Episode 79: HubSpot's Not Another Marketing Report & Trends For The Remaining Year

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Show Notes

Editor's Note: If you haven't already, leave the podcast a review either on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

We’ve done other report reviews like this in other episodes. If you would like to check them out, you can find them here: 

Episode 65: MarTech 2030...The Implications

Episode 66: Gartner’s Report: The Future of Sales - What We Think

Episode 76: Under Armor, Nike & The State of Proposals 2021

Episode 77: The State of Sales 2021

Episode 78: Video in Business Benchmark Report & Prepping for Sales Calls

BIG NEWS: 

HubSpot put out their Not Another State of Marketing Report 2021, “a new report by HubSpot, Litmus, and Westin to help marketers prioritize their strategies and outperform their goals.” Did they deliver on the promise that it was in fact not another state of marketing report? Unfortunately, no.

The title here is making fun of state of reports, yet they didn’t do anything differently here. It truly was just another state of marketing report. 

Mike found the information to be biased primarily because of those that were surveyed. The big thing that stuck out to him was how often the report mentions social media. Are people really investing this heavily in social media marketing? More on this later.

Doug agrees that there’s a major selection bias as he was confused by the demographic they used. He was also surprised that traditional marketing didn’t show up, and neither did anything about podcasts or podcast advertising. The one positive right off the bat that he enjoyed was that they didn’t put video in the forefront. 

The number one thing that you can take away from this report before digging into it is that for all the change that is happening, nothing has truly changed. 

What is marketing’s primary role? 

To cultivate. This includes awareness and engagement. Their job is to soften the market and educate their audience. There’s a nurturing element, too. Marketing done right defines the battlefield, defines the market, defines the product, defines the offering, and defines the proposition. Their second job is to influence and to see the world from the viewpoint of the customer. They are the primary means to a customer centric viewpoint. If it isn’t that way, it’s highly unlikely that the rest of your company will be customer centric. 

That being said, if sales is being customer centric without marketing, then sales is picking up the functionality that marketing is supposed to be doing. When you have insufficient marketing, sales will pick up the slack. 

As we’ve reviewed all these surveys it’s becoming clear that we’re trying to reverse engineer a success formula by trying to look at all these findings under a microscope. And as we do that and get better, we become more misaligned with the customer.

There was a great thread for markers on Twitter by @matthlerner on “Why your startup can’t ‘Just Do It’ or ‘Think Different.’” The thread discussed how you can’t compare start ups to established brands. More and more social media is becoming the new hot commodity alongside of community. Why? 

It’s insanely measurable. You can measure all kinds of things, though whether they mean anything is a different question. It’s gone beyond the pursuit of followers; you can break down audiences. People on Twitter pay attention to politics at a multiple of the general world. You fall into this place that you starting thinking people see the world the same way you do, and that’s a very disproportionate view to have. 

If you go back to the podcast that we did with Dave Gerhardt on conversational marketing, don’t do the things that scale all the time. If we were moving in the right direction, wouldn’t we be happier with our vendors? Wouldn’t trust be increasing?

QUESTION: 

What are the things you think companies should be focusing on during the last half of the year? Are there any trends you are starting to see that could affect business?

For Mike, he’s personally working on ecosystems and partnerships with HubSpot. They’re continuing to develop themselves by getting to know more people in the ecosystem through the app marketplace and community. They’re looking at new ways for distribution, too.

What do you look for in the app marketplace for distribution?

For Mike it’s lead generation. With the marketplace adding reviews and a search mechanism it’s easier for people to find the product and ask for a demo. Because HubSpot certifies them to be on the marketplace, it gives the company more credibility, so they’ve been getting more installs. It also gives them a place to regularly update their listing with new language, features, etc. Anytime they get an opportunity to change something up they do.

If we’re being honest the timing doesn’t have anything to do with it. Unless you’re in funding or financial services, the time of the year doesn’t mean anything. The biggest thing you can do is realize that we don’t play a finite game that has a beginning and an end.

There are two things though that you should focus on:

1. Focus on how you’re going to make things easier
2. Focus on messaging around “don’t miss out”

The economy is on fire right now, and you are at risk of falling behind. If you focus on how you enable people and you’re messaging, you’re in a good place because people’s resources are bare right now, and change is scary. What you need to do is for all the optimism happening there’s also a lot of fear of the unknown. You have to demonstrate the path and show how you’re going to enable the change without being a major resource pull.

TAKEAWAYS:

Mike - I’m going to be happy to not read these state of reports. People should stay away from them.

Doug - Play your game. Now is the time. There’s so much stimulus out there. Be focused and know what you’re trying to do. Oh and be consistent.