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

However, you have to remember there’s another point at which business owners and marketing leaders might be thinking about their investment in HubSpot – when it’s not living up to its potential. In that case, they’re asking themselves, “Wait, why ARE we going with HubSpot Marketing Hub again?”

🔎 Related HubSpot education:

• What is HubSpot, really? (most get it wrong wrong)
• Why go HubSpot Service Hub? (HubHeroes, Ep. 10)
• Why go HubSpot Sales Hub? (HubHeroes, Ep. 12)

This is an important distinction because today’s episode isn’t a sales pitch, even if it does enable some of you in our HubHeroes audience to make a more informed buying decision that includes HubSpot Marketing Hub. 

Instead, today's conversation about helping you, our fellow HubHeores – whether you're thinking about buying into HubSpot , or you already have it but you've slipped out of the HubSpot honeymoon phase – understand what HubSpot Marketing Hub REALLY is. 

Because, for a lot of us who have been around the HubSpot world for the past five to 10 years and have been using HubSpot in that time may not realize that the HubSpot of yesterday is not the same as the HubSpot of today … 

So, why go HubSpot Marketing Hub? I’m so glad you asked! We even have a very special guest this episode joining us for this discussion — Deanna Schwarz of HubSpot! 

Here's what we cover in this episode ...

• What was HubSpot Marketing Hub back and in the day, and how is it different from what HubSpot Marketing Hub is today?
• What problems does HubSpot Marketing Hub help organizations solve, and what problems doesn't HubSpot Marketing Hub solve?
• Whether someone is brand new to the platform or they’ve had it for awhile, where do most go wrong with HubSpot Marketing Hub that leads them to give up down the road?
• What are our favorite tools, features, and integrations of HubSpot Marketing Hub that many people overlook or miss entirely?
• What is a fiddle fart?

And that's only the beginning ... 

YOUR ONE THING FROM THIS EPISODE

It doesn't matter if you've been drinking the HubSpot Kool-aid for years or you're brand new to the HubSpot and inbound ecosystem — education is absolutely essential if you want to see the results you're looking for from HubSpot.

Without education of what the platform really is and isn't, what it's true capabilities are, as well as how and when it should be used, you'll always look to the platform to perform in ways it was never meant to. Is HubSpot Marketing Hub powerful? Of course it is. But with great power comes great responsibility ... and your responsibility in this case is to get educated. HubSpot Academy is a smart place to start.

RESOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE

• Why go HubSpot Service Hub? (HubHeroes, Ep. 10)
• Why go HubSpot Sales Hub? (HubHeroes, Ep. 12)
• What does great content actually look like? (HubHeroes, Ep. 2)
• Who are your buyer personas, anyway? (HubHeroes, Ep. 4)
• HubSpot Flywheel: Engage phase ... and is building trust crap? (HubHeroes, Ep. 7)

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

George B. Thomas: Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by silo 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 tool belt, knowledge. Never fear hub heroes.

Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub heroes, it's time to unite and activate your your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that both Devin and Max are currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin and Max during the show are that of their own and in no way represent those of their employer.

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 literally wearing a VR headset, and we're trying to be serious about marketing.

Max Cohen: I'm stepping into the metaverse.

Liz Moorehead: Oh, god. He's either trying to experience this more deeply, 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 joined as always by Devin Bellamy and Max Cohen of HubSpot.

Hi, gentlemen. Hello. Hi. And then there's George b Thomas. How you doing, bud?

George B. Thomas: I'm doing great. I'm I'm just I gotta go buy a VR headset now. What is going on right now?

Max Cohen: Let's get let's get weird.

Liz Moorehead: Okay. While 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 3?

Diana Schwartz: 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. 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, our partners, and you, the business, you, the people. And also making sure we're solving all those problems in the right order.

Liz Moorehead: I'm so excited you're here. I know we are gonna be digging into basically your sweet spot. We're talking all about 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 2,005? Get ready. One question only. True or false? I am going to read you a bit of copy.

You tell me, yes, this was on their front page in 2,005 when HubSpot first launched or false? No. It wasn't, you ridiculous sunflower.

George B. Thomas: Wait. 2,005?

Liz Moorehead: 2,005. Graduated high

George B. Thomas: Wait. I thought 2,011 is when they or 2,010 is when they actually man. Holy crap.

Liz Moorehead: Went digging in the wayback machine in HubSpot dotcom. Their first imprint as a website was May 10, 2005. Are you ready?

George B. Thomas: Oh, god. I'm I'm adequately unprepared for this.

Liz Moorehead: Good. I love it. I love making all of you look like experts and rock stars. Alright. So on their website in 2,005, they listed 4 things you

Diana Schwartz: could do with HubSpot. True or false,

Liz Moorehead: this was one of them. Number 2, build individual extranets. Secure private Internets for your customers.

George B. Thomas: Oh, I'm gonna say true. That so much sounds like Dharmesh Shah right there, like, back in the day when he was at MIT, like, or wherever. Yeah. I'm a say yes.

Max Cohen: I mean, that was a hard false.

Devyn Bellamy: I'm leaning false.

Liz Moorehead: Alright, gentlemen. George, guess what? You're right. What? Yeah.

Alright.

Diana Schwartz: You defeated What? Yes.

Liz Moorehead: Defeated the 2 HubSpotters. So, Dharmesh, Brian, I want you to know Max and Devon were wrong.

George B. Thomas: And I 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.

Liz Moorehead: Do you wanna hear what the other three things were on there, by the way? Because this was just wild to me. Create a powerful intranet for employees of your company to share information and collaborate. Number 2, build the individual extranets. Number 3, manage your public Internet website without knowing HTML.

And number 4, create a website for your community group.

Max Cohen: What about God, I missed 2,005. Where's keyword tracker? Wasn't that the first thing we did?

George B. Thomas: Dude, that's that's in, like, 2,010, 2011. Bro. This is way back before, like, even Goodness. The understanding that there was probably a HubSpot.

Liz Moorehead: Back when the dinosaurs and Cleopatra were going to happy hour. Super fun. Alright. Enough of this nonsense. Are we ready to talk about the big question today, which is why go HubSpot Marketing Hub?

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. 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.

Right? 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're 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 ever?

George B. Thomas: Oh. See, I knew that was coming. I knew that was coming. I was about to throw out a deja vu joke. Like, hey.

Anybody else have a deja vu? Anyway, let's just throw this out real quick. And people who are listening to this right now, we've done this once. Your boy George b forgot to hit record, and so here we are. Thanks, Liz.

I'm I'm fessing up too.

Liz Moorehead: End of the whole thing, and none of us noticed. And then we got to secret question at the end of the episode, and Devon goes, I'd be happy to answer your question, Liz, but are we recording? And then the whole world just

George B. Thomas: Shattered. It was it was a moment. I made it cry after I turned my video off.

Max Cohen: It was my favorite conversation I've ever had about HubSpot ever. And you know what? Only the 5 of us of us will ever share that. And I still think that's special.

Liz Moorehead: Well, maybe the Internet gods knew it was just a personal moment between the 5 of us. But are you ready? 17th time's a charm, kids.

George B. Thomas: Let's go.

Liz Moorehead: Alright. Same. I don't wanna hear from any of the gentlemen. Deanna, hi. 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 was. 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 kinda get wrong about it?

Diana Schwartz: So about 8 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. I mean, some light forms and email tooling about 8 years ago. We were one product company really thriving off of the inbound.

But if we flash forward to today, the year of almost 2023, we are multi product serving, like, 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 over time.

Liz Moorehead: Fantastic. I guess we can all go home, guys. I think we're done. That's it? I would say.

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 what used to be just a solid even decade.

We're now about to hit your 11th year hugging the sprocket. So talk to me about it.

George B. Thomas: 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 it's a little bit of a baller moment. But here's the thing.

When when we first got in with HubSpot back when it was Wild Boy Design from Massillon, Ohio, and Zach Bazner and I had won tickets to inbound 2,012, it was like 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. 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 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.

Liz Moorehead: So what I find interesting about that is, though, because 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 BFD. 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 gate keep behind a sales conversation, 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 made $10,000,000 off of one piece of content. Don't you wanna 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 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 evolves.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. And you know what, Liz? Let me jump in here because 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 in 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're enabling the small guy to keep up with the big business. And so you could have, like, a tiny agency of, like, 6 people with almost zero budget actually have a voice and actually been being able 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.

Liz Moorehead: Devin, I wanna ask you a question that wasn't on the outline. Pub quiz. You ready? What are the most common misconceptions I have as a longtime HubSpot user about what marketing hub really is? What are the legacy things I'm still holding on to that are stunting my ability to maximize the platform with what it is today?

It's not just Mailchimp on steroids and orange?

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. Nope. It's so much more. There there are people who are still out there hanging their hat on the email functionality and and are stuck on just an email first approach because 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 where, like, if you really wanna see the full capabilities, it's about incorporating multi hub and at the very least, marketing and sales hubs, so you can get that alignment within your organization. But if you can get a full 360 view of your customer with it, then wonderful. But it's more than just sending emails.

Liz Moorehead: The thing that kills me, and 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 guessing. 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, Mike. What do you what do you got for us?

George B. Thomas: Yeah. There's a couple things. First of all, I was like, oh, 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 moving forward. But what I wanted to dive in because Deanna slicked past it so quickly is, 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 podcast episode.

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. She did just lightweight sprinkle that massive integration in mid sentence and then kept going like it wasn't making people's minds explode all around the world when it happened.

Liz Moorehead: She's the kind of person who, like, shows up at a party and as she's walking out the door, and she's like, oh, and here's the cure for cancer, please.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Gotta go.

Max Cohen: What?

George B. Thomas: Wait. What?

Liz Moorehead: What? What is happening? Congratulations,

George B. Thomas: Diana. What?

Devyn Bellamy: I am so, like, mind blown. Right? Like, we we're we're progressing too quickly with new information.

Liz Moorehead: Okay. Wait. So we got the WhatsApp drop. Deanna's engaged. Max, do you have anything to share with that?

Max Cohen: Yeah. I mean, the thing is that everyone is sleeping on right now is, like, how you can build your employees' intranet on on on on Oh

George B. Thomas: my god.

Diana Schwartz: Like, nobody talk about it.

Liz Moorehead: Don't forget your public Internet website.

Max Cohen: Yes. Your public Internet website. Important.

Liz Moorehead: Right? But Is there a hub for that?

George B. Thomas: 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, somebody slow this train down.

Liz Moorehead: That was awful, and you should feel that.

George B. Thomas: I'm I'm just saying. You it's possible. It's possible. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying you shouldn't.

I'm just saying it's possible.

Max Cohen: Very possible.

Liz Moorehead: Okay. So here's what I want you to do.

Max Cohen: Solve the problem of, too lazy to build content. In terms of what it can't solve, yeah. Like, one of the biggest problems that I think people have 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.

You know, HubSpot's only gonna be as good as, like, the strategy you actually put in place, which is

Diana Schwartz: why it's, like, super important

Max Cohen: to be able to detach things like the inbound methodology and HubSpot the product and be able to understand that the 2 kind of, like, depend on each other. 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. You know, if you're someone who's just gonna come in and kinda like Devon said, just kinda operate the status quo of, like, alright, my marketing tools, 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 kinda prior to selecting, you know, some sort of marketing technology and kinda fix that first.

It's really important to make sure you got your strategy down pat, and and you're doing things the right way and using the tool in the way that it's intended.

Liz Moorehead: I wanna keep this hate parade going. It's breaking all the hearts of what HubSpot can't do before we talk about what it can do. Deanna, talk to me about what problems HubSpot does not solve.

Diana Schwartz: It doesn't fix your broken business model. Mhmm. We can smoosh 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. Changing your software is not going to solve that. So when after 6 months down the road or it's more like 90 days to get HubSpot, all 5 big hubs fully implemented, and you're not seeing any change. Did you go through the process of updating your business models and your strategies and making sure your teams are aligned on what your goals are? If you did not, it might be more of a you problem and not a software problem.

Liz Moorehead: Quick follow-up question. Is Smoosh an internal technical term that's used at HubSpot?

Diana Schwartz: It is the most technical term. I'm not sure if it's HubSpot approved, but it's very technical.

Liz Moorehead: I love it.

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. I feel like it was gonna

George B. Thomas: go faster. It's right next to a skosh.

Liz Moorehead: An Alawish. Yeah.

George B. Thomas: Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. Good callback. Thank you.

Max Cohen: Yeah. When you're when you're building out pipelines, you're like, oh, just just scotch that deal out of smoosh into the next,

Diana Schwartz: Max, can I have an I have another echo request for you?

Liz Moorehead: Can you just say the smooshoning really, like, scarily? The smooshoning. I love recording on Fridays. It's the nonsense time. Alright.

George and Devin. Okay. So now that Deanna and Max have have peed in our funds seal cereal collectively and told me what HubSpot can't do. I wanna hear from you guys about what it does do. What problems does HubSpot actually solve?

Devyn Bellamy: Well, I can go. It well, first thing is that it can bring all of your reporting into one place, and so you can see the entirety of your impact on someone's interaction with your brand, in one location, because you're using the same tool to get it all done. That's, for me, one of my favorite things instead of trying to identify which 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.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. So the easy answer list to that is a lot. But if I go a little bit deeper, what I mean by that is, first of all, it can, 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 in to HubSpot. I can do my work, and I can I can get it done quickly?

The other thing that I wanna throw in here that HubSpot 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 that they can do with the time allotted for the tasks needed for growth and success in the business.

Liz Moorehead: 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 talking to someone to one homogeneous 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 them 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?

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 perspective, it it allows you to see overarching everything that you need to see. We're talking about attribution reporting. We're talking about sales content reporting. 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, because I get that sales actually what they wanna do is be on the golf course, hitting the ball, talking to people, making sales. So that's why you gotta use snippets and templates and all the automation sequences features that you can and document.

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.

Max Cohen: 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 sort of milk toast attempt at, like, kinda just saying, hey, it's all on one and that's great because that sounds cool. 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 to use. Especially, when you think about marketers. Right? I I don't know what the average, you know, amount of tools and tech stack is.

Maybe someone can educate that on me, but it's a bunch. 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 wanna chop it up and think about it. 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, 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 betcha. Right? And one of the biggest and best reasons why you would wanna make the argument on one 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 kinda 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 your reporting is just there, and it works. Right? You know, so when you reduce all of the friction and the time and the headaches and the pain and the wasted calories training on stuff and and everything there, you get to spend a lot more time actually doing your job as a marketer. And that's what we all need.

Liz Moorehead: Oh 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 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 many? 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, do I wanna work on a blog? Great. I'll open up HubSpot. Okay.

This company hates me, so now I have to go to Mailchimp. Now this company hates me even more. Now I have to go to WordPress or Drupal. 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 LastPass 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 bucks, 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? Whether or not somebody is brand new to the platform or somebody has HubSpot in their hands and in their hearts, 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?

Diana Schwartz: The least sexy thing in all of technology, I think. It's just like 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 gonna 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 when you're like, alright. 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 40 6 years, any custom models you have associated with it. And you say, hey. Are these accurate?

Does Max Cohen have a favorite color of x? Does he have the 17 custom hats? How many does he have? If this data is accurate, you put it into HubSpot. In 9 months when you start marketing to Max Cohen with custom hat brands, you will make a sale.

If your data is not correct and you start trying to 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 3 custom hats and made a gross face at 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.

Liz Moorehead: 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 that. Max, what do you have to say, capcake?

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 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. Because I wanna hear you talk about that.

Diana Schwartz: 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.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. It's it's funny because my brain went to 2 places. It went to it's not gonna fix if you have crappy marketing tactics. Again, that garbage in garbage out. So if your tactics are flawed, HubSpot ain't gonna help you.

You're gonna jack it up. You your database is gonna churn. You're gonna go out of business, and so just knock it off. Knock it off. 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 you have to have the right everybody's dying, by the way, listeners, because I said fiddle fart.

But at the end of the day, you have to have the right strategy, and you have to add 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.

Devyn Bellamy: You know what? That reminds me, aside from the fact that George is actually an 18 forties prospector, The thing that we have to, remind people also about is it's also possible to overcomplicate what it is you're trying to do. 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. Once you get going, it allows the one person to accomplish a lot.

What you don't wanna do is create these, hilariously complex and over engineered workflows. 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's, again, 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, craziness.

Liz Moorehead: I love that point you made because it kinda 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, farts are loud. And it took me 10 years to realize, like, he has 2 modes, hungry and not hungry. End of list.

People look at HubSpot and they're just, like, projecting all of their crap onto it. It's like, hold on. Can it do complex things? Yes. Is it complex?

No. Alright. 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 about HubSpot.

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.

Devyn Bellamy: My favorite thing about HubSpot oh, I I actually have 2 equally favorite things about HubSpot, that have nothing to do with the tools. First thing is HubSpot Academy. I am lucky enough to now be on the same team and report to the same VP as Academy on the community led growth team. And Academy is is where it's at 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 it doesn't matter where you are in your business life. You could be a marketer. You could be a sales person, you can be an intern, or you could be a CEO. There's so much valuable information about how to be successful, and and run your organization, industry, but 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 high. There are great people who 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, which is one of the main reasons why we have such a phenomenal product.

Our culture our culture code is second to none. It's like awesome is literally written in the DNA of the company.

Max Cohen: I just wanna double down on 2 things. Because what Devon just said doesn't sound like features of the tool when indeed they absolutely are. Because one, there's not a lot of features that actually improve the brains in a really good way of the users. HubSpot Academy quite literally does that. Sure.

Your software is like giving you an upgrade of the tools that you have, 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. That is very much a feature just like multi touch revenue attribution. I think on top of that too, Devon talked a lot about the people. Guess what? HubSpot hires people that really really give a about your success.

And I know that sounds cheesy, but I've worked next to these people for 7 years and the internal conversations we have there are never about, how

George B. Thomas: can we sell the most product

Max Cohen: to this person? It's like, what do these people actually need? I don't really wanna sell them this because I don't think they're gonna be successful if they don't change their mindset. There are a lot of really good people behind you. Our support team, they're absolutely amazing.

But, like, your customer success manager is not just 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 and how you use it. Because we really really do care. Moving on past that, I'll go for a specific, like, feature of marketing hub. One of the cooler things I think lately that we've added is the customer when we would talk about reporting.

I'd say, like, hey, what sort of reporting do you wanna build on? When we would talk about reporting. I'd say, like, hey, what sort of reporting do you wanna 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 kinda wanna see how someone sort of like moves through the whole journey.

And trying to represent that with an x axis and a y axis is really really difficult. And, you know, often times I would ask people, would you like to draw what that report, like, would look like and communicate what you're you're really asking of me? Then they would realize, wow, that actually is something very difficult to visualize. So HubSpot recently released and, you know, these things called Sankey charts have kinda 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. They really do something like super useful within a CRM and a marketing tool.

But basically, it allows you to like track these different touch points of how you think someone actually goes through a journey interacting with your marketing content. So things like your emails, your web pages, your forms, things like that. But it also takes into consideration, I kinda gave it away, custom events. And custom events are amazing because that's how you can track things that happen of HubSpot that we can't really 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 wanna know are people actually, like, using this feature and are any of our marketing efforts actually driving people to do it?

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 because we saw an event that is tracking if they're logging in. And then we have another event tracking, did people actually do it? 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.

So, yeah, customer journey analytics for interview, marketing hub, enterprise, Andy's out there. Go check it out. It's pretty sweet.

Diana Schwartz: So Max just talked for about 4 straight minutes about a really cool new feature in reporting, which is awesome. 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 prebuilt dashboards.

There's custom dashboards. There are custom report builders. There was a brand new custom report builder released 2 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 world, I'm gonna do a little bit of what questions for for a multi top revenue attribution versus customer journey analytics. Because I do believe that those of you who are using multi touch revenue attribution are at the upper echelon of using Marketing Hub Enterprise. 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 the flip side of that coin.

So with multi touch revenue attribution, the types of questions that I'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 multi touch attribution does. It says how much money is any of these touches, these assets, any of these actions driving towards my bottom line. The flip side, what customer journey analytics is gonna do is answer questions like which marketing activities are getting us opportunities faster, what touch points in my journey are contacts 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 journey.

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 in marketing of enterprise.

George B. Thomas: The faces the faces the the the the faces. 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 or 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 workflows.

That's all.

Devyn Bellamy: Can I just give some quick forms, love, too? Just just for a hot second. Forms are such a fantastic way to drive adoption within your organization for Luddites who don't wanna use or learn a new tool. One of the ways that I found success with forms, especially on an enterprise level, is I would create landing pages, 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 them 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 then, oh, look, that stars 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, internal enablement, but we've had integrations with outside companies that didn't have APIs. We're just gonna just email us content. It's like, no. 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 another useful way to use forms. It doesn't have to be customer facing. It can be effective internally as well.

Liz Moorehead: I've never done that.

George B. Thomas: Forms. Yeah. 100%. For sure.

Devyn Bellamy: Be. You put in a 100 leads and find out you're just overriding the same record over and over again. Oh my god.

Liz Moorehead: That's what we're here for. The Barclays ever said a trade show

George B. Thomas: has done that.

Max Cohen: Saves you money saves you money on contacts though. Am I right?

Diana Schwartz: Just put

Max Cohen: them all in one contact record. That is the

Liz Moorehead: Oh my god. It's like a mega score.

Max Cohen: Strategy that you get on this podcast. Instead of having a 1000000 contact records,

George B. Thomas: you

Liz Moorehead: have 1. That's what we call the that's just pushing. That's like 5 d chess and motion

George B. Thomas: in. Oh my god. Oh my god.

Max Cohen: This is the ax.

Diana Schwartz: This is the ax that you come to with.

Liz Moorehead: This is the time where I have to warn warning warning. Wait. Max, give me a warning, bud.

Max Cohen: Give me a reverb warning. 4 d Smush.

Liz Moorehead: Perfect. This is the second to last question, which means it's the last question in the HubSpot Marketing Hub conversation, but that means you all need to gird your loins. It's almost time for secret question.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

Diana Schwartz: Yeah. Alright.

Liz Moorehead: Wow. Thanks, bud. Alright. Noah cut that part out. What 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.

Max Cohen: One thing, I would say, again, like, the the tools are built to support a very specific strategy. Right? You wouldn't you wouldn't go get a Lamborghini 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?

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.

Go go go figure out the proper strategy to use with this. And again, don't just, like, replace an old process that you have.

Devyn Bellamy: Go to HubSpot Academy and learn you something. 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

Liz Moorehead: Spoiler alert.

Devyn Bellamy: Who was a guest on that

Liz Moorehead: one. Georgie.

Devyn Bellamy: It was huge.

George B. Thomas: Do tell.

Liz Moorehead: What? What's your one thing? Wait. What?

Max Cohen: It was devil's.

Liz Moorehead: Oh. What's your one

Diana Schwartz: thing? Oh.

Liz Moorehead: I yeah.

Max Cohen: It's him.

Liz Moorehead: Yes.

George B. Thomas: Yes.

Liz Moorehead: I know. What? I'm an awful person for asking.

George B. Thomas: What? My one thing that people need to take with them?

Max Cohen: Dang.

Liz Moorehead: Or get wrecked.

George B. Thomas: I mean, honestly, it's fix yourself. Like, fit fit fix You're the problem. Here's the thing. Like, one of one of the diatribes I went on on the first time we did this in an alternate hub verse, right, 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. Yes. It is through, you know, logging into one thing.

And, yes, it is having the proper integrations. But just stop for a minute and figure out how do you fix your business? How do you fix your people?

Diana Schwartz: A lot of us have

George B. Thomas: And then move forward into

Diana Schwartz: Indicated what I'm going to say, but I'm gonna say it out loud. So I have been in SaaS for about a decade now. And I before I started HubSpot about 3 years ago, I was at a 25,000 person company. And I think that company could have benefited from HubSpot. And the point I am 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 CDP. You don't need the big names. You can do it with what you have. You just gotta look at academy.

You just gotta look. You You have to ask for help just like a person.

Liz Moorehead: 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 hard. Of the 3 new words we've learned today, bork, smush, or fiddle fart, what's your favorite?

Mine is smoosh.

George B. Thomas: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Diana Schwartz: I like bork because it is a verb and also the sound might

Liz Moorehead: An excited utterance as they call it on law and order.

George B. Thomas: Mhmm. Yes.

Liz Moorehead: Put a pot put a pot.

George B. Thomas: Oh. Oh, wow.

Liz Moorehead: Devin?

Max Cohen: Fiddle fart fart. I missed the photo. Fiddle fart really caught me off guard. I'm a go with that one.

Liz Moorehead: I love it. Also Oh, no question. Saying colloquialism after 4 o'clock

Max Cohen: on a Friday. Way to go on. Just start

Devyn Bellamy: saying George? All of the gold rush colloquialism. It was definitely a little part.

George B. Thomas: I mean, I to my fiddle part to say that I I tell you. I know. I don't have the brainpower 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 thumbnail myself to look like a prospector for this episode's cover? I don't know how I do that.

Liz Moorehead: We determined it was not long loud. It was double o. Smoosh. Smoosh.

George B. Thomas: I wanna give it a little smoosh.

Devyn Bellamy: Can we just follow-up real quick? Are we talking double o or umlaut? Which which camp are

Liz Moorehead: you You get with the umlaut? Are we the umlaut gang?

George B. Thomas: Double o.

Max Cohen: If it was an umlaut, wouldn't it be smoosh?

Devyn Bellamy: Well, I'm spelling with the umlaut period because that's just how I get down. I am a rebel, but I was

Liz Moorehead: Okay. Quick question. Are we recording them? Did we actually I

George B. Thomas: just went

Max Cohen: I'm gonna put that on a hat. I don't understand. Please, please, just tell me what Aloy is.

Liz Moorehead: And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for a very demure, not energetic, no way chaotic episode of Hub Heroes. We did. We just have a question once. You

Diana Schwartz: might be

Liz Moorehead: locked. Thank you. Leave a review. Not only does that help other people the hub heroes, we just like being told how pretty and fiddle farty we are. And with that, we will talk to you next week.

Go away. Bye bye.

George B. Thomas: Okay, Hub Heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will lord lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the hub heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hub heroes dot com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes.

FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub euros podcast, on any of the socials, and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces. Remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.