Posted by Ellie Mirman on Thu, Aug 05, 2010 @ 10:06 AM
Earlier this week I flew down to sunny (aka sweltering hot) Orlando, FL to speak at the Online Marketing Summit. It was a great event (sadly I had to miss the second half, but the first half was fantastic) and I wanted to share my presentation with those who couldn't make it.
I had been wanting to talk about the role of content and how central it is to every marketing activity. Content is a key part of our (HubSpot's) marketing strategy, whether it's for getting found online by more prospects, converting more of those prospects into leads, or converting those leads into paying customers. This presentation reviews each piece of that marketing process and how content fits in at each stage. Enjoy!
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Fri, Jul 09, 2010 @ 09:15 AM
Turns out zombies make terrible temps. The good news, though, is that with inbound marketing you can generate tons of qualified leads so you can don't need to hire any zombie temps. The other interesting news is that regular makeup can turn any marketer into a decent zombie.
Check out the video below to see our zombie temp in action. (And catch my cameo at the end, acting totally disgusted with our zombie temp.)
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Tue, Apr 06, 2010 @ 08:30 AM
Last week I had the fun opportunity to fill in for the oh-so-provocative Karen Rubin by co-hosting HubSpot TV. It was a pretty perfect week in marketing for me, with lots of news on Facebook and email marketing! Check out the full episode below or on the HubSpot blog.
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Mon, Jan 18, 2010 @ 07:03 AM
The New York Times had a great article a few days ago with an interview with SunGard CEO on their flat organizational structure. A lot of the points really resonated with and reflected life at HubSpot. Though I may have not thought about this when looking for a job, I realize that the organizational structure - and seeking out a flat organization - can really impact my happiness level and personal growth. Some favorite snippits from the interview:
"Top-down organizations got started because the bosses either knew more or they had access to more information. None of that applies now. Everybody has access to identical amounts of information."
This typically gets reformulated at HubSpot in relation to the changing nature of learning and purchasing in the business world due to the Internet. Of course, the Internet puts information at everyone's fingertips. On top of that, it's the employees who are in the muck of things that really can understand the challenges of the business and their users and can come up with great solutions.
Conde discusses Yammer as their collaboration tool of choice, allowing them to distribute valuable information across the organization straight from users to every single employee.
At HubSpot, I see our wiki allowing for incredible conversations and a flattening of the organization. How better to participate in a conversation with our CEO or VP Engineering or Partner Program Manager if you work in Sales or Engineering or Customer Support? Our challenge now is getting all the new employees to embrace the wiki and feel comfortable enough to jump into these conversations.
"If you start micromanaging people, then the very best ones leave. If the very best people leave, then the people you’ve got left actually require more micromanagement."
Micromanagement stifles your top performers, and top performers will go where they can truly achieve. At HubSpot we talk about being cathedral builders - where everyone is contributing to this greater vision that is common to all of us. Not only does this make us excited and driven to achieve this goal, but also - in the absence of strict managers - we are all aligned towards the same, business-changing end goal. You open yourself up to creative solutions and new ideas to tackle your goals.
"My advice to young people is always, along the way, have a sales job."
I cringe at this at first, because I would hate to be in Sales. But I get the point here. At least in my interpretation, this is about being responsible for driving real business results and being able to articulate the value of what you're selling - whether it's a product or yourself - to a skeptic. Obviously the CEO of SunGard is likely to be a smart cookie, but he really does point out a lot of the truly important things to an organization - the people and their qualities that lead to success. Focusing on their intellectual curiosity and reasoning processes and writing ability, for example, shows that it's about getting the right ingredients as opposed to trying to reformulate a pre-packaged meal. It's very cool to see this coming out of such a huge organization from which you might expect something a little more traditional and up tight.
Read the full interview with SunGard CEO Cristobal Conde here.
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Sat, Jan 16, 2010 @ 05:44 PM
Today I drove out to Worcester to speak about Marketing Transformation and The Future of Marketing at the UR Enough Workshop at Holy Cross University. Below is my presentation - enjoy!
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Wed, Dec 16, 2009 @ 10:16 AM
I'm happy to announce that in just over a month, I'll be heading down to Miami for the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2010. I had a fantastic time last year, but I'm ten times more excited about this year's event. Why? Here are my top 5 reasons:
1. See My Old Email Marketing Friends
Last year I met so many fantastic people. I got to finally meet some long-standing twitter friends, and meet a lot of new folks. Coming from an organization where I was the only email marketer at the time, hanging out with all email marketers was a dream come true. I've come a long way since then and can't wait to geek out all over again about email marketing.
2. New B2B Track!
The new B2B track is reason alone to go to the summit this year. The one thing that would have made last year's event better was more B2B content. There will be no less than 8 specifically B2B sessions this year, delivered by MarketingSherpa folks and real B2B marketers.
3. Could I Be Winning an Email Marketing Award?
I am up for a few of the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Awards this year. It would be quite exciting if I actually won - considering usually the winners are very big name agencies producing B2C email marketing campaigns. An award going to a small B2B company that does all their email marketing with ~2 people? Amazing!
4. Keynote Speaker: Joseph Jaffe of crayon (and Free Book!)
This year MarketingSherpa is bringing together their usual group of fantastic speakers, plus a fantastic keynote speaker: Joseph Jaffe, President of the marketing agency crayon. His session, "Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones - Email's NEW Critical Role," is based on his book - which all attendees will also receive.
5. Miami in January? Yes, Please!
Of course, if the summit were in freezing cold Minnesota, I would surely still be going. But on top of everything, the summit is taking place in warm, sunny Miami, Florida. So in the middle of the ugliest, coldest time in New England, I'll be heading down to geek out in the sun.
I will surely be blogging and tweeting (hashtag #sherpaemail) about the event in the coming months, so stay tuned. Or, join me at the 2010 Email Summit (and just for reading this, get $600 off the ticket price).
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Fri, Sep 25, 2009 @ 07:31 AM
Last night I finally made it out to my first DartBoston Pokin' Holes event and I was on a panel of three critiquing Launch Into Boston.
Overall, it was a great experience - met some great people and got to talk about a really interesting business. Full video is below, but here are the basics:
DartBoston: DartBoston is a community of young entrepreneurs and professionals in the Boston area.
Pokin' Holes: DartBoston holds a live weekly video podcast and event called "Pokin' Holes" that evaluates and provides feedback to young entrepreneurs starting new ventures.
Launch Into Boston: This week we evaluated Launch Into Boston, a service for recent college graduates and young professionals to transition into life in Boston.
Panelists: Jason Evanish, Neha Patadia, and myself, and moderated by DartBoston's Cort Johnson
Big thanks to Cort and DartBoston for inviting me to join the panel. It was a great time and I'm sure I'll be back!
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Sat, Jul 18, 2009 @ 08:52 AM
My worlds are colliding in a wonderful way - my very funny uncle, Eugene Mirman, made this video all about inbound marketing. Enjoy!
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Fri, Mar 13, 2009 @ 07:44 AM
There's nothing like a great conference to really get lots of thoughts and ideas jumping around in your head, just waiting for a blog post to flush them out. Yesterday I drove down to Randolph, MA for Geek Girl Camp Boston to talk to women about how to use inbound marketing and, specifically, Facebook, for business and afterwards I was so energized with blog post ideas about marketing and Facebook and social media newbies.
But that's not really what this blog post is about. I'm actually pretty new to the conference speaker role, and I was excited to get some experience at this event. Feedback was great (thank you all!), but of course I want to improve. I'll be the first to admit that I have a tendency to be a bit wordy and confusing when I try to explain things that I know too much about. I definitely fall victim to the Curse of Knowledge and need to work on better explaining things I know a lot about, like Facebook.
So when I got home last night, I pulled out (one of the four books I'm currently reading) Made to Stick to pick up where I left off (months ago... I really need to focus on one book at a time). Made to Stick has been one of the best business books I have ever read, really helping me with this Curse of Knowledge that I so easily fall victim to. Something that occurred to me - both in observing the authors' writing style and also the section specifically on Concrete ideas being "sticky" - was that concrete examples or case studies can be a huge help in delivering your idea in an effective way while also overcoming the Curse! By using real life examples of what you're explaining, a reader or listener can more easily remember your story. Also, by using case studies, you paint a picture that is worth a thousand words - your audience can fully experience what you're talking about, draw their own conclusions, and all at the same time, you make a lot more sense by not being so abstract.
Uh oh, I'm falling victim to it again. I'm being too abstract and not using concrete examples! So let's try this again.
In my presentation at GGC, I spent a lot of time talking about the news feed, about business Pages, about Facebook applications. Sure, I was giving step-by-step instructions for setting up a Page, but I still got a lot of questions like, "What if I don't want my clients to see my friends' kids' photos?" or "Should I use my real name?" -- questions more easily answered by just jumping in and seeing how Facebook works from a user's perspective.
Here's what I could have done: logged in to Facebook. Shown the news feed. Look! My friend Dan posted a link to his latest blog post. Mike uploaded a video of his son. Ashley became a fan of Flight of the Conchords. From there, we could go look at the Flight of the Conchords Page on Facebook. We could look at Ashley's profile, that shows she's a fan of that Page. And we remember that her action of becoming a fan actually showed up when I logged in. That's pretty cool.
That's one idea. By making it a lot more concrete, people can see exactly what Facebook is and how it works and will (hopefully) be better able to jump in using it.
What I especially like about the case study approach is that I can still allow myself to be wordy... But in this case, my words are used to describe a story. They add color and texture, and at the end, the listener can get a fuller experience of the picture, instead of me throwing a thousand words at them to describe the picture. I'm hoping from now on I'll try to paint more pictures... and not write any more dissertations.