HubSpot for me is the number one𝓡 tool when it comes to looking at data and metrics. It's so user-friendly I am NOT a techie person whatsoever when I ge✱t into like Google Analytics and Google Search Console and all ꦏthat stuff It's a little over my head

Yeah

HubSpot can be too b🌃ecause there's so much in there But ifও you really like dive in there's kind of a way to do E🌺verything like there's been certain problems that I've wanted to solve like I really want to ♔get a report on this like how do I? Do it and sometim💮eꦇs it takes a little bit of trial and error and solving a puzzle, making a workflow. How do I make this work?

But there's kind of a way to do everything. So I would definite💜ly recommend it to all marketers out there.

Welcome back to Endless Customers.

My name is Alex Winter. And today I'm join🅘ed by Corin Cook, who is our Senior Marketing Manager at Berry Insurance. Welcome to the show.

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. And we're live. We're at Impact Live. We're in Chicago. We're learning a lot. W🌄e're like, I feel like at someﷺ points today, kind of

drinking from a fire hose.

So much great information. Yeah, definitely.

Are you having a good time so far?

Oh, for sure. This is my fifth conference, I believe. And every time I 𝕴just ♑get so much out of it to bring back to the team.

Excellent. Excellent. So I think a good place to start, for our listeners and for our audience, is to talk a little bit about Berry Insurance and gi🔯ve people the high level what Berry Insurance does

and how your journey started at Berry Insurance.

Sure, so Berry Insurance is a small, independent insurance agency, family owned. We've been around for over a century and we're located in Franklin, Massachusetts. We offer both personal and commercial insurance.

Nice.

And I started there in 2019. So actually after our owner, Kaitlyn, she attended an impact conference in Hartford, saw Marcus Sheridan speak there and said, we hav♑e to do this whole, They Ask, You Answer t♏hing. So she came bac🌺k, had the whole teaꦅm read the book.

And then at that point, she decided to hire a content manager, which is when s🀅he found me,🅺 brought me on the team. I s🌞tarted doing all of the content manager things, blogging, writing a ton, working on the website. A♈nd then after about a year, we brought on a video pro🌄ducer

and now we have a content writer who took some of that load off of me and also a community manager. ไSo we've grown a lot in marketing in the last fiv🔯e years. That's amazing.

There's been a lot of growth. And I was lucky enough to come film a customer journey video a few years back because you guys have been crushing it. So were you ﷽previously doing content manager type stuff or was this your first time in that role

as being a content manager? First time in that ro♌le, prior to that I was doing, I started off in journalism and then I was doing a little bit of PR and it's internal writing the news💫letters for companies, for the company I worked for.

But then when I came to Berry Insurance it's the first official content manager role.

Cool.

John has some really great questions that he put together, right? And I wanna hit some of these questions. We're talking about insurance, and that's something that everyone has to have. Everyone has to deal with.

It's like a necessity in life, right? So is that something that most people don't know a lot about? And if th♑at's true, how does Berry influence the market and educate people and get them the information that they need to make better buying decisions

and make better decisions overall? Yeah, definitely, that's a good point. It does touch almost everybody's life, but most people don't �♌�really think about it very often. You think about it when you first need to get it or upon renewal if you have a good agent

who's gonna actually sit down with you and make sure everything's up to date or if you have a claim. So it's really not something that's on top of mind for people. So, you know, 𓆏the whole 🌌catchy, fun marketing strategy

wouldn't really work for someone like us. I mean, we still do our faꦿir share of fun, catchy things, but thatꦡ's more for community purposes and retention. So that's why the They Ask, You Answer princ♈iples and education really do work for us because insurance is such a confusing topic.

There's so many different types of insurance, so much that goes into it. So, you know, over the past few years, we've written hundreds of articles on insurance and we have hundreds in the queue. There's so much to write about.

And it's always great to have that inform﷽ation out there for people who want to look up a question and find an answer, because it's not easy for them with some of those questions.

Yeah, yeah, no, and I was fascinated with what you were doing. Anℱd I felt ไlike you and Kaitlyn were a driving force of getting this conteౠnt out and starting the blogging train where most insurance companies aren't doไing that. Most insurance companies 🍬don't have a content manager,

don't have a videographer on staff.

And years later, they still aren't. I feel so ahead of the game in the industry.

Yeah, so how has that affe🅠cted the success of gaining new customers and building the business as you've scaled over the years?

It's been great. We've grown so much. We see even, not even looking at the data, we've seen it, per🍌sonal stories, people co🐓ming to us and telling us how much things have impacted them, the 🎀articles they read, how great videos you made are, how informative they are, whetherไ or not they're a client of ours or someone who just found u🌳s online and said,

wow,𝓡 thanks for this. This isꦜ great information. So we've grown a ton. We've had to add a couple new account managers. Like I mentioneಌd, marketing has grown. So൲ there's just, it's been tremendous.

Yeah, that's 🏅amazing. So as a content manager, I know you've advanced in your role and the compan🃏y's grown, but when you were doing your content manager thing, is there like a🐼 blog or something that really stood out to your point ඣof like, you had somebody come in and they were like, this helped me out so much. And I made a way better decision because of it. Like, do you have🐽 a story you could share with us

that's kind of like that? There🗹's one situation that was kind of strange fඣor us. When the pandemic happened, there was something called EIDL loans. ꦡAnd I 🐻don't even remember fully what that was about, but we wrote an article on it.

It 𝄹had to do with insurance and eve🍌rybody was looking it up because everybody🍒, I th✤ink it was small businesses need to apply to like a loan to help their business during tha🔴t ꦛtime and they need to the certain type of insurance for it. And so we wrote ♑about i🎶t, we were the first ones to write about it, the꧋ only ones, and so that article blew up almost 🥀to a point that we needed to like we had to sta🃏rt put like a header on it like we

only serve Massachusetts🍬, we're getting all these calls. Oh li☂ke all over the country? Yeah, all over the country like every 10 minutes you coulꦉd hear a rec𒀰eptionist pick up the phone and be like sorry we only serve Mass𒁏achusetts. So that 𒅌was really cool to see like how much of an impact a ꧟blog can have. And it also rea꧟lly helped giv🦹e us a lesson in how to cater our content better. It's good to have out there for people who want that information, but to cater it 🐟to show this is our audience, this is who we serve.

Right, and this is the state that we're li🐈ving in.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So let's talk🐼 a little bit, too, about how HubSpot plays into all this, right? So having a CRM or having a centralized place where you can store all this content and you can track all th�ꦇ�is data, how, had you messed with

Hub🅘Spot before or was this like your first foray into using ꦛa CRM like that? So when I started in 2019, we did have HubSpot, b🉐ut at that time it was really only being used for email marketin🍌g communications. Our website was♍ on WordPress and so in early 2020, we decided we were going to redꦏo our website andꦛ we had the ꩵoption whether to stick with WordPress or do HubSpot.

Immediately I said, please HubSpot. I know just from the email newsletters we had s🐭ent out and stuff, it's just s꧅o user-friendly. I did a little research and I'm like, yeah, this is definitely the right decision to move over to HubSpot.

And after we did that, it w🍎as really a game changer being able to have all of our content up there, all of our videosඣ, everything just integrated into the site and being able🐼 to look at the the analytics of everything and ✱see what's performing well, what isn't, ho𒊎w can we, you know,☂ change just looking back at blogs like this one is perform⛎ing well, what can we look at in 🍃terms of data to see how we can impr🐟ove it so it

starts performing🧸 b𓆉etter. There's just so much you can dive into in there and you can see we have our ema🌳ils integrated so you can see everybody's, you knꦡow, customer journey if you want t♌o a🥂nd all of our clients and customers and what's working for them and what's working for us. Yeah, it really helps to make better decisions. And even though they may be tough, like if an article isn't workin💛g, it gives you the

chance to like updat❀e it and fix it and make it better so that you can serve peopl✅e better and meet them where they are. Absolutely. Yeah, that's cool that you we🎶re in the heads🃏pace for that. So h𒊎ow does HubSpot today as you've evolved play into ♚like your overall strategy and how

you create content as a team?

So in terms of data, it's actually k🅰ind of maybe a controversiaꦿl answer, because we do things♓ a little differently. I don't think a lot of business owners would agreeꦉ. But we don't really use the data in HubSpot to track ou🅘r success, per se.

One of the reasons is that we hꦜave an insurance-s𒀰pecific CRM that we also have to use the account manaܫgers, and it does not yet integrate with HubSpot. So we can integrate with Excel spreadsheets and stuff, certain reports, but it's a time🥃 consuming thing. And it's just never been, we're a sma♎ll company and our owner

sees🌼 the success and day to day stuff. So s💟he's always like, I don't really care about the numbers, I can see it's workinꦰg, I can see it's working. But what we do really heavil🌜y use it for is seeing what's wo🦋rking well, and how 🍃we can improve upon things based on that. So right, like leaning into it more, ✤like 🙈if you see something

that'💎s really working, you can create more content similar to that

to just like really push it forward.

Definitely. You look at the blogs that are working well 🔜and everything and just say, this topic's re🧜ally working. Well, of course, I always go to our aꦗccount manageꦐrs first and foremost and say, hey, what questions are you being asked

to really see what they'll use. And we also use HubSpot to track the content that they're sending out so we can see what they're actually using too.

That's great. And how does your sales team and the rest of the team, how do they feel using HubSpot and having their💟 emails tracked? Was that like a process getting them to start using the CRM a💟nd to staඣrt really

like leveraging this to their advantage? Or what was that jour💞ney like for you? If I'm being honest, the account managers don'🐟t really use it too much per se. It is tracked through ⛎their emails and onཧ the marketing side we kind of look at some of that, but they don't really dive too heavily into it.

Gotcha, so it's really more for you and your team on the marketing side to just really get a sense of what's going on and have like

your finger on the pulse basically. Yes, definitely.

Cool, very cool. So we know that better data me🌱ans better decisions. We've been talking about that a little bit. What information from HubSpot is like critical that you really focus on? Let's get granular on like what are some 🧜of ♈the metrics

and things that really help you make

the decisions that you make? So in terms of, we definitely use it a lot for ar൩ticles. We track we𒅌b ♚traffic, but we also do a lot of just like looking at wha✱t🦩 articles are performing well each month. And then 🐭also, we have a really built out content library that we use internally.

So each quarter, we'll p🧔ick a couple diffeꦑrent types of insurance and do an audit on every single article in that type.

Oh, great.

So we'll go in and look at the bounce rates and time on page, that sort of thing. Our content writer does a lot of that. He'll go through and say like, people drop off this article early, maybe we should add an intermediate CTA in the mid🏅dle

rather than just have it at the end to see if people want to take action sooner. Or if the bounce rate is high, could mean like maybe it's title isn'tജ really portra🐟ying what they think they're going to be getting when they get into it.

So we get really granular on looking at each a🐷rticle and making sure they're all optimized and up to date so they're perfor🤡ming ♛the best that they can.

Yeah. And that's critical. We do that too. So Austin ove𝔉r here and I, we do a lot of video content and a lot of content💃 in general and it's the same thing. 🐟We are always looking at engagement and where people fall off and look❀ing at watch time

and then also tweaking titles. Titliꦅng is huge and I don't think people realize how important if your title is positioned correctly how that affects if people will engage with the content or not.

Yeah, absolutely.

So what do you do to shift? Like if you're looking at some of these metrics and you're seeing𓃲 that maybe it's not opt♕imized fully, what's that process look like? Do you like go back to your team and then like how do you start to like try to

fix the titles or update things so that it does, it does work to your advantage?

Yeah, so our content writer, Robbie, he'll tend to look at each, you know, 🦩aspect of 🔥it and he'll, in a ꦉlot of times, he'll ask the team l📖ike, hey, this isn't performing as well🔯, is this still accurate, is this any 🅷way we can make it clearer and kindꦦ of just go back in and change things up a little when we need to. Nice.

So for other content managers out there and for mar🐬keting leaders out there, wh🧸at advice would you g🍷ive them for if they're not using HubSpot or CRM and what maybe would you tell them to like encourage them to like,꧒ hey, this is going to help you do your job better and help your team do your job better. HubSpot 🥃for me is the number one tool when it comes to looking at data and metrics. It's so user-friendly.

I am not a techie person whatsoever. When I get🐽 into Google Analytics and Google Search 𓃲Console and all that stuff, it's a little over my head. Me too.

It's intimidating.

No, there's a lot.

Yeah, there's a lot there. There really is. And HubSpot can be too because there's so mu🌳ch in there, but if you༒ really dive in, there's kind of a way to do everything. The♛re'ꦫs been certain problems that I've wanted to solve. I really want to get a report on this. H🔴ow do I do it? Sometimes it takes a little bit of trial

and error and𝄹 solving a puzzle, making a workflow. How ♈do I make this work? But there's kind🗹 of a way to do everything. So I would definitely recommend it to 🦄all marketers out there.

For your experiences, I know you worked🗹 with the IMPACT team. You had some coaching and training. Did that help with your learning curve and getting you to 🐟understand HubSpot better and to leverage it to your advantage?

Definitely. Like I said๊, there's so much in there that you c🀅an do. They're alw🧸ays changing around 🤪where stuff is too, so it's making updates. It was definitely good to have that training. Still to this day, I go to Joe at Impact

and I have a question, be like, I'm really trying to figure out how to make a report for this, but I'm not sure that this is quite gonna work how I want it to. Can you help me out?

The training was crucial. Joe B🐼ashir is a HubSpot expert. Yeah,🔥 he's unbelievable the stuff that he knows Yeah, I've solved many problems for me He's really good people yea🦂h, there's a question here that I think is really interesting I want to talk ꧋to you about so John put in is there a particular workaround or like a hack ൲that

You like to🐈 share with the audience that maybe has really helped y🍌ou do your job better

Sure, so one thing that has been kind of helpful for us, that actually one of the things I just mentioned that I was really trying to figure out a report for that I reached out to Joe, is we really wanted to see which content was being used and sent out and how each of our account managers wer🍒e doing in terms of sending content out. It took a bit of figuring out how to find exactly wh💖at we wanted. But we made a report f﷽or both articles and videos. And using the email tracking, we basically said, if an ema꧑il💛 contains the word article or video, and it would๊ pull up a report of all those emails. So in our content library, 𝕴basically all we had to ♒do, it took a lot of time,

but 💃we had to add article colon video colon in front of ever𓂃ything. And tꦓhat's wღhere all the account managers copy and paste from. So if article or video appears in an 🐼emai𓆏l, it shows up in the report. And that's something that's helped 🧸intern𒁏ally too, because that's a goal that the team has ♔to send a certain amount of articles and videos each month.

And so it's been really cool to be a♎ble to go in there and track that data and ꧑also see which content it is, because I can go into each email and see what are they using and what situatꦑions are they using it. So that's been really cool to test out. So you're using the semicolons to almost tag

these specifiꦜc keywords that you know you want to track.

Yeah. It kind o💎f serves as a hashtag because it's going to be, beca♔use they copy and paste that title, so it'🐽ll 🐠say article, colon, video, colon, and just using that term shows when it appears in an email.

That's really cool. I think a lot𒆙 of people are going to find that helpful.

Yeah, that was a fun one to start.

Nice, very nice. Since using HubSpot an🐲d integratingꦜ HubSpot, have you seen a difference in conversions and in sales? And can you talk maybe a little bit about how that's affected numbers?

I mean, can I see a difference? Not necessarily, but that's 🅺because we didn't know before. Like, it was the lack of knowledge. It wasn't until we got HubSpot until we could really look at how 𓂃m♔uch our form submissions, I mean, they've definitely skyrocketed

since we started using it at the beginning, but what it was prior to that, like, we really don't know. That was not something we were ever looking at. So it's been c🍎ool to see, like, you know, how many people. We look at each month, web t🍷raffic as well as♍ new contacts

and then which contacts I actually converted. And every time, usu📖ally I'll go into each conಌtact too just to like check out their customer journey because it's cool to see like, hey, look, I'll bring it to the team. Look, Shelly, you did a great job this month,

assignment selling with this. This person went to all these web pages that you sent them this article. They checked it ouꦗt, they reached back out the next day. So it's cool to share with the team like what you're doing is working

and assignment telling really works.

Totally, no, it's amazing to go from not tracking any of this stuff to now really hyper focusing on what you said, the customer journey. And what that looks like is you can really ꦅfine tune that and customize it to a place where it's exactly how you want them to experience it.

It feels really concierge and you're meeting them where they are, you're building trust.

Yeah, I was so amazed when I started, because before I never really did any sort of website management. 𝐆I knew you could track traffic and certain things, but the fact that I could just kind of look at all of our clients and see

what they're looking at on our website is prettyꦛ amazing. I had no idea you can go that detailed until I really started doing it.

Yeah, so cool. So for everyಌone out there that's listening and watching, you gotta get your Sierra up andꦐ♍ running because you-

You can do some digging.

You can do some digging, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it could reall💫y help your business. So we're at IMPACT Live. We're in Chicago. We go♛t it We got to ask the question. How is I⛦MPACT Live? I know💃 this is your fifth. You said yes Wow That's a lot of impact lives to come to that's really꧃ꦍ cool So why do you keep co👍ming back and what's what's uh, what's most exciting about♔ coming to these events for you?

I feel like over the years like when ꦫwe first star📖ted out with IMPACT we had relationships with so many differe🌟nt people on the team You know weekly meetings with different traine꧙rs and they helped so much 🐬just bring stuff to our attention that we🐼 weren't even aware of and now that 🌠we've sort of graduated ꦜa little bit we don't really talk to them unless we have a specific like thing we want to solve an issue we wa🃏nt to help them work through we just don't

have tha🔯t communication as much anymore so I'm very adamant about going to all of these 🅘because every time I come I say wow🌱 this new stuff's going on and this is great and I got to lꦿike dip my toes ba💜ck into some of the stuff that if you're not doing it all the time yo🐟u can fall off on certa🃏in things so it's really like rꦬefreshing and mot🌳ivational to come back here and be like, oh yeah, we𒆙 do really need to focus in on this.

We do really need to keep optimizing our website and keep adding new self-service tools. And there's always just, it's invigorating. And I love hearing from other companies here too and what they're doing, because everyone's doing so many amazing things and everyone's doing

the ask you answer a little bit differently in their own way. So I love getting little nuggets from oth💫er people to bring back to the team ♍and say, hey, we should test this out.

Right.

Right. No, it is definitely a good refresher t🐽o g꧅et back into the They Ask, You Answer mindset. And I agree with you, too. I think some of the coolest parts 🧸about what happens here i𒊎s other industries and other people that you ge𒅌t to

interact with, you ge🌼t to see the ways that♔ they use They Ask, You Answer that might be different than how you're using it, cꦉou🍸ld give you ideas that maybe you never would have entertained in the past.

Yeah.

I've gotten so many great ideas. We have been able to sta𒁏rt using They Ask, You Anawer not only for clients, but also foꦉr recruiting and internally with our own team. And I think that idea started here, somebody talking about how they made

a separate learning center for careers. And I did that, I made a career learning center that's filled with content﷽ for basically every ♈single, just general working at Berry Insurance, but every single one of our roles as well. And so when I'm hiring someone for marketing,

it💟 has ma😼de a world of difference to be able to say, read these two articles first, here's everything you need to know. If you're still interested, let's 🌞have a conversation. So now I use assignment selling for recruiting and it has saved so much time for me,

getting on that initial phone call and realizing someone is just not really aware, it's not what they're looking for. So, and that's been a huge thing that I got from just a person's idea here.

Yeah, that was, I think, was that in Boston? I'm pretty sure that happened in Boston. Yes. Yeah, because I remember being, I think I was in the room too.

I think it might have been ATS who was doing it.

Yeah, yeah, and I was blown away with that too.

Yeah, and I was like, we're 🀅doing that immediꦉately. I've got to do that.

Yeah, no, it's crazy how well They ꧃Asꦰk, You Answer works on the client-facing side, but it also for recruiting is, it's great. Yeah. It helps you get better rec🐻ruits and better talent, but it also iღs great for people that are applying

because when you go through assignment selling and you go through the motions, you can disqualify pretty quickly and know if it's not a good fit or if it is a good fit and you wanna really

let it go out for this job and take the next sﷺteps. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I used to have so many phone calls where I'd get to the end and they're like, actually, I wasౠ really looking for somet🎃hing remote and I was like, you didn't know that from t♍h𒀰e beginning?

Like, so now we have like everything laid out, everything about the job. And it really helps too. We have usually for each position, there's like a day in the life article and 🦩FAQ article. Cool. And it kind of covers most of what 🐼they need to

know and so when we do sit down for interview, w🐻e can really like dig deep and say like is this the right fit for 🦩you, is this the right fit for us and so it helps us like dive dee✨per quicker. 🍎Yeah, that's awesome. So I know we're only like halfway through day two but is there anything that you've seen ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚor heard so far that like y💫ou're going back and that's the first thing you're gonna implement

when you get back?

Yeah, like I mentioned, there's always something that I realize that I'm not doing enough of that I need to get back into, and juꦕst seeing Vin's talk about optimizi🥃ng your website and how it's performing and how important it is, I know I don't do enough of that.

We redid our website in 2020, an🍌d we're like, it's pretty g🦋ood, it's working well, but I need to really do an audit on everything and make sure it's still, because things change in the world of the internet꧑, a🧔nd it's very important to make sure your website

is up and running. So I'm chomping up a bit𒀰 to dive deeper on that stuff and

make s🔯ure it's perf💎orming well. That's a good one. We actually just interviewed Vin not too long ago about websites and whet🍸her to use WordPress or HubSpot and he talked a lot about how your w🦩ebsite's a living breathing thing and even though it might be great wheꦫn you redesign it, yo♕u can't like set it and forget it and not touch it for a few y𝔍ears. You have to keep up with it. So that's definitely true.

And for everybody out there, Vin Gayat 𒁏is our lead web strℱategist here at Impact. He's also just a web developing guru. I don't know how he does what he does. He's a wizard. Yeah. Anything before we wrap up that you want to share or that we haven't talked ab𒊎out?

No, I'm just excited to, you know,🅺 see what other segments we have today, chat with some more people. I always get so much out of it. So I'm excited to keep going.

Well, we're pumped to have you here. Thank you so much for being on the show. For everyone out there listening, we always do this at the end. If they have questions🍎 and they want to follow☂ up with you, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Should they hit you up on LinkedIn or you on Impact Pl♔us? Like what's the best way? Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, Impact Plus. You can email me, ♎you can look me up on the website, Berry Insurance websit💃e, email me, whateve🧜r, whatever. Sounds good.

We'll make sure to 🥃drop her info in the show notes if you have any follow-up questions. But that's our show. Thank ꦬyou for being on the podcast. We really appreciate it. Great. Thank you so much. That was great.

Absolutely. All right, everybody, this is Endless Customersᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ꦆᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ. I'm Alex Winter. Absolutely. All right, everybody, this is Endleꦕss Customers.🥀 I'm Alex Winter.

We'll see you on the next episode.