HubSpot for me is the number one tool when it comes to looking at data and me🧸trics. It's so user-friendly I am NOT a techie person whatsoever when I get into like Google Analytics and🌸 Google Search Console and all ꦚthat stuff It's a little over my head

Yeah

HubSpot can be too b𝓡ecause there's so much i🃏n there Butꦯ if you really like dive in there's ki༺nd of a way to do Everything like there's been certain problems that I've 𓆉wanted to solve like I really want to get a report on this like how do I? Do it and sometimඣes 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.

Welcome back to Endless Customers.

My name is Alex Winter. And today I'm joined by C🌼orin 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. We're lꦑike, I feel like at some points t🥀oday, 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. Anꦉd every time I just 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 give pe♚ople 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 have to do this whole, T༺hey As💖k, You Answer thing. So she came back, had the whole team read t🌱he book.

And then at that point, she decided to hire a content manager, which is 🌱when she found me, brought me on the team. I started doing all🔯 of the c𓆏ontent manager things, blogging, writing a ton, working on the website. And th✅en after about a year, we br🐲ought on a video producer

and now we have a content writer who took some of that load off of me and also a community manager. So we've grown a lot in marketing in the💖 last five 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 ma🗹nager ty♔pe stuff or was this your first time in that role

as being a content manager? First time in that r🌜oཧle, 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 w🌳ritin𝄹g the newsletters 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 that's tr🔯ue, 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 ꦍit ver༺y 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, the 🎶whole catchy, fun marketing strategy

wouldn't really work for someone like us. I mean, we still do our fair share of🦋 fun, catchy things, but that's more for community purposes a𝐆nd✤ retention. So that's why the They Ask, You Answer p✱rinciples 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 grea♐t to have that information 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. And I felt like you and Kaiﷺtlyn were a driving ♌force of getting this content out aꦅnd starting the bl𝕴ogging train where most insurance companies a꧅ren't doing that. Most insurance companies don't have a content mana🧸ger,

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 affected the success o𒀰f gaining n♛ew 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, personal stories, people comﷺing to us an🐷d telling us how much things have impacted them, the articles they🐼 read, how great videos you made are, how informative they are, whether or not they're a 💛clien🧔t of o𝔉urs or someone who just found us online and ♊said,

wow, thanks for this. This is great information. So we've grown 🎉a ton. We've had to add a couple new account managers. Like I mentioned, marketing has grown. So thereಞ's just, it's been tremendous.

Yeah, that's amazing. So a🗹s a content manager, I know 💎you've advanced in your role and the company's grown, but when yoꦅu were doing your content manager thing, is there like a blog or s💦omething that really stood out to your point of 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? T🌠here's one situation that was kind of strange ܫfor us. When the pandemic happened, there was something called EIDL loans. And I don't even r𓆉emember fully what ♋that was about, but we wrote an article on it.

It had t꧑o do with insurance and everybody was looking it up because everybody, I think it♛ was s🤪mall businesses need to apply to like a loan to help their business during that tim𝕴e an🔯d they need to the certain type of insurance for it. And so we wrote about it🗹, we were the first ♔ones to write abou🏅t it, the only ones, and so that article blew up almost to a point that we needed to like we had to start put like a header on iꦕt like we

only serve Massachus🔯etts, we're getting all these calls. Oh li♕ke all over the country? Yeah, all over the country like every 10 ಞminutes you could hear a receptionist pick up the phone a൩nd be like sorry we🦂 only serve Massachusetts. So t🍬h🥂at was really cool to see like how much of an impact a blog can have. And it ﷺalso really helped give us a lesson in how to cater our content beღtter. It's good to have out there for people who want that inform♔ation, but to cater it to show this is our audience, this is who we serve.

Right, and this is the state that we're l🎃iving in.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So let's talk a little bit, too, abo🐲ut how HubSpot plays into all this, right? So haviꦫng a CRM or having a centralized place where you can store all this content and you🐻 can track all this data,ꦦ how, had you messed with

HubSpot before🥂 or was this like yo🅷ur first foray into using a CRM like that? So when I start🌞ed in 2019, we did have HubSpot, but at that time it was really only being used for email marketing communications﷽. Our website was on WordPress and so in early 2020, we decided we were going to redo 🙈our websit💃e and we had thﷺe option whether to stick with🌳 WordPress or do HubSpot.

Immediately I said, please HubSpot. I know just from the email newsletters we had sent out and stufಞf, it's just so 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 was really𒁏 a game cha🎶nger being able to have all of our content up there, all of ꦺour videos, 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, how can we, y🌱ou know, c꧙hange just looking back at blogs like this one is performing well, what can we look at in term𝔍s of d🦩ata to see how we can improve it so it

starts performing better. There's just so much you can div🦩e into in there and you can see we have our emails integraꦓted so you can see everybody's, you know, customer journey if you want to 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 working, it gives you the

chance to like update it and fix it and make it better sꦿo that you can serve people better and meet them where they are. Absolutely. Yeah, th🐲at's ♐cool that you were in the headspace for that. So how does HubS𒅌pot today as you've evolved play into like your ov🧸erall strategy and how

you create content as a team?

So in terms of data, it's actually k🌊ind of maybe a controversial answer, b✨ecause we do things a little differently. I don't think a lot of busine🍨ss owners would agree. But we don't really use the data in HubSpo🐓t to track𝓡 our success, per se.

One of the reasons is ꧂that we havཧe an insurance-specific CRM that w𒊎e also have to use the account managers, and it ꦐdoes not yet integrate with HubSpot. So we can integrate with Excel spreadsheets and stuf🅺f, certain reports, but it's a time consuming thing. And it's just never been, we're a sm💃all company and our♏ owner

sees the success and da꧒y to day stuff. So she'sꦕ always like, I don't really care about the numbers, I can seꦚe it's working, I can𓆏 see it's working. B▨ut what we do really heavily use it for is seeing what's working well, and how 𒈔we 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 simil🦩ar to that

to just like really push it forward.

Definitely. You look at the blogs that are working well and everythꦺing and just say, this topic's really working. Well, of cou🍸rse, I always go to our account managers 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, ho꧅w do they feel using HubSpot and having their emails tracked? Was that like a process getting them to start using the C🐼RM and to start really

like leveraging this to their advantage? Or what was that journey like for you🦩? If I'm being ho﷽nest, the account managers don't really use it too much per se. It is tracked through their emails ꦗand on 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 be🥂tter dat🅷a means 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 articles. We track web traf𝄹fic, but we al✃so do a lot of just like l༺ooking at what 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 pick a coꦫuple different ꧋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't really p🐻ortraying what they think they're going to be getting when they get into it.

So we get really granular on looking at each art𒉰icle and making sure they're all optimized and up 🐻t🦋o date so they're performing the best that they can.

Yeah. And that's critical. We do that too. 🗹So Austin over here and I, we do a lot of video content anꦫd a lot of content in general and it's the same thing. We are always looking at engagement and🍌 where ♛people fall off and looking at watch time

and then also tweaking titles. Titling is huge and I don't think people realize how important if your title is pos✅itioned 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'൩re seeing thatღ maybe it's not optimized 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 eౠach, you know, aspect of it an🅷d he'll, in a lot of times, he'💧ll ask the team like, hey, this isn't performing as well, ൲is this still accurate, is this any way we can make it clearer and kind of just go back in and change things up a little when we n𝔉eed to. Nice.

So 🐻for other content managers out there and for marketing leaders out there, what advice would you give them for if they're not using HubSpot or CRM and what maybe w🃏ould you tell them to like encourage them to like, hey, this is﷽ going to help you do your j💜ob better and help your team do your job better. HubSpot for me is the number one tool when it comes to lookiꦆng at data and metrics. It's so user-friendly.

I am not a techie person whatsoever. When I get into Google Analytꦬics and Google Search Console 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 s🐲o much in there, but if you really dive in, there's kind of a way to do everything. There's been certain pr🍃oblems that I've wanted to solve. I really want to get a report on this. How do I do🌳 it? Sometimes it takes a little b꧟it of trial

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

For your experiences, I know you worked with th🐟e IMPACT team. You had 𝓰some coaching and training♛. Did that ℱhelp with your learning curve and getting you to understand HubSpot better and to leverage it to your advantage?

Definitely. Like🅷 I said, there's so much in there that you ca💖n do. They're always 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 Bashir is a HubSpot expert. Yeah, he's unbelievable the stuff that he kn𝔍ows Yeah, I've solved many problems for me He's rea😼lly good people yeah, there's a question here that I think is really interesting I want to talk to you about so John put in𒀰 is there a particular workaround or like a hack that

You like to share with the a꧅udience that maybe has really hꦍelped you 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 were doing in terms of sendin🌳g content out. It took a bit of figuring out how to find exactly what ⛎we wanted. But we made a report fo🎉r both articles an🌠d videos. And ✅using the email tracking, we basically said, if an email contains the word article or video, and it would pull up a 🅷report൩ of all those emails. So in our content library, basical♛ly all we had to do, it took a lot of time,

but we had to add articl🍌e colon video colon in front o𓆉f everything. And that's where all the acco💫unt managers copy and paste from. So if article or video appears in an ema😼il, it shows up in the report. And that's something that's helped internal😼ly too, because that's a goal that the team has to send a certain amount of articles and videos ea♉ch month.

An♌d🐷 so it's been really cool to be able to go in there and🔜 track that data and also see which content it is, because I can go into each email and see what are they usi꧅ng and what situations are t🐈hey using it. So that's been really cool to test out. So you're using the semicolons to almost tag

these specific keywords that you know you wa🥂nt to track.

Y𝔉🍎eah. It kind of serves as a hashtag because it's going to be, because they copy and paste that title, so it'll say article, colon, video♏, colon, and just using tha𒆙t term shows when it appears in an email.

That's really 🎶cooꦦl. I think a lot of people are going to find that helpful.

Yeah, that was a fun one to start.

Nice, verꦿy nice. 🥂Since using HubSpot and integrating 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 lo꧂ok at how much 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 cool to see, like, you k🐭now, how many🐬 people. We ⭕look at each month, web traffic as well as new contacts

and then which contacts I actually converted. And every𝔉 time, usually I'll ൲go into each contact 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 out, t🍌hey 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 reaꦓlly fine 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. I knew you could track trafಌfic and certain things, but the fact that I could just kind of look at all of our clients and see

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

Yeah, so cool. So for everyone 💙out there that's listen𒁃ing and watching, you gotta get your Sierra up and running because yܫou-

You can do some digging.

You can do some digging, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it could really help your business. So we're aওt IMPACT Live. We're in Chicago. We got it 🅷We got to ask the question. How is IMPACT Live🔥? I know this is your fifth. You said yes Wow That's a 🎶lot of impact lives to come to that's really co🍎ol So why do you keep coming back and what's what's uh, what's mꩲost exciting about coming to𒐪 these events for you?

I feel like over the years like when we first star𝓡ted out with 𝐆IMPACT♉ we had relationships with so many different people on the team You know weekly meetings with different trainers and they helped so muc𒈔h🎃 just bring stuff to our attention that we weren't even aware of༺💦 and now that we've sort of graduated a l🌳ittle bit we don't really talk to them unless we have a specific like thing we want t🅘o solve an issue we want to help them wo🐠rk through we just don't

have that communication as much anymore so I🅷'm very adamant about going to all of these because every time I🌼 come I say woꦫw this new stuff's going on and this is gr﷽eat and I got to like dip my toes back into some of the stuff that if you're not doing it all the time 🦄you can fal🤡l off on certain things so it's really like refreshing and motivatiꦯonal to come back here an💝d be like, oh yeah🅘, we 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 lov🌼e gettin♛g little nuggets from other people t𝔉o bring back to the team and say, hey, we should test this out.

Right.

Right. No, it is defiಞnitely a good refresher to get back int🌺o the They Ask, You Answer mindset. And I agree with you, too. I think some of the coolest parts a🔜bout wha💖t happens here is otheไr indꦛustries and other people that you get to

interact wi🎀th, you get to see the ways that they use They As൲k, You Answer that might be different than how you're using it, could give you idea꧙s that maybe you never would have entertained in the past.

Yeah.

I've gotten so many great ideas. We have been able to star🀅t using They Ask, You Anawer not only for clie✅nts, but also for 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 ever𝐆y 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 made a world of difference to be ab꧋le to say, read these two articles first, here's everything you need to know. If you're still interested, let's have a coꦗnversation. 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 immed🦂iately. I've got to do that.

Yeah, no, it's crazy how well They Ask, You Answ🗹er works on the client-facing side, but it also for recruiting is, it's great. Yeah. It helps you get 𒅌better recruits and better tale🅰nt, but it also is 🦄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 take𒉰 the next steps. 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 was really lookin💯g for something remote and I was like, you didn't know that from the b🦩eginning?

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. Co🌟ol. And it kind of covers most of what they need to

kn𒉰ow and so when we do sit down for interview, we 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 deeper q📖♒uicker. Yeah, that's awesome. So I know we're only like halfway throuඣgh day two but is there anything that you've seen or heard so far that like you'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 jus🧔t seeing Vin's talk about optimizing 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, and we're like, it's pretty good, it's wor💫k🐓ing well, but I need to really do an audit on everything and make sure it's still, because things change in the worℱld of the inte𝕴rnet, ൩and it's very important to make sure your website

is up and running. So I'm chomping up a bit to d🐭ive deeper on that stuff and

make sure it's performing well. That's a 🌺good one. We actually just intervie൩wed Vin not too long ago about websites and whether to use WordPress o✱r HubSpot and he talked a lot ab𓆏out how your website's a living breathing thing and even though it might be great when y❀ou redesign it, y𝕴ou can't like set it and forget it and not touch it for♔ a few years. You have to keep up with it. So that's definitely true.

And for everybody out there, Vin 𒁏Gayat is our lead web strategist here at 𓆉Impact. 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 about?

No, I'm just e𓃲xcited to, you know, see what other s🐼egments 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 t♋o follow up with you, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Should t🀅hey hit you up on LinkedIn or you on Impact Plus? Like what's the best way? Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, Impact Plus. You can email me, you can look me u♊p on🦹 the website, Berry Insurance website𝄹, email me, whatever, whatever. Sounds good.

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

Absolutely. All ri🐭ght, everybody, ♌this is Endless Customers. I'm Alex Winter. Absolutely. All ri🦋ght, everybody, this is Endless Customers. I'm Alex Winter.

We'll see you on the next episode.