you really wanna see the full capabilities, it's about incorporating multi hubs, uh, and at the very least marketing and sales hub. So you can get that alignment within your organization.

But if you can get a full

360

[00:13:13] Max Cohen:

on what you got customer with it, then

[00:13:15] Devyn Bellamy:

wonderful. But it's more than just sending

[00:13:18] Deanna Schwarz:

emails.

[00:14:03] Liz Murphy:

thing that kills me in this takes me back to our content marketing ROI episode where I said, what is my one thing? . If you can't have your sales intelligence and your marketing intelligence talking, you're gonna have a bad time. Because guess what? If you like things like proving how much revenue your content is making, understanding what content is actually working with the people who actually close or end up closed, lost, like where are you losing them?

If you don't have Sales Hub, you are guess. if you like things like ROI reporting and revenue reporting and understanding what content is actually closing deals, you need both. George, I see you up on that mic. What do you, what

[00:14:43] George B. Thomas:

do you got for us?

Yeah, there's a couple things. First of all, I was like, Ooh, we got the multi hub instead of the multiverse going on here with the Hub Heroes Podcast. So we're gonna, we're gonna have to figure out, we can play that in, uh, moving forward. But what I wanted to dive in, because Deanna slicked past it so quickly, is, uh, the mention of WhatsApp and the fact that now that you can actually connect that to a unified inbox for WhatsApp for business.

Like if you, if you're listening to this right now and you didn't know that, then you have something that you should track down. Educate yourself and see if it's an execution point after this, uh, podcast.

[00:15:29] Devyn Bellamy:

Yeah, she did just lightweight, sprinkle that massive integration in mid-sentence and then kept going.

She's the kind

[00:15:35] George B. Thomas:

of person who like shows

[00:15:36] Max Cohen:

up at just walking out the door when it happened. There's the cure for protector peace guys.

[00:15:48] George B. Thomas:

Yeah. Mm-hmm. , .

[00:15:51] Max Cohen:

What is that big Wait,

[00:15:55] George B. Thomas:

what? What? What?

[00:16:00] Devyn Bellamy:

Congratulations, Diana

[00:16:06] Max Cohen:

I am so like WhatsApp dropped. You mind blown, right? Like we're, we're progressing

[00:16:10] Devyn Bellamy:

too quickly with new information.

[00:16:17] Max Cohen:

Yeah. I mean, the thing is that everyone is sleeping on right now, Don. Don't forget how you can build your employees internet. Don't forget your public internet website, right? Oh my. That's important. Like no one talks about it enough. , yes. Your public internet website, right? Don't forget

[00:16:33] George B. Thomas:

about. But I will say, I will say though, with private content in HubSpot Enterprise and a blog, you could create what Max is joking about.

Anyway. True. Somebody slowed this train down. Okay.

[00:16:48] Liz Murphy:

I do con silence. What else?

[00:16:50] George B. Thomas:

It's possible I go to Max. It's possible that I'm not saying you should, I'm just saying it's possible. Very possible.

[00:16:55] Liz Murphy:

What problems can't HubSpot

What problems CAN'T HubSpot Marketing Hub solve?

[00:16:59] Max Cohen:

solve? What's your question? What can mm-hmm. can't solve the problem of who, what can it solve?

There's no wizard. Uh, it, it can't solve the problem of, oh, I'm too lazy to build content. Right. I'm getting an echo. I'm getting an echo from someone. I don't know who it is. I think it might be you, Liz, but All right. Yeah. Okay. So, um, yeah, in terms of like what it can't solve, yeah. I don't know why. Weird, weird echo.

In terms of what it can't solve? Yeah. Like one of the biggest problems that I think people have, um, with the marketing hub is just like the inability to create content or the unwillingness to create content, right? When in fact that's like the gas in the car. Um, you know, HubSpot's only gonna be as good as like the strategy you actually put in place, which is why it's like super important to be able to detach things like the inbound methodology.

and HubSpot the product and be able to understand that the two kind of like depend on each other, right? Like you can't really expect to like take all these tools and put together this perfect symphony if you don't actually have like a really good conductor making everything work together, right? So, um, you know, if you're someone who's just gonna come in and kinda like Devin said, just kind of operate the status quo of like, all right, my marketing tool is my email Blaster 9,000, and I'm just gonna email people as much as I possibly can.

that's a people problem that HubSpot's not gonna fix. Like that's something you gotta think about kind of prior to selecting, you know, some sort of marketing technology and kind of fix that first, right? Um, it's really important to make sure you got your strategy. I wanna keep this hand going, breaking all the things the right hub way HubSpot, using the tool in

the

[00:18:35] Liz Murphy:

way that, about what it can do.

Dean, talk to me about what problems HubSpot does not.

[00:19:06] Deanna Schwarz:

It doesn't fix your broken business model. We can oosh HubSpot into whatever business model you have, but you have a broken business model that's not getting you high quality leads. It's not getting you the right volume of leads. You're not converting, you're not closing deals, quick chaining your software.

Smoosh is not going to solve that technical term. So when, after six months down the road, or it's more like 90 days to get HubSpot, all five big hubs fully implemented, uh, and you're not seeing any change. Did you go through the process of updating your business models and your strategies and making sure, and your teams are aligned

[00:19:41] Liz Murphy:

on what

[00:19:41] George B. Thomas:

your goals are?

I feel like it was gonna gloss, it's, it's right next to a scope might be more of a you problem and not assessment problem. Yes. Oh yes. Good callback.

[00:19:49] Max Cohen:

Yeah. When you're, when you're building out pipelines, you're like, oh, max, can I have, I have

[00:19:52] Deanna Schwarz:

another echo. It is the most technical term. I'm not sure if it's cub spot upscale, but it's very technical.

I love

[00:20:00] Liz Murphy:

recording on Fridays. It's the nonsense time. All right. Shortly done.

[00:20:05] Deanna Schwarz:

Okay, so

[00:20:06] Liz Murphy:

now that Deanna and Max have have peed in our fun deal cereal collectively and told me what

[00:20:11] Deanna Schwarz:

HubSpot can't do, I wanna hear from you guys about what it

[00:20:14] Liz Murphy:

does do. What problems does HubSpot actually?

Why problems does HubSpot Marketing Hub actually solve?

[00:20:18] Max Cohen:

solve?

[00:20:27] Devyn Bellamy:

Well, I can go it. Well, the first thing is that it can bring all of your reporting into one. . And so you can see the entirety of your impact on someone's interaction with your brand, uh, in one location, uh, because you're using the same tool to get it all done. Um, that's for me one of my favorite things.

Instead of trying to identify. Tool is going to be the source of truth on which platform. For whichever thing that may or may not read the UTMs that I'm setting up, I can just look in my dashboard, create reports and say, here's what we're doing. This is working.

[00:21:11] George B. Thomas:

Yeah. So the easy answer list to that is a lot.

Right. But if I go a little bit deeper, what I mean by that is, first of all, it can, uh, simplify the complex. Meaning it can take a company who has 17 different logins, you know, on 33 different platforms, and actually bring it down to, I can log into HubSpot, I can do my work, and I can, I can get it done quickly.

The other thing that I want to throw in here that hubs. Does if being used right? And when I say being used, right, I mean that people have taken the time to educate themselves on what the tools are, how the tools work, and the best practices and strategies around those tools. If that happens, then what HubSpot can do is empower your company, empower your teams, and empower each human.

There's the word for you to do the best. Yeah, to do , to do the best that they can do with the time allotted for the tasks needed for growth and success in the business.

[00:22:21] Liz Murphy:

That all sounds nice, but I wanna break this down even a little bit further with you, George, because when you work with your clients who are using Marketing Hub, You're not wa talking to one to one homogenous entity of people who all have the same priorities and are coming to the table with the same perspectives, right?

You're working with business owners, you're working with marketing leaders, and you're working with marketers, and sometimes sales gets dragged to the table because. Somebody told 'em they had to be there. But I want you to break that down for me. If I'm the business owner, if I'm the marketing leader, or if I'm the marketer, what does that even mean for me?

Take me through each role. What does that do?

What does HubSpot Marketing Hub do for the marketer vs. the business owner?

[00:22:55] George B. Thomas:

I mean, do we have an extra hour for the podcast episode? I mean, I'll do my best, but at the end of the day, from an owner perspec perspective, it, it allows. See overarching everything that you need to see. Uh, we're talking about attribution reporting, we're talking about sales content reporting.

We're talking about campaign reporting. You, you, you as the owner have to immediately, uh, be able to see success or failure. And understand what needs to happen to move it in the right direction. As the marketer in the scenario, it gives me the tools that I need to actually communicate with a community in a way that adds value to their life, that helps them pass their hurdle or towards their aspiration.

And of course, I'm talking very micro back to email. Back to call to actions, back to list segmentation, so we can actually have the right conversation with the right people at the right time. You know, like right. And now sales. I love talking to sales cuz I get that sales. Actually, what they want to do is be on the golf course, hitting the ball, talking to people and making sales.

So that's why you gotta use snippets and templates and all the automation sequences, features that you can't and documents because. For sales. What I want you to do is have way more time in your day so you can sell more, and I want you to have way more lead intelligence so that you know more and can sell better.

[00:24:18] Max Cohen:

Liz, can I pop in on this one? Oh, sorry. I, I just real, real quick. I want to throw in there the, I think that in terms of like the problems thing, a, a lot of people when they're making the case for HubSpot, make a very. Milk toast attempt at like kind of just saying, Hey, it's all on one. And that's great because that sounds cool.

right? And they don't really like critically break down the argument of why having a lot of your tools on one platform, right? And this is, again, this is not an argument saying don't use other stuff with HubSpot. There's a reason we call ourselves a platform, right? Like we're meant to integrate well with other things, right?

And it's a huge part of why HubSpot's so. But there is also an argument on why you're gonna want to reduce the total amount of tools you have to use. Right. Um, especially when you think about marketers, right? I, I don't know. What the average, you know, amount of tools in a tech stack is. Maybe someone can educate that on me, but it's a bunch, right?

Um, and when you're talking about a disparate tech stack, you gotta think about all the other friction that that gives you, that takes you away from doing the act of marketing. Demand generation, lead generation, however you want to chop it up and think about it, right? Um, you know, you're worried about all these different tools and learning all these different tools and managing logins and all these different tools and paying for all these different tools and, uh, can I get support in a consistent way across all these different tools?

And can I integrate all of these different tools, right? And sometimes that experience is fine. Sometimes that experience is terrible, but is it inconsistent? Always You. Right, and one of the biggest and best reasons why you would wanna make the argument on why all On Platform is gonna work is because you reduce a ton of the friction of having all those different systems.

You've got one support team that you go and talk to when the tools aren't kind of working properly. All the tools are built to work with each other. You're not integrating your landing pages tool with your forms tool or your email tool back to your crm, right? It's all the same thing, right? All you're reporting is just there and it works, right?

Um, you know, so when you reduce all of the friction and the time and the headaches and the pain and the wasted calorie, Training on stuff and, and everything there. You get to spend a lot more time actually doing your job as a marketer. Right. And that's what we all need. Yeah. Oh

[00:26:40] Liz Murphy:

my gosh. Cosign. I'm cosigning that so hard.

In fact, it, you know what, George, this reminds me of a conversation you and I had a couple of months ago with uh, uh, a company who had approached us to work with them on some content and some website stuff, and we got into this big conversation about, you know, where should the website live? How many hubs is too?

Blah, blah, blah. And I said, you know what? I, I can't speak for other people. I can't speak for the VPs of marketing in the world. But I will tell you something, as a content strategist, I lose my mind when it's like, uh, do I wanna work on a blog? Great. Uh, open up HubSpot. Okay, this company hates me. So now I have to go to MailChimp.

Now this company hates me even more, and now I have to go to Word presser, Droople. Anytime you have to go to multiple platforms, you are decreasing your efficiency and I want business owners to hear me now when I say this. The more you try to Frankenstein a bunch of tools together, the more you can't rely on your data.

The more you can't expect your people to be efficient. Would you like your people to waste an hour or more each day beating their head against a wall and logging in and out of things, and then trying to get back into last pass because they forgot their master password, but then can't find the PDF with the special password.

You get what I'm saying? You think you're making their lives easier and you're saving a couple. But think about how many hours over a week, a month, a year, you are paying them to just be angry at you. Now, Deanna, take us on a different journey. You ready? Fabulous. Even if you said you weren't ready, we're going anyway.

So whether or not somebody is brand new to the platform or somebody has HubSpot in their hands and in their. , how do people screw it up, whether they're onboarding or just kind of going through the motions? How do people get their heart broken by HubSpot? By doing something bad themselves?

How do people who fall in love with HubSpot Marketing Hub at first screw it all up?

[00:28:47] Deanna Schwarz:

Oh, uh, so the least sexy thing in all of technology, I think it's just like it's data hygiene and it matters so much because, It's, I just like people, like marketers love to produce awesome looking and sounding and feeling things.

What is not sexy is data entry and data hygiene. And why that matters is if you put shit in, you're going to get shit out. It does not matter what system you're putting the shit data in. So if you take some time as a marketing team and sit down with your sales team and you're like, all right, here are all our contacts, here are all the attributes, otherwise known as properties that we know about our contacts, what companies they work for, what open deals we have, what support tickets they've opened in the last 46.

Any custom object you have associated with and you say, Hey, are these accurate? Does Max Cohen have a favorite color of X? Does he have 17 co 17 custom hats? How many does he have? If this data is accurate, you put it into HubSpot In nine months, when you start marketing two Max Cohen with Custom Hat Brands, you will make a sale.

If your data is not correct and you start trying. And you start trying to market to Max Cohen for a lawnmower, you may not make a sale because you may have mistranscribed the data, max did just show me three custom hats and made a gross face that a lawnmower. So the point is, you take the time to reorganize your data, make sure it's good going in, you're gonna see the revenue on the other side.

[00:30:29] Liz Murphy:

I don't know why people don't think hygiene is sexy, because I don't wanna make out with someone who hasn't brushed their teeth. I'm just saying. Max, what do you have to say? Cupcake,

[00:30:40] Max Cohen:

Deanna, when we had this conversation the first time, you also mentioned something that had, that started with r and r that you really, really weren't a fan about, and I wanna make sure we have that conversation today because I think we had a spontaneous.

Re re uh, different version of what people do wrong that we could maybe have people walk away with today. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick it back to you again cause I want to hear you talk about that.

Oh,

[00:31:32] Deanna Schwarz:

we can have it.

I did.

I would love. Yeah, I would love, so I think I referred to it and I continue to refer to it as like a dirty phrase when it comes to software implementations, and that is the rip and replace. So if you try to rip out another software system and put the exact same process back in, it's not gonna work because it was borked before, it is now remaining borked.

Like that's how it works. And I think Max called it Rip and Reimagine. So there's no Bork. There's no boing in the reimagination. ,

[00:32:21] Max Cohen:

rip and reimagine. Yes. . Yeah. . Yeah. So we've

[00:32:28] George B. Thomas:

got Smoosh , we've got Borked, we've got Akosh. Don't forget about Scrabble. Come on man. We the Hub Hero podcast. And here's my question about, don't forget about booing it up a episode.

Don't

[00:32:41] Liz Murphy:

bork it like a little line over it. Like I'm curious.

[00:32:46] Deanna Schwarz:

Oh, no mlo, no. Umm L It's a double O

[00:32:50] Liz Murphy:

smoosh. All right.

[00:32:52] Max Cohen:

An mlo. No. Yeah,

[00:32:54] Liz Murphy:

that's what I was about to ask. .

[00:32:57] George B. Thomas:

Yeah. Devin, host the conversation. Sorry.

[00:33:02] Devyn Bellamy:

I'm, I, I lean, um, out personally, but I'm, I'm, I'm a runner. Hey.

[00:33:07] Max Cohen:

No kidding.

[00:33:11] Liz Murphy:

Devin. . Smu. More of my dreams. Noah. Leave it out. What else do people screw it up with? HubSpot. How else do either well-intended people who just invested in it or people who've had it for a while? Yes. Where does their success story with HubSpot Marketing Hub go?

What are some of the other mistakes people make with HubSpot Marketing Hub?

[00:33:34] Devyn Bellamy:

Well, I'm fairly certain it's been said, but the number one way is to try and use it like it's another tool, um, to try and bring in your practices and procedures from another tool and bring it into hubs. Instead of sitting through the academy courses and learning something new, getting fresh perspective, talking to a partner agency and working on a strategy, you know that.

if you're just gonna jump in and just start pushing buttons and using all the things, it's gonna look like your first house in the Sims. You're gonna have everything everywhere. It's gonna be a total cluster. Nothing's gonna go together. You're just gonna have all the parts and all the pieces doing stuff just because you can.

And then you're gonna end up having to just burn it all down anyway. Or just remove the doors so your sims can't leave cuz you're a sick person. But either way, The, the , the, the point is, wow, that you need to, uh, like, like she was saying it, ripping, replace doesn't work. You, you need to come fresh

[00:34:42] Max Cohen:

with a new person.

I'm just having this vision in my head of, of like keeping the same contacts in your database forever and just

[00:34:48] George B. Thomas:

emailing them and emailing them and emailing them. Yeah, and emailing 'em.

[00:34:52] Max Cohen:

It's the same thing as leaving a sims in the pool and taking the ladder.

[00:34:56] George B. Thomas:

You just watch to swim around. Just swim around and can't get out.

Yeah, it's, it's funny because my brain went to two places, right? It went to, it's not gonna fix if you have crappy marketing tactics, like again, that garbage in, garbage out. Uh, so if your tactics are flawed, HubSpot ain't gonna help you. You're gonna jack it up. Your, your database is gonna churn. You're gonna go out of business, and so just knock it off.

Fiddle, fart, knock it off big. The other thing too is you can't just go into HubSpot and just fiddle, fart around, like there's HubSpot Academy. Yes. You can't fiddle fart around. Like, here's the thing. There's HubSpot Academy for a reason. There's a HubSpot marketing software certification for a reason.

There's an email marketing certification for a reason. There's a content marketing certification for a reason. Right? It's because no one's laughing. No, right. Everybody's dying, by the way, listeners, because I said fiddle fart, but at the end of the day, you have. Yeah, you, you have to have the right strategy and you have to a, educate yourself around the thing that you're actually trying to use on a daily basis instead of just going in there.

Here you go willy-nilly and messing it up.

[00:36:08] Devyn Bellamy:

You know what that reminds me, uh, aside from the fact that George is actually an 1840s prospector, the thing that we have to, uh, remind people also about is it's also possible to overcomplicate what it is you're trying to do. Um, . HubSpot is not a complicated tool.

That's one of the things that sets it apart from almost anything that I've worked with in the past. Um, once you get going, um, it allows the one person to accomplish a lot what you don't want to do. Is create these, um, hilariously complex and over-engineered workflows. Uh, start relying on API data or API calls to get your data out to a Google sheet so you can dive into it with a fine tooth comb.

And, and it's like, there, there are so many ways where you can make using HubSpot harder than it needs to be because you're losing sight of the big picture that. That that ties back into just working with someone who can help you with process and someone who can help you with strategy where they can stop you when you're starting to fall down a rabbit hole of, uh, craziness.

[00:37:30] Liz Murphy:

I love that point you made, cuz it kind of reminds me of my first 10 years of marriage to my husband Patrick. I would just lay there at night and I was living that meme where it's like he's probably thinking about somebody else and he's like, huh, farts are loud, you know? And it took me 10 years to realize like he has two modes, hungry and not hungry.

End of list. And people look at HubSpot and they're just like projecting all of their crap onto it. It's like, hold. Can it do complex things? Yes. Is it complex? No.

[00:38:06] Deanna Schwarz:

Anyway,

[00:38:07] Liz Murphy:

all right, now that we've yelled at people enough, let's fiddle fart to a new topic. Are we ready? Tell me about your favorite things

What are your favorite HubSpot Marketing Hub features, integrations, or capabilities?

[00:38:18] Deanna Schwarz:

about HubSpot.

[00:38:19] Liz Murphy:

I want your favorite tools, your favorite features, your favorite integrations. Max, I've been mean to you and not called on you first, once yet so far. So why don't you wait, because I'm gonna ask Devin first.

[00:38:46] Max Cohen:

All

[00:38:46] Devyn Bellamy:

right, so. . My favorite thing about HubSpot. Oh, I, I actually have two equally favorite things about HubSpot, uh, that have nothing to do with the tools. Uh, the first thing is HubSpot Academy. Uh, I am lucky enough to now be on the same team and report to the same VP as, uh, academy on the community led growth team.

And, uh, academy is, is where it's, Um, regardless of where you are with your education, whether you are a college dropout, whether you have your PhD, there is so much valuable information and it doesn't matter where you are. In, in your business life. You could be a marketer, you could be a salesperson, you can be, uh, an intern, um, or you could be a ceo.

There's so much valuable information about how to be successful, uh, and, and run your organization or be a part of it and keep your eye on the big pictures. There's just so much goodness, and not just in the certifications which are being recognized in the industry. , even in the individual courses, which are often overlooked, there are some fantastic gems in there.

So I would say that's like my first favorite thing. But then my equally favorite thing is that HubSpot is like the best company on earth and that I've always wanted to work there. And then when I started working there, it was actually surpassed my expectations, which were already very, very, They're great people work at HubSpot.

I have yet to be disappointed by anyone who I've met at HubSpot. We do a really good job of bringing in phenomenal people, um, which is one of the main reasons why we have such a phenomenal product. Uh, our culture, our culture code is second to none. It's like awesome is literally written in the DNA of the.

[00:40:44] Max Cohen:

Uh, well, I, I just wanna double down on two things because what, what Devin just said doesn't sound like, Features of the tool when indeed they absolutely are. Right? Because one, there's not a lot of features that actually improve the brains in a really good way, right? Of the users. HubSpot Academy quite literally does that, right?

So like, sure, your software is like, Giving you an upgrade of the tools that you have, right? But then all this other free stuff that you have access to, like Academy is gonna turn your people into folks who actually know how to use it correctly. Right? Um, that is very much a feature, just like multi-touch revenue attribution.

Right. Um, I think on top of that too, Devin talked a lot about the people. , right? Guess what? HubSpot hires people that really, really give a about your success. Right? And I know that sounds cheesy, but I've worked next to these people for seven years and the internal conversations we have there are never about how can we sell the most product to this person.

It's like, what are these people actually need? I don't really wanna sell 'em this cuz I don't think they're gonna be successful if they don't change their mindset. Da da da da da. Right? So like, you know, there are a lot of really good people behind you. Like our support team, they're absolutely amazing, but.

your customer success manager is not just there to make sure, like you keep buying the product. They're actually there as like a strategic resource to make sure like you're making good decisions in how you use it. Right? Because we really, really do care. Um, so anyway, moving on past that, I'll go for like, you know, a, a specific like feature of Marketing Hub.

Um, one of the cooler things I think lately that we've added is the customer journey analytics. Um, if you haven't seen that, it's pretty easy to kind of just. Visualize it. Um, I used to get the question a lot. Uh, when we would talk about reporting, I'd say like, Hey, what sort of reporting do you want to build that's gonna be helpful for you?

When we're talking about like the marketing hub, and I would often get a very vague request of people saying, well, I just kind of wanna see how someone sort of like moves through the whole journey, right. And trying to represent. With an x axis and a y axis is really, really difficult, , right? And um, you know, oftentimes I would ask people, would you like to draw what that report?

Like would look like and, and, and communicate what you're, you're really asking of me. And then they would realize, wow, that actually is something very difficult to visualize. Right. Um, so HubSpot recently released and you know, these things called sanky charts have kind of been around for a while, but like they haven't been around in the same way that you can connect your CRM data and your analytic event data and your contact data to it, to really do something like super useful within a CRM and a marketing.

Um, but basically it allows you to like track these different touchpoints of how you think someone actually goes through a journey interacting with your marketing content. So things like your emails, your webpages, your forms, things like that. But it also takes into event, uh, or it takes into consideration, I kind of gave it away custom events, right?

Um, and custom events are amazing because that's how you can track things that happen outside of HubSpot that we can't really, you know, see with something like the tracking code. So what's really cool about that is like, now if you're like a SaaS company for example, and you release this new feature and you want to know, you know, are people actually like using this feature?

And are any of our marketing efforts actually driving people to. , you quite literally can see a report of Hey, here's all these people we emailed, announcing, you know, this new feature. Here's all the people that actually clicked that email. Here's the people that actually like logged in cuz we saw an event that is tracking.

If they're logging in. And then we have another event tracking. Did people actually do it right? And so like you can see that now in customer journey analytics, which is something we've like never been able to accomplish before, at least in one sort of visualization. , yeah. Customer Journey Analytics for interview Marketing Hub Enterprise.

Andy's out there. Go check it out. It's pretty.

So

[00:44:42] Deanna Schwarz:

Max just talked for about four straight minutes about a really cool new feature in reporting, which is awesome. Um, for those of you who have been in HubSpot for a while or are just getting started, there is one very important piece of information you're probably aware of is. , there are 500,000 different reporting tools in HubSpot.

There's traffic analytics, there's in-app analytics, there are pre-built dashboards, there's custom dashboards. There are custom report builders. There was a brand new custom report builder released two years ago. There is multi-touch revenue attribution and now there is customer journey analytics. What that means is that it's very important for you to understand what the different questions are that each of these different types of reporting engines can help you answer.

So for those of you who are in the Marketing Hub Enterprise, I'm gonna do a little bit of what questions for, for multi touch revenue attribution versus customer journey analytics, because I do believe that those of you who are using multi-touch revenue attribution well are at the upper echelon of using Marketing Hub Enterprise Well, Because what that means is that you have your data in line, you have all of your assets in line, you have your sales data in line, so we can properly attribute marketing efforts to the bottom line of your company.

That's pretty much as good as you can get. So let's talk about kind of the flip side of that coin. So with Multitouch revenue attribution, the types of questions that'll answer for you is, which campaigns drove the most revenue? Which marketing assets generate the most revenue? Which channels influence the most revenue?

You're hearing a lot of the word revenue. That's what Multitouch attribution does. It says, how much money is any of these touches, these assets, any of these actions driving towards my bottom line. . On the flip side, what customer journey analytics is gonna do is answer questions like, which marketing activities are getting us opportunities faster?

What touchpoints in my journey are contexts not resonating with? Where are we experiencing marketing gaps in the journey? Or something like how well did an asset pull customers all the way through the. Being able to sit down and say, what questions do my leaders or my team care about is gonna help point you in the right direction of reporting.

So that was my soliloquy on the Advanced Reporting and Marketing of Enterprise.

[00:47:07] George B. Thomas:

So, No fiddle fart, but I will say that we officially reached the rewind point of this podcast episode. You literally, as a listener, need to go back about two and a half minutes, get your notepad, get your pencil, and jot down everything that Deanna just said because it's so important. What I'll add to that.

The level of importance for you to train your team on the process of putting the data in right, so that the reporting that she just talked about actually comes out and makes some semblance of fricking sense compared to like empty reports showing up because nobody put the crap in or move the thing the way that it was supposed to be Moved for you to see what you need to see to be success.

Yo, I get passionate people, uh, like, like here's the thing. Everybody thinks that I'm talking about hubs. But I realized how much HubSpot can like change your life, like change your business, like change yourself, like I'll go back to what Devin said, and I'm gonna be real vulnerable for hot second. But the reason I get so passionate about this, Liz, is because HubSpot Academy literally took a high school dropout and turned him into who he is today in the HubSpot ecosystem.

Yeah. So, so listen, HubSpot, if used properly, can change your life individually and as a corporation.

Depends on the day, depends on the client, but yeah, yeah, yeah. So right now I have a client that I'm gonna go meet with shortly that my favorite tool is forms, because right now they're not using HubSpot forms. He literally sent a screenshot over and showed because they're not getting the right data in.

It. It's brand new portal people, they're actually transitioning off of WordPress into the HubSpot ecosystem. Everybody relax on this recording right now. The faces. The faces, the. The, the faces

No, no, no, no, no. So, so listen, listen. Let me let, they're not you. First of all. You have non HubSpot forms, so it'll bring in like gravity forms and ninja forms and like some of the information where, HubSpot knows to put it when you first get going. Okay, but here's the thing. He literally shared a screenshot of how, because the data is jacked up and not known properly, that he's manually happening to put the response in the ninja form, gravity.

Form message into a note in HubSpot until we get all the forms transitioned and then embedded into the website, right? So this is a pain point that they have to deal with and, and so right now my favorite thing is forms because it's gonna enable a team to actually have the right process, the right information, and move in the right way.

If you ask me on any other day, Liz, it's either campaigns or

[00:50:27] Max Cohen:

workflows. That's all. Can I

[00:50:30] Devyn Bellamy:

just give some quick forms? Love too. Just just for a hot second. Um, forms are such a fantastic way to drive adoption within your organization. For Luddites, who don't want to use or learn a new tool, one of the ways that I found successful forms, especially on an enterprise level, Is I would create landing pages, uh, that were for internal use, and that's how they would do data entry.

I wouldn't let them in the tool. I wouldn't give 'em sign-ins. I would just say, Hey, Fill out this form and this form is unique to you and you can just do this thing. And this is where all the data that I need to know and oh look, that star is, that field is starred. You have to fill it out or else your data is just not gonna get into the system.

And we've done that not just for in, uh, internal enablement, but we've had integrations with outside companies that didn't have APIs, and we're just going to just email us content. And it's like, Don't email it. You're gonna use this form and you're gonna do data entry on your end until your system gets its act together.

And it's just, just a, another useful way to use forms. Doesn't have to be customer facing. It can be effective

[00:51:44] Max Cohen:

internally. Better disabled cookies on those forms though. Tell you what.

[00:51:47] George B. Thomas:

Yeah, bro. Hundred percent.

[00:51:50] Devyn Bellamy:

You put in a hundred leads and find out you're just overwriting the same record over and over again.

Oh my.

[00:51:57] Max Cohen:

No, bro. Yes you have. Hey,

[00:51:58] George B. Thomas:

hey. Anybody who's ever done a trade show, that's what

[00:52:01] Max Cohen:

we're here for. The bar. Save money being save money on contacts, though. My right ha. Just put 'em all in one contact record. That is the, that is the high level strategy that you get on this podcast. Instead of having a million contact records you have and you just look through the history details on every single Wait. That's what he called the

[00:52:23] Max Cohen:

five. Oh my hacks. Mushing. This is the hacks that you come here for. Okay, .

[00:52:28] Deanna Schwarz:

All right,

[00:52:29] Liz Murphy:

so this is the time where I have to warn. That's a warning. Four warning. Wait, max. Gimme a warning bud.

Give me a reverb warning. Perfect. This is the second to last question, which means it's the last question in the HubSpot Marketing Hub conversation. That means you all need to go to Lloyds. It's almost time for secret question. All right. Wow.

[00:52:52] Deanna Schwarz:

Thanks, bud. All right, Noah,

[00:52:54] Liz Murphy:

cut that part out. If somebody is walking away from this conversation and they are just like, my head is spinning, we've barked, we've smooshed, we've fiddle, farted, we've prospected with George.

And I'm only gonna remember one thing from today's conversation. What should it be and why? Max?

If our listeners only remember one thing about HubSpot Marketing Hub from today's conversation, what should it be and why?

[00:53:22] Max Cohen:

Mm. One thing. Um, I would say again, like the, the tools are built to support a very specific strategy. Uh, you wouldn't, you wouldn't go get a Lamborghini to, to, to, to go pick up trash. You need a, a, a dumpster or like a, I don't know, garbage truck for that, right? Uh, you wanna make sure that like, you're, you're doing inbound with tools that were built to do inbound, right?

If, if, again, you're just gonna do the email blaster 9,000, you've completely missed the point, right? Slow it down to speed up, dam it. Go, go figure out the proper strategy to use with this. And again, don't just like replace an old process that you. . No.

[00:54:06] Devyn Bellamy:

Go to HubSpot Academy and learn you something. Uh, forget everything. You know, go in and get some guidance from these experts and not just the professors. There are guest lecturers. Like for instance, in in the Rev ops certification, I happen to know a really awesome Deadpool fan who was a guest alert. It was.

[00:54:29] Max Cohen:

Georgie . It was Devin. What? Oh, oh, . Oh, I, can I ask a question?

[00:54:35] George B. Thomas:

Him? What's your one thing? ? Yes. Yes. What? What? I know I'm an awful person for asking my one thing that people need to take with him. That's, I mean, honestly, it's yourself. , like fi fi, fix. You're the problem. . Now here's the thing, like one of, one of the diatribes I went on on when the first time we did this in an alternate hub verse, right, uh, that I didn't record, was the fact that HubSpot marketing hub will not fix your people.

It won't fix your process, right? It's, and so you gotta fix yourself. And yes, it is through education and yes. Through, you know, logging into one thing and yes it is having the proper integrations, but just stop for a minute, Dean and figure out how do you fix your business? How do you fix your people? So I think a lot move forward into it.

[00:55:34] Deanna Schwarz:

Indicated what I'm going to say, but I'm gonna say it out loud. Um, so I have been in SAS for about a decade now, and I, before I started HubSpot about three years ago, I was at a 25,000 person company. Um, and I think that company could have benefited from hubs. And the point I'm trying to make is that HubSpot can scale with you no matter how big.

No matter how complex your organization goes, if you are smart about how you build it, you partner with the experts, you partner with your CSMs and your partners, and you make a team internally that helps you scale with HubSpot. There is nothing you cannot do with a tool set that exists today. You don't need a quote unquote enterprise crm.

You don't need a C D P. You don't need the big. You can do it with what you have. You just gotta look at Academy. You just gotta look. You have to ask for help. Just like a person. You can scale with HubSpot and Marketing Hub.

[00:56:26] Liz Murphy:

Awesome. Mine's really simple. Guess what? HubSpot is not your strategy. Guess what?

HubSpot is not your content machine or content wizard. If you don't have a strategy and you're not investing in content, you're not gonna have a good time. And now are we ready for the secret question? This one's either really, really easy or super, super. Of the three new words we've learned today, Bork, smush, or fiddle fart?

Yes. What's your favorite? Yes, minus smoosh.

Bork vs. smoosh vs. fiddle-fart

[00:56:56] Deanna Schwarz:

I like Bork because it is a verb, and also this sound my dog makes.

[00:57:00] Liz Murphy:

She borks an excited utterance, as they call it, on law and order. Yes.

[00:57:07] George B. Thomas:

Yeah, the pot for the pot. Oh, wow.

[00:57:13] Max Cohen:

Fiddle fart, fart. Kevin . I misspoke. Ha ha. Fiddle fart. Really caught me off guard. I'm gonna go with that one. Wow. The fiddle fart brigade.

I love it.

[00:57:24] Devyn Bellamy:

Oh, no question. Fiddle fart. Like it, it made me, plus was

[00:57:27] Max Cohen:

saying colloquialism four O on a Friday Way to go by

[00:57:30] Devyn Bellamy:

gold rush journalism. It was

[00:57:32] George B. Thomas:

definitely, I.

I know I don't have the brain power to do that, but I'll tell you, as soon as Devin made the joke about prospecting to my fiddle fart statement, I was like, how do I actually thumb my thumbnail myself to look like a prospector for this episode cover? I don't know how I do that, but, um, I actually like oosh.

[00:58:26] Liz Murphy:

Whatever. And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for a very it. Love us. Hate us. Have a question. Want us to talk about something? Leave a review. Not only does that help other people find the hub heroes, we just like being told how pretty and fiddle authority we are. And with that, we will talk to you next week. Go away. Bye-bye.