1535 – What You Should do to Achieve Your Vision with Simple Strat’s Ali Schwanke

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0:59with us right now it's ali schwanke ali you are the founder of our ceo and founder of simple strat you're found on the web at simple strat.com ali thank you so much for joining us thanks for having me all right what does simple strat do yeah simple strat is a marketing agency and we are primarily helping folks get more out of a platform called HubSpot. So if you've heard of the technology platform, it's a marketing and sales, that CRM built into it, but really driving results through marketing technology. And then as of the last couple of years, we've been helping folks get awareness and leads through mechanisms like YouTube channels, podcasting, and blog strategy.

1:41So you got to have people get into your HubSpot to be able to market to them. So we're drawing folks in and then ultimately helping market through that system. Yeah. So would you mind maybe just kind of giving an overview just for someone's like, yeah, I've heard HubSpot. I think I know what it is. Would you mind maybe just kind of giving us a quick one-on-one on everything HubSpot? Yeah. So think about HubSpot as you're back in operation to store all of your customer data, all of the prospective data, and then run all of the sales and marketing operations that you'd have. So think about marketing emails, sales emails, helping your sales team track their deals.

2:17And then ultimately, if someone comes to your website, you can have them sign up for a webinar or a form or an ebook and all of that data is then tracked. And we market to those folks based on how they get into the system. And hopefully they shake out at the bottom of your sales funnel and become customers. Yeah. And where do you fit? I mean, because that sounds wonderful, but where do you come in to, and who do you work with and how do you engage with HubSpot? Yeah. So we work with all types of companies. And the reason we focus on HubSpot is because it's kind of like a, think about it this way.

2:51If I get a really fancy car kit and I buy this online, there's going to be a small percentage of people that can actually put that car together and drive it down the road and know what they're doing. And there's going to be a greater percentage of those people that are like, I want this really nice car, but I'm not quite sure where this piece goes and what to do here. And so we help folks get more out of the system because, you know, when you're using a new technology, you don't know what you don't know. So think about, you know, that's one thing. And then the other thing is if you aren't a marketer or a sales professional yourself, if you're a founder, you should not be spending your time learning all the things.

3:25You should hire the people that know what they're doing and then ultimately help them accomplish your vision. So we're helping marry those two things together so that you as a founder, if you want to grow, we can identify the fastest way to use marketing and sales automation to grow. And then ultimately we deploy that for you. So we do tell our clients, we help you get more out of HubSpot, but really it's teaching you how to use it, setting it up properly, and then making sure that all systems go for you. Yeah. And Ellie, how did you find yourself in this world? Yeah, I have, you know, I went to college to be a doctor.

3:56I thought I was going to be in the healthcare field and I think I just love solving problems. So I love solving problems. I grew disillusioned with the idea of school. So I decided to make a leap into entrepreneurship and my first business was a photography studio. I hate, hate, hate stock photos. So that was going to rid the world, stock photos. Thank you. You know, it turns out. I come from the fintech world. I can't tell you, like it's, or kind of the personal finance. So I work with a lot of like investment advisors and that was my background. And I cannot tell you, like the bane of my existence was the flyer that had the elderly white couple wearing pants, no shoes, walking on the beach, hand in hand, looking off into the horizon.

4:38It's like, ah, if I see that photo one more time. Yes. I mean, it's just nowadays we find it to be somewhat off putting when we see an image that we just know we can't relate to because we have so much real life stuff, but nobody gives a collective, you know, eight people high-fiving at the same time over a boardroom table. Never in my professional career, have we put all hands in the center and said, you know, go team. Never, never have I done that. So I thought, you know, I'm going to rid the world of these stock photos. Well, turns out that at the time people didn't really want to pay me to do that.

5:09So I started learning, you know, getting a lot more into marketing and ultimately discovered HubSpot as I was solving problems and saying, Hey, how do I do this better? How do I do this smarter? What technology should I use? And then stumbled upon HubSpot, became a HubSpot partner and the rest is kind of history. Yes. All right. So over the past few years, two to three years, we think about the transformative changes. How has HubSpot strategy evolved or like what opportunities are you seeing that founders and or marketers really need to like, if you didn't think this was true before, you really better have put a fire under your butt now regarding what?

5:55Yeah. So if you, let's throw the word HubSpot off the table, like HubSpot's just a tool. So really what is happening in marketing and sales that every single founder should be perking up to listen to right now is you are not in as many sales conversations as you used to be. 80 to 85%, if not more of the sales process is being done without you or your team present. And that is because we as consumers, every, all of us are like this, Like, do not call me, do not bother me. I'm doing my research. I'm looking for the stuff in advance. So I know I'm coming into a meeting. I am armed. We do not walk into a car dealership being like, what do you have?

6:35And what can you show me? Like we show up with agendas because we don't want to, we want to feel in control. And all the information is now there for us to do so. So anywhere from let's say 10 to 40 touches is what it takes before someone's really ready to have that sales conversation. This is the role of marketing and sales automation. You have to be in those conversations as a company before your salespeople are in those conversations. So that comes through blogs. It comes through things like podcasts, videos, social, and all those pieces then managed and distributed and segmented inside of that HubSpot platform.

7:09So that's the role of the platform. But really the philosophy is, if I said you can be in 20 more sales meetings a week, was that something that you want? Everybody here should say yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And of course, when we're talking about content, we can't have a conversation in 2023 without talking about how AI intersects with content today. What's on your radar? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of really good things happening with AI. It's making us more efficient. It's helping with idea generation and all of these pieces that we typically said, wow, it's gonna take me a while to write a blog, for example.

7:46Well, you can then feed some of these tools into AI or feed some of the insights into AI and they can come up with an outline for you. What AI is doing for us is making us more efficient with the creation piece. What it's not doing, what we need to lean into to make it most effective is you still need a point of view. You still need to prove there's a human on the backside and there's some sort of expertise that's unique to you and only you. So what we're gonna see, I think is the rise of mediocre vanilla content. I think we're going to see folks that are doing, like we still can't, there's some technology being put in the marketplace now, but we still can't outsource our faces.

8:21Or if you can, it's an avatar and like your mouth is moving kind of, just like in a creepy way. But this is why thought leadership or the content that you're sharing, like you and I are sharing here is so incredibly important right now because you can't refute. If Josh, you've done a hundred podcast interviews, I can't refute that you know what you're doing in your space, right? So that has to be true. And that's something AI can't touch right now. Yeah, the human to human. And yeah, aspects, you know, but certainly, you know, I was just having a conversation with someone that, you know, helps, you know, people become authors, write books.

8:58And he's like, it's pretty interesting, you know, but still, you know, requires a lot of human touch right now. But boy, is it helping great founders take their voice and amplify it in more ways. I mean, it still has to be them at some point. I mean, there's a human there, but it is interesting how this could potentially save us time and effort and do the more meaningful, higher touch stuff that only currently a human can do. Correct. Yes. Yeah. The interesting thing is this all is changing. I've tweeted quite a bit about this lately. As for those of you listening, I'm holding a phone and I'm holding it up saying this thing right here, you know, my teenage son, I said, we used to call people on this.

9:43You know, we didn't, we didn't text them. We didn't, we didn't Facebook them or Snapchat them. The phone, when you get someone's voice over the phone now, it's so powerful. This in-person piece is so powerful because we know that there's AI out there that might be mimicking, like, never do I get a cold email and say, wow, I'm so glad they took the time to send an email to me. I'm like, stupid bot. You know, like we just, that's what we're up against as marketers. Interesting. And I think that I look at, there was a time when cold outreach on LinkedIn sales navigators sliding into DMs and trying to book immediately to a discovery call.

10:19There was a time that that worked pretty well. Absolutely. And then everyone started doing it. It's like, the saying is like, marketers flock to every good idea until they ruin it. Until they ruin it, yeah. I think that the thing that, and again, my background as a consumer, kind of leading as a consumer expert, and I look at, I think about the impact of current environment and what that's going to do to kind of the mindset of the consumer. and if AI is just getting sneakier and sneakier and sneakier at this spray and pray mindset where it's not, you know, me investing time and truly trying to figure out what your needs are and wants, but, you know, just trying to manipulate emotions, I think it's just going to make people more and more and more guarded.

11:06If you're already, you know, get bombarded with sales and marketing messages, buckle up, you know, because marketers are going to keep trying to outsmart you. Yeah. And I think that's an excellent point to make for founders because Because this is what I'm telling people now is there are very few silver bullets left. There are very few like, you know, Al, I want to find everybody who needs what we need right now and is ready to buy. And I'm like, great, join the club. You know, so does everybody. If anybody is promising you that they're probably relying on methodologies like that or that are somewhat outdated.

11:40Yeah, I can get them on LinkedIn, but the likelihood they're going to respond now is very slim due to these psychological components. So if we're not aware of like how we're all responding to the changes in our world and what that means for us psychologically, these tools that promise quick wins are not going to work. Yeah. Allie, what does engagement look like with you? So for someone who's like, look, coming in, like, do they already have to be a devotee of HubSpot or maybe they're outgrowing what they're currently doing? Sure. We help folks across three different spectrums. So one is definitely if they're looking to implement a system like HubSpot for the first time, or if they happen to, they just want to work smarter in their business and they know the need to make some changes in sales and marketing.

12:27They just don't really know where to go. So we can help them figure that out. You know, sometimes HubSpot might not be the right fit for them. And that's important for us as practitioners to be like, listen, it's not the golden child for every scenario, but it fits for a lot of things that you're working on. Um, so we can help migrate or we can help you set up or optimize whatever that is. Um, and then let's say you have a system and it may not even be HubSpot, but you need to drive. So think about your system being like, I have 10 ,000 contacts in here. If we're going to grow, I need to get 30 ,000 people into our database.

13:00How do you get those additional 20 ,000? That's going to be through content driven campaigns. So that is one of the aspects that we help you build that, execute that. Or if you need someone to take that over, we'll do that. And then there's going to be the strategic component. So let's say you have a podcast and I don't know if Josh, you're doing this right now, but you know, YouTube just released the podcast tab inside of the YouTube environment. And so if you're not currently taking advantage of that, that's a huge early access thing you should do right now. And so we can help you keep like abreast of the changes in the digital media landscape and also like strategically take advantage of those.

13:34So almost advising and coaching you in that area. So those are three ways that folks engage with us. Yeah. And what types of companies are you working with? Primarily B2B for the content and lead generation strategy components. We help any size business. Really, it's more of a probably revenue generation size. So up to 100 million is typically our HubSpot clients. When you get beyond that revenue, you're going to have pretty large teams. You're going to have pretty complex environments. You're probably going to have a dedicated HubSpot person, dedicated developers. So it just becomes like easier to most likely hire internally for that.

14:13Yeah. And then like when you start working together, how does that typically look? Yeah, we usually have a kickoff and just like any professional service area, we're going to establish some goals for you. But we like to start with some initial projects that help us both earn your trust and you can understand what it's like to work with us. We also understand that not every client's a good client from our standpoint too. So if you want to be a good client, um, know what you don't know and make sure that you're coming to the table with those, those, um, uh, those beliefs, but not trying to direct the, uh, agency or the, or the partner like us, you know, it's like a, like a teenager trying to teach, you know, someone how to drive when they've never driven before.

14:55Like that's, that's a healthy boundary, but, um, project-based work is how we typically start. And then we'll move into retained engagements where we're kind of your external marketing arm. Yeah. And you wouldn't be affiliated or associated with HubSpot in any way if you didn't. I don't know if I'm saying this with my double negatives, but as someone who's connected with HubSpot, naturally, you're probably going to give away some pretty high value things for free. At least that's kind of the reputation I see with HubSpot devotees. And you do. So like on your website, you have some really good guides.

15:30I don't know if you know what those are off the top of your head, but you know, when someone goes to simple strat.com and maybe they're not necessarily ready for a call, but they really love to get more value. What would you recommend? Yeah, our guides are a good place to start. If you are looking at or wanting to even just know what HubSpot is or know how to use sales and marketing automation more effectively, we've got a whole YouTube channel called HubSpot Hacks. There's demos over there of the software. there's like, I've got one video that I talk about how I, like I, as a founder level up my productivity so that I'm not leaving my inbox.

16:07So I'm like, I'm tracking down sales deals. I'm following up on tasks. I'm doing all of this in one screen, as opposed to bouncing back and forth between tools. So I think one of the benefits that folks find in working with us is we're both a user of the platform and also a teacher of the platform. So if someone says, how do I use this for sales. Actually, you know what, let me pull open your contact record and I will show you exactly all of the conversations we've had. I'll show you what this looks like on our backend. And then the person goes, Oh, cause you're, you're like, I'm a big fan of David Allen, getting things done methodology.

16:41And if you get it out of your brain and into a system, you then are not like, there's more brain space to free up, to be innovative instead of like retainer of information-based. So that's really what these systems are designed to do and the power that they hold for you. Yeah. Alice Schwanke, again, the CEO and founder, SimpleStrat, your website, simplestrat.com. Anything else that someone needs to know or should know in terms of like, maybe they're listening to this episode, they're kind of doing some research on you and they wanted to get to know you. Now they heard this conversation. Where do they go from here?

17:18Yeah, I would encourage folks to reach out. We have a free consultation if they want to get any feedback, like happy to tear down any, any landing page, webpage, you know, campaign you're running. Um, I would say the biggest word of caution that I give to folks in marketing as there are three different types of marketing activities, foundational driving and supporting. You need to know what you're investing in when you're looking for an ROI. HubSpot's going to be one of those foundational things. Lead gen is going to be one of those driving things, keeping your current customers happy and getting referrals as a supporting thing.

17:49you have to have all three for a healthy marketing program. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much. Ali Schwanke, thank you. CEO founder of SimpleStrat, SimpleStrat.com. Thanks, Ali. Thanks for having me.

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