The PR 20/20 Blog

Inbound marketing requires a champion—those who believe in the power of inbound, and are willing to take a risk on a new direction, methodology and technology. Here at PR 20/20, we call these champions change agents.

We’ve helped many change agents implement inbound tactics, and prove MROI to leadership. It doesn’t happen overnight, and every journey is unique. That said, their successes continue to inspire us.

In this spotlight, we’ve featured Chris Schmitt (@ChrisSchmittEsq), senior director of strategic development at National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). NAM is a DC-based trade association with more than 14,000 manufacturing members representing 80%+ of the manufacturing economy.   

Prior to his current role, Chris executed digital transformation at two Cleveland manufacturing powerhouses. Read on to see how Chris implemented an inbound approach at both organizations, and proved long-term value to the C-suite.

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.

If you’re interested in growing your business, then lead generation campaigns are a must.

It’s not surprising that marketers are obsessed with leads. In fact, “53% of marketers say half or more of their budget is allocated to lead generation.”

These campaigns come in the form of gated content offers like survey reports, coupons, free events, job applications, and much more. There’s no shortage in creativity, so why the shortage in leads?

After hours of production, are you dedicating ample time and resources to promotion?

Below are ten tactics to distribute your offer, and capture more leads.  

Picture this: you’ve just launched the most robust, creative lead generation campaign yet. The gated asset is evergreen and useful, and the promotion is creative and clickable. You’re probably feeling pretty good (rightfully so); but, the work is far from done.  

The most successful performance-driven marketers are always tracking, reporting and adjusting in real time. They let the data tell a story, and if need be, change the narrative as quickly as possible. In fact, regular reporting may be the most critical piece of a marketing strategy.

Taking a step back (and in case you missed the first two posts in this series), top marketing minds weighed in on building truly performance-driven strategies. The first step is gaining executive buy-in and the second step is more intelligent goal setting. In this final installment, the experts address the importance of campaign reporting. Read on to see what they have to say.  

Inside the enterprise, driving change isn’t easy.

A true digital transformation requires a champion—one person who believes in the power of inbound marketing and is willing to take a risk on a new direction, methodology and technology. Here at PR 20/20, we call this person the enterprise change agent.

We’ve helped many change agents implement inbound marketing, and prove MROI to leadership. It doesn’t happen overnight, and every journey is unique. That said, their successes continue to inspire us. So we’ve decided to share their stories, starting with Jorge Solorio (@JorgeLubrizol), Americas Industrial Business Manager at The Lubrizol Corporation.

Jorge oversees the Americas business operations for the Corzan Industrial Systems brand at Lubrizol, and has played the pivotal role of change agent over the past few years. He began experimenting with inbound for Corzan Industrial Systems, a Lubrizol brand, in 2016. This included the creation of a simple, five-page Wordpress website and blog. In January of 2017, he partnered with PR 20/20 to continue building a case for digital transformation.

Read on to see how he used inbound to reach double-digit returns and drive international change.

The role of marketer and data analyst have become intertwined.

Thanks to more intelligent systems (think HubSpot) and insight into consumer behavior at every step of the buyer’s journey, marketers have the power to apply these learnings and create truly personalized, relevant experiences.

That’s why the most impactful marketing strategies are data-driven.

It’s a simple concept, but it’s not a simple process. In fact, a recent survey from CMO Council and RedPoint Global found that “...only 7 percent of the marketers surveyed early this year say they deliver real-time, data-driven engagements across both physical and digital touchpoints.”

So how can marketers turn the tide, and create more impactful performance-driven marketing strategies?

In case you missed the premier post in this series, the first step (according to the experts) is to align expectations—from marketing to leadership. The second step is more intelligent, intentional goal setting. Read on for tips from the experts to reinvent the way your team approaches goal setting, and ultimately develop strategy that drives bottom-line results.

Getting executive buy-in is a massive challenge for marketers—and it’s just one of several major challenges holding them back.

Recent surveys from organizations including Gartner, Content Marketing Institute and The CMO Council continue to prove that marketing strategy is a massive pain point for marketing professionals.

More intelligent insights and access to smarter marketing technologies have led to a state of complete analysis paralysis. So, how can we bring data, technology and talent full-circle with a performance-driven marketing strategy?

After a bit of research and deliberation with my internal team, it was clear that we needed to bring in the undeniable experts for this conversation. So, we asked top marketing minds how to solve for this problem—zeroing in on team alignment, goal setting, campaign reporting and more.

Top marketers weighed in, and they had a lot to say. So, we’ve created a three-part series to cover all key pieces of a performance-driven strategy.

Read on to see what the experts recommend.

The marketing industry reached a tipping point in 2017.

New, artificially intelligent tools are working to make our campaigns smarter than ever before. Increased access to consumer data enables more contextual, relevant content. And, more and more manual tasks are being left to automation.

But, we are just scraping the surface of disruption to come.

In the words of ChiefMartec.com’s Scott Brinker (@chiefmartec), “...the truth is that AI is already having a significant impact on marketing. And over the next several years, it will dramatically reshape the nature of business and marketing — no hype.”

Before we push on into 2018, we’d like to take this time to reflect on the best of 2017—PR 20/20 style.

Below, we’ve curated our top 17 blog posts from 2017. We ranked posts in order of pageviews, and excluded any with an average time on page that fell below two minutes.

Cheers to our blog readers in 2017. Enjoy a bit of marketing know-how over a hot cocoa!

Disclaimer: this is not your average end-of-year tips and tools blog post.

We get that annual planning is a beast, and marketers everywhere are wrought with expectation and reporting woes.

If numbers are down, how can you prove that next year’s performance will improve? And if your numbers are up, what can you do to keep climbing?

You need an actionable, original marketing plan—driven by purposeful planning and backed by data—to truly gain executive buy-in.

Thus, below we’ve outlined seven tips (including PR 20/20 tools, concepts and templates) that can lead to actionable change. The following tactics featured (of which are nearly all free) will add value to your planning framework, year-over-year analysis and assessment, performance reporting, team brainstorming, integration with artificial intelligence, and more.

We’ve always believed in HubSpot’s potential to disrupt an industry. In fact, PR 20/20 became HubSpot’s first agency partner back in 2007—a decision that continues to fuel and inspire our business.

So we’re not surprised that the software company reported more than 34,000 customers and upwards of $89 million in revenue at the end of Q2.

HubSpot continues to flourish because of one solid fact: the product works. (And no, this is not a paid endorsement; we’ve just seen the results.)

The HubSpot Growth Stack aims to solve our number one setback as data-driven marketers: the “elusive, fully-integrated marketing stack.” It creates a home base for all marketing, sales, service and CRM activity, enabling performance-driven, agile marketing. From initial prospecting to closing the deal, you can use the stack to design and serve the full customer experience.