Creating B2B Educational Content that Converts with Courtney Sembler
In this week's episode of Exploring Growth, Lee Murray speaks with Courtney Sembler, the leader of the HubSpot Academy team. They talk about the value of educational content and how it can benefit businesses with their marketing and sales strategies. They also delve into the various courses and educational materials provided by HubSpot Academy.
This episode is full of practical advice for companies looking to implement an educational content strategy.
If you are enjoying what you hear, please consider sharing it with a colleague or a friend.
For more information on HubSpot Academy: https://academy.hubspot.com/
Have a guest recommendation, question, or just want to connect?
Go here: https://www.harvardmurray.com/exploring-growth-podcast
Connect on LinkedIn:
Lee - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehmurray
Courtney - https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-sembler-b3394951
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:24:05
Speaker 1
Welcome back to Exploring Growth Podcast. Before I jump into this amazing discussion with Courtney Semler from HubSpot Academy, I want to let everybody know that we also have a newsletter that follows this podcast. You get all of this plus more of my ideas and insights that I have from time to time and all the resources that I find from week to week, all in a nice, simple, beautiful email that comes out once a week.
00:00:24:23 - 00:00:40:22
Speaker 1
So go to Harvard Money.com, click Exploring Growth Podcast and insert your email if you want to sign up for that. Now on to our episode with Courtney Semler, HubSpot Academy and Joy. Hey, Courtney, thanks for being a part of the Exploring Growth podcast.
00:00:41:11 - 00:00:42:23
Speaker 2
Of course, it's wonderful to be here.
00:00:43:23 - 00:01:12:01
Speaker 1
Yeah. So, you know, like a lot of things that are happening in my world right now, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, probably too much time. I should be running the business and I run into savory and unsavory characters. You tell me which one this all falls in. But Dan Tire is, as I told my last guest, is a rocket ship, you know, and you need to make sure you're strapped on when you're talking with him.
00:01:12:01 - 00:01:26:07
Speaker 1
But I had him on the podcast. It we referred from another colleague of mine. We had a lot of a lot of good, good conversation and, you know, obviously a lot of value from him. And then I reached back out to some of my previous guests and said, hey, I want more people like yourself. Who do you recommend?
00:01:26:07 - 00:01:32:18
Speaker 1
And he recommended you. So I said, Hey, if a friend of Dan's a friend of mine. So here we go, you know?
00:01:33:15 - 00:01:42:15
Speaker 2
So thanks for being. Yeah, yeah, of course. Dan. Dan Tire is a is a special and he's very unique and full of energy, which is always fun to be around.
00:01:43:11 - 00:02:03:02
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, he is. And I love that you guys are in the same ecosystem. I'm a big fan of HubSpot. Before we jump into some of this conversation, tell me a little bit about your role and you. We work at HOTSPOTS, but specifically a specific department of HubSpot, I guess.
00:02:04:00 - 00:02:31:08
Speaker 2
Yeah. So my name is Courtney Semler. I've been at HubSpot for just about eight years now. It's been it's been a journey. I've really seen quite a bit of growth in the time that I've been here over the past couple of years, which is amazing. And I have the opportunity right now to lead the HubSpot Academy team. And so we are a global educational content team focused on developing really all the educational content you see coming from HubSpot that's in our Academy app.
00:02:31:14 - 00:02:59:12
Speaker 2
So a traditional educational platform, we've got courses and certifications and lessons and we're doing that in six different languages. So really supporting our global HubSpot ecosystem from our customers to our partners and the way that we like to think about HubSpot Academy is it's a full flywheel engine for HubSpot. We attract, we engage, we delight, we work with sales, our product team, our marketing team, our customer success team to really get educational content.
00:02:59:15 - 00:03:19:14
Speaker 2
Customers and prospects need to be successful in their business. I've been working on the HubSpot Academy team for seven of the eight years I've been here, so it's then also a journey within that. I was a inbound professor one point. That's what we call our instructors. I got to educate and inspire and now have this great opportunity to lead the team.
00:03:19:14 - 00:03:48:00
Speaker 2
And it's been like, darn a rocket ship of an adventure. And Dan is actually our very first inbound professor fellow. He works on the team and is focused on really taking a lot of what I call like the bread and butter of HubSpot Academy and expanding it. We're doing bootcamps and experimental learning and it's been great to have Dan on the team for the last year and a half to to take his knowledge and really expand it for academy.
00:03:48:00 - 00:03:50:06
Speaker 2
And yeah, it's it's been a joy.
00:03:51:09 - 00:03:54:20
Speaker 1
That's wonderful and I can tell that you've given that introduction a few times.
00:03:56:03 - 00:03:58:03
Speaker 2
Just a few, you know, working on it.
00:03:58:03 - 00:04:31:18
Speaker 1
I know it doesn't it doesn't just roll off your tongue or anything. I mean, you know, so I love I love I've got you know, I had long story but back in 2015, 16, somewhere in there, I was a partner of those five. And, you know, HubSpot is has really created the model for a lot of things. But inbound, you know, in particular and I like this educational arm that informs everything and affects everything what I'm interested in.
00:04:31:20 - 00:04:53:06
Speaker 1
So let me first say, you know, a lot of people that are listening to this are B2B marketers at mid-level companies or CEOs. See sometimes, you know, they're looking at strategy. They're looking at how are we build systems in to our marketing and sales teams. What I'm interested in, you know, because I know I don't think everybody really knows the the full value.
00:04:53:06 - 00:05:17:18
Speaker 1
If they haven't spent a lot of time with HubSpot, that the model that HubSpot has really created has and could have in their business. From the educational side, you know, the people listening to this are thinking, okay, I'm doing marketing, I'm doing sales, I'm doing, you know, digital marketing, paid ads. We're doing lots of different things and we're trying to figure out what is it that's going to work for us.
00:05:17:18 - 00:05:39:17
Speaker 1
And we know that content is important. We need to engage our target audience. Right? So, yeah, what could you give us? Like, how could you tell us from your vantage point, you know, utilizing the HubSpot model of this educational approach, how could they learn from that?
00:05:40:19 - 00:06:01:15
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's it's a great question. And I love the way that you're framing this on the target audience, because when we think about educational content, that really is where all of it starts is like, who are we trying to reach and why? And before we dove into a little bit of that, I'll take a step back and say that educational content comes in a lot of forms.
00:06:01:15 - 00:06:24:05
Speaker 2
For HubSpot, you have a very traditional educational platform, you've got a HubSpot Academy. You see that in other institutions as well. You see the course areas of the world that are really on that far end of the spectrum. You're taking that to the certification program element. But if you are a smaller business or that's not something that fits with your model, you can still use elements of that strategy.
00:06:24:12 - 00:06:54:12
Speaker 2
And so if you're thinking about that, you're thinking about your target audience. What is it that you want them to be educated on that's going to support your services or your products? And so or I often tell people to start if they're thinking about using that educational strategy, it's well, what are kind of the 2 to 3 main things where your sales reps are getting calls or you're getting questions and you know, whatever support inbox that you have here just like I wish I didn't have to answer this question like I waste time here.
00:06:54:18 - 00:07:27:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, that is a great place to start with educational content and I really like starting with it to kind of a little bit wider. So let's see, you've got a few of those. If you create a collection of videos, great that can be repurposed and your blog content that can be repurposed into podcasts and so knowledgebase articles. And that's one of the main values, particularly for smaller companies with educational content because it's so easy to replicate and repurpose that it ends up being a little bit of this one plus one equals three approach.
00:07:27:00 - 00:07:46:08
Speaker 2
Like you take some of those questions that are like, Oh, I just wish we knew about that. And then start to plug that in to your blogs, your knowledge base, whatever that is, and put it in the hands of your sales reps. Here's a video. It's 5 minutes, it's getting all this good stuff in and you can just sort of rinse and repeat.
00:07:46:19 - 00:08:13:05
Speaker 2
Yeah. And that also helps you think about, all right, what are we trying to hit with some of these target audiences? You might have a few different flavors of that, and it allows you to start to create some of those. I call them swim lanes. You know, there's a lot of different terms for them. But some of those swim lanes for your target audiences and doing some of that initial research of, all right, if we really want to be knowledgeable, HubSpot was knowledgeable in inbound marketing.
00:08:13:05 - 00:08:33:00
Speaker 2
We crafted this. We wanted to be known as the experts for it. And that's why you see all that educational content on it. What is that for your business and how can that really start to jumpstart that flywheel? It's how I like to start to think about it. There's a lot in there, of course. Yeah, but that's some good sort of starting points that I often recommend.
00:08:33:10 - 00:08:57:23
Speaker 1
I like it. So okay, so let me ask you, if you're looking at a mid-level B2B company and advising them on this and let's say they're already open to the idea, we see the need there needs to be educational content to help our sales reps and all the things you mentioned who you know of their current team should start working on this because maybe they see the need.
00:08:57:23 - 00:09:13:18
Speaker 1
Then they say, okay, well we could start to hire around this and start build this out if it has success and we can map it. But who on our team is going to say yes, I want more work and I want to record videos and I want to write blogs and do all these things are educational that I don't really even know if it's going to work.
00:09:14:22 - 00:09:36:04
Speaker 2
It's a good question. And there is a there's probably a debate to be had in here because I think often we get stock of like is is there one right fit or one right place for an educational team? There's not you can actually put it in any layer of your business because you have the expertize there. HubSpot Academy, you know, use us as an example for a moment.
00:09:36:04 - 00:09:59:03
Speaker 2
We started in customer success and the reason why is because the folks in Customer Success were very close to our product and they knew the ins and outs really well. And that translated great into our initial video content, right? It was product tutorials, how to get started with HubSpot. They were already doing that and we elevated that work.
00:09:59:03 - 00:10:16:22
Speaker 2
And so we starting customer success years later. We've been around for about 11 years of HubSpot is about 17 years of business. We now sit in marketing and we're a larger team and we sort of sit more in what you'd say, like the center of a lot of other stuff that's going on because hot spots evolved as a business.
00:10:17:03 - 00:10:36:16
Speaker 2
Yeah, if you're in that kind of mid-market place, you're, you're getting started. I really recommend sitting and thinking about where that intersection is probably with your marketing team. Okay, probably have the expertize that you can bring it in. And if you don't, great. Go take a look at some folks in Customer Success. Be like, Hey, we're looking at doing a project.
00:10:36:16 - 00:10:57:12
Speaker 2
We need you to take on a couple of videos here and there. And it can be a great way for someone to elevate their career. I think for all businesses right now, skill development, both soft and hard skills, it's a lot for people. There's a lot going on in the economy. This is a great way for like, hey, put this on your resume, you're going to do this.
00:10:57:12 - 00:11:24:18
Speaker 2
It's going to be short term. We're going to get started. And you may be able to say years from now, you helped start our educational content Academy, which is which is really awesome. Yeah. And then when you think about who who's going to lead that team, what are the skills, the biggest skill that you really want to be focused on is communication because you can teach a lot of it the way we initially thought about it, because educational content definitely can go down the route of learning and development.
00:11:24:18 - 00:11:46:11
Speaker 2
Adult learning theory. There is a lot that can be added, but if you're just getting started, the communication piece is key. Can you get someone on camera? Can they facilitate some great content, get people excited, and then you can start to iterate from there. And then the product knowledge, if it's a service, it's a product, whatever that is, making sure they can sort of stand up to that.
00:11:46:17 - 00:12:01:21
Speaker 2
Yeah. One of the things that has been really successful for Academy is we're very accessible. You can go on LinkedIn, look up one of our inbound professors and ask them a question How do you facilitate that human nature for your educational content that will be successful?
00:12:02:05 - 00:12:32:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's super valuable. And you just said a lot. I know in your world you're like, I'm just telling you all this stuff that we talk about every single day, but it's super valuable for people hearing it for the first time. And I love how you started with Customer Success. I mean, it's great that you actually did, but in giving this example because the way I see it is you have people who are potentially product experts, but they are it is in context to the customer because they're actually working with the customer.
00:12:32:00 - 00:13:02:21
Speaker 1
Right. So if I could kind of maybe summarize succinctly, if you're listening to this and you're hearing what she's saying, it is resonating. It's like go back and look across your organization, especially in customer success. Who who's customer facing that has the ear of the customer, but also has maybe a deeper level of product knowledge or expertize and that is can communicate that that's that person that is kind of looking for their voice to be heard.
00:13:03:08 - 00:13:30:17
Speaker 1
You know, I see a lot when I work with companies, I see that one person, that general is not outspoken in the meeting, but they kind of sit back and they'll have all the insightful questions, you know, towards the end when we get done talking and they're the person that at night, you know, they're not getting paid for this, but at night they're researching about the product and competitors in the market and they want to know everything.
00:13:30:17 - 00:14:04:09
Speaker 1
So those product experts, I always will say, okay, that person, they we need to bring them forward and let's talk to them for a little while and see if they have the chops to like be on video. And it can we develop that a little bit because if so, like you said, I think one little piece that you said in there that shouldn't be missed is that a lot of people can really develop in their career if like they could blossom because they all this stuff they do behind a computer screen that adds value in the company can now be sort of even private facing and or public facing, depending on how they're utilizing the
00:14:04:09 - 00:14:12:21
Speaker 1
education. And then they just blossom as a professional because this other side of them is being tapped into. So I love that.
00:14:13:09 - 00:14:33:23
Speaker 2
And it's it's something that we often don't think about, particularly when getting started with educational content. I think there is a precedent in the market and I see it, which is like, Oh, you need to go and hire the person who has the ten years instructional design experience because that's the only way to do it. Yeah. Yes. At some point, if that is where you're going, you're going to need that expertize on your team.
00:14:33:23 - 00:14:56:05
Speaker 2
You're going to need to bring that in. But when you're getting started, the people who to your point see the customer issues day to day are going to create the most contextual content for the learner. And so, you know, think about that. Even when you're like, Well, what should we create? Go and look at what the top five questions that your product experts, your customer success reps get.
00:14:56:21 - 00:15:25:03
Speaker 2
Those are probably the things you ought to be educating on anyways. And then, you know, example base learning is, is so important nowadays anyways. You probably are going to have to find those examples to bring in. So you might as well start, start from that, that place. And there's also so much education out in the market to help those individuals craft those skills and that's that's a great opportunity internally to promote someone to to give them an opportunity to engage.
00:15:25:03 - 00:15:48:14
Speaker 2
And if you're unsure on who should be the conductor or the leader of that type of team, I'm sure there's someone in there that's like, I love doing what I'm doing, but it'd be really great to expand into this other area and take on a new challenge. I've personally benefited from that. At HubSpot, when we started to explore additional languages, it was like, I didn't have experience in that.
00:15:48:16 - 00:16:09:06
Speaker 2
I was like, But I'm really interested in it and I want to see what it means for us to create Spanish educational content for Latin America. Yeah, and that's been a gift that I feel that I've been given in my career, that now I can say I have expertize in it, but I didn't have to learn it at some point.
00:16:09:18 - 00:16:44:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's really cool. So I don't know. I mean, the other thing that kind of comes to mind is this idea of on the B2B space, I see that a lot of companies are moving away from a Jen model and they're moving towards a demand gen model so that the nature of educational content definitely plays. I'm curious to know if, you know, part of how people go about building demand is they will build in public or they will do a lot of live events and then repurpose that that later.
00:16:45:04 - 00:16:57:20
Speaker 1
Do you feel like that could be a place where marketers could deploy educational content or create educational content publicly and then utilize it or do you see it in a different way?
00:16:58:15 - 00:17:22:07
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's a great question. There's a lot of ways that it can be utilized. I think a good example is right now you see a lot of that educational content, you know, out there in the wild, so to speak, where it is in the live format. It is in a shorter form that is on a website page that's free to access and it's giving someone the value before we kind of take it that step further.
00:17:23:02 - 00:17:46:12
Speaker 2
And I really like to map it to two the flywheel that is really the attract piece that educational content is probably shorter form. It's it's going to be very bite sized and engaging, but it's not going to go into kind of the deeper modes of of getting folks to engage with something. And that's okay because that you want to get them in the door and then you can start to engage.
00:17:46:12 - 00:18:08:01
Speaker 2
And that's where you may have educational content that is more practical. Okay, so go test out this model, use this framework, use a free version of our tool, explore services. And for HubSpot Academy that has shifted slightly over the last couple of years, we've sometimes gone much more heavy in acquisition content to really get folks in the door.
00:18:08:07 - 00:18:30:00
Speaker 2
And then sometimes you go heavy on the practical piece, depending on where we are, particularly even from new products on the market. Yeah. And where the sweet spot is, is if you can kind of pair those things together. So let's say you do have some of this demand type content that you want and you also have products and services that match to it.
00:18:30:06 - 00:18:58:19
Speaker 2
Great. That can be a little learning path that you create. Yeah. For your learners and you can present that. And where I see people be most comfortable experimenting with educational content is in the live format. So like, oh, we're, we're not committing enough, you know, it's not a commitment to that live content though. If it resonates well, you have the script, you have a deck, convert it into that on demand higher quality and start to kind of progress down that ladder.
00:18:58:21 - 00:19:17:03
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. And I can see to like in the, in the spirit of exploring growth, like a lot of it, I always preach experimenting. You know, I think that's a kind of a secret sauce to the marketing these days. And like you got to experiment with some of these things on LinkedIn. I'm going to say LinkedIn live, right?
00:19:18:00 - 00:19:47:09
Speaker 1
You do LinkedIn live and you do, you know, put together some educational content that may not be super technical, super in-depth, but you're experimenting if it resonates, then marketing can take pieces of it and create new content, right? So, so I guess it's sort of an inception point where we started like it's with your company, you have to decide where are we going to, where does this have the biggest need to work and have the most impact?
00:19:47:15 - 00:20:10:12
Speaker 1
Let's start there and then if we find that there's there's traction here, then let's open this conversation up to other people, other teams, sales, marketing, you know, whomever else and see what they think about it. Because as a marketer, they're immediately going to look at educational content and see how they can repurpose it and how they can turn it into a blog and, you know, get organic rank.
00:20:10:12 - 00:20:36:23
Speaker 1
And, you know, there's all these different ways to do stuff with existing content. So I guess to I would say, you know, if you if you're thinking about educational content and it's serving your business, it doesn't necessarily have to be an ad on know. It could be something that serves multiple disciplines within your company and it actually makes those disciplines more efficient.
00:20:37:22 - 00:21:01:01
Speaker 2
Oh, definitely. And there is a big opportunity, I think, in when we frame particularly for marketing teams, oh my goodness, there are so many things going on. We're chasing a lot of different goals and you know, we've got lead goals and trying to figure out what that looks like and educational content. Often, I think in the last couple of years has been like, Oh, well, when we have the time we can do it.
00:21:01:14 - 00:21:24:07
Speaker 2
Where if we frame that differently, it's like, what is the fuel to the fire here that we can insert? So what are some of those really hot topics, things that we do want to rank for? All right, let's take some of that and shape it into educational content. Something that we've done over the last couple of years is we call them quick apps, but they're really they're short educational videos.
00:21:24:07 - 00:21:47:12
Speaker 2
They tend to then lead to longer educational content in our Academy app, but the marketing team uses them on our product pages, on our services pages, you know, in a lot of different places throughout with some of these free tools that they're injected into. And it can help take those little next steps from going, Oh, I'm not really sure about HubSpot to Oh, okay, that makes sense to me.
00:21:47:13 - 00:21:48:23
Speaker 1
Yeah, it can explain it.
00:21:49:09 - 00:21:49:23
Speaker 2
It connects the.
00:21:49:23 - 00:21:50:18
Speaker 1
Dots. Yeah.
00:21:51:03 - 00:22:22:15
Speaker 2
And you know, once a day I kind of look at how many sales reps at HubSpot are mentioning HubSpot Academy and how they're mentioning it. Oh, we're talking about this thing. And, you know, you're really interested in contact management and HubSpot. Great. Here is this piece that goes in a little bit more of like why contact management is important because that's obviously a piece we get stuck in when we start to get into some of that with the sales processes you're trying to sell on something and someone's not even buy into why it is important to them.
00:22:23:00 - 00:22:45:10
Speaker 1
That's a really good point. And I think that's that's that's definitely something to sit on for a second because I think that's the conversion aspect of what we're talking about, because someone's going to engage. There's a need, you know, the kind of coming through the funnel and if they have that little those dots connected for them to for the why or the how, you know, how does this work?
00:22:45:10 - 00:23:09:10
Speaker 1
And then it makes sense and it connects to how they can actually use it with their team. That educational piece is going to help for conversion, so I'm sure you've seen that a lot. I'd be interested to know, you know, if there's any stories you could give us, you know, I mean, because you're you're I mean, I know you said like pretty much well in the academy side of things and there probably is some disconnect between you and marketing.
00:23:10:16 - 00:23:37:14
Speaker 1
But, you know, for maybe a smaller company, that's a that's the whole team, right? The whole team is sitting there talking to one another and they're trying to utilize all of these resources. And I think that's just something like to try to put it all together. For someone who's hearing this for the first time, it's it's about connecting the dots for your prospect, for your buyer, so that you can have an opportunity to for conversion, not an actual opportunity.
00:23:37:14 - 00:23:44:08
Speaker 1
But, you know, you have you have the conversion can happen because you're connecting the dots. I don't know if there's not a better way to say it.
00:23:44:20 - 00:24:17:03
Speaker 2
Yeah. And you know, one of the early experiments we did with the marketing team prior to us sitting in marketing, when you were selling Customer Success, they were looking to do a email marketing campaign to folks that had engaged on our free email tool was new at the time because probably like 2017, 2018. And what we did was, is we took like snippets of an existing academy course that we had and we and they were like 2 minutes and we inserted them into all these emails.
00:24:17:11 - 00:24:42:18
Speaker 2
But the way that campaign worked and the way that it ended up kind of coming to fruition is they sort of built on each other. And so then by the end there was a CTA which was like, Oh my goodness, you've actually completed almost an entire academy course, like pop into the Academy app and finish it. And at the end of that Academy course, there was a practical element to use our free email tool for the first time and to create your first email.
00:24:43:01 - 00:25:02:17
Speaker 2
And then in that email there was an engagement piece that we had worked with the product team on that was like, Oh, are you unsure about what you're doing? Like go back to the Academy course and make sure you have these pieces. And we saw that people who progressed through that, you know, we're going to we're closing at a higher rate that we're using the tool at a higher rate.
00:25:03:01 - 00:25:34:21
Speaker 2
And that intersection between, yes, we've got this campaign that's going, but you can use the educational content to really like push someone along. And it's been a strategy we've used in many other capacities for that even I mean even to if you want to talk about it from the other side like this is a lot of where we started from academy on onboarding customers once they are converted, let's say our customer getting them that educational content that they need again really working in that full flywheel impact for academy.
00:25:35:06 - 00:25:47:07
Speaker 2
It provides consistency to if you're a prospect and you engage with the educational content and you keep seeing that as a customer, it's also going to have that retention piece, which is equally as important from a lead conversion standpoint.
00:25:47:14 - 00:25:59:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, I can see how it definitely embeds them into the brand more. You know, they become part of the ecosystem, you call it a flywheel, and I kind of think about it as an ecosystem, right?
00:25:59:15 - 00:25:59:22
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:26:00:05 - 00:26:25:17
Speaker 1
You know, like they're touching so many different parts of the of the company and they're seeing they're hearing the same thing from all the different players that they feel like, why would I go anywhere else? You know, I mean, I think for the right, for many buyers, that is enough for them to just kind of say, you know, that it's too much work for me to go try to compare tools or change tools.
00:26:25:22 - 00:26:30:02
Speaker 1
You know, after you have three certifications, you're not really going anywhere.
00:26:30:02 - 00:26:51:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the hope at least. But, you know, there's that healthy amount. And I think when you are, you know, a B2B kind of mid-market company, you do need to think about what that customer journey does look like. And that's a really good exercise to do as a marketing team. Yeah. Which is where do we want to end up?
00:26:51:22 - 00:27:15:23
Speaker 2
Okay, let's backtrack from there. And what are those milestones along the way that is going to craft that journey and where do we need to plug some of the holes? I think a couple of years ago there was a tension between like marketing, collateral and campaigns and educational content mean we weren't speaking the same language. It was like, well, now like marketing is here and educational content is a retention play, right?
00:27:16:16 - 00:27:37:02
Speaker 2
And you want much more of that in our section and that like kind of I don't know if there's a good way to think about it, but like you don't want them to necessarily be separate from a Venn diagram standpoint. Like there is overlap. Yeah, but it doesn't replace one or the other. Like no educational content can't replace all of the campaigns in the work that you're doing.
00:27:37:02 - 00:27:40:10
Speaker 2
From the marketing side, but it can benefit it heavily.
00:27:41:11 - 00:27:49:21
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's I don't know if a PRISM analogy is the right now. I didn't say prison. I said prison, but I don't know if I was.
00:27:49:21 - 00:27:51:00
Speaker 2
Like, where are we going with that?
00:27:51:05 - 00:28:18:23
Speaker 1
The prison analogy is correct, but it's kind of like through the educational lens, you can see how it can impact so many different parts of the organization if it's allowed. But yeah, I mean, that's a great it's a great case for companies to consider. You know, working work in educational content. Help us. So let's switch gears for just a second and think more about the practical like, okay, they're sold on and they're going to start experimenting.
00:28:19:16 - 00:28:40:14
Speaker 1
But, you know, they don't have all the resources that HubSpot has to create all these videos and do all this writing. Where would you like how would you direct a smaller company to get started? Should they jump in and buy a nice camera and build a studio and do all this stuff? Or should they start writing first or you know, like let's talk more about the how.
00:28:41:04 - 00:29:02:21
Speaker 2
Yes, but how is it a great question. And, you know, today it is, I think, a lot easier to get started than it ever has been before. Like, yes, before the quality of the camera on your computer, on your phone. You know, there are so many apps on the phone for free that will allow you to record, but also have a transcript that's scrolling in front of it.
00:29:02:21 - 00:29:36:05
Speaker 2
So, yes, you can do a like makeshift teleprompter like I could go on for days about like you can do this for a very, very little cost. Right. And with that being said, to your point, the most important thing is that the quality of the content is actually going to match what your learner needs, like your videos a little like off or you're in the corner of your house and like I can see a cat running around like, okay, if the quality of the content that you are creating like the message is resonating, great.
00:29:36:12 - 00:29:36:19
Speaker 1
It doesn't.
00:29:36:19 - 00:30:00:01
Speaker 2
Matter. It doesn't matter. And you know, we for the most of us working from home or not in offices anymore, HubSpot Academy shifted to a completely remote selling, and we don't do any of our in office studio recording anymore. It's all in people's homes and it adds a little bit of the human touch. Yeah, that is a quality that is beneficial from a legitimate perspective.
00:30:00:01 - 00:30:23:01
Speaker 2
What I would consider, and this is something that I've learned and wish I could go back, is make sure you have some sort of database management system. It can be a spreadsheet set up from the start to track the content you create because your marketing team, your sales team, they're going to ask you for a list. I want all the videos on blah blah, blah.
00:30:23:01 - 00:30:40:15
Speaker 2
Where is it? And if you don't have that, it's going to be a headache. And so we use we initially use spreadsheets, we now use a couple of different tools at our table being one of them that just has a list of the content. It's current status of some sort. There is it, who owns it and the link to it.
00:30:41:01 - 00:31:12:23
Speaker 2
There's lots of ways to do it. Google Drive, all that good stuff will make it work. But that to me is the biggest. How that will save you later on is keep it all in one place, keep track of it, and then if you're going to do some video like do recording and resume, do some of that stuff, use QuickTime on your computer on there is options to if you're doing product tutorials or anything like that we I highly recommend screen flow Camtasia they're great tools to get started very easy.
00:31:12:23 - 00:31:33:10
Speaker 2
I was not a video person prior to coming to HubSpot and I figured out how to use it. So I a I can send you a demo of how I learned it. It's very, it's pretty simple to pick up on. And then the last thing with the how to is there's a lot of advantages in sharing those materials.
00:31:33:10 - 00:31:59:06
Speaker 2
So from an excessive accessibility standpoint, first of all, like having the closed captioning on your videos, being able to share the transcript, the slide deck, they're they sound really simple, but they can make a big impact. Yes. And as an added plus, the slide decks and the transcripts are great to be quotes and screenshots that people then share on LinkedIn and talk about the educational content that they received from you.
00:31:59:06 - 00:32:02:21
Speaker 2
And it ends up starting to spend that flywheel in a positive way as well.
00:32:03:15 - 00:32:23:16
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think those are all great ideas. And I mean, the bottom line is it doesn't take much to get started. Just get started. And and I would say do it in a spirit of experimenting, say, okay, what is that we're trying to accomplish? You know, who is the product specialist, you know, customer facing person that's a little bit boisterous.
00:32:24:01 - 00:32:43:13
Speaker 1
And let's, you know, let's turn on the camera and see what happens. And then let's record four or five videos. Let's not make a big investment in this and let's all sit back and look at what we have. And if you look at those four or five videos together as a team and you bring everybody in and give your feedback, you're going to there's going to be lots of opinions that can be lots of ideas.
00:32:44:00 - 00:32:52:13
Speaker 1
You know, you're going to have uncovered something that potentially could help you go to the next level. So I like all those ideas. I think you're starting just starting to see.
00:32:52:14 - 00:33:22:19
Speaker 2
I mean, that's true with everything. You just got to start you got to jump in. Yes. I will say one of the most important elements of starting is kind of understanding what your why is. So the way that we frame that is in a learning objective, a learning outcome for the video. That's going to be what sets it apart from a piece of marketing collateral, which is I want the learner to implement this strategy by the end of the video and how you walk that through.
00:33:22:23 - 00:33:39:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, there's a lot of frameworks that help you do that. Bloom's taxonomy being one of them, but just keeping that in mind when you create the videos so that when you are reviewing it, once it is in the market, you can put that objective back up and be like, Okay, did we hit that objective? Why or why not?
00:33:39:18 - 00:33:58:14
Speaker 2
Like The views could be really high, but oh, it's not converting to so so-and-so, so that we want go back to the objective. How are you getting people? They're like, What frameworks are you teaching them in? That's what's going to set you apart also from your competitors. Like I'm sure everyone has watched four or five videos today. What did they watch?
00:33:58:17 - 00:34:05:21
Speaker 2
What did you learn? Yeah, if you can keep you can instill that educational piece in them. They will definitely come back for more.
00:34:06:12 - 00:34:19:03
Speaker 1
For sure. And that's a good column to add to that spreadsheet that you're tracking is what's the objective. So then if everybody's looking at the content, they can say, Oh, I like that objective, let's work back from that. It's a matrix, right?
00:34:19:03 - 00:34:19:18
Speaker 2
Exactly.
00:34:20:14 - 00:34:39:10
Speaker 1
This is great. I it's been an awesome conversation. I knew it would. And I think that our listeners have learned something. And if they haven't, then I don't know what they do. I don't know what podcasts they're listening to. So let's wrap it up there. If people want to find you, where should they go?
00:34:40:01 - 00:34:58:13
Speaker 2
Oh, please come find me on LinkedIn. Come. Send me your initial drafts of learning objectives. I love to see it. That would be awesome. But also come check out HubSpot Academy if you haven't already. Academy out HubSpot dot com. All of our educational content is free. So even if you're not a HubSpot customer, you are not interested in being a HubSpot customer.
00:34:58:13 - 00:35:18:20
Speaker 2
I hope you are. But if you're not, no worries. All of our education resourcing is free and I love to use it also for inspiration. Come check it out. Come check out folks in our industry that are creating educational content and just start to explore what it can look like for you. That's a great place to get started and I'm always here to chat about it.
00:35:19:09 - 00:35:22:08
Speaker 1
That's great. Thanks again, Courtney. We'll be talking to you soon.
00:35:22:21 - 00:35:23:17
Speaker 2
Awesome. Thanks so much.