My husband sent me this video the other day. The video is a little long, but I watched the whole thing and have been thinking about it for a couple days. Two things are clear, passion for what you do helps sell and I have to try the cucumber soda!
On Wednesday I did my first webinar with Mike Volpe. It was a lot of fun! Mike and Ellie Mirman have webinars down to a science doing at least one a month and getting thousands of people to register each time. I was totally impressed with how calm and cool they were as we were setting up and getting started, my stomach was jumping!
Since this webinar was about online video, we did decide to change things up a bit and include a video of ourselves. Users who watched had two windows to pay attention to, one of Mike and I talking and one of the slides up on slide share. The viewers had to advance the slides on their own, but we had kept them updated on what slide we were on.
As compared to HubSpot.TV a webinar is a bit more focused and bit more serious. We made a couple jokes, but for the most part kept on topic and focused on the slides. We had some great questions at the end and the audience seemed engaged, so all in all I am willing to call it a success!
As always we recorded the show, you can watch the webinar here or check out Mike and I in action below.
Topics: online video, marketing 101
Okay, it may be a little farfetched that Nationwide Insurance read my blog post on industries that need to meet the internet, but I wanted to give them some props as an insurance company that is at least trying to make it easier on their users.
My sister just pointed out to me that Nationwide has released an iPhone app for their customers. According to their site it,
- Calls emergency services
- Helps you collect and exchange accident info
- Stores your insurance and vehicle info for easy lookup
- Locates Nationwide agents near you
- Takes and stores accident photos
- Converts your iPhone into a handy flashlight
- Helps connect you with towing services*
- Helps you start the Nationwide claims process*
- Finds Nationwide Blue RibbonSM Repair Facilities*
All I can say is props to them and I could have used this last summer when a rock cracked our windshield, or last fall when my landlord ran into my car, or last winter when my landlord ran into my car AGAIN, or the other weekend when my husband ran the car into a pole...
*** Update ***
I tweeted about this post, and look at the reply I got!
Again, kudos to Nationwide! Any small, medium or large business should be on Twitter if for no other reason that to look out for people mentioning them.
Topics: Doing It Right, marketing 101
Mike had been planning this for months, or at least since his wife kicked the puppet out of the house. He grabbed me last week around 4:30 in the afternoon and asked if I wanted to tape an interview with the Pet.com Sock Puppet. Who am I to turn down the chance to be in a video?
The whole thing took us about 2 hours to complete. We figured out what questions I would ask and his general responses. We then took 1 tape and got some feedback from the all star marketing team. They said it was too long and not funny enough, so we cut a bunch of stuff and tried it again.
I think that this is exactly how video should be done. If you over think it, it will take way to much time. We didn't edit the video, we didn't spend hours on a script. We just figured out the key points we wanted to make, took a couple takes and got feedback.
Who knows if it will be a viral hit, but didn't cost us a lot to produce, so there isn't a lot to lose. The more we produce, the higher chance of us making a hit that spreads like wild fire. The secret is to keep it simple and easy!
Topics: social media, marketing 101
Life around my home has been very interesting the last couple months. It started with a busted valve leaking water all over our brand new bamboo floors and ended with a meeting between the back of our car and pole in our garage this past weekend. Based on my experiences dealing with these two issues, I feel I can confidently say I have identified 3 industries that need to learn more about inbound marketing.
#1 - Insurance Companies
I have been dealing with both my homeowners insurance company and my auto insurance company. While customer service at both has been acceptable (and even on the good side) it has often required long waits on the phone before I can talk to a human. This is a BAD experience for me. The questions asked by both have are clearly form questions asked to everyone reporting a claim, why can't I report my claim online and have someone call me?
.jpg)
The reason is that the sites of both insurance companies are relatively pitiful brochure websites. Sure I can find the number to report a claim and I can do a zip code look up to find and agent, but what if I want to find information about what the process is for fixing my crunched car or damp floor?
If I were an insurance company I would recognize that most people have lots of questions when filing a claim. How will this affect the cost of my insurance? How do I pay the auto body shop for the work? Can I bring in my own contractors to fix the floor? Is this accident going to add points to my license?
As an insurance company I would make sure getting the answer to those questions was not only easy for my customers, but didn't require 10 minutes of hold music or 3 phone transfers. It could be handled through a forum, an FAQ page or even a blog about how to get issues resolved quickly and easily.
#2 - Auto body Shops
I know how to drive a car, fill it with gas, add windshield washer fluid and oil and that is about it. I am pretty much a novice when it comes to all things car and don't feel that I can begin to judge an auto body shop in any way. So how am I going to go about picking which one to take my car to?
First stop for me is Yelp. There aren't an excessive number of reviews on auto body shops in the area, but there are enough. The one that catches my eye is A Plus Auto body. It's in Somerville, it has 5 stars and 8 reviews, my next stop is their website to see what information I can find. This is what I get,
Yes, that is a photo of a burning car, and that's the whole website! While I understand the impact, it doesn't fill me with confidence. I finally ended up heading back to the website of the dealer were we bought the car and checking out their collision center. I liked the people when we bought the car and while their website doesn't give me all the information I need, at least it doesn't have photos of burning cars!
If I were an auto body shop, I would make sure I had a fantastic website that inspired confidence. It would include
- before and after photos of jobs I had done,
- customer testimonials,
- answers to questions about how to get my car fixed and how long to expect it to take,
- information I would need on hand when bringing my car in,
- questions I should ask before it gets fixed,
- and tips on dealing with the insurance company after an accident.
#3 - Contractors
The deal for contractors is much the same as the auto body industry. I don't know much about fixing my damaged floor, but I know I want someone I can trust who does good work. I got lucky in this regard because the developers of our building were able to suggest contractors who are fantastic. After they recommended them, I checked out their site and was amazed to see a decent, informative site pulled together with testimonials and referrals.
.jpg)
The only things I would do differently is get more exposure on Yelp (since that is where I looked first) and add a blog to help answer questions about work done on your home and what to expect. As a first time homeowner having work done for the first time, I had no idea what to expect. It would have been nice to get some more information from them directly through a blog.
Bottom line for all three industries is they need more of an online presence that is helpful to their customer base. I have spent a lot of time on the phone trying to get information and on the internet doing research. It's been hard to find the information I needed and if a company within these industries that took the lead in being open, transparent and informative online, they would have my business in a heartbeat.
Topics: Doing it Wrong, marketing 101
In addition to keeping up with Karen-Rubin.com, I also have a cooking blog where I keep my friends and family updated on my exploits in the kitchen. I was checking out the traffic on Gormandizing.com today and I saw some interesting things.
These might both be super obvious observations to an experienced blogger, but I am relatively new to the game and seeing my expectations play out is fantastic.
First, when you write sensationalist titles you get more traffic! You can see from the annotated chart below that my two posts titled "Chocolate Peanut Butter Orgasms" and "This is Why You Are Fat" were posted in the same week which was also the highest traffic week in the last 5 months.
Second, if you don't write any blog posts, your traffic drops off very quickly. You can see that in the last 5 weeks, since I launched Karen-Rubin.com I have only written 3 blog posts. In that same timeframe my traffic has dropped from 90 unique visitors per week to just 6 visitors for the last 3 weeks!
If you are writing a blog for work or fun, think about eye catching titles and make sure you are writing regularly. (By eye catching, I mean include sex terms as often as possible. By regular, I mean at least once per week if not more frequently.)
Topics: blogging, marketing 101
I may have mentioned, once or twice, that every week I co-host a weekly marketing podcast with Mike Volpe. It's a really good time because the whole company comes together, drinks some beer and watches the show while we tape. Obviously I enjoy it, because I love being the center of attention, but seeing as the audience comes back week after week, I think they enjoy it as well.
We generally have 20-30 HubSpotters watching and 5-10 non-HubSpotters. The office is open to anyone who wants to come and watch, have some FREE BEER, and hang out for Ping Pong after. We start taping at 4PM sharp, but some of the most entertaining commentary is the back and forth with the audience before the show.
Last week we had Scott Kirsner on the show talking about his new book Fans, Friends and Followers. Scott is super smart and interesting and we had a great conversation, which you can watch here. This week we have Chris Brogan joining us which is sure to be a good time. You should definitely watch to hear what he has to say, but better yet, come on down to 1Broadway in Cambridge and join us in person!
P.S. Did I mention there is free beer?
*Photo courtesy of Steve Garfield
Topics: marketing 101, events
As you may or may not know, I am not a marketer at HubSpot. I am actually on the development/product team and spend most of my time working with our brilliant team of developers and talking with customers. With that said, since starting my job at HubSpot, I have learned oodles and oodles about marketing and now consider myself an amateur marketer.
Another thing you might not know about me, is that my father is an uber awesome artist! He makes crazy, kinetic sculptures that hang on the wall and move in ways that boggle the mind. A while back he and I made a deal. In exchange for one of his pieces in our spanking new condo, I would consult on all things marketing for Wood That Works. This worked out beautifully for me when a couple of weeks ago he came and installed this amazing piece.
As a result, it was finally time for me to put some of my marketing chops to use. First, I nagged him to finally figure out how to make screen savers of his animations. He explains the process in his blog, which is the result of another inbound marketing nag-a-thon. Once he had a couple ready to go, we decided to do the following comprehensive campaign.
- Launch the screen savers on Sunday evening.
- Coordinate this with new calls to action around the site,
- a blog post,
- some tweets,
- an update to his Facebook Fan page and profile,
- and a email marketing campaign.
- We then topped that all off with easy Digg buttons placed strategically on the main screen saver page.
The goal is to have the screen savers spread far and wide and we are hoping that Digg becomes the vehicle. We selected Digg because the target audience that gets excited about my Dad's work uses Digg. They also use Stumble Upon, so we made sure that the pages that get the most traffic from Stumble Upon also had well placed calls to action.
This is the first marketing campaign I have tried to launch, and I hope I am not missing anything! Please check out the screen savers and pass them along if you think they look great. I'll keep you updated on how the campaign goes!
Topics: marketing 101, events
