The PR 20/20 Blog

HubSpotters have been busy. Over the course of the second quarter, HubSpot released significant product updates across marketing and sales—and (in case you missed it) unveiled Service Hub.

If you’re like our team, we eagerly geek out over new tools. So we decided to feature the product updates at our latest HubSpot User Group (HUG) event in June. Maggie Bomze (@Maggbomze) joined us from Boston to give our guest the inside scoop on what’s new and exciting in your portal.

Below, we’ve featured five of our favorite new features and tools. View the full SlideShare at the end of this post to catch up on everything you missed.

At a marketing agency, no day is like the day before. In the morning you’re reading news and reporting on the latest healthcare overhaul, then in the afternoon you’re presenting to a room full of engineers on differentiation within a niche manufacturing submarket.

Welcome to agency life.

At PR 20/20, we work with clients across industries—from manufacturing and distribution, to  healthcare, insurance, finance, real estate, technology and more. We’ve worked with select markets over the years to establish internal expertise, and we know that it’s a game-changer for our team and for the quality of client work, strategy and results when we can establish domain expertise within an industry.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2013 and has been updated to be more current and comprehensive.

A flowchart—the visual representation of a logical progression of things. 

In my humble opinion, one of man’s greatest accomplishments, right next to the spork. 

Great marketers understand the importance of having good data on their businesses. So much, in fact, that they’re doing everything they can to get their hands on as much data as possible. 

That’s great! We recommend that. But what are you doing with all of the data you’re collecting? 

For many of us, the answer is glancing at our collected analytics once a month, quarter or year because we don’t really have the time to deep dive through Google Analytics and excel spreadsheets.

All that telling data you’re collecting, including trends and insights your boss and CEO might be very interested in, is going to waste.

This post originally appeared on the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute's blog. The Marketing AI Institute was created and is powered by PR 20/20. 

Will AI replace your job?

To be honest, no one knows for sure. Not yet. Which makes it more important than ever to ask the question.

We know AI is advancing rapidly. Image and voice recognition have become serious technologies. Natural language processing and generation are progressing. Neural networks push the envelope of how well machines learn without human intervention.

This has led to some insane advancements. We all now have AI voice assistants in the form of Siri and Alexa. Self-driving cars are viable technologies—and self-driving trucks may be next. Google built AI that taught itself how to be superhuman at a board game—without human teachers.

It's still very early in AI. But these advancements mean we need to move beyond hype and start asking tough questions.

How might AI redefine marketing jobs? How might it redefine our entire industry? And how do we train ourselves and others to survive potentially massive disruption?

“Traditional, structured education is very important, yet much success is derived from highly motivated individuals that have dedicated their lives to the concept of lifelong learning. These individuals prioritize the creation of time in their busy lives each day to educate themselves on new concepts and ideas. These individuals understand the importance of creating plentiful opportunities in all spheres of life.”

— Why You Should Strive to Be a Lifelong Learner via Entrepreneur

At PR 20/20, we live by this lifelong-learner mindset, and professional development is at our core. Simply having a college degree or background in a related marketing role isn’t enough— instead, we stay hungry for knowledge and seek to learn more. Marketing is a fast-paced and ever-changing industry, meaning staying up on the latest trends, techs and best practices is constantly important to your career.

Luckily, you don’t have to search far for resources to help you learn the basics or master advanced skill sets in marketing. Much of the work is done for you, thanks to ample online digital marketing course and certifications. Did we mention many of them are free, too?

Check out five of our team’s favorite online digital marketing courses, all for free, below.

Roughly 2.34 billion people worldwide use some form of social media. That’s a lot of potential followers, clicks, likes and engagements waiting to happen with your brand on social. But, what good are these metrics if you’re not in tune with what your audiences are saying? 

Creating relevant, engaging social media content for all of your brand’s channels is only half the battle. Staying up to date on what your followers are engaging with, and using social platforms as a communication tool to connect with leads, prospects and customers, monitor complaints and address questions is the other half. And to do this effectively, you need to proactively monitor and engage with your audiences.

This is where HubSpot’s monitoring tools become your best friend.

By taking advantage of all of HubSpot’s social capabilities, monitoring your feeds becomes easier and more effective.

As marketers, we’re required to wear many hats throughout the day— author, producer, consultant, data analyst, social media guru. The list goes on.

But in reality, how much time are marketers really devoting to these types of roles in comparison to planning? According to iMedia, the average marketer spends the majority of their time on planning tasks, whether that be scheduling or attending meetings, reading and responding to emails or managing relationships.

What if you could spend less time planning for success, and more time actually reaching it? That’s the exact thought process behind PR 20/20’s Marketing Growth Hackathon^TM.

When you hear the term “hackathon,” does your brain immediately go to a room full of computer geeks furiously typing on multiple computers? If so, you’re not far off.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2013 and has been updated to be more current and comprehensive. 

The term doublethink was pioneered by George Orwell in his dystopian masterpiece 1984. In it, an alternate England is enslaved by the totalitarian Party, headed by the omnipresent Big Brother.

To maintain power, the Party invents Newspeak, a reductionist language that eliminates the ability to express complex thought.

Doublethink is the result: the ability to believe two contradictions without question. In 1984, doublethink is everywhere: citizens believe they’ve been perpetually at war with another country one day, perpetually at peace the next. It’s also present in the Party’s slogan: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

That world may be fictional, but doublethink is real—and it’s destroying your content creation efforts.