THROW BACK THURSDAY - pre-website launch
This Thursday we are celebrating our inbound marketing emergence. This blog was written and published on our old website on 10/28/2014, a little over one week prior to our Hubspot COS website launch. We updated it with answers to questions we had and promises we made, added a few links, but kept its core message in tact.
So, join us, business owners, sales and marketing professionals, recruiters, and general enthusiasts. Digital marketing is evolving, and we're going to help you bring a new age of branding development to your business with inbound marketing advice you can take to the bank.
10/28/2014 - We are in the 5th week of onboarding the inbound marketing plan with Hubspot, and I am going cross-eyed.
I have been through 25 pre-recorded training modules (each running approximately an hour), and at least 15 live class sessions. I still have about half a dozen classes to attend with their respective live labs, and close to 20 webinars. Each class also has homework, sometimes taking all afternoon, so all in, I have probably racked up over 100 hours of hands-on training and classroom exercises. This is a mix of the methodology and the tools to support it.
As a future inbound marketing consultant (current in the present day - remember, this is a #TBT post), I do not look at any one peripheral as the end-all be-all solution to marketing. I do not look at this as JUST developing a website... I look at the picture as a whole: Email automation, workflow integration, social media management, marketing strategy development, bridging the gap between sales & marketing, and, of course, website development and all of it's many peripherals.
Here's how it all went down after the training:
Chapter 1: The second half (execution) should go faster…right?
Well... Maybe, or maybe not...
Once I felt that I had mastered the introductory class concepts (yes, those 25 sessions I mentioned are merely the introductory classes), I decided to switch gears. As part of the training exercises, we are encouraged to apply the inbound concepts to our own businesses, so all of the follow-up homework has actually been contributing to my own branding campaign. That said, I wanted to build my campaign from nothing, and my website was in dire need of an overhaul, so I hit the "pause" button on the training, and diverted all of my free resources into creating a new one. This is where I spent the last 2 weeks, and it's the reason why I'm writing this blog today.
Chapter 2: Anybody can do it, right?
Yes and no. I personally have no training or background in coding, although I'm not a complete stranger to basic html or design. This, of course, had me worried in regards to building my own website. In the past I used Wix as my CMS, and I chose it because everything was "drag and drop," but its limitations with 3rd party plug-ins had me frustrated enough to leave them even after I already paid my year's subscription. "Easy" on its own was no longer good enough for me. I needed my website to be easy and awesome.
So, I switched to the Hubspot CMS (or, as they call it, the COS [Content Optimization System]), and have spent the last two weeks building my new website from the ground up. Now, they offered to transfer my old site over for free, which would have saved me a significant amount of time, I'm sure. However, I hate my old website.
It is now day 17, and I am nearly finished. I have 13 site pages, a blog, 6 content offer landing pages (see more at the ), and 6 thank-you pages to support the 6 ebooks I wrote using canva. I also have 2 more landing pages for scheduling consultations and 2 more thank-you pages to support them. That's a total of 29 pages and 6 premium content downloads. Over time, this number will grow as I continue to expand my library and start playing around with the smart content modules. For now, I’m happy.
In the process I scrapped my design and started fresh a half dozen times. Some of this was because I was still learning the system. Some of it was because I decided to go in a different direction based on the feedback I received from my personal rep and the live lab professors at Hubspot. The way I see it, they’ve done their homework and spent the better part of the last decade perfecting their system. I’ll do my reinventing later. Now is the time to absorb.
Chapter 3: Eyes. Crossed. But the "i"s are not yet dotted...
Up to the plate for the rest of the week: Emails & Workflows – This is where I take personalized experiences to the next level by creating automated emails that dispense based on the behavioral patterns of my visitors. You’ll be able to read my ebook about it soon (RIGHT HERE).
I am learning through the Hubspot journey that adopting, embracing, and integrating inbound is no small feat (and thusly, should not be taken lightly). That said, once I am through the creation of these workflows, I will be ready to officially publish the new website (done: 11/7/14), and from that point forward, the workload should lighten significantly (uh, not really... now we focus on content and new clients!). This is good, because I have clients that are chomping at the bit to get their inbound campaigns started.
So, if all goes well, this will be the last blog I publish on my old website (it was). It will be the last time I have to spend the better part of my morning publishing on all of the different platforms (yep). And, hopefully, it’s the last week I wake up in the middle of the night dreaming in Hubspot orange (No, this is still happening). Then again, I get a lot done in my sleep when I dream about work.
So, yes... easy as Pi. The possibilities are endless, but there is also value from just knowing the first two decimal places.
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Our journey is yours, and the best is still ahead.
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