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 like Google Analytics and Google Search Console and all that stuff It's a little over my head

Yeah

HubSpot can be too because there'❀s so much in there But if you really like dive in there's🎃 kind of a 💫way to do Everything l𒈔ike 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 sometimes it takes a little bit of trial and erro💯r 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 recomm🐷end it to all marketers out there.

Welcome back to Endless Customers.

My name is Alex Winter. And today I'm 🍸joined by Corin Cook, who is our Senior Marketi💦ng 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 like, I feel like at some points today, kind o𒉰f

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 just get🦩 so much out of it t⭕o 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 people the high level what Berr🗹y 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 t♍his whole, They Ask, Yo🦄u Answer thing. 🦂So she came back, had the whole team read the bo𒐪ok.

And then at that point, she decided to hire a content manager, which is when she found me, brought me on thꦑe team. I started doing all of the content ma🐻na💖ger things, blogging, writing a ton, working on the website. And then after about a year, we brought o꧙n a video prod▨ucer

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 maꦆrke♒ting 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 conte🀅nt manager type stuff or was this your first time in that role

as being a content manager? First time in that role, prior to t☂hat I waꦦs doing, I started off in journalism and then I was doing a little bit of PR and it's internal writing t🐼h🍸e 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 ▨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 d🦹on'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, the whole catchy, fun marketing stra🔯teg🌳y

wouldn't really work for someone like us. I mean, we sꦓtill do our fair share of fun, catchy things, but that's m🌱ore for community purposes and retention. So that's whyಞ the They Ask, You Answer principles 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 informa🎉tion 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 yoꦦu and Kaitlyn were🏅 a driving force of getting this content out an𒁃d starting the blogging train where most insurance companie🐟s aren't doing that. Most insurance companies ꦿdon't have a content ma🐈nager,

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 of gaining new customers and b♏uilding 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 storiꦆes, people coming to us and telling us how much thin𝓡gsꦡ have impacted them, the articles they read, how great videos you made are, how infಞormative they are, whether or not they're a 🅺client of our𓄧s 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 there'sไ just, it's been tremendous.

Yeah, that's amazing. So as a content manager, I k🍨now you've advanced in you🧜r role and the compan🔥y's grown, but when you were doing your content manager thing, is there 🌃like a blog or something that re💙ally 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 shar🔯e with us

that's kind of like that? There's one situa🐽tion that was kind of stra🃏nge for us. When the pandemic happened, there was something called EIDL loans. And I don't even rememb♊er fully what that was about, but we wrote an article on it.

It had to do withꦛ insurance and everybody was looking it up beca🐻use everybody, I think it was small businesses need to apply to lik🅘e a loan to he🌠lp their business during that time and they need to th✨e certain type of insurance for it. And so we wrote about it, we were the first ones to write about it, the only ones, and so🍎 that aꦑrticle blew up almost to a point that 🌃we needed to l💯ike we had to start put like a header on it like we

only serve Massachusetts, we're getting all꧃ these calls. Oh like all over the country? Yeah, all𝐆 over the country like every 10 mi𝄹nutes you could hear a reception𓆉ist pick up the phone and be like sorry we only serve Massachusetts⭕. So that was really coolꦰ to see like how much of an impact𒅌 a blog can have. And it also really helped give us a lesson in how to cater our content bꦓetter. 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,ꦗ and this is the state that we're living in.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So let's talk a little bit, too, ab🌳out 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 alꦆl this data, how, had you messed with

HubSpot beforܫe or was this like your first foray into using a CRM like that? So when I started in 2019, we did have 🦋HubSpot, but at that time it was really only being used for email marketing communicatioꦺns. Oܫur website was on WordPress🦋 and so in early 2020, we decide𓃲d we were going to redo our website and we h🌜ad the option whether to stick with WordPress or do HubSpot.

Immediately I said, please HubSpot. I know just from the email newsletters we had sen✤t out and stuff, 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 really a game changer being able to have all of our content up there, all of our videos, everythജing just integrated into the site and being able to look at the the analytics of everything and see what's perfor൩ming well, what isn't, how can we, you know, change just looking back at blogs li𒐪ke this o🌌ne is performing well, what can we look at in terms of dat🌃a to see how we can improve it so it

starts perfor🐓mi🌼ng better. There's just so much you can dive into in there and you can see we have ou🍰r emails integrated so you can see everybody's, you know, customer journey if you want to and all oไf our clients and customers and wꦍhat'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 wor༒king, it gives you♑ the

chance to like update it and fix it and make it better so ﷽that you can ser♛ve people better and meet them where they are. Absolutely. Yeah, that's cool th﷽at you were in the headspac♈e for that. So how does HubSpot today as you've evolved play into like youܫr overall strategy and how

you create content as a team?

So in terms of data, it's act😼ually kind of maybe a controve🎐rsial answer, because we do things a little differently. I don't tওhink a lot of business owners would agree. But we don't really use t💟he data in HubSpot to track our success, per se.

One of the reasons ﷽is that we have🤡 an insurance-specific CRM thaꦚtܫ we also have to use the account managers, and it does not yet integrate with HubSpot. So we can integrate with Excel spreadsheets and st💝uff, cert꧂ain reports, but it's a time consuming thing. And it's juওst never been, we're a small company and༺ our owner

se🍸es the success an♔d day to day stuff. So she's always like, I don't really care aﷺbout the numbers, I can see it'✃s working, I can see it's working💛. But what we do really🐼 heavily use it for is ꦜseeing what's working well, and how we can improve upon things based on that. So right𝔍, like leaning into it mo🍌re, like if you see something

t🏅hat'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 every♛thing and just say, this topic's really working. W🀅ell, of course, 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, how do they feel using HubSpot and havi🧸ng their emails tracked? Was that like a process getting them to start using the CRM and to start real꧙ly

like leveraging this to their advantage? Or what wasꦛ that journey like for you? If ဣI'm being honest, the acc♔ount managers don't really use it too much per se. It is tracked through their emails and 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 betജter data 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 on𒐪 like what are some of the metꦺrics

and things that really help you make

the decisions that you make? So in te🥀rms of, we definitely use it a lot for articles. We track web traffic, but we also doꦜ a lot of just like looking at what articles are performing well e🍬ach month. And then also, we have a really built out con🍬tent library that we use internally.

So each quarter, we'll pick a couple difꦕferent 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 middle

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 portr🅷aying 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 performing the beܫst that tౠhey can.

Yeah. And that's critical. We do that too. So 🃏Austin over 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 looking at watch time

and then also tweaking titles. Titling is huge and I don't think people realize how importan🧸t 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 y♍ou're seeing that 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 each, you♒ know, aspect of it and he'll, in a lot of times, he'll ask the t𓂃♉eam like, hey, this isn't performing as well, is🐈 this stilཧl accurate, is this any way we can make it clearer and kind of just go back in and cha🔴nge things up a little 🎀when we need 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 wou𝐆ld you tell them to like encourage them to like, hey, this is going to help you do your job better and help 𒉰your team do your job better. HubSpot for me is the number one tool whe𒐪n it comes to looking at data and metrics. It's so user-friendly.

I am not a techie person whatsoever. Whenꦕ I get into Google Analytics 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 HubS♔pot can be too because there's so much in there, but if you really dive in, there's kind of a way to do everything. ♛There's been certain problems that I've wanted to solve. I really want t꧑o get a report on this. How do I do it? Sometimes it takes a little bit of trial

and error and solving a puzzle, making a workflow. H๊ow do I make this work? But there's kind of a way to do everything. So I would definitely recommend it to all mark♉eters out there.

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

Definitely. Like I said, there's so much in there t🐲hat you can do. They're always changing around wher🐻e 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 Bas🏅hir is a HubSpot expert. Yeah, he's unbelievable th💧e stuff that he knows Yeah, I've solved many problems for me He's re꧅ally good people yeah, 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 parti🧸cular wor💞karound or like a hack that

You like to s♔hare with the audienc🥂e that maybe has really helped you do your job better

Sure, so one thing that has been kind of helpful for us, that actually one of the thiꦑngs 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 sending content out.💫 It took a bit of figuring out how to find exactly what we wanted. But wꦜe made a report for both articles and vi🌺deos. And using the 🌄email tracking, we basically said, if an email contains the word article or video, and it would pu🎐ll up a report of𒁏 all those emails. So in our 🌞content library, basically all we had to ꦑdo, it took a lot of time,

but we had to add ar🥃ti🍌cle colon video colon in front of everything. And t♉hat's where all the acc𝓡ount managers copy and paste from. So if article or video a🦩🐲ppears in an email, it shows up in the report. And t🙈hat's something that's helped internally too, because that's a goal that the team has to send a certain amount of article🃏s and videos each month.

And so🉐 it's been really cꦬool to be able to go in there and track that data aꦍnd also see which content it is, because I can go into each email and see what are they using and what situations are they♈ using it. So that's been really cool to test out. So you're using the semicolons to almost tag

these specific keywords that♚ yo꧅u know you want to track.

Yeah. ཧIt kind of serves as a hashtag be💯cause it's going to be, because 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'ꦓs really cool. I think a lot of people are going to find that helpful.

Yeah, that was a fun one to start.

Nice, very 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 befo🐷re. Like, it was the lack of knowledge. It wasn't until we got HubSpot until we could really look at how much oജur 🧜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 know, how many peopleꦕ. We look at𓆉 each month, web traffic as well as new contacts

and then which contacts I actually converted. And eveꦛry time, usually I'll go into each contact tওoo 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, they reached back out the n🐲ext 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 loo⭕ks like is you can reall♓y 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 k🌟new yoওu 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 p♛retty amazing. I had no idea you can go that detailed until I really started doing it.

Yeah, so cool. So for everyone oꦑut there that's listening and watching, you got𒉰ta get your Sierra up and running because you-

You can do some digging.

You can do some digging, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it could really help your business🦩. So we're at IMPACT Live. We're in Cꦬhicago. We got it We got to ask the question. How is 𓂃IMPACT Live? I know this is your fif🌼th. You said yes Wow That's a👍 lot of impact lives to ꦍcome to that's really cool So why do you keep coming back and what's what's uh, what's most exciting about coming to these events for 🌄you?

I fe🌟el like ov🦩er the years like when we first started out with IMPACT we had rela꧙tionships with so many diffౠerent people on the team You know weekly meetings with different t🐼rainers and the♛y helped so much just bring stuff to our attenti🔯on that we weren't even aware of and now that we've sort of graduated a little bit we do👍♏n't really talk to them unless we have a specific like thing we want t𒀰o solve an issue we want to help them work through we just don't

have that communication as much anymore so 💟I'm very adaꦫmant about going to all of th🧸ese be💮cause every time I come I say wow this new stuff's going on and this is great and I got to like dip my toesꦺ b🍬ack into some of the stuff that if you're not doing it💜 all the time 𒊎you can fall off on certain things so it's really like refreshing and moti🌠vational to come back🐠 here and 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 love𝔍 getting little nuggets fr🌊om other people to bring back to thཧe team and say, hey, we should test this out.

Right.

Right. No, it is definitely a good refresher to﷽ get back into the They Ask, You Answer mindset. And I agree with you, too. 𒀰I think some of the coole🐷st parts about what happens here is other industries and other꧟ people that ꦗyou get to

interact with, you get to﷽ see the ways♒ that they use They Ask, You Answer that might be different than how you're using it, could give yo🍸u ideas thatꦓ maybe you never would have entertained in the past.

Yeah.

I've gotten so many great ideas. We have be🥀en able to start using They Aꩵsk, You Anawer not only for clients, 🎃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 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 made a world of difference to bꦓe able toღ 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 immediately. I've got to do that.

Yeah, no, it'🌄s crazy howꩲ well They Ask, You Answer works on the client-facing side, but it also for recruiting is, it's great. Yeah. It helps you get better recruits a❀nd better talent, but it also is great for people that ꦬare 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 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 lookingꦺ for something remote and I was like, y💞ou didn't know that from the begin♕ning?

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 mo🍌st of what they need to

know and so w🐲hen we do sit down for interview, we can really like dig deep and say like is this the right fit for you, is thi🤪s the right fit for us and so it helps us like di📖ve deeper quicker. Yeah, that's awesome. So I know we're only like halfway thr𒆙ough d🍒ay two but is there anything that you've seen or heard so far🐟 that like youꦇ'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 j💜ust seeing Vin's talk about optimizing your webs🌟ite 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 good, it's working well, but I need to really do an audit on everything and make sure it's still, because thin🧸gs change in the world of the interne🅠t, and it's very important to make sure your webs𒀰ite

is up and running. So I'm chomping up a bit to dive deeper on that s🅷tuff and

make sure it's performing well. That's a good one. We actually ju✃st interviewed Vin not too long ago about wღebsites and whether to use WordPr💮ess or HubSpot and he talked a lot about how your website's a living breathing t🌳hing꧒ and even though it might be great when you redesign it, you can't like set 🎐it and forget it and noꦆt touch it for a few years. You h🍷ave to keep up with it. So that's definitely true.

And for everybody out there, Vin Gayat is our lead web♔ strategist 🥀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 u💞p that you want to share or that we haven't talked about?

No, I🎶'm just excite💯d 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 questionꦿs and they want to follow up with you, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Shoul𓂃d they hit you up on Link♛edIn or you on Impact Plus? Like what's the best way? Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, Impact Plus. You can email me, y🐽ou can look me up on the website, Berry Insurance website, email𒈔 me, whatever, whatever. Sounds good.

We'll make sure to dro🦂p her info 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 appreciꦯate it. Great. Thank you so much. That was great.

Absolutely. All right, everybody, this 🦋is Endless Customers. I'm Alex Winter. Absolutely. All right, everybody, this is Endless Customers🐓. I'm Al💟ex Winter.

We'll see you on the next episode.