How to achieve B2B Marketing Success: Strategies & Tools to Cut Through the Chaos with Digitopia CEO Joseph Freeman

[00:00:00] Joseph Freeman: So we've got, you know, marketers who are faced with LinkedIn and Google Ads and of course, TikTok.
[00:00:05] Joseph Freeman: And now AI adds all kinds of fun new components to the mix.
[00:00:10] Joseph Freeman: And then you've got your email and your Drip nurturing, and you've got dark social and forums and places where you can get the word out.
[00:00:17] Joseph Freeman: And it's kind of too much for a single marketer or even a small marketing team to do it all, and it becomes pretty overwhelming.
[00:00:29] Jess Bahr: Welcome to another episode of Marketers Talking Marketing.
[00:00:33] Jess Bahr: Today we're joined by Joseph Freeman.
[00:00:35] Jess Bahr: Joe, tell us a little bit about yourself.
[00:00:37] Joseph Freeman: Yeah.
[00:00:38] Joseph Freeman: Hey, Jess.
[00:00:38] Joseph Freeman: I'm excited to be here.
[00:00:39] Joseph Freeman: So my name, as you said, Joseph Freeman.
[00:00:42] Joseph Freeman: I'm the CEO of a company called Digitopia.
[00:00:44] Joseph Freeman: And Digitopia exists as a HubSpot diamond partner specifically to create systems that make B two B marketing easier and more predictable.
[00:00:57] Jess Bahr: Awesome.
[00:00:57] Jess Bahr: I love HubSpot so much.
[00:01:01] Jess Bahr: It's been such a game changer on the marketing standpoint, I will say.
[00:01:05] Jess Bahr: So let's dive into it.
[00:01:07]Discussing Challenges of B2B Marketing with Joseph Freeman
Copy Content

[00:01:07] Jess Bahr: Talking about B two B marketing, why is it so hard for many brands to generate demand as B two B companies?
[00:01:15] Joseph Freeman: This is like the million dollar question, especially in this impending recession, right?
[00:01:20] Joseph Freeman: How do I create more demand?
[00:01:22] Joseph Freeman: How do I create more lead gen?
[00:01:26] Joseph Freeman: And I think one of the biggest challenges is, in a big way, demand requires a huge budget, right?
[00:01:32] Joseph Freeman: So if you have a whole bunch of advertising dollars, then you might actually be able to throw that at the demand problem and create some demand.
[00:01:40] Joseph Freeman: And there's a lot of solutions that are preaching that.
[00:01:43] Joseph Freeman: I think for the marketer, the everyday marketer that doesn't have a huge budget has some budget, but not a huge budget.
[00:01:50] Joseph Freeman: What they really are faced with, at least in the companies that we work with and we work with a lot of B to B SMBs, maybe a little bit bigger than that, is there's just too much going on.
[00:02:02] Joseph Freeman: There's too much channel chaos, right?
[00:02:04] Joseph Freeman: There's too many outlets and too many things to try without enough time and without enough budget.
[00:02:10] Joseph Freeman: So we've know marketers who are faced with LinkedIn and Google Ads and of course, TikTok, and now AI adds all kinds of fun new components to the mix.
[00:02:20] Joseph Freeman: And then you've got your email and your Drip nurturing, and you've got dark social and forums and places where you can get the word out.
[00:02:27] Joseph Freeman: And it's kind of too much for a single marketer or even a small marketing team to do it all, and it becomes pretty overwhelming.
[00:02:35] Jess Bahr: So it's really about prioritization then, right?
[00:02:38] Jess Bahr: Figuring out where you want to be versus being in what feels like a really almost a chaotic channel mix where you're just trying a little bit of everything everywhere.
[00:02:46] Jess Bahr: And that is so expensive, too.
[00:02:49] Joseph Freeman: Yeah, I mean, I think what actually ends up happening with too little time, with too little budget, with too little resources is marketers panicking.
[00:02:58] Joseph Freeman: B two B marketers specifically panicking, trying to get leads to show some sort of hope and promise of ROI to the board or whoever the stakeholders are.
[00:03:08] Joseph Freeman: They're literally just throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.
[00:03:11] Joseph Freeman: So they pick up some marketing spaghetti, toss it on the wall, some of the noodles stick, and they get kind of excited.
[00:03:17] Joseph Freeman: As soon as they get excited about it, it dries up and falls off and doesn't stick anymore.
[00:03:20] Joseph Freeman: And so they got to keep doing it over and over again.
[00:03:23] Joseph Freeman: And they're spending money, they're spending time, they're spending resources, and honestly, like very little to show for it.
[00:03:29] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I laugh because I'm picturing there was this very short lived trend, not trend, but TikTok, kind of viral TikToks, I would say, of someone who made it's like a paper machete wallpaper.
[00:03:43] Jess Bahr: And you would see them just put it up, and it was supposed to last, but you'd have to keep it moist and water it like a living moth.
[00:03:48] Jess Bahr: And that's like the visual that comes to mind.
[00:03:50] Jess Bahr: We're talking about throwing spaghetti at the wall, and eventually it falls off, because I know so many marketers that have done that where they're not really sure what's working.
[00:03:59] Jess Bahr: They're oftentimes earlier stage too, and so they don't have a lot of data, so they just start testing everything and then hope something works and then try and scale it.
[00:04:07] Jess Bahr: But that's not always the most efficient way to get there.
[00:04:11] Jess Bahr: You end up with a weird crumbling wallpaper or spaghetti falling off 100%.
[00:04:16] Joseph Freeman: I mean, I think one of the challenges is that in B to c so at B to B versus B to C, in B to C marketing, in many cases you have the opportunity because the cost is so.
[00:04:28] Joseph Freeman: Much lower because the price point is so much lower to buy, you have the opportunity to just throw tons of traffic at a B test all day long.
[00:04:36] Joseph Freeman: Right?
[00:04:36] Joseph Freeman: Like you've got a new protein bar or you've got a new widget.
[00:04:39] Joseph Freeman: You put it up, you run some ad dollars, and you can run thousands and thousands and thousands of eyeballs across that in a short amount of time and quickly see what's working and what's not.
[00:04:48] Joseph Freeman: And you can actually get to ROI pretty quickly because it's a grab and go item in many cases, right?
[00:04:53] Joseph Freeman: It's like five to $50 that's not that hard to pull the trigger on.
[00:04:58] Joseph Freeman: In B two B world, we're talking about million dollar price tags that take 6812 months to actually get a sales cycle completed or even started in some cases.
[00:05:11] Joseph Freeman: And this is a challenge.
[00:05:12] Joseph Freeman: And what we see B two B owners and B two B marketers.
[00:05:16] Joseph Freeman: And any stakeholder to B two B company doing is they try some things.
[00:05:21] Joseph Freeman: Okay, so this is going back to the spaghetti on the wall.
[00:05:23] Joseph Freeman: They try some things.
[00:05:25] Joseph Freeman: It kind of is working, and then it's not.
[00:05:26] Joseph Freeman: And then they give up on it, and then they go on to the next thing, and it kind of works.
[00:05:30] Joseph Freeman: It doesn't.
[00:05:31] Joseph Freeman: And then they give up on it and they do this.
[00:05:32] Joseph Freeman: It's like a repeat.
[00:05:34] Joseph Freeman: It's a broken record over and over until finally somebody, one of the stakeholders, says, this isn't working.
[00:05:40] Joseph Freeman: Let's cut the marketing budget, and then everybody loses, right?
[00:05:44] Joseph Freeman: And I like to liken it to the gym.
[00:05:46] Joseph Freeman: Like people who want to get fit, right?
[00:05:48] Joseph Freeman: Whether it's because you want to lose weight, whether it's because you want to build muscle, you decide that you are going to make a New Year's resolution to get fit.
[00:05:57] Joseph Freeman: Well, that's like your marketing plan, right?
[00:05:58] Joseph Freeman: You make this resolution and this plan, and you're really excited about it.
[00:06:01] Joseph Freeman: So what do you do next?
[00:06:02] Joseph Freeman: You go and you buy a gym membership and you go and buy the Nikes.
[00:06:06] Joseph Freeman: You go and buy the Apple Watch, and you get all the gear.
[00:06:09] Joseph Freeman: So this is, like your HubSpot and your salesforce and your mailchimps, and you get all this stuff, and you're now ready to roll with your marketing plan, your New Year's resolution.
[00:06:18] Joseph Freeman: And you go and you hit the gym.
[00:06:20] Joseph Freeman: And you go for five days and you knock yourself out and you're super proud and you're super tired and you're exhausted to the point that you don't even want to go back, right?
[00:06:28] Joseph Freeman: And you may even stick with this for like a whole quarter.
[00:06:31] Joseph Freeman: Maybe not, probably not at the gym, if we're being honest.
[00:06:33] Joseph Freeman: But you may stick with this for a few weeks, and then you wake up and you say, great, where are my muscles?
[00:06:39] Joseph Freeman: And the truth is, there are no muscles.
[00:06:41] Joseph Freeman: After three weeks, you have made some progress, probably mostly in the form of a new habit, but you have not actually achieved anything that you were hoping to achieve.
[00:06:52] Joseph Freeman: Because why?
[00:06:53] Joseph Freeman: Because we know it takes a year.
[00:06:55] Joseph Freeman: Takes six months.
[00:06:56] Joseph Freeman: It takes a year, it takes three years, depending on what your goal is and where you started, right?
[00:07:01]Discussing the Challenges of Marketing and the Importance of Consistency with Jess Bahr and Joseph Freeman
Copy Content

[00:07:01] Joseph Freeman: B, two B.
[00:07:02] Joseph Freeman: Marketing is really no different.
[00:07:04] Joseph Freeman: I mean, you get into a routine of blogging for three or four weeks, and then when you don't have sales from it, you say, this isn't working, and you get rid of it.
[00:07:12] Joseph Freeman: You get into a routine of running ads, and two months later, after you've run down $1,000 of ads that have generated some leads in your database, but like no sales conversations, you give up on it.
[00:07:22] Joseph Freeman: And this is a challenge for a lot of you to be it kills.
[00:07:26] Jess Bahr: Me also when I see because I've had clients that have wanted an ROI super quick too, and it's not giving enough time and carrying on to the gym analogy.
[00:07:35] Jess Bahr: It's someone who goes to the gym and they don't know how to lift and they don't have any form, and they're doing the total wrong thing, and they go, well, this doesn't work at all.
[00:07:43] Jess Bahr: It's like, well, yeah, LinkedIn ads, someone told me that day, email marketing doesn't work.
[00:07:47] Jess Bahr: I was like, Email marketing works.
[00:07:49] Jess Bahr: You're just doing it wrong.
[00:07:52] Jess Bahr: It must not work.
[00:07:53] Jess Bahr: If it didn't work for me, doing it for a week, it must not work at all.
[00:07:56] Jess Bahr: And then giving up on it completely versus taking the time to do something right with time and budget and effort and energy and also just alignment internally on it to get there.
[00:08:07] Jess Bahr: So that's a great analogy, though.
[00:08:09] Jess Bahr: It is very similar.
[00:08:11] Joseph Freeman: It's similar.
[00:08:12] Joseph Freeman: And Jess, I would actually say more than doing it right is doing it consistently.
[00:08:16] Joseph Freeman: So I'm going to go back to the gym for a second, right?
[00:08:19] Joseph Freeman: Like if you do anything at the gym long enough, you will get results.
[00:08:22] Joseph Freeman: Now you might get lopsided results.
[00:08:24] Joseph Freeman: Like if you just pump with one arm over and over for weeks and months, you're going to get one strong bicep.
[00:08:28] Joseph Freeman: And that's not ideal, but you will get a result by doing something over and over and over again.
[00:08:34] Joseph Freeman: So it's the same with marketing.
[00:08:35] Joseph Freeman: If you commit to something and just keep doing it, you'll get some sort of result.
[00:08:39] Joseph Freeman: I think the challenge is, and again, going back to the gym example, the challenge is like actually having the commitment and the consistency and the hyper specificity around what it is you're trying to achieve to make it work.
[00:08:53] Joseph Freeman: Otherwise, there's a lot of people who show up to the gym and just wander around and find the first open machine and then when the next one they want to do is not open, they skip it and go to something else.
[00:09:01] Joseph Freeman: And there's no plan, there's no routine.
[00:09:03] Joseph Freeman: It's literally just like, I'm going to try stuff and you won't really get a lot of results that way.
[00:09:09] Joseph Freeman: And then fast forward to the CrossFits of the world.
[00:09:12] Joseph Freeman: Familiar with CrossFit.
[00:09:15] Jess Bahr: I say, you don't know this about me, while the audience probably doesn't either, but I actually used to do Strong Woman and power lifting.
[00:09:21] Joseph Freeman: Oh, my gosh, it's amazing.
[00:09:23] Jess Bahr: Long time.
[00:09:24] Jess Bahr: Yeah, back in the day.
[00:09:25] Jess Bahr: And CrossFit Games is actually in Madison, Wisconsin, where I live.
[00:09:28] Jess Bahr: So I usually go as a spectator.
[00:09:30] Jess Bahr: I don't compete, I'm not that fit, but I go as a spectator and try and buy all the discounted equipment afterwards.
[00:09:39] Joseph Freeman: Well, I love this.
[00:09:40] Joseph Freeman: So we have a whole nother podcast to do, probably around CrossFit in your backyard.
[00:09:45] Jess Bahr: Beat heads to marketing.
[00:09:50] Joseph Freeman: Well, the CrossFit example to me is actually, again, really relevant because what CrossFit does for people is it gives them a plan.
[00:09:57] Joseph Freeman: They show up and on the board, there's something they're going to do that day and everybody's going to do it in circuit.
[00:10:02] Joseph Freeman: Actually, I've never done CrossFit, so I'm speaking a little bit out of ignorance here, but I know generally the concept okay, so you show up, there's a board, it's exercises.
[00:10:10] Joseph Freeman: Is it the best exercise that you could ever possibly do to get the best Arnold Schwarzenegger results?
[00:10:16] Joseph Freeman: No, but what they're doing for you is they're giving you a consistent plan every single day.
[00:10:21] Joseph Freeman: They're getting you back in there, they're getting you to go in a circuit.
[00:10:24] Joseph Freeman: You're just over and over hitting these things.
[00:10:26] Joseph Freeman: Someone's curating it for you.
[00:10:28] Joseph Freeman: And over time, these people not only see results, but they actually kind of drink the Koolaid.
[00:10:32] Joseph Freeman: They get really into the whole culture of it because it creates new habits for them.
[00:10:37] Joseph Freeman: It creates real success and little milestones along the way that they can be excited about, whether that's literally waking up and looking like a bodybuilder, which is many years down the road, or it could just be getting up and you're obviously feeling healthier.
[00:10:52] Joseph Freeman: You're starting to shed a few pounds.
[00:10:54] Joseph Freeman: Your friends in the community of CrossFit are starting to talk about it, and that's what we need in marketing.
[00:11:00] Joseph Freeman: There are some superstars that can go in and just like, nail it, kill it.
[00:11:03] Joseph Freeman: Of course there are marketers that can do that, but the majority of marketers, especially coming into a new business or maybe a startup, they kind of just need to start exercising the muscles in a consistent daily routine with a plan.
[00:11:16] Joseph Freeman: That's what I do.
[00:11:17] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it's like when you start out, just the movement, the act of going can be the thing that has an impact.
[00:11:23] Jess Bahr: And for a lot of early stage companies, early stage marketing programs in general, there's so many places to start that there isn't a wrong place.
[00:11:32] Jess Bahr: You just need to start making some motion and then ideally get a plan together and move with intention towards whatever efforts you're going with.
[00:11:42] Jess Bahr: There's a company, actually.
[00:11:44] Jess Bahr: Yeah, a friendly company.
[00:11:45] Jess Bahr: They're taking a bold move, I'll say.
[00:11:47] Jess Bahr: And instead of hiring their first marketer or marketing team, they just hired a PR firm.
[00:11:52] Jess Bahr: And the PR firm is helping with branding and messaging, but they just skipped all the other early marketing activities and they're just doing press and it's so far working for them.
[00:12:04] Jess Bahr: That was an interesting move.
[00:12:07] Joseph Freeman: And I think that that's another good point.
[00:12:08] Joseph Freeman: If it works, it works.
[00:12:10] Joseph Freeman: Keep doing it.
[00:12:11] Joseph Freeman: You don't have to be doing everything.
[00:12:13] Joseph Freeman: Wrapping this back around to the original question is, like, why is it hard?
[00:12:16] Joseph Freeman: There's a lot of chaos out there with all of the different channels and platforms and the things you could be doing.
[00:12:22] Joseph Freeman: Don't get distracted with that.
[00:12:23] Joseph Freeman: Just do something and keep doing it until it works.
[00:12:26] Joseph Freeman: Don't do it if it works.
[00:12:27] Joseph Freeman: Do it until it works.
[00:12:29] Joseph Freeman: Because the more you do it, the more you optimize it, the more you learn and you can make it work.
[00:12:35]Facing the Challenges of Content Marketing
Copy Content

[00:12:35] Jess Bahr: This translates actually really well to a specific topic in marketing I think a lot of people have challenged with, which is content.
[00:12:41] Jess Bahr: It's where do I start with content creation?
[00:12:45] Jess Bahr: What part of the between bottom of funnel and top of funnel.
[00:12:48] Jess Bahr: Where do I start for creating it?
[00:12:50] Jess Bahr: What format do I do?
[00:12:51] Jess Bahr: Do I spend three months trying to do some big rock piece of content to repurpose?
[00:12:56] Jess Bahr: Or do I start with blog posts and build it up?
[00:12:58] Jess Bahr: And it's one of those things, again, where there's so many spots to start.
[00:13:01] Jess Bahr: Where do we really take that first stab at content?
[00:13:04] Jess Bahr: At content and content funnels?
[00:13:07] Joseph Freeman: Yeah, it's hard, it's challenging.
[00:13:08] Joseph Freeman: And I think one of the things that a lot of content marketers or just marketers do is they start, but then they get overwhelmed with how much more there is to do, and they kind of just stop.
[00:13:18] Joseph Freeman: And so what we end up with are a lot of companies with a landing page and a Contact US page, and it's creating first of all, the Contact us page is creating spam in the database, but the landing page is creating maybe some interesting contacts in the database in terms of downloads or whatever it is you're offering.
[00:13:37] Joseph Freeman: But they just go cold.
[00:13:39] Joseph Freeman: Like, the sales team, if they are following up on them, follows up and gets no response.
[00:13:43] Joseph Freeman: The marketing team is so busy trying to do everything, they're not actually nurturing these new leads.
[00:13:49] Joseph Freeman: And so they're just going in, they're getting cold.
[00:13:51] Joseph Freeman: The marketing team is excited to report that they got 50 new leads.
[00:13:53] Joseph Freeman: The sales team is saying, those aren't leads at all.
[00:13:55] Joseph Freeman: Those are just contacts.
[00:13:56] Joseph Freeman: And again, the board, the CEO, is saying, Well, I don't care.
[00:14:00] Joseph Freeman: Where's the ROI?
[00:14:01] Joseph Freeman: Right?
[00:14:02] Joseph Freeman: So you need to create a relationship path.
[00:14:05] Joseph Freeman: You need to have content that's taking baby steps from one step to the next, all the way from you've heard the dating analogy.
[00:14:13] Joseph Freeman: Don't ask someone to marry you on the first date.
[00:14:14] Joseph Freeman: Don't go on a date and say, Would you marry me?
[00:14:17] Joseph Freeman: That's the same as jumping on them right away with a sales pitch.
[00:14:21] Joseph Freeman: But you got to create that relationship pat.
[00:14:23] Joseph Freeman: You got to have a little bit of content taking them one step further, one step further, one step further, until the day they're ready to buy you're there.
[00:14:30] Joseph Freeman: Right.
[00:14:33]Effective Marketing Frameworks
Copy Content

[00:14:33] Jess Bahr: Wrapping back also to a conversation before about just doing things, I feel like I've heard so many people talk about content syndication, networking, and then you look at it, and content syndication, I think oftentimes people think they're buying a really hot lead that's ready for that demo request.
[00:14:49] Jess Bahr: And so you look at what they're doing, you find out, oh, you're just buying leads.
[00:14:52] Jess Bahr: You're not nurturing them.
[00:14:53] Jess Bahr: You're not even bridging between the content that you're syndicating and the other content you're following up with.
[00:14:58] Jess Bahr: And they totally miss that.
[00:15:00] Jess Bahr: I think you call the relationship pass yeah.
[00:15:03] Jess Bahr: With it.
[00:15:04] Jess Bahr: Yeah, they totally miss that.
[00:15:05] Jess Bahr: And they're like, content syndication doesn't work.
[00:15:07] Jess Bahr: Well, it doesn't work if you don't do it fully.
[00:15:10] Joseph Freeman: Yeah, 100%.
[00:15:12] Joseph Freeman: And we learned this the hard way back when we've been an agency for 15 years and we used to sell web development.
[00:15:17] Joseph Freeman: Then we turned into marketing, and all along the way we were trying to generate our own leads.
[00:15:21] Joseph Freeman: When we started working with HubSpot back in 2013, HubSpot had all these promises of it's going to unlock all this inbound lead potential.
[00:15:29] Joseph Freeman: And when we got into HubSpot, yes, it's like a Ferrari, it's got all the cool bells and whistles, but we didn't really know how to drive it.
[00:15:36] Joseph Freeman: Even though we were marketers, even though we were creatives and developers, we didn't know really what to do with it in terms of bringing it to life as a program, as an actual lead gen engine.
[00:15:46] Joseph Freeman: So we started figuring it out and building it for ourselves.
[00:15:49] Joseph Freeman: And we came up with what we now call the digital Utopia methodology.
[00:15:52] Joseph Freeman: And it's a prescribed way to build a content funnel that elevates the relationship from one baby step to the next through content, through ads that support it cold and retargeted, and then through nurturing campaigns.
[00:16:05] Joseph Freeman: And it worked so well, we ended up bundling it up and started selling it.
[00:16:09] Joseph Freeman: So for the last five years, we've been selling this methodology where we help implement it, but we also have an actual playbook that literally outlines exactly what to do.
[00:16:18] Joseph Freeman: And once you have the whole thing set up, of course you're going to iterate over it, you're going to optimize it, you're going to make it better.
[00:16:25] Joseph Freeman: But what it does is it helps you eat that elephant of creating an ascension path, a content like relationship path.
[00:16:31] Joseph Freeman: It helps you eat that elephant one bite at a time, and it helps give you all of those little mini mile marker success points where you can say, yeah, we're not getting ROI yet, but look at all of this momentum we're creating and you're starting to change the inertia.
[00:16:48] Joseph Freeman: So this is something we do every single day.
[00:16:51] Joseph Freeman: We've been doing it now for years and it really works.
[00:16:54] Joseph Freeman: And so I am out to get b to b marketers to start using a system.
[00:16:58] Joseph Freeman: Now, you can use that system, ours, we know it works, we love it, but literally use any system, use a framework and a system and it will make your life so much better.
[00:17:08] Jess Bahr: I think that's why ABM has taken off in the last five years especially, is marketers are looking for that and it's why CrossFit took off.
[00:17:17] Jess Bahr: People are looking for that formula, they're looking for what the next step is, and some plan to get to their end goal versus just coming in and starting to, as you said earlier, throw spaghetti at the wall.
[00:17:27] Jess Bahr: We'll link to that below for everyone listening or watching on YouTube.
[00:17:31] Jess Bahr: We'll put links in the description below to all the resources we're talking about on the show today, too.
[00:17:36] Joseph Freeman: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:38] Joseph Freeman: And I think you'll get someone who will argue like, well, it's always better to have a bespoke sort of solution, and maybe that's true, but that costs a lot of money, that requires a certain amount of talent.
[00:17:48] Joseph Freeman: And the reality is, most B to B's aren't used to doing marketing in a significant way.
[00:17:54] Joseph Freeman: So now that they're deciding to do it, you got to start somewhere.
[00:17:56] Joseph Freeman: You got to start with a framework, with a plan.
[00:17:59] Joseph Freeman: Grow up from there, evolve it from there, customize it from there.
[00:18:02] Joseph Freeman: But please, just use a system, use a plan.
[00:18:04] Joseph Freeman: It will really take away that chaos for you.
[00:18:08] Jess Bahr: Yeah, no, completely.
[00:18:12] Jess Bahr: I think one of the biggest things that impacts successive marketing programs, too, is alignment internally with Sales, CS, other teams.
[00:18:20] Jess Bahr: And when you have a framework in place or you have some plan, it's so much easier also to share what you're doing.
[00:18:26] Jess Bahr: A manager, when I was really early into my career, told me, whoever owns the deck for a meeting, owns the meeting.
[00:18:32] Jess Bahr: And so having a deck and a plan for everything means that you can explain what you're doing to others.
[00:18:36] Jess Bahr: You can get everyone aligned on the same page, and the frameworks and plans do the same thing.
[00:18:40] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:18:41] Jess Bahr: They really help you get everyone together to make sure you're all moving towards the same goal, or if they're not moving towards the goal with you, why?
[00:18:48] Jess Bahr: And start having that conversation, too.
[00:18:51] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I would say I'm a huge fan of systems also.
[00:18:53] Joseph Freeman: Yeah, no, I'm really glad you said that, because one of the biggest complaints we hear from marketers is, hey, I know it takes time, I know it takes money, but my stakeholders don't.
[00:19:02] Joseph Freeman: They need to see ROI right now.
[00:19:04] Joseph Freeman: Well, the reality is, unless you literally have a magic wand, you cannot give them ROI right now.
[00:19:09] Joseph Freeman: So just stop trying to find a way to do that and instead find a way to switch the narrative so that you can say, hey, I will promise you ROI in twelve months.
[00:19:18] Joseph Freeman: However, on the way, we don't just have to be waiting twiddling our thumbs.
[00:19:22] Joseph Freeman: Here is milestone one, and we can all be excited about that because this company's never hit that before.
[00:19:27] Joseph Freeman: And here's milestone two.
[00:19:29] Joseph Freeman: Here's milestone three.
[00:19:30] Joseph Freeman: And what a framework does to your point is it empowers a marketer to actually have a real conversation, a business conversation, around what it's going to take to achieve real results.
[00:19:42] Joseph Freeman: Because otherwise you're kind of just hoping and praying that your campaign hits this month, and it creates that one lead that turns into that one sale that pays for the whole program, and it's just not realistic.
[00:19:53] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:19:53] Jess Bahr: Sitting there checking your form submissions every single morning.
[00:19:59] Joseph Freeman: There's some amount of fun adrenaline with that, but it's also like nail bitey.
[00:20:05] Jess Bahr: Yeah, well, it feels hard to influence sometimes with it, too.
[00:20:10] Jess Bahr: So, speaking, we're gemming up on time.
[00:20:12]Joseph Freeman Discusses the Importance of HubSpot and Relationship-Building in Content Marketing
Copy Content

[00:20:12] Jess Bahr: So the question everyone gets what is your favorite tool, or least favorite tool?
[00:20:18] Joseph Freeman: Oh, gosh.
[00:20:19] Joseph Freeman: Well, I love tools.
[00:20:20] Joseph Freeman: And I love trying new tools, but I don't know if this is appropriate or inappropriate, but I have to say HubSpot is my most favorite tool.
[00:20:30] Joseph Freeman: And the reason HubSpot is my most favorite tool is because HubSpot builds in all of the tools that we really need as marketers.
[00:20:40] Joseph Freeman: And you could make an argument for there's better versions of chat and there's better versions of automation and stuff like that.
[00:20:46] Joseph Freeman: But for me, having worked in all of the systems over the years, I love HubSpot so much because we really can, and especially now more than ever, we can customize it to do whatever it is we need and it gives us that full funnel reporting in it.
[00:21:01] Joseph Freeman: And to me that's huge because when we talk about creating a content path that is a relationship builder, you need to know what's happening at every step of that relationship and you need to track it all the way back to the very first date.
[00:21:13] Joseph Freeman: And if you are using a cobbled together system, that's really hard to do, it can be done, but that's really hard to do to keep track of.
[00:21:19] Joseph Freeman: And so I have just like I think I resisted it at first, the whole HubSpot bandwagon years and years ago.
[00:21:26] Joseph Freeman: But since I've become a true believer.
[00:21:28] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I mean, I bathe in the Kool Aid I'm all in on because yeah, for the same reason, it pulls everything together.
[00:21:34] Jess Bahr: And this isn't a HubSpot ad, I promise.
[00:21:38] Jess Bahr: Jenna's great.
[00:21:40] Jess Bahr: Well, Joseph, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:21:42] Jess Bahr: And thank you everyone for listening.
[00:21:44] Jess Bahr: If you want to learn more about the Digital Utopia methodology, we will have links in the description below and feel free to hit Joseph up on LinkedIn.
[00:21:53] Jess Bahr: We'll include all the links below.
[00:21:55] Joseph Freeman: Thanks Jess.
[00:21:57] Jess Bahr: Have a good one everyone.