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Setting up An Alternative Universe

Posted by Peter Caputa on Fri, Jul 06, 2012 @ 12:03 PM
 

I've been speaking with many of HubSpot's top partners about joining my inbound networking group for inbound marketing agencies. As I've discussed it with more people, I've been refining how I explain it. I've also been searching for that big hairy audacious goal that gets me and my future members excited, committed and motivated.

Here's the story I've been telling...

I want to create an alternative HubSpot universe. Currently, HubSpot generates 50,000 leads per month through HubSpot.com. I don't know the exact count, but there are 20+ marketers who pull this off. They are a highly coordinated, highly skilled, finely tuned marketing machine. Minus a few segments we can't serve effectively ourselves, all of those leads go to our direct sales team.  HubSpot's direct sales team is also a finely tuned, highly skilled, highly disciplined sales machine.

The alternative universe I want to create is a world where 100s of marketing agencies work together to generate 50k leads/month and the leads go directly to them. Right now, HubSpot's 20ish marketers create 50+ blog posts and 15+ ebooks and webinars per month. Imagine what several hundred marketing agencies could produce if they worked together to create and promote their content. The problem is that marketing agencies are doing this on their own sites and they don't have the authority, the following, the reputation that HubSpot has. Their content doesn't get as much of an audience. They don't have 100s of employees, 100s of partners and 100s of thousands of fans, blog and email subscribers who share their content. They don't have a huge machine built.

There are 10s of thousands of small marketing agencies in the US alone. Many have taken to the web - trying to break through the clutter and noise - and establish themselves as thought leaders, above the competition. Very few do.  Most struggle. Some even give up. But, what if a few 100 of them decided to leave the rest in the dust by working together? How successful can these few hundred be?

Stay tuned: I'll be announcing the first few members soon. If you're interested and we haven't talked yet, leave a comment on this post. If you've reached out to me and we haven't spoken, I'm sorry. Please be persistent. I'm prioritizing my 1:1 conversations with top HubSpot partners first.

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Comments

Peter - still interested in this. I couldn't agree more. Especially for us newbie HubSpot partners, breaking through the SERPs clutter is incredibly difficult without joining forces and resources. :-) I look forward to speaking with you when you have time.
Posted @ Friday, July 06, 2012 12:13 PM by Mary Planding
Pete - This is fantastic. You're eagerness to better the agency model never ceases to amaze me. It's obvious that agencies would want increase their leverage through the use of HubSpot's brand, and your insight into empowering a collective agency conversation makes perfect sense.  
 
What HubSpot has done so well is standardize the sales process. I think this would be key in creating a method to distribute and follow up from the leads generated. The partners program has done a great job of providing resources to inform the agency sales process. Ongoing training, coaching, alignment meetings and other resources to keep everyone tracking towards one common goal could keep everyone on the same page. Persona segmentation, refinement, and analytics would help refine capabilities, and segment leads. 
 
The greatest opportunity I see is the ability to teach the customer how to buy. This process has been notoriously challenging for agencies, and you've done a great job of helping agencies change that process with the VAR program. If that knowledge could pollinate across the network, the opportunity to change the agency procurement process will be transformative. 
 
Really excited to watch this take shape.
Posted @ Friday, July 06, 2012 1:23 PM by Casey Lockwood
Hey Peter, I'm in also, let me know the specifics. I think this will be very valuable collaboration and look forward to contributing if accepted!
Posted @ Friday, July 06, 2012 2:02 PM by Remington Begg
I like your alternative universe, which is made practical by the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson. I'm not sure how you (we) would administrate the leads out to the most appropriate service provider, but I assume you have ideas on that. 
 
I would actually be even more interested in getting together some of the best minds in the business to create a special consortium, like the W3C, to help drive best practices in digital marketing and provide thought leadership. With HubSpot's backing in spirit, this could become a go-to resource for anyone interested in doing things the right way. By becoming a member and participating, each network agency would have the opportunity to raise their profile and gain a broader (or more targeted) audience even with larger companies. We would share great content, as you suggest, but the goal would be greater awareness of best practices from an independent body and exposure to each member profile for lead generation. Just a thought. Maybe I'm just rewording what you already expounded. Wouldn't be the first time!
Posted @ Friday, July 06, 2012 3:38 PM by John McTigue
@John - I really like your idea! 
 
How about extending it beyond -- perhaps to the level of a "ThinkTank" that would not just look at best practices and standards, but would also explore leading edge technologies, processes, solutions and concepts for digital marketing / inbound? Right now, I comb through hundreds, if not thousands, of sites searching for those catalyzing nuggets and more often fail to find them than not. I have no doubt that there are plenty of others out there who do so as well.  
 
I'd love to talk with you more about your concept and see what synergy there might be.
Posted @ Friday, July 06, 2012 4:17 PM by Mary Planding
@John. Your description sounds much more sophisticated than mine. I like it. :-)  
 
All joking aside, as I talk to partners about this, I'm realizing a) how much our best partners already collaborate, outsource, refer each other business and b) are just as excited about interacting with each other as they are about generating leads. I also agree that this could be a group that "sets the standard". In fact, I was thinking just the other day that we should create an "oath of an inbound marketing agency" of sorts. Might be hard to agree upon, but would be a good conversation to have.  
 
Re: Administering leads, in the beginning, I expect most of the lead generation will happen on each member's sites. Since you all have your own HubSpot subscription, your articles can point to your own landing pages. In the future, we can probably do some fancy stuff around nurturing by geography or other target persona criteria. Bob Roffolo from Impact Branding had the same question and some good ideas around it. But, I'm trying to keep this simple for now by launching a group blog and working together to promote each other's good content.  
 
@Mary and Remington I'll respond to your emails and set up some time.
Posted @ Friday, July 06, 2012 5:21 PM by Peter Caputa
@Mary, yes absolutely, and maybe like W3C we can encourage standards - of process, technology, results and interpretation. That would serve our customers well and encourage uninformed companies to take the leap.
Posted @ Friday, July 06, 2012 5:25 PM by John McTigue
Sorry to throw a wet blanket on your fire, Pete, but this isn't gonna work. You can put a 100 of your little guys together. They'll just make more noise. Not more business because they can't do what John can do. Convert and finish on behalf of their clients.
Posted @ Saturday, July 07, 2012 7:08 AM by Rick Roberge
@Rick 
 
John isn't the only one HubSpot partner who knows how to sell marketing services effectively. He's also not the only one who can/does deliver results to clients. In fact, I'm handpicking the first few members, based on their ability to do so. Many of them, you've trained.  
 
What I'm learning as I talk to more partners is that there's quite a few of them who have really changed their fortunes from what they've learned from HubSpot, you and each other. I'm looking forward to accelerating that. As John points out, there's room for everyone to step up their game. And while I want us to focus on "making lots of noise" initially, I imagine a lot of benefit will come just from learning from each other.
Posted @ Saturday, July 07, 2012 7:51 AM by Peter Caputa
@John - that's great! I look forward to the on-going conversation. We would all benefit from such a group. 
@Peter - I know how busy you are with Inbound coming up among all the other things on your plate. Be in touch when you have time to breathe. :-)
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