1639 – Using the Internet to Drive Revenue for Brands with Lone Fir Creative’s Tyler Pigott

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0:58with us right now Tyler Pygut Tyler you're the founder and CEO of Loan for Creative you're found on the web at loanforcreative.com Tyler thank you so much for joining us awesome Josh it's fun to be here thanks for having me on the show absolutely so Loan for uh you work with clients that are either contemplating or are already using HubSpot, right? That's correct. Yeah. All right. What's going on in the world of HubSpot these days? Yeah. It's like our horizontal niche, if you will, of people that are trying to build their brand and companies trying to build their brands on HubSpot. So man, there are so many things going on in the HubSpot realm right now.

1:40They're a super cool platform to partner with or kind of hit your wagon to because they're very forward thinking. You know, there's lots of other platforms and tools out there that do lots of things. And oftentimes those are, they're, you know, acquiring softwares and they're kind of like, you know, adding onto their house, if you were. Whereas in HubSpot generally tries to build things, or at least from the beginning, they built it from the ground up. And so like user intuitive and, you know, lots of people are, you know, jumping into it real quickly from a staff standpoint. And I've found that if the tool is easy to use, people will actually use it, which then makes it worth the investment in purchasing it.

2:18So anyway, we could go down lots of different avenues. But yeah, lots of cool stuff from the marketing and sales standpoint on HubSpot right now. You know, one thing I've always respected about HubSpot and kind of that culture is just that empathy toward the user, right? And that persona, avatar, and then just everything about their journey, where they are on the journey. And, you know, what are their hopes, dreams and concerns and fears and skepticism? Like, where are they right now? Where is all that stuff now? And just, you know, and I find that HubSpot does a really admirable job in kind of working with guest customers kind of where they are and feeding them the right information when they want it.

2:58And I suspect that that's probably has something to do with where you come in. Yep. No, absolutely. Yeah. helping out really kind of map out that customer journey all the way from, you know, awareness and kind of general top of funnel, if you will, all the way to purchase, you know, pre-purchase, purchase, and then post-purchase kind of if you think about that in a wheel, you know. And so there's tons of different data points. There's tons of different, you know, interactions, contents, activities, tactics, all sorts of things that can happen through that journey. and we've found that most brands succeed in being able to kind of serve their client right place right time when they have some sort of a system in place to help them with that that can be you know personalized automation that can be internal tasks that pop up in certain phases all sorts of different things but if you're you know letting someone just kind of hey hopefully your brain works perfectly and you always remember everything right on right on the right time and you you know of have all this initiative that you can take and you kind of jump in.

3:59Most people don't, you know, about a thousand when it comes to that. And so building a system and kind of a backbone for your sales and marketing and even the customer success after they've jumped in as a customer is definitely, you know, we spend a lot of time helping clients with that, but at the same standpoint, that is usually what helps clients succeed and helps give them, you know, like that kind of edge in the market, if you will. Yeah. So what do you see working well? Let's kind of start from the top of the funnel by talking about acquisition, just attraction. Obviously, HubSpot's huge on inbound.

4:37Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what movements do you see or kind of what work do you find yourself doing most with clients when we're talking about very, very top of the funnel? Yeah. It's changing right now a lot. I think that the idea of just sending out a blanket email and hoping for a meeting schedule. Usually most people find that pretty annoying and it's not working. Yeah, exactly. So you really do have to meet the clients where they're at and have a very specific focus. And so those brands that are just kind of, oh, we do everything. We're the best fit for absolutely everything. They're not winning anymore.

5:17And if you're a very specific, I have this specific problem that I solve for clients and I'm telling the client, this is the problem I solve for you. Those ones are doing better. And so we kind of start oftentimes helping clients just defining, honing in, focusing their message. And really kind of we follow a couple different frameworks for that, but just really like, okay, great, we've got this message, this is kind of like your brand positioning, and then helping them roll that across all their, you know, digital properties and physical properties and all those kinds of things has been like that initial aspect of it.

5:49Because what we've found is that you can pay millions of dollars in paid media, excuse me, millions of dollars in paid media or other outreach tactics. But if you're sending them to something that's kind of irrelevant to where they're at and what they need, then it's not going to be successful and you're kind of just lighting that money on fire. And so kind of like that foundational element is the first kind of key, I think, for everybody. And then really understanding, well, where are your clients at? If you're a B2B company, you're starting to I explore different social strategies right now to build followings and to almost kind of, you know, B2C has been in that influencer marketing for a long time, right?

6:27We're not trusting brands as much, but I'm trusting this personality that I've built, you know, trust with over years and they're helping sell your product. Well, B2B is going that direction and is kind of already there. And so you're, you know, helping people kind of amplify their story. Sometimes it's founder stories, you know, just creating content around that, helping build trust around humans and personalities. And, you know, there's brand that's there as well, but everybody's kind of lost trust in, in, in the, in the larger brands, I believe. And so there, but they still gain trust with, with individual humans, you know, and have that human connection.

6:59And so we do a lot around that again, foundational elements, problem you solve for people and helping amplify that in the, across tons of different tactics, but that's kind of like that, I guess, you know, 10 ,000 foot view, if you will, of that top of funnel type activity that we do. Yeah. And for someone who's maybe either not in B2B or maybe they're not even in business for themselves right now, or they're just kind of leadership in a different environment. Yeah. What are the, when you're thinking about B2B, particularly if you're thinking about higher ticket consultants or bigger ticket B2B services, and you think about that buyer persona or that decision maker that they're going to be engaging with.

7:39What are the considerations that folks should have? Because you already mentioned, you know, listen, just slamming ads in front of these folks and, you know, just sending DMs and whatever. It's not as effective as it may have been in the past. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a good point. I think, you know, initially really for your, you know, audience, your core audience, your target that you're shooting for your ICP, if you will, that you're trying to attract, I think really, I believe that it's important to adjust your expectations to reality. And so that it's kind of like the dating analogy I know is overused, but the same concept of the first time you meet someone, if you ask them to marry you, they'll probably run for the hills.

8:21And it's the same thing in B2B marketing, B2B sales, B2B kind of relationship building. And so just adjusting your expectations to knowing it's going to take several touch points and not starting initially with, hey, let's jump on a call. I want to sell you this thing. But maybe there's some value you could provide for the first several touch points that would help them in their purchasing process or push them in the right direction or nudge them. And then you could kind of earn that ability to have that sales call at some point. So I think just setting that as the baseline and then the sky's the limit is how you would use kind of like each of those different touch points from a value add standpoint, but it is a shift.

9:05I think people are in the midst of that shift right now from just an expectation standpoint. If you're a sales leader, if you are a leader of a team, if you're, you know, Hey, we're trying to hit these KPIs this year, we're trying to hit these goals this year. I think it's important to recognize just that it's changed. And so you do have to earn that relationship, which then takes time. It's not just, oh, I'm going to blast everybody in my email list, you know, and just say bye, bye, bye, you know, and that is, that's not really working. Maybe for some brands it might, but you know, really it's not working.

9:37There's too much noise. There's too much competition. I think everybody at this point is hit with, you know, somewhere between four and 6 ,000 messages a day. And you're like, you've got one, you've got like, oh yeah. I mean, it depends on how engaged you are in social. If you're spending a lot of times on social, you're getting hit with way more than that. But so you just have to pay attention to that. People do have certain personalities, certain brands, certain message, certain topics that they pay attention to at different times. And you do have to earn your keep or earn your right, I suppose, to get onto that list for individuals.

10:10So I don't know if that answered your question, but I kind of was thinking like the foundational elements have changed a little bit. And so it's important to kind of have that reality check moment and also then strategize how you're going to do that. For sure. So in the world of HubSpot solution providers, where do you fit and why would, you know, kind of where do you like who might you be a really great fit for? And like, where have you found your niche? Yeah, it's a good question. We've spent a lot of time in the ed tech space. So educational technology, educational support kind of companies.

10:44So not, you know, people that are selling to those higher ed or to those academic communities. So that's a good fit for us. We've spent a lot of time in like, you know, that, I guess, just surrounding environment. And probably the sweet spot for us is really helping, you know, get more value out of the HubSpot platform. And so we've just found that the average person is using like, you know, just scratching the surface of what it does. And, you know, just helping kind of jump in and help, you know, helping them kind of build out strategy and also then do implementation and execution on that strategy within the HubSpot platform.

11:17And that can be anything from, you know, moving a website to there to do some data hygiene stuff to automation to all sorts of different complexities. but we found that, you know, we're a great fit for those types of companies. And then the ones that are really looking to, you know, expand within that platform and really have that platform as a single backbone to, to your business. So. Yeah. Your website, loan for creative. And by the way, that's F I R loan for creative.com. Talk about the resources that you have available. Obviously in HubSpot world, you probably have some resources available.

11:53Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, we totally, we've been writing content for years. So there's a lot of content on there. We're going through and revamping some of it, updating a lot of it all the time. Lots of content, like HubSpot specific content on there. So I don't know. Anyone who's listening, you know, kind of where they go from here. Yeah. So lots of HubSpot specific content, like even from getting started to kind of advanced stuff. We're starting to write a lot more content around the sales systems that you can build within HubSpot. You know, we're doing a lot of migrations into HubSpot right now, away from other well-known platforms that might have the color blue as their logo.

12:31And we're finding that lots of sales teams actually don't use the platforms entirely. And they're trying to get people to actually use the platforms. And so lots of content around that. I personally, like on LinkedIn stuff, I talked a lot about team and leadership and that type of thing. So check me out on LinkedIn too. Love to have conversations there, but lots of resources on both those places. So, yeah. And you have a website check. Can you tell me a bit about that? Yeah, for sure. So one of the things, one of the ways I built our business is doing what I call website teardowns. And so I used to just do these before email, video and email were cool.

13:10So this was six, seven years ago. I would do like these little loom videos, my face in the corner, and I'd share a screen and go, hey, try this, try this, try this. You know, kind of things I've noticed about doing hundreds and hundreds of websites in my career. and it was a great way to kind of, you know, help people and provide value. And if we can help them, you know, implement some of those ideas, great. If not, you know, and they've got a team internally or their own resource, that's awesome too. And so if people just want to like, and I think that's probably in the show notes here, but if people just want to submit, hey, here's my, like my contact info and then my email, or I mean, sorry, my website, we'll do like, we'll pull together one of our website strategists and probably an account manager or something like that.

13:50We'll jump on and riff on some ideas, best practices, some things we're seeing, and then hopefully give you some actionable things you can run away with. And I promise to not spam you or ask for sales and those types of things with your email address. Yeah. Yeah. Again, loanfircreative.com, L-O-N-E-F-I-R creative.com. And again, from there, you can actually go. Let's see. I think if you click around, you can find the website check. If they reach out, you'll share the direct link. But I think if you click around, you should be able to find that. So, well, this is great. Again, Tyler Paggott, founder, CEO, Learn for Creative.

14:33It's been great having you. Thanks for the conversation. Appreciate it, Josh. Thanks.

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