It's all about creating marketing people love! HubSpot's inbound marketing philosophy has a strong international presence already: more than 710 of their 8,600 customers are outside the United States and Canada, representing 56 countries. Also in IT inbound marketing is getting more and more popular, although a lot of companies aren't familiar with this concept yet.
That's why Kieran Flanagan, Marketing Director at HubSpot, will come all the way to the Netherlands to tell you about it at Next Marketing 2013! In an interview he shares his insights about Inbound Marketing.
We know all about your career path, but who’s Kieran Flanagan as a person?
I studied computer science at the University in Northern Ireland. Once I graduated, I went on to work in a variety of IT roles, but I never really enjoyed my career. I was passionate about the web, enjoyed coding (I wasn’t very good), but didn’t get any creative enjoyment from it. Around the time I started to question my career direction, I started to study NLP as a hobby. This really helped me to realign my focus around new career goals. That’s almost 5 years ago now. I just woke up one day, quit my old job, and started to work towards my goal of being a marketing director for a company I truly love and here I am. I am obsessed with marketing, I love it, I love the people I have meet through it, the opportunities it has presented and now I get to work for Hubspot, who are passionate about making marketing people truly love.
HubSpot’s slogan ‘create marketing people love’ has been quoted a lot. Now, what’s your favourite quote?
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – Albert Einstein
HubSpot is all about inbound marketing. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, could you maybe give a short and clear definition?
Inbound marketing is the most effective way to market your business online today. Instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can convert, close, and delight over time. You can read more about Hubspot Inbound Marketing Methodology right here.
Why is inbound marketing more important than ever before?
The growth of the Internet has completely changed the way buyers purchase products. The consumer is now in total charge of the buying cycle. They can choose to skip your ads, not answer your calls or avoid your display advertising.
Inbound marketing is a better way to reach today’s buyers. It helps companies add value through their marketing, rather than simply paying to get noticed. Producing quality content that speaks to your target audience needs is the best way to get found through channels like SEO and Social. It also helps companies to think about the whole buying cycle, and how it can be personalised around the different buyer personas each company has.
Inbound marketing provides a new methodology for companies to use that is completely tailored for the way buyers purchase goods today.
What can inbound marketing do specifically for ICT?
Hubspot is a B2B company that sells marketing software. We are a great case study for any ICT company who is considering if inbound marketing will achieve results for their company. It’s so powerful for ICT companies because it helps marketing and sales align around common goals. Inbound marketing doesn’t just attract traffic to your site; it helps companies implement processes that make their whole funnel work better. It allows companies to implement closed looped marketing so you can access how well each stage of the funnel is working and how to optimise both marketing and sales functions so it will perform better.
Marketing automation plays an essential role in HubSpot. On the other hand, inbound marketing focuses on personal relationships. This seems contradictionary?
We approach Marketing Automation is a very Hubspoty way. Our tools are focused on personalisation, not automation. Regardless of what tools you use, they should help personalise the buying experience for each of your buyer’s personas. Our approach is to build out a buyer persona matrix where you list each of the different buying personas and the different stages of your funnel. You can then personalise the experience for each of those buyer personas, offering the type of content they want, when they need it. That’s a little different from how a lot of people may use Marketing Automation, where by, it’s really just a tool to filter leads, calling some that you want and nurturing the rest. I would highly recommend thinking personalisation, not automation.
Content marketing is an important aspect of IM. I can imagine that big companies can hire people to do so. Small companies, on the other hand, might not have the amount of time to create valuable content, neither the amount of money to hire an expert. What advice would you give these companies?
When Hubspot started in 2006, we didn’t have a big team or a product. But the first thing Brian and Dharmesh did was blog. This allowed them to start building up a list of prospects, before they even launched anything. The problem is, most small companies think about content as something they should be doing. They don’t consider how much of an impact it could have on their business a year or two down the line. They don’t see the pay off, because it doesn’t happen overnight.
The first thing I would recommend is looking at your priorities, and considering if content shouldn’t be further up that list. I would also advocate looking to hire a graduate with backgrounds in journalism, PR, communications or something relevant to content creation. Having an internal employee responsible for content will really improve the results you are getting. Also, keep in mind, the print industry isn’t doing so good, I am sure there are a lot of journalists who would be happy to start a new career in inbound marketing.
Not every professional possesses the skills of a writer. What would you recommend them: start blogging anyway and learn by trial-and-error or hire an external expert?
I would highly recommend starting to write and learn by trial-and-error. This for me is the best approach to any form of marketing. You are never going to hit it out of the park first time around. But the experiences you gain from trying are what will help you to succeed in the long run.
I would highly recommend reading about one of our most successful customers, who was recently features in the New York Times. Marcus is a great example of how someone can become a true master at this, by just getting started.
What’s the most common marketing mistake nowadays?
That’s a really difficult one to answer. I think we all make a lot of mistakes. That’s how we learn. Some of the things I think we need to change in marketing are:
- Personalisation: We don’t make enough of an effort to personalise our marketing towards the different buyer personas we have.
- Taking Shortcuts: I think marketers take a lot of shortcuts to build an audience because real marketing is hard. We need to put more effort into building a real audience from marketing people love, rather than trying to simply buy it.
- Shouting about ourselves: We need to think how can we create amazing experiences for the people we are targeting with our marketing, rather than how can we just promote ourselves at every chance.
- Metrics Focused: Marketing really needs to be measured on real business value created, rather than a lot of traditional marketing metrics, that really give no indication of the true value a marketer is generating.
What is your golden marketing advice?
If I were a marketing leader today, I would look at the budget I have for the year, and ask myself, what marketing assets are my team going to create that will add true value to the business. That value could be traffic, leads, sales, PR, but it should be something that truly makes the company more valuable. This is a better long-term strategy than simply funnelling all your money into paid channels, where the benefit disappears the moment you stop spending cash.
Kieran Flanagan is een keynote speaker op Next Marketing 2013. Samen met andere experts zoals Jan Willem Alphenaar en Marcel Molenaar (LinkedIn) zal hij zijn kennis delen met ICT-ondernemingen over het optimaliseren van de online marketing strategie. Bent u nieuwsgierig geworden naar dit unieke ICT-Marketing congres? Kijk dan nu op www.ictvalley.nl/NM13 of meld u direct aan!
