Episode Transcript
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Intro (00:01):
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloedapartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace, lord lack, lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:22):
tool in your superhero toolbelt? Knowledge.
Never fear hub heroes. Get readyto don your cape and mask, move
into action, and become the hubhero your organization needs.
Tune in each week to join theleague of extraordinary inbound
heroes as we help you educate,empower, and execute. Hub
(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Liz Moorehead (00:52):
And we're back versus another episode of Hub
Heroes, guys.
George B. Thomas (00:56):
We are. Hey. Hey. Doing great. Before we dive
into the actual conversation, bythe way, because I know we're
this is, like, part two, theElectric Boogaloo, you know,
landing pages.
Joke.
Liz Moorehead (01:08):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (01:09):
Well, you you could you could still use it.
I'm old enough to have actuallywatched Break Into Electric
Boogaloo anyway. But here's thething. I wanna make sure,
because I'm about to Well, Ialready did one. Recertified
HubSpot Academy certificationlast week.
(01:29):
And I'm about to be on a kick todo a whole bunch more
certifications because yes, eventhough your boy has been in the
ecosystem for twelve years, eventhough I've recertified these
things like four, if not sixtimes, depending on the
certification and how often youhave to do it, I'm going to
continue to do it. There's newvideos. I was kind of going
(01:49):
through ones to see like, shouldI redo this? What's new? You can
see the little orange dot forwhat you've watched, the ones
you there's a lot that I haven'twatched since the last time I so
I'm I'm glad it's up to all ofthis, all of this, Liz, Max
Mhmm.
Listeners to say HubSpot'sAcademy World Certification
Week. Hey, we need to plan forIs that already coming up? No,
(02:13):
no, no. Giving us a good lead intime. We probably need to have
an episode closer to this.
But if you're sitting here andyou're like, yeah, George, I'm
like you, I need to researchtoo, or I need to get a
certification that I've beenwanting to get because I never
got it. April twenty eighththrough May 2 is when worlds or
(02:34):
HubSpot Academy WorldCertification Week is scheduled.
So just put that on yourcalendar right now, everybody.
Liz Moorehead (02:39):
So it's gonna be like a month.
George B. Thomas (02:40):
It's it's April 28 to May 2. No, it's in a
month.
Liz Moorehead (02:44):
That's what I'm saying. It's about a month.
George B. Thomas (02:45):
Yeah. Yeah. In about a month. So I'm trying to
I'm the reason I'm bringing thatup is because like, if we
schedule it, it can happen. Andso many times in the past couple
of years, we've been doing this,we get to it.
I'm like, God, we're herealready. Like, even Max, like,
is that coming up already?Listen, I'm giving you thirty
days to block some time off inyour calendar so that you can
actually do some good in theworld and get your
(03:08):
certifications as well. Okay,sorry, Liz. I had to throw that
in this morning because it'simportant.
Liz Moorehead (03:12):
No, that is really important. I mean, the
reality is, is that if you'renot constantly flexing and
strengthening your muscles as aninbound practitioner, no matter
what your role is, like, there'sno such thing as reaching a
point where you can stoplearning.
George B. Thomas (03:27):
No. I think
Liz Moorehead (03:28):
what's so challenging to me about it is
and and I'm equally guilty ofthis too. Right? I will always
find ways to say, Ugh, I have somuch work to do. Oh, work is so
much more important. But theseare certifications that actually
impact your work and yourability to affect more positive
change within your role.
Like this isn't one of thosethings where it's like we're
going into an abstractexperience where we're going to
(03:51):
learn some high level conceptsthat might be no, it'll actually
teach you to use the toolsyou're using every day better,
more effectively and to getgreater outputs.
George B. Thomas (04:00):
Yeah. Like, I mean, listen, if you, if you do
the content certification andyou do the SEO certification and
maybe if you do the digitaladvertising certification, I bet
you have some beastie landingpages by the time you're done
with all that knowledge. I'mjust trying to tie it back into
what we're actually talkingabout today, you know.
Max Cohen (04:19):
Beastly landing pages.
George B. Thomas (04:21):
Beastly pages. Yeah.
Max Cohen (04:22):
It's wild.
George B. Thomas (04:23):
You like that? I love it. I can't
Max Cohen (04:26):
even remember the last time I built a landing page
if I'm being completely honest.
George B. Thomas (04:29):
Oh, dude.
Max Cohen (04:29):
Well, it's because I'm not in a marketing role.
George B. Thomas (04:31):
Right.
Max Cohen (04:31):
Right. I'm sure I'm sure Nikki's built, you know, an
LP or two, you know, recently.Uh-oh. Don't worry. Mean, I
still I'm trying
George B. Thomas (04:39):
hear Liz, and I feel like Liz can't hear us.
Max Cohen (04:42):
Oh, she's
George B. Thomas (04:43):
on mute. And and I'm not sure, like Hello?
And gentlemen. Yeah. There wego.
Now we can It
Max Cohen (04:48):
was weird. It was like the mute button was
fighting you.
Liz Moorehead (04:51):
No. It actually still is. I have to hold my
space star bar down to keep mymic on.
Max Cohen (04:55):
That's interesting. Well, hopefully, your finger
George B. Thomas (04:58):
doesn't cramp up by the time this is over.
Max Cohen (05:00):
Liz is on push to talk right now, dude.
Liz Moorehead (05:02):
Yeah. Don't know why. Alright. Well, anyway.
George B. Thomas (05:05):
Here we go.
Liz Moorehead (05:06):
Here we go, guys. We're back for another round
Yep. Of landing pages.
George B. Thomas (05:12):
You know, this shouldn't surprise me that you
have to hit the space barbecause if you remember last
episode, the world didn't wantus to talk about landing pages
like everything was happening,and now this anyway, let's talk
about landing pages.
Liz Moorehead (05:23):
Still gonna talk about landing pages. They're
that important. And, Max, youwere not here for this horrific
discovery that I made, which isthat we've somehow never talked
about them. Like, I literallywent through our entire catalog.
I I went through our entirecatalog.
Couldn't find a dang thing aboutit.
George B. Thomas (05:40):
Years, bro. Years. Years. Years of episodes.
Liz Moorehead (05:43):
We've talked about the social media tool
twice. Email marketing threetimes.
George B. Thomas (05:49):
Commerce hub 52 times. No. Just kidding.
Liz Moorehead (05:52):
The HGT now. Yeah. And so here we are.
Max Cohen (05:56):
AI 468,000.
George B. Thomas (05:58):
Right. Right. True facts right there.
Max Cohen (06:01):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (06:01):
So we're back with part two of this incredible
conversation because who knewthat one of the most
foundational building blocks ofthe HubSpot inbound marketing
ecosystem would require so muchdiscussion? Who knew?
Max Cohen (06:17):
Who knew? Who knew? Who knew?
George B. Thomas (06:18):
I mean, us now, obviously, but Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (06:21):
But, Max, I wanna start with you by asking you a
question that I asked George andChad last week, particularly as
someone like you worked atHubSpot, you've been in the
inbound ecosystem for a reallylong time. Let's start our
conversation back at thebeginning. And I'd love to hear
from you if you think there areany outdated landing page best
(06:42):
practices that people are stillclinging to. Right? Those common
mistakes that people are stillmaking.
Max Cohen (06:47):
Yeah. I mean, I always kind of thought the whole
remove the navigation thing waskind of cringe. Right? Because
to me it didn't well, I know. Icould see both sides of the
argument where you want to limitdistractions.
Right? But I think there's afine line between limiting
distractions and doing some,like, weird, you know, unsavory
(07:09):
things just to steal people'sattention. Right? So I I I kinda
think the whole remove the navthing is like kinda played out.
And honestly, like looking backon it, because again, I was, you
know, I don't wanna say guiltyof teaching this, but like, you
know, I definitely had it verymuch imprinted into my brain of
(07:31):
like, oh, you must remove thenavigation on landing pages.
And the reasoning made sense,right? But thinking back on it
now, think about how you'd reactif you were on a website and all
of a sudden the nav went away.Right? You'd probably be kind of
distracted in like, oh, wait,why is this website breaking? Or
am I on a different website?
(07:52):
Oh, the URL changed as well too.Because remember how everyone
back then was doing likeinfodot, you know, whatever.com.
Right? You know, a lot of that Ithink, like, looking back on it,
while, like, functionally kindof made like, functionally made
sense. There's, I think, plentyof things that I could look back
on and go like, oh, no.
Maybe this wasn't, like, thebest thing ever. You know, like,
(08:16):
thinking about it, like, alittle bit more tactically. But
I might be overthinking it toobecause it's been a while since
I've actually popped this stuff.But, yeah, I think the the
navigation thing is kind offunky. I also think just, like,
the the thing that kind ofalways bugged me too is like how
much of a emphasis was put on itfor just straight up lead
generation.
Right? And not actually takingit as an opportunity to educate
(08:37):
someone with that piece ofcontent that you're getting
behind that landing page. Right?Like, what I feel like people
thought too much was that, oh,I'm making this landing page so
I can get somebody's email so Ican send them emails later. And
I feel like that's the mode alot of us were in.
And maybe that's either how wedirectly interpret it or maybe
(08:58):
misinterpreted the biggerpicture of what inbound was.
Yeah. But, you know, I I thinkwhat a lot of people forgot is,
like, putting a lot of specialcare and attention into whatever
it was that that person wasgiving up their information in
order to get. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (09:14):
It's like Well,
Max Cohen (09:15):
because you forget that you have that opportunity
that when someone digests thatpiece of content, right, and
actually gets their hands on itand starts to consume it, right,
Their brain is in this mode of,oh, I'm really excited to learn
this thing and I just gave awaysomething valuable to me, which
was like the means to interruptmy day and get in touch with me,
(09:36):
right? And they're immediatelygoing, was this worth that trade
off? And they're deciding likewithin twenty five seconds, if
they're just going to go totheir email and hit the
unsubscribe from whatever yousent them. Right? Because if you
were to supply them with thatpiece of content and then they
start consuming it and then theygo, oh wait, this was a waste of
(09:57):
time or, oh, this isn't actuallyhelping me.
They feel duped, right? Sothere's like a big risk there
know, that I think a lot ofpeople didn't think about. They
just kinda said, oh, we got theemail. Mission accomplished.
Not, alright.
Great. We got the email. We cankeep talking to them. But, like,
let's hope this piece of contentactually shifted their brain in
the right direction that wewanted to or taught them
(10:17):
something or made them look atus more favorably after they
consumed it and didn't feel likethey just got tricked. Right?
Yeah. Don't think people thoughtabout that far.
George B. Thomas (10:26):
Yeah. No, Max, it's interesting because when I
think about, you know, I'll saythe good old days, even when I
see when I, when I see thingsnow, it's like the email
shouldn't be the goal. That'sright. Email should be an
outcome of like a larger goal.And so you're right.
This whole idea of what I fellin love with inbound was about
(10:46):
it, it, you know, being human.And I think about if you're, if
you're even thinking abouthaving landing pages, how your
brain of the person who's goingto have the landing pages should
probably have some type of valuefirst human centric, adding
value to the world, to thereader, to the viewer, whatever
is behind that gate. It shouldbe coming from a place where
(11:10):
you're trying to help them bebetter, make a situation better,
fix a problem that they might.And and so many times it's like,
hey, let's let's create thisseven step checklist so we can
get an email. Yeah.
That's not.
Max Cohen (11:23):
Yeah. It's like the it's the the point isn't to get
for a lot of people, the pointis to get the email because
that's all people think about.Right? The the email is Or the
point of getting the email islike, we got the email, so we
have a way to communicate withthem. Should this piece of
content made them actually wantto continue doing that?
Yeah. Right? Like that's reallykind of what should be, right?
George B. Thomas (11:46):
Because it's shameful if you're like creating
more harm than good.
Max Cohen (11:51):
Right? That's the thing. People opened up a lot of
these opportunities to create alot more harm, not in like the
esoteric sense of like, oh, theyduped somebody and that was like
morally incorrect from amarketing standpoint for them to
do it. It's no, no, no. You turnsomeone into a detractor because
of your content and that sucks.
George B. Thomas (12:12):
Yeah. That's the exact opposite. Sucks. Like
you're trying to build trust.
Max Cohen (12:15):
It's like, bro, someone's already a detractor of
your company and they didn'teven get to buying your company
yet. Just marketed them intobeing a detractor. You didn't
even get to make any money offof them. They just hate you
already. What?
Dude. Yeah. Like, come on.
George B. Thomas (12:31):
Liz, one of the things that's fun about this
being like part two is I've hadtime to actually think about
some some of this and I wannaadd in Yeah. I I wanna add in
one that I didn't talk aboutlast time because HubSpot does
these really cool things for us.Right? And and and it's subtle
things. And sometimes when theydo them, people don't even know
that they've done them.
(12:52):
And so, if you haven't gone intoyour files area of HubSpot and
realize that you have a tab thatsays stock images, and that
there's literally a shutterstock system inside of your
HubSpot file manager to be ableto use in your emails and your
landing pages, then, well, it'sthere for you. But here's the
(13:14):
thing, I hate landing pages whenyou get to it and it just
screams fake. Like fake photos,like stock photography, like it
doesn't feel like it's evenconnected to the thing. And so
like this idea of like, can wejust get some pictures of some
real people? Can we just maybeget a picture of like maybe your
(13:35):
real office?
I don't even care if you'reremote. Like whatever the
landing page is, can we getsomething that feels more like
you, your brand, instead of,again, slapping in that seven
step checklist and slapping on astock photo and being like, it's
a day, ladies and gentlemen.Thousands of people are gonna
give us their emails so that wecan spam the crap out of like,
(13:57):
or or even like video instead ofimage on landing pages would be,
I would love that, but we'lltalk about AB testing a little
bit later and things like that.But but stock photography,
please, all the totally, ifyou're listening to this, go
back through all of your landingpages and look for where you've
used stock photography and comeup with a strategy to figure out
how to replace that stuff.
Liz Moorehead (14:18):
I gotta throw in one more too, George, because I
had a similar thing. You know?Even though I was the one who
prepared that episode, the moreI sat with these the more I sat
with these questions, I Iactually went about my week last
week and thought, you know, I'mjust gonna start paying
attention to the things thatmake me go when I'm looking at a
landing page.
George B. Thomas (14:34):
And
Liz Moorehead (14:35):
I remember one of the things that HubSpot rolled
out a few years ago was youwould end up on a landing page
and then you would fill out whatyou thought was the form, but
then you were taken to aseparate second super secret
form with way more information.And
Max Cohen (14:53):
Cringe.
Liz Moorehead (14:53):
Like, as a marketer, you're like, this is
great because it reduces thatfirst barrier of them, like,
wanting to give theirinformation. But then I just
feel duped, hoodwinked,amboozled, let us dry.
George B. Thomas (15:04):
That's the word the word duped is the word
for for for today's episode. Youknow, it's funny, but it's
insane.
Max Cohen (15:12):
What I'm talking about because, like, instead of
you being like, oh, let me trytheir product or their product's
not that great. You just go, oh,these people are scumbags before
you even get there.
George B. Thomas (15:21):
Yeah. And let me be completely honest, though,
because you say that. And then Iremember back in the day where I
had this, like, thing that I didand then I had a second form
after it. And the second formwas like, I wanna know you. It
was positioned that by the way,this is me calling myself out on
my own ish historically.
I literally had a second formthat was like, I wanna get to
(15:44):
know you better so we can belike buddies and like add
additional information. And inhindsight, that was like the
dumbest ish that I everattempted to do. And that's a
friend, Hal. Yeah. It didn't itdidn't last long.
And it's just like it's if Itake what Max was talking about
and Liz, what you're talkingabout, it's like, well, I wanted
to be your friend on the firstconversion, but I sure don't
(16:06):
want to be your friend on thesecond. Like, I'm out. You know
what I mean?
Max Cohen (16:10):
Yeah. Well, let me ask you this, George. What was
the intent of you gathering thatdata?
George B. Thomas (16:15):
I mean, I did want to know more about the
humans so that I couldcommunicate with them in a
better way. A lot of it waslike, how long have you been
using HubSpot? What HubSpot hubsare you using? Like, so there
was a positive intent on theother side, but I can understand
how it might have felt like,bro, I just filled out a form.
(16:35):
Why are you asking me to fillout another one?
Max Cohen (16:37):
Well, did you gate additional stuff from that?
George B. Thomas (16:40):
No. No. It was just trying to get to know them
better. You know what I mean? Igave them the thing that I said
I would give them.
Max Cohen (16:45):
Okay. There you go. See, I think that's okay because
you didn't I
George B. Thomas (16:50):
don't feel bad about myself now then.
Max Cohen (16:51):
Because what was the what was the obligation of them
filling up? What do they have to
George B. Thomas (16:55):
No obligation on the second Just Right. I
wanted to know more about That'sokay. Was a curious human being.
Max Cohen (17:00):
That's okay. Because what you didn't do was oh,
here's the little thing. Oh, gotto quick here. That's different.
See, that's different to me.
Right? You know, it's like thethe worst thing the way I see
people do it like a really badworst practice, I guess, in that
scenario is, like, you getemail. Like, the form looks like
(17:22):
just email. K? And you're like,oh, easy.
Just email. But they're doing itbecause they wanna capture the
email if the rest of the forumturns you off. Right? Because
then they've at least got youremail. Right?
And so even when you see thenext part of the forum and
you're like, no, I'm sorry. I'mnot gonna give you my social
security number and my boss'semail address.
George B. Thomas (17:43):
My credit card number.
Max Cohen (17:44):
Yeah. I'm not gonna, like, tell you how many you
know, when my company buysstuff. Like, you know what I
mean? Like Yeah. And and andbefore I actually get the thing
I wanna get, well, they go, oh,that's fine.
We got your email. That's all wewanted anyway. That's the worst.
I think it's a dark pattern iswhat people call it.
George B. Thomas (17:59):
Yeah. The darks, like, it's it's like the
dark side of conversion rate.It's the opposite of conversion
rate optimization. Right?
Max Cohen (18:07):
Well, I mean, if you think about it, from a raw like
conversion optimization, it'snearly perfect. Right? Because
you're getting the most valuablething, which is to me a very
subjective idea of value there.Right? You're getting what you
interpret as the most valuablething, which is the email
(18:29):
address, which let's be honest,you didn't wanna educate
somebody.
You just wanted that the entiretime if you're pulling a scumbag
move like this. Right? Butyou're eliminating all the stuff
that would get in the way ofthat conversion happening. So,
like, from conversionoptimization standpoint, great.
From actually doing somethinguseful for that person who's
who's, you know, trying to getyour content and learn
(18:52):
something, you've doneabsolutely zero, buddy.
You've you've duped them.
George B. Thomas (18:56):
It's interesting because we're
literally having a selfishnessversus servanthood. A
fundamental basis. Right?Conversion rate optimization in
a selfish way. But what can Iget out of it versus conversion
rate optimization of aservanthood?
Like what can I give them? Whatcan they get out of it?
Max Cohen (19:13):
But so yes, I agree. The moral marketer says yes,
right? The moral marketer saysyes. I wanna serve people with
content. I wanna teach them.
But here here's the other thing.That's not your job. Your job is
to make the business money.Right? And what I'm trying to
say is like, sure, that kind offeels good and you should do
(19:33):
that.
And yeah, you should do theright thing. Absolutely. Right?
But there are reasons beyondjust doing the right thing that
makes a lot of these tacticsreally dumb. You know what I
mean?
A lot of that
George B. Thomas (19:44):
I hear you.
Max Cohen (19:45):
A lot of that comes down to the little micro
experiences you're creating forpeople when they're interacting
with your comment that eithermakes them hate you before they
even hate your product. You knowwhat I'm saying? Yeah. Right?
And so it's just one of thosethings.
So it's like, yeah, should youshould you focus on educating
people? Yes. Not because itfeels good though, because
that's good for your business.Like that like that. That's the
(20:08):
thing.
But but yeah. I mean, again, I II am super down with doing the
right thing and creating contentthat actually educates people.
That makes me feel good and itmakes me wanna do my job. Yeah.
And it makes me feel like I'mdoing more than just selling a
product.
I'm I'm educating people andgetting without Here's the
thing. Not a lot of peopleoperate that way. Right? Yeah.
(20:30):
You know what
Liz Moorehead (20:30):
I mean?
George B. Thomas (20:31):
What you said? What you said? Because let's be
honest, like, of my emails overthe weekend literally had a
playlist to your quote happilyplaylist on YouTube. Oh. Because
I was like, hey, you need tocheck this out because at least
you can, without getting in thesales funnel, you can at least
see if it's gonna be a right fitfor what you're trying to do.
Oh, yeah. Same thing, by theway, same thing with oh, dang on
(20:52):
it. My friend, my friend withwow, I'm having a senior moment.
I literally am. PixelCompressed.
Whoo. My goodness. How did Iforget the name of that? So,
it's like, talk about service orvalue. And by the way, and I'm
bringing this up because landingpages, and I just brought up
(21:13):
stock photography too.
The other thing that needs todie is your landing pages don't
load quickly, especially if theydon't load quickly on, like, a
mobile device because I'm on myphone a lot, but I'm also on my
desktop a lot. But, like,something like a quote happily
or something like pixel compresswhere they're like adding value
by interviews or by tutorial orby just making it your life
(21:37):
better because it's likestreamlining and optimizing. By
the way, they are sponsoring thepodcast right now for the next,
I think it's like thirty orsixty days. You might hear a
little ad in here if you listen,listeners to the very ending or
it might even hit you in themiddle. But Pixel Compressed is
amazing.
It's definitely something youshould be looking at in your
(21:58):
HubSpot portal for optimizedimages of landing pages, website
pages, even your emails. By theway, if your emails are loading
slow, come on. Like, it's twentytwenty five. Anyway, let's let's
keep moving We
Max Cohen (22:12):
need start doing funny ad reads, I think.
George B. Thomas (22:14):
Oh, that would be fun. That would be fun.
Liz Moorehead (22:16):
Well, you already brought this up, George. So I
want to I want to bring thisright back to you. So over the
years, HubSpot has rolled out somany different tools in regards
to how you create morepersonalized experiences or
deeper content experiences. Sofor example, AI driven tools or
as you mentioned earlier, smartcontent features. Now as someone
(22:38):
who has a lot of experienceswith these tools, George, I
would love to hear you talk toour audience for a bit about how
we should be leveraging thosetools today to optimize landing
pages in ways that weren'tpossible five years ago.
Because I know you and I stillboth encounter landing pages
where we're like, you guys, thisis this this is 2018. What are
(22:59):
we doing here?
George B. Thomas (22:59):
Well, well, in some of this, what's funny, I
I'd like to go back to by theway, I can't move forward
without saying if there's not abook called The Moral Marketer,
somebody needs to write the dangbook, The Moral Marketer. I'm
just saying. Anyway, but
Max Cohen (23:13):
Somebody said not be me because I can't write a book.
George B. Thomas (23:15):
Well, you know, but maybe it should be
you, but with a ghostwriter.Anyway Right. Like Liz, here's
the thing. What's funny. I'dlike to go back and see when the
contextual marketingcertification came out, because
it might have been five yearsago.
You might have been able to dosome of the things that I'm
about to talk about five yearsago. However, like people don't
(23:35):
watch that certification. Theydon't understand that the thing
lives in a left hand sidebar.They don't realize exactly what
they can do. Maybe they're justtrying to get a landing page out
and they're not focused onexperience.
Right. And that's the thing likeyou have to have, and I don't
mean to sound like a brokenrecord, but if you're doing
value first human centric userexperiences, and the things are
(24:00):
being birthed out of trying tocreate those experiences. Now
you realize that you've gotsmart content that you can do
some really cool things. AndI'll just tell you like this,
one of the clients that we get aprivilege to work with, they
help solopreneurs, right? That'stheir sole focus is to help
people either go from being in ajob to being a solopreneur, or
(24:21):
having a solopreneur businessthat isn't the greatest, but
they want to make it great.
And just being like thiscommunity for solopreneurs. They
literally have used what, twopieces of HubSpot in a magical
way. Number one, they usepersona, the property, and they
use it properly. They've gotpositive and negative personas.
(24:43):
They're using the I'm Astatements and they're
leveraging it for bettercommunication, segmentation, and
smart content.
Instead of just having a landingpage, they actually have
multiple landing pages perpersona. So now what they can is
(25:03):
they can literally go and sendthat human to the landing page
for the right conversation forwho they are and what they know
about them. So they're creatinga one to one instead of a one to
many experience at a per humanlevel based on a conversion and
an understanding of who theyare. And so like, I want you to
(25:26):
think about what you currentlyhave as for, and this is for the
listeners, the viewers, what youcurrently have as a landing page
and ask yourself how much moreeffective would it be? Not only
if we were going to AB test it,that can be, we'll talk about
that later.
Know I keep kind of pushing itback, but how effective could it
be if we actually had five,four, three different landing
(25:50):
pages and we were using imagesand video and text that actually
resonated with who they were. Wetalked to them like we know who
they are. We talk about theproblems that they're actually
facing. Like Ricky, theresearcher wants it to come to
them different than the actualCharlie, the CEO. And I'm just
(26:13):
making up persona names becauseit helps tell the story.
And so that's, that's the thing.If you're not looking at list
segmentation for smart content,if you're not looking at life
cycle stage for a smart content,it like, and there's so many
other things that you could bedoing with this to just create a
(26:34):
better user experience and whatmight be considered your most
important area conversion,because that starts the
conversation to which thenequals the cash flow. And so
taking the extra time tounderstand, hey, there's a
contextual marketingcertification. Let's take that.
Let's look at our existinglanding pages.
Let's look at how we're usingpersona. Let's look at how we're
(26:56):
using lifecycle stage. Let'slook how we're using list
segmentation and let's actuallybuild a real conversion strategy
around the tools that HubSpothas given us.
Liz Moorehead (27:05):
So I wanna take it a step deeper actually,
George, if you'll bear with mefor a moment. So I remember when
smart for content first cameout, everybody was excited.
Right? They were like, oh, I canchange it. So it says, like, if
I have two different personas.
Right? One is an IT manager inan organization, one is a CTO at
an organization and they havedifferent thoughts and opinions
(27:25):
about a certain topic that wewant them to convert on. I can
change the introductoryparagraph. My understanding is
that the capacity andcapabilities of smart content
are much deeper than like, well,you could put a different
paragraph here.
George B. Thomas (27:39):
Oh my god. You can have a different form. You
can have a different video. Youcan have a different image. You
can have different copy.
Like now, especially if you'reusing the Content Hub, like
almost every module or everysection can be smart. If you're
like and by the way, we'retalking about landing pages, but
(28:01):
this in email is amazing aswell. Because now not only have
you created a dope experiencewhere the form, the module, the
copy, the video, the image issmart to them, but when you,
they get communication, thecommunication in the email is
smart as well with the rightimage, the right verbiage, the
right subject line, because youcan have smart subject lines.
(28:24):
Again, this is one place where Idon't think enough marketers,
enough business owners dive inand take the time to understand
the power that they have withsmart content inside of their
HubSpot ecosystem.
Max Cohen (28:38):
Yeah. Mean, most of them still think it's it's
witchcraft to even just say hi,first name on a
George B. Thomas (28:45):
page. Right?
Max Cohen (28:46):
I think well, I think the other thing that's
interesting too is, like, youknow, thinking, you know,
outside the box there, it'slike, what if if if if you're
using, like, smart content,like, in mind, you can make,
like, entire sections of thepage totally different. Right?
And, you know, sure, maybe youcan show a different form or
maybe if you have everyone'sinformation and they're already
on a list, don't even show aform at all. Just replace it
(29:09):
with a section that lets themdownload the piece of content
immediately without having towait for an email or take an
unnecessary step. Right?
Because again, like I think westill, you know, when we don't
think about how can it how can Imake my content delivery even
easier? Right? Like we're we'restill like forgetting the fact
that like someone actuallyconsuming the content is
(29:31):
important. Long as you're makinglike, so long as like whatever
that thing is, so long as thatebook is actually valuable and
not just some garbage, whatever.Right?
Yeah. You know, like you do wantpeople to consume the content if
it's good content. If it's notgood content, you probably
shouldn't be putting it outthere, right? Because you're
just increasing the likelihoodthat someone's gonna have a bad
(29:52):
experience with you, right? Youknow, and so like, I'd say like
what the smart content piece,like think about ways where you
can make it not a landing pageand just like give someone what
they need.
Like if you already have anyinformation you'd be collecting.
George B. Thomas (30:05):
I mean, that's that's such a good value piece
there because I mean, listen,you could have it be smart and
it could just be a CTA because Iknow even the moralist of
marketers out there is like, buthow do I track success? Listen,
if they're in X, Y, Z list, youcould have a CTA. And when they
(30:28):
click that CTA, they could bedownloading it without needing
to fill out a form. And by theway, then your measurement of
successes, you know, every clickon that CTA is a download. So
you can now have theconversation of, well, this
piece was downloaded by peoplein our database a hundred times
this month.
Max Cohen (30:45):
Sure.
George B. Thomas (30:46):
The people who click the CTA, 27% of them also,
we have deals that have beencreated in the pipeline. Mhmm.
And and the human never had tofill out another form ever.
Max Cohen (30:54):
Yes. Funny way she tried stuff without, like,
forcing a conversion. Yeah. Youknow?
George B. Thomas (30:58):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (31:00):
I feel like I used to have a really, really good talk
track about this, and Idefinitely have forgotten it
because I'm not repeating itevery two weeks to a bunch of
new hires. But I think the thebig thing that I was trying to,
like, get across, like, okay, ifyou are making a landing page or
for that matter, any sort ofpage with a form on it, which I
(31:20):
guess is always gonna be somekind of Well, it
George B. Thomas (31:23):
could be product. It could be service.
Max Cohen (31:25):
Sure.
George B. Thomas (31:25):
Like So much so much in this last week and
this week, we were talking aboutebooks, guides, checklists, but
let's be honest.
Max Cohen (31:31):
Yeah. Yeah. I guess if we think about I think I
guess if we think about, like,you know, a form in the
marketing sense. Right? Becauselike, let's be honest, the only
piece of information you youprobably think you need is
email.
Right? But, you know, the thething that I always tell people
is when you're deciding whatquestions to put on a form on a
landing page, you you have toplay the risk and reward game.
(31:55):
Right? I think I've talked aboutthis before in the show like a
long time ago. But like everysingle time you put another
question on a form, Right?
And I still think this holdstrue to today. Right? You are
risking that someone is gonnago, that's too much information
to give away, or it's gonna takeme too long to fill the form
out, or I'm not comfortablegiving that away. Right? Like
(32:17):
every single time you addanything else onto that form,
you're increasing that chance alittle bit that you're gonna
turn someone away from it.
Right? So what you need to do isyou need to say, hey, if I'm
gonna risk putting this questionon this form, is there a big
reward for me as a marketer? Sothe question is Or sales team.
True. Yeah.
(32:37):
But still it's it's, you know,if it helps your sales team, I
guess it helps you. Right?
George B. Thomas (32:42):
Yes. Yes.
Max Cohen (32:42):
So the reward is what what would be reward is like,
can I use this piece ofinformation to market to this
person more effectively andcreate a better experience for
them? Right? Creating a betterexperience for them is not
rewards. Ready is not. Let meget their phone number super
fast so I can have a BDR gointerrupt their day.
(33:04):
No. Right. But a good example isasking that persona question,
getting a general idea of whothis person is. So like, yeah,
getting their phone number andhaving someone call them way
before may appear as a valuablepiece of information for your
sales team who, sorry guys, allthey know is just how to just
(33:24):
incessantly pester people untilthey say go away. Right?
But again, maybe ask thatpersona question so I can at
least get a slight understandingof what might be relevant to
send to you in the future.
George B. Thomas (33:37):
That's snap shot.
Max Cohen (33:37):
Just because I wanna be a moral marketer. So I don't
send you stuff that makes yougo, wow, these people are
annoying. Right. And immediatelylose credibility with you. Okay.
I try
George B. Thomas (33:47):
to look at it as like, what information can I
ask for the value I'm givingthat is a snapshot of
understanding?
Max Cohen (33:53):
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (33:55):
You know what I mean? The rest of the journey,
can get more, but I at least seethat initial snapshot to to
provide better pathways in thefuture, we'll say.
Max Cohen (34:04):
Correct. Yeah. And and and, you know, just making
it so that like the productbecause the product that you
provide to them before theyactually buy the thing that you
sell, the product that yourcompany provides is a marketing
experience. Yep. Right?
And so you gotta say, whatquestions can I ask to deliver
that product in the meantime?Much better. Right? I think a
(34:28):
lot of it comes down even tojust like the same conversation
we have around why we do thesethings or why we think about
these things in this way is thesame reason why we talk about
why customer service is soimportant, right? It's another
one of those things where itfeels really good to do it and
sure you have a lot ofopportunities to do the morally
good business thing and a lot ofcustomer service situations, and
(34:52):
you have a lot of opportunity todo the right thing, right?
But it's not just doing theright thing because it feels
good. It's doing the right thingbecause that's good for
business, right? Yeah. You know,the same thing goes for a lot of
the stuff that we're talkingabout.
George B. Thomas (35:04):
Yeah. You you have said do the right thing so
many times in this episode. Itmakes you want to go back and
watch the movie, do the rightthing. I haven't watched it in
so many ways. People want to
Max Cohen (35:14):
actually do the right thing.
George B. Thomas (35:15):
Yeah. Right. The right thing is always the
right thing. Liz, what's next?We're we're we're hurt.
Heard us. We're we're having agood conversation.
Liz Moorehead (35:22):
What I want to cover. No, I want you just have
heard us conversation for areason.
George B. Thomas (35:26):
Now, heard, heard,
Max Cohen (35:29):
Like, yes. Heard us. Heard us, please.
Liz Moorehead (35:33):
What?
Max Cohen (35:33):
Do you ask us a painful question?
George B. Thomas (35:35):
No. No. I don't want a painful question.
Max Cohen (35:38):
I
Liz Moorehead (35:38):
don't like needles. Well, I'm gonna call
out a painfully obvious pointthat we need to address. Right?
So one of the things that we'vebeen talking about over the past
this episode and the lastepisode about landing pages is
how so much of the content hasbecome transactional, flimsy.
You're not really digging intothe depth of what it is that's
being offered, things like that.
(36:00):
But we also have to contend withthe fact that people's attention
spans are getting shorter. Sohow do we check both of those
boxes? Right? Because I think wecan all close our eyes and
imagine a circa twenty fourteenlanding page. Would you like
this ebook?
Download now. You will learnblank, blank, blank and more.
(36:22):
Please give us your name, yourphone number, your firstborn's
child's name, like all of thesedifferent things, right? But
still the meat of that landingpage was pretty weak sauce. But
today people have shorterattention spans but they want
more value and they want moresubstance.
So how do we, how? How? And why?Do you like that, Max?
Max Cohen (36:43):
We stop using landing pages. We just start creating
content where people actuallywanna get it.
Liz Moorehead (36:48):
Like, I George, you and I did that with content.
Like, we, like, just don'there's the whole thing. If you
would like it for later, you canstill also download it.
Max Cohen (36:58):
Yeah. See, the thing the thing is is, like, where so
before people were okay, Ithink, getting their value by
going, let me go find the thing.And let me go fill out this form
so I could then get the thing.And then let me go into my email
address and open up the file andread it. But now we're in the
zero attention span.
(37:19):
Swipe from a swipe. Go throughNo.
George B. Thomas (37:21):
I agree with that.
Max Cohen (37:23):
No. No. What I'm saying is lean into that stuff.
Right? Like and and and andhere's the question.
Okay. Hold on. Ready? I think ifyou were to sit somebody down
and say, is it more important toyou? Well, actually, George, let
me ask you.
George B. Thomas (37:39):
Oh, God. Here we go.
Max Cohen (37:41):
Yeah. Is it more important to you that somebody
consumes a piece of content andthen in their in their brain
feels better about you andbetter about your brand and
maybe learn something or you getan email address. What would you
rather have happen?
George B. Thomas (38:01):
I would rather have the human consume the
content, but I'll add a caveatand they would feel better about
themselves or the situation thatthey're in. Sure. Because of the
content that we've created.
Max Cohen (38:14):
Way, way more valuable than an email. Getting
an email. Right. So my questionwould be, if you want to create
more opportunities for that tohappen. Right.
You're probably going to go theroute that puts the least, you
know, in front of that aspossible and gets people there
quicker. Right. And I wouldthink you do what I mean,
(38:37):
George, you already do this. Youcreate an insane amount of
content that's ungated.
Liz Moorehead (38:42):
You know
George B. Thomas (38:42):
what I mean?
Max Cohen (38:43):
And I think like that's in and when we talk about
the age of shortened attentionspan, I was saying this back
when I was doing marketingonboarding. So I was like, we're
in the age where people wannawatch, not read. So, like, go
instead of writing this freakinggiant ebook, dude, go start the
(39:03):
YouTube channel. Right? Go,like, get the content out there
that's gonna change the heartsand minds and, like, put a % of
your focus into that than hyperfixating on getting email
address.
George B. Thomas (39:15):
I mean, listen, like Landing pages have
their place like they do.Without a doubt. For sure.
Max Cohen (39:22):
But like when we talk about short attention stuff,
short attention span stuff andhow to combat that, I mean, if
it's in the context of landingpages and the shirts like
minimal questions on the form,right? Maybe you do limit
distractions in ways that aren'tsuper sketchy. Right? But I
think also make it likeabundantly clear what someone's
(39:44):
getting if they do fill the formout. Right?
So there isn't any ambiguity,right? Because the last thing
you want someone doing whenthey're going like, oh, no, I
really want to fill this formout is them going, I don't
really know what I'm getting ifI fill this out. Right?
George B. Thomas (39:58):
I'm not filling it out if I don't know
exactly.
Max Cohen (40:00):
Right. So be super clear on what the offer is or
whatever it is that thatsomeone's happening or
George B. Thomas (40:05):
what's happening now. Don't don't be
fluffy with like, download ourebook. Just shut the no. Like,
actually, like, anyway. Sohere's the thing, My brain is
battling with this because Idon't know if we have a short
attention span.
And let me explain. I think wedo when things might be crappy
(40:28):
or when we're trying to escape.Right? Like we're just trying to
escape. And so we'll go onFacebook or we'll go on YouTube
and we'll watch the shorts andwe'll, you know, get thumb
cramps because we're just like,we're just, we're checking out,
we're escaping.
When it comes to what'simportant though, I think, or
what's good, I don't think thatwe have a short attention span.
(40:51):
Like, listen, I've sat andwatched both Avatar movies back
to back. Right? I didn't have ashort attention span. Shoot,
this weekend, I made it a pointto have some downtime.
I watched almost a season and ahalf of The Chosen. That was not
a short attention span, a seasonand a half of The Chosen, right?
(41:11):
And so, but it was somethinggood. And here's the key that I
want people to think about. It'sthe journey.
You're on a journey, and if yourcontent, whether it be landing
page, because now you're usingit as a pillar page, but if your
content can put them on ajourney. And so maybe you do
have a couple micro videos thatare actually in some copy, and
(41:33):
maybe you have some other mediaelements, like a podcast that
happens to be embedded in, like,whatever it is. You're trying to
create a journey, a good journeyof valuable information that may
eventually lead to a conversion.Listen, I wanna circle back
around on something else here.Max, you said you've you've
(41:54):
created a lot of ungatedcontent.
Me. Right? Brother, I've beencreating content since 2013 and
I've given a lot of it away. Andlet's be honest with you, I'm
still kind of giving it away andI'm realizing that it's less
about any type of conversion andit's more about maximizing
conversations and it's aboutscaling who I am. And this is
(42:18):
literally, we're talking aboutone of the reasons why I've
createdhelper.georgebthomas.com, which
is the HubSpot slash humanhelper, the clone that has all
of that free content that hastrained it in to be what it
needs to be or what it can befor people.
And now you can go in and youcan extract whatever value you
(42:39):
need out of all of that contentat any given point in time,
twenty fourseven. So scalinghelpfulness, forgetting about
conversion, by the way, there'sonly there's, you can use it for
free or you can get unlimitedaccess for $25 a month. 20 4 7
HubSpot help no matter what. I Iand if you go to the landing
(43:00):
page for it, by the way, it'sgeorge b thomas dot com forward
slash helper. There's not afreaking form on it.
It's a button that takes you tothe clone so that you can start
a conversation with it. Becauseagain, you got to start thinking
about the experience. You got tostart thinking about the
journey. You've got to startthinking about the human. And if
you're going to be a moralmarketer, what does that mean
that you might have to changeover time?
(43:21):
By the way, in the last twoepisodes, we've given you an ish
ton of things that you need togo back and look and see about
changing your landing pages.
Liz Moorehead (43:30):
You know, you said something, George, in your
answer there that I wanna pointout. I think sometimes we have a
very reductive thought processwhen we hear someone say, well,
our audiences have shorterattention spans. They will
commit to deep, lengthy contentif they see the value in it.
George B. Thomas (43:47):
Yes. So is it the overall
Liz Moorehead (43:49):
attention span short? Is it the overall
attention span that'sshortening, or is it the window
you have to demonstrate thevalue that is short? Yes.
Max Cohen (43:57):
And part
Liz Moorehead (43:58):
of the reason why I think it's getting shorter is
because historically marketershave not done a very good job of
demonstrating value. We eitherbelieve that it what we are
trying to give them is obviousor quite frankly, that you
should just understand you oweus your information we show you
what is actually valuable.
George B. Thomas (44:19):
Listen, I was, oh God, I was on It's been a
while since
Liz Moorehead (44:24):
I've made George that. I'm very proud.
George B. Thomas (44:25):
Oh, my god. I was on a so I love all of the
humans. Alright. I love all ofthe humans. I was on a marketing
professor's webinar.
If you happen to be the personwho was on the webinar and said
this, and you're listening tothis podcast, I apologize. I
don't know your name. I can'tuse your name. I won't use your
name. But I literally got aquestion at the end of a forty,
(44:49):
thirty five, forty minutesession about all the strategy
and tactics B2B marketers shouldbe using when it comes to video
nowadays in 2025.
And the question came to me of,yes, but how do I do this
without giving away the secretsauce? And I about lost my dang
mind because the value is in thesecret sauce. The conversion is
(45:14):
in the secret sauce. Theconversation is in the secret
sauce. The cash flow, the ROI,the revenue is in the secret
sauce, share it.
That's what you do. I might needa minute.
Max Cohen (45:31):
I mean, it's it's and there's there's a lot of truth
behind that. Right? Like, Ithink you gotta remember when
you go and share the secretsauce. Right? There's, I think
it was just what?
One of two or one of threethings that happened, right?
Actually, yeah, it's one ofthree things that happened,
right? The majority of peopleare gonna just read it and go,
(45:53):
oh, and not do anything. Thenthere's going to be two people
left. Right?
The folks that take the advicethat the secret sauce offers and
goes and solve their problem orhits their goal or challenger
does whatever with that. Andthen you've created a really
great promoter of your content,which is something that you
want. So you want other peoplegoing, this content's good, it
(46:15):
helped me do this thing. Andthey're going to share it out to
other people and then otherpeople are going to see it. It's
going to have a compoundingeffect.
Right? And then as the otherpeople are gonna go, oh, that's
an interesting way to solve mygoal or challenge. Thank you for
the secret sauce. They're gonnaslip the secret sauce and then
they're gonna go, oh, this isactually way too hard, but you
guys seem to know what you'redoing. Let me hire you.
That's literally all that couldhappen. Right? What a lot of
(46:37):
people think is they're gonnatheir competitor is gonna go,
oh, that is their secret sauce.We are going to then steal their
idea and do exactly what theydo. Nope.
No. They're no. That's notwhat's gonna happen. What's
gonna happen is those twothings. Right?
It's again, physics of content,physics of physics of marketing.
But yeah. I mean, give away yoursecret sauce. That's the whole
point. Guess guess what?
If you don't put any secretsauce in your content, your
(46:58):
content's going to suck. Imagine
Liz Moorehead (47:00):
a Big Mac without secret sauce.
Max Cohen (47:02):
Exactly.
George B. Thomas (47:03):
That's not a Big Mac. It's just a bun and
some burger.
Liz Moorehead (47:05):
Sad meat.
Max Cohen (47:06):
Yeah. Butt and some burger.
George B. Thomas (47:07):
That's right there.
Max Cohen (47:08):
That's the Just the
George B. Thomas (47:10):
bun. The bun and some burger. Wants landing
pages that are sad meat. Justgonna throw that out.
Max Cohen (47:15):
Yo. Sad meat is wild, dude.
Liz Moorehead (47:20):
Thank you. Thank you. I try to have at least one
good punchline per quarter. Yep.See you on q two.
Alright. So, George, I want youto take us home. Yeah. We've had
a really interesting, expansivediscussion today about the
nature of quality content inlanding pages and how we
(47:42):
actually create that. What arethe between one and seventy five
thousand things you would likeour listeners to walk away from
today's episode with?
George B. Thomas (47:50):
No. One thing.
Liz Moorehead (47:52):
Oh my god. Are you serious?
George B. Thomas (47:53):
Yeah. No. One thing. One one thing. One thing.
Here here's the deal. This iswhat I want you to do. I want
you to go look at your landingpage or landing pages, and I
want you to ask you a questyourself a question. Is this
landing page all about thehumans or all about us? If it's
not about the humans and theexperience and the value that
(48:18):
you can give them, fix it nowtoday.
Okay, hub heroes. We've reachedthe end of another episode. Will
Lord Lack continue to loom overthe community or will we be able
to defeat him in the nextepisode of the hub heroes
podcast? Make sure you tune inand find out in the next
(48:39):
episode. Make sure you head overto the hubheroes.com to get the
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(49:01):
and use the hashtag hashtag hubheroes podcast on any of the
socials and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next. Until nexttime, when we meet and combine
our forces, remember to be ahappy, helpful, humble human,
and of course, always be lookingfor a way to be someone's hero.
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloedapartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace, lord lack, lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:22):
tool in your superhero toolbelt? Knowledge.
Never fear hub heroes. Get readyto don your cape and mask, move
into action, and become the hubhero your organization needs.
Tune in each week to join theleague of extraordinary inbound
heroes as we help you educate,empower, and execute. Hub
(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Liz Moorehead (00:52):
And we're back versus another episode of Hub
Heroes, guys.
George B. Thomas (00:56):
We are. Hey. Hey. Doing great. Before we dive
into the actual conversation, bythe way, because I know we're
this is, like, part two, theElectric Boogaloo, you know,
landing pages.
Joke.
Liz Moorehead (01:08):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (01:09):
Well, you you could you could still use it.
I'm old enough to have actuallywatched Break Into Electric
Boogaloo anyway. But here's thething. I wanna make sure,
because I'm about to Well, Ialready did one. Recertified
HubSpot Academy certificationlast week.
(01:29):
And I'm about to be on a kick todo a whole bunch more
certifications because yes, eventhough your boy has been in the
ecosystem for twelve years, eventhough I've recertified these
things like four, if not sixtimes, depending on the
certification and how often youhave to do it, I'm going to
continue to do it. There's newvideos. I was kind of going
(01:49):
through ones to see like, shouldI redo this? What's new? You can
see the little orange dot forwhat you've watched, the ones
you there's a lot that I haven'twatched since the last time I so
I'm I'm glad it's up to all ofthis, all of this, Liz, Max
Mhmm.
Listeners to say HubSpot'sAcademy World Certification
Week. Hey, we need to plan forIs that already coming up? No,
(02:13):
no, no. Giving us a good lead intime. We probably need to have
an episode closer to this.
But if you're sitting here andyou're like, yeah, George, I'm
like you, I need to researchtoo, or I need to get a
certification that I've beenwanting to get because I never
got it. April twenty eighththrough May 2 is when worlds or
(02:34):
HubSpot Academy WorldCertification Week is scheduled.
So just put that on yourcalendar right now, everybody.
Liz Moorehead (02:39):
So it's gonna be like a month.
George B. Thomas (02:40):
It's it's April 28 to May 2. No, it's in a
month.
Liz Moorehead (02:44):
That's what I'm saying. It's about a month.
George B. Thomas (02:45):
Yeah. Yeah. In about a month. So I'm trying to
I'm the reason I'm bringing thatup is because like, if we
schedule it, it can happen. Andso many times in the past couple
of years, we've been doing this,we get to it.
I'm like, God, we're herealready. Like, even Max, like,
is that coming up already?Listen, I'm giving you thirty
days to block some time off inyour calendar so that you can
actually do some good in theworld and get your
(03:08):
certifications as well. Okay,sorry, Liz. I had to throw that
in this morning because it'simportant.
Liz Moorehead (03:12):
No, that is really important. I mean, the
reality is, is that if you'renot constantly flexing and
strengthening your muscles as aninbound practitioner, no matter
what your role is, like, there'sno such thing as reaching a
point where you can stoplearning.
George B. Thomas (03:27):
No. I think
Liz Moorehead (03:28):
what's so challenging to me about it is
and and I'm equally guilty ofthis too. Right? I will always
find ways to say, Ugh, I have somuch work to do. Oh, work is so
much more important. But theseare certifications that actually
impact your work and yourability to affect more positive
change within your role.
Like this isn't one of thosethings where it's like we're
going into an abstractexperience where we're going to
(03:51):
learn some high level conceptsthat might be no, it'll actually
teach you to use the toolsyou're using every day better,
more effectively and to getgreater outputs.
George B. Thomas (04:00):
Yeah. Like, I mean, listen, if you, if you do
the content certification andyou do the SEO certification and
maybe if you do the digitaladvertising certification, I bet
you have some beastie landingpages by the time you're done
with all that knowledge. I'mjust trying to tie it back into
what we're actually talkingabout today, you know.
Max Cohen (04:19):
Beastly landing pages.
George B. Thomas (04:21):
Beastly pages. Yeah.
Max Cohen (04:22):
It's wild.
George B. Thomas (04:23):
You like that? I love it. I can't
Max Cohen (04:26):
even remember the last time I built a landing page
if I'm being completely honest.
George B. Thomas (04:29):
Oh, dude.
Max Cohen (04:29):
Well, it's because I'm not in a marketing role.
George B. Thomas (04:31):
Right.
Max Cohen (04:31):
Right. I'm sure I'm sure Nikki's built, you know, an
LP or two, you know, recently.Uh-oh. Don't worry. Mean, I
still I'm trying
George B. Thomas (04:39):
hear Liz, and I feel like Liz can't hear us.
Max Cohen (04:42):
Oh, she's
George B. Thomas (04:43):
on mute. And and I'm not sure, like Hello?
And gentlemen. Yeah. There wego.
Now we can It
Max Cohen (04:48):
was weird. It was like the mute button was
fighting you.
Liz Moorehead (04:51):
No. It actually still is. I have to hold my
space star bar down to keep mymic on.
Max Cohen (04:55):
That's interesting. Well, hopefully, your finger
George B. Thomas (04:58):
doesn't cramp up by the time this is over.
Max Cohen (05:00):
Liz is on push to talk right now, dude.
Liz Moorehead (05:02):
Yeah. Don't know why. Alright. Well, anyway.
George B. Thomas (05:05):
Here we go.
Liz Moorehead (05:06):
Here we go, guys. We're back for another round
Yep. Of landing pages.
George B. Thomas (05:12):
You know, this shouldn't surprise me that you
have to hit the space barbecause if you remember last
episode, the world didn't wantus to talk about landing pages
like everything was happening,and now this anyway, let's talk
about landing pages.
Liz Moorehead (05:23):
Still gonna talk about landing pages. They're
that important. And, Max, youwere not here for this horrific
discovery that I made, which isthat we've somehow never talked
about them. Like, I literallywent through our entire catalog.
I I went through our entirecatalog.
Couldn't find a dang thing aboutit.
George B. Thomas (05:40):
Years, bro. Years. Years. Years of episodes.
Liz Moorehead (05:43):
We've talked about the social media tool
twice. Email marketing threetimes.
George B. Thomas (05:49):
Commerce hub 52 times. No. Just kidding.
Liz Moorehead (05:52):
The HGT now. Yeah. And so here we are.
Max Cohen (05:56):
AI 468,000.
George B. Thomas (05:58):
Right. Right. True facts right there.
Max Cohen (06:01):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (06:01):
So we're back with part two of this incredible
conversation because who knewthat one of the most
foundational building blocks ofthe HubSpot inbound marketing
ecosystem would require so muchdiscussion? Who knew?
Max Cohen (06:17):
Who knew? Who knew? Who knew?
George B. Thomas (06:18):
I mean, us now, obviously, but Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (06:21):
But, Max, I wanna start with you by asking you a
question that I asked George andChad last week, particularly as
someone like you worked atHubSpot, you've been in the
inbound ecosystem for a reallylong time. Let's start our
conversation back at thebeginning. And I'd love to hear
from you if you think there areany outdated landing page best
(06:42):
practices that people are stillclinging to. Right? Those common
mistakes that people are stillmaking.
Max Cohen (06:47):
Yeah. I mean, I always kind of thought the whole
remove the navigation thing waskind of cringe. Right? Because
to me it didn't well, I know. Icould see both sides of the
argument where you want to limitdistractions.
Right? But I think there's afine line between limiting
distractions and doing some,like, weird, you know, unsavory
(07:09):
things just to steal people'sattention. Right? So I I I kinda
think the whole remove the navthing is like kinda played out.
And honestly, like looking backon it, because again, I was, you
know, I don't wanna say guiltyof teaching this, but like, you
know, I definitely had it verymuch imprinted into my brain of
(07:31):
like, oh, you must remove thenavigation on landing pages.
And the reasoning made sense,right? But thinking back on it
now, think about how you'd reactif you were on a website and all
of a sudden the nav went away.Right? You'd probably be kind of
distracted in like, oh, wait,why is this website breaking? Or
am I on a different website?
(07:52):
Oh, the URL changed as well too.Because remember how everyone
back then was doing likeinfodot, you know, whatever.com.
Right? You know, a lot of that Ithink, like, looking back on it,
while, like, functionally kindof made like, functionally made
sense. There's, I think, plentyof things that I could look back
on and go like, oh, no.
Maybe this wasn't, like, thebest thing ever. You know, like,
(08:16):
thinking about it, like, alittle bit more tactically. But
I might be overthinking it toobecause it's been a while since
I've actually popped this stuff.But, yeah, I think the the
navigation thing is kind offunky. I also think just, like,
the the thing that kind ofalways bugged me too is like how
much of a emphasis was put on itfor just straight up lead
generation.
Right? And not actually takingit as an opportunity to educate
(08:37):
someone with that piece ofcontent that you're getting
behind that landing page. Right?Like, what I feel like people
thought too much was that, oh,I'm making this landing page so
I can get somebody's email so Ican send them emails later. And
I feel like that's the mode alot of us were in.
And maybe that's either how wedirectly interpret it or maybe
(08:58):
misinterpreted the biggerpicture of what inbound was.
Yeah. But, you know, I I thinkwhat a lot of people forgot is,
like, putting a lot of specialcare and attention into whatever
it was that that person wasgiving up their information in
order to get. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (09:14):
It's like Well,
Max Cohen (09:15):
because you forget that you have that opportunity
that when someone digests thatpiece of content, right, and
actually gets their hands on itand starts to consume it, right,
Their brain is in this mode of,oh, I'm really excited to learn
this thing and I just gave awaysomething valuable to me, which
was like the means to interruptmy day and get in touch with me,
(09:36):
right? And they're immediatelygoing, was this worth that trade
off? And they're deciding likewithin twenty five seconds, if
they're just going to go totheir email and hit the
unsubscribe from whatever yousent them. Right? Because if you
were to supply them with thatpiece of content and then they
start consuming it and then theygo, oh wait, this was a waste of
(09:57):
time or, oh, this isn't actuallyhelping me.
They feel duped, right? Sothere's like a big risk there
know, that I think a lot ofpeople didn't think about. They
just kinda said, oh, we got theemail. Mission accomplished.
Not, alright.
Great. We got the email. We cankeep talking to them. But, like,
let's hope this piece of contentactually shifted their brain in
the right direction that wewanted to or taught them
(10:17):
something or made them look atus more favorably after they
consumed it and didn't feel likethey just got tricked. Right?
Yeah. Don't think people thoughtabout that far.
George B. Thomas (10:26):
Yeah. No, Max, it's interesting because when I
think about, you know, I'll saythe good old days, even when I
see when I, when I see thingsnow, it's like the email
shouldn't be the goal. That'sright. Email should be an
outcome of like a larger goal.And so you're right.
This whole idea of what I fellin love with inbound was about
(10:46):
it, it, you know, being human.And I think about if you're, if
you're even thinking abouthaving landing pages, how your
brain of the person who's goingto have the landing pages should
probably have some type of valuefirst human centric, adding
value to the world, to thereader, to the viewer, whatever
is behind that gate. It shouldbe coming from a place where
(11:10):
you're trying to help them bebetter, make a situation better,
fix a problem that they might.And and so many times it's like,
hey, let's let's create thisseven step checklist so we can
get an email. Yeah.
That's not.
Max Cohen (11:23):
Yeah. It's like the it's the the point isn't to get
for a lot of people, the pointis to get the email because
that's all people think about.Right? The the email is Or the
point of getting the email islike, we got the email, so we
have a way to communicate withthem. Should this piece of
content made them actually wantto continue doing that?
Yeah. Right? Like that's reallykind of what should be, right?
George B. Thomas (11:46):
Because it's shameful if you're like creating
more harm than good.
Max Cohen (11:51):
Right? That's the thing. People opened up a lot of
these opportunities to create alot more harm, not in like the
esoteric sense of like, oh, theyduped somebody and that was like
morally incorrect from amarketing standpoint for them to
do it. It's no, no, no. You turnsomeone into a detractor because
of your content and that sucks.
George B. Thomas (12:12):
Yeah. That's the exact opposite. Sucks. Like
you're trying to build trust.
Max Cohen (12:15):
It's like, bro, someone's already a detractor of
your company and they didn'teven get to buying your company
yet. Just marketed them intobeing a detractor. You didn't
even get to make any money offof them. They just hate you
already. What?
Dude. Yeah. Like, come on.
George B. Thomas (12:31):
Liz, one of the things that's fun about this
being like part two is I've hadtime to actually think about
some some of this and I wannaadd in Yeah. I I wanna add in
one that I didn't talk aboutlast time because HubSpot does
these really cool things for us.Right? And and and it's subtle
things. And sometimes when theydo them, people don't even know
that they've done them.
(12:52):
And so, if you haven't gone intoyour files area of HubSpot and
realize that you have a tab thatsays stock images, and that
there's literally a shutterstock system inside of your
HubSpot file manager to be ableto use in your emails and your
landing pages, then, well, it'sthere for you. But here's the
(13:14):
thing, I hate landing pages whenyou get to it and it just
screams fake. Like fake photos,like stock photography, like it
doesn't feel like it's evenconnected to the thing. And so
like this idea of like, can wejust get some pictures of some
real people? Can we just maybeget a picture of like maybe your
(13:35):
real office?
I don't even care if you'reremote. Like whatever the
landing page is, can we getsomething that feels more like
you, your brand, instead of,again, slapping in that seven
step checklist and slapping on astock photo and being like, it's
a day, ladies and gentlemen.Thousands of people are gonna
give us their emails so that wecan spam the crap out of like,
(13:57):
or or even like video instead ofimage on landing pages would be,
I would love that, but we'lltalk about AB testing a little
bit later and things like that.But but stock photography,
please, all the totally, ifyou're listening to this, go
back through all of your landingpages and look for where you've
used stock photography and comeup with a strategy to figure out
how to replace that stuff.
Liz Moorehead (14:18):
I gotta throw in one more too, George, because I
had a similar thing. You know?Even though I was the one who
prepared that episode, the moreI sat with these the more I sat
with these questions, I Iactually went about my week last
week and thought, you know, I'mjust gonna start paying
attention to the things thatmake me go when I'm looking at a
landing page.
George B. Thomas (14:34):
And
Liz Moorehead (14:35):
I remember one of the things that HubSpot rolled
out a few years ago was youwould end up on a landing page
and then you would fill out whatyou thought was the form, but
then you were taken to aseparate second super secret
form with way more information.And
Max Cohen (14:53):
Cringe.
Liz Moorehead (14:53):
Like, as a marketer, you're like, this is
great because it reduces thatfirst barrier of them, like,
wanting to give theirinformation. But then I just
feel duped, hoodwinked,amboozled, let us dry.
George B. Thomas (15:04):
That's the word the word duped is the word
for for for today's episode. Youknow, it's funny, but it's
insane.
Max Cohen (15:12):
What I'm talking about because, like, instead of
you being like, oh, let me trytheir product or their product's
not that great. You just go, oh,these people are scumbags before
you even get there.
George B. Thomas (15:21):
Yeah. And let me be completely honest, though,
because you say that. And then Iremember back in the day where I
had this, like, thing that I didand then I had a second form
after it. And the second formwas like, I wanna know you. It
was positioned that by the way,this is me calling myself out on
my own ish historically.
I literally had a second formthat was like, I wanna get to
(15:44):
know you better so we can belike buddies and like add
additional information. And inhindsight, that was like the
dumbest ish that I everattempted to do. And that's a
friend, Hal. Yeah. It didn't itdidn't last long.
And it's just like it's if Itake what Max was talking about
and Liz, what you're talkingabout, it's like, well, I wanted
to be your friend on the firstconversion, but I sure don't
(16:06):
want to be your friend on thesecond. Like, I'm out. You know
what I mean?
Max Cohen (16:10):
Yeah. Well, let me ask you this, George. What was
the intent of you gathering thatdata?
George B. Thomas (16:15):
I mean, I did want to know more about the
humans so that I couldcommunicate with them in a
better way. A lot of it waslike, how long have you been
using HubSpot? What HubSpot hubsare you using? Like, so there
was a positive intent on theother side, but I can understand
how it might have felt like,bro, I just filled out a form.
(16:35):
Why are you asking me to fillout another one?
Max Cohen (16:37):
Well, did you gate additional stuff from that?
George B. Thomas (16:40):
No. No. It was just trying to get to know them
better. You know what I mean? Igave them the thing that I said
I would give them.
Max Cohen (16:45):
Okay. There you go. See, I think that's okay because
you didn't I
George B. Thomas (16:50):
don't feel bad about myself now then.
Max Cohen (16:51):
Because what was the what was the obligation of them
filling up? What do they have to
George B. Thomas (16:55):
No obligation on the second Just Right. I
wanted to know more about That'sokay. Was a curious human being.
Max Cohen (17:00):
That's okay. Because what you didn't do was oh,
here's the little thing. Oh, gotto quick here. That's different.
See, that's different to me.
Right? You know, it's like thethe worst thing the way I see
people do it like a really badworst practice, I guess, in that
scenario is, like, you getemail. Like, the form looks like
(17:22):
just email. K? And you're like,oh, easy.
Just email. But they're doing itbecause they wanna capture the
email if the rest of the forumturns you off. Right? Because
then they've at least got youremail. Right?
And so even when you see thenext part of the forum and
you're like, no, I'm sorry. I'mnot gonna give you my social
security number and my boss'semail address.
George B. Thomas (17:43):
My credit card number.
Max Cohen (17:44):
Yeah. I'm not gonna, like, tell you how many you
know, when my company buysstuff. Like, you know what I
mean? Like Yeah. And and andbefore I actually get the thing
I wanna get, well, they go, oh,that's fine.
We got your email. That's all wewanted anyway. That's the worst.
I think it's a dark pattern iswhat people call it.
George B. Thomas (17:59):
Yeah. The darks, like, it's it's like the
dark side of conversion rate.It's the opposite of conversion
rate optimization. Right?
Max Cohen (18:07):
Well, I mean, if you think about it, from a raw like
conversion optimization, it'snearly perfect. Right? Because
you're getting the most valuablething, which is to me a very
subjective idea of value there.Right? You're getting what you
interpret as the most valuablething, which is the email
(18:29):
address, which let's be honest,you didn't wanna educate
somebody.
You just wanted that the entiretime if you're pulling a scumbag
move like this. Right? Butyou're eliminating all the stuff
that would get in the way ofthat conversion happening. So,
like, from conversionoptimization standpoint, great.
From actually doing somethinguseful for that person who's
who's, you know, trying to getyour content and learn
(18:52):
something, you've doneabsolutely zero, buddy.
You've you've duped them.
George B. Thomas (18:56):
It's interesting because we're
literally having a selfishnessversus servanthood. A
fundamental basis. Right?Conversion rate optimization in
a selfish way. But what can Iget out of it versus conversion
rate optimization of aservanthood?
Like what can I give them? Whatcan they get out of it?
Max Cohen (19:13):
But so yes, I agree. The moral marketer says yes,
right? The moral marketer saysyes. I wanna serve people with
content. I wanna teach them.
But here here's the other thing.That's not your job. Your job is
to make the business money.Right? And what I'm trying to
say is like, sure, that kind offeels good and you should do
(19:33):
that.
And yeah, you should do theright thing. Absolutely. Right?
But there are reasons beyondjust doing the right thing that
makes a lot of these tacticsreally dumb. You know what I
mean?
A lot of that
George B. Thomas (19:44):
I hear you.
Max Cohen (19:45):
A lot of that comes down to the little micro
experiences you're creating forpeople when they're interacting
with your comment that eithermakes them hate you before they
even hate your product. You knowwhat I'm saying? Yeah. Right?
And so it's just one of thosethings.
So it's like, yeah, should youshould you focus on educating
people? Yes. Not because itfeels good though, because
that's good for your business.Like that like that. That's the
(20:08):
thing.
But but yeah. I mean, again, I II am super down with doing the
right thing and creating contentthat actually educates people.
That makes me feel good and itmakes me wanna do my job. Yeah.
And it makes me feel like I'mdoing more than just selling a
product.
I'm I'm educating people andgetting without Here's the
thing. Not a lot of peopleoperate that way. Right? Yeah.
(20:30):
You know what
Liz Moorehead (20:30):
I mean?
George B. Thomas (20:31):
What you said? What you said? Because let's be
honest, like, of my emails overthe weekend literally had a
playlist to your quote happilyplaylist on YouTube. Oh. Because
I was like, hey, you need tocheck this out because at least
you can, without getting in thesales funnel, you can at least
see if it's gonna be a right fitfor what you're trying to do.
Oh, yeah. Same thing, by theway, same thing with oh, dang on
(20:52):
it. My friend, my friend withwow, I'm having a senior moment.
I literally am. PixelCompressed.
Whoo. My goodness. How did Iforget the name of that? So,
it's like, talk about service orvalue. And by the way, and I'm
bringing this up because landingpages, and I just brought up
(21:13):
stock photography too.
The other thing that needs todie is your landing pages don't
load quickly, especially if theydon't load quickly on, like, a
mobile device because I'm on myphone a lot, but I'm also on my
desktop a lot. But, like,something like a quote happily
or something like pixel compresswhere they're like adding value
by interviews or by tutorial orby just making it your life
(21:37):
better because it's likestreamlining and optimizing. By
the way, they are sponsoring thepodcast right now for the next,
I think it's like thirty orsixty days. You might hear a
little ad in here if you listen,listeners to the very ending or
it might even hit you in themiddle. But Pixel Compressed is
amazing.
It's definitely something youshould be looking at in your
(21:58):
HubSpot portal for optimizedimages of landing pages, website
pages, even your emails. By theway, if your emails are loading
slow, come on. Like, it's twentytwenty five. Anyway, let's let's
keep moving We
Max Cohen (22:12):
need start doing funny ad reads, I think.
George B. Thomas (22:14):
Oh, that would be fun. That would be fun.
Liz Moorehead (22:16):
Well, you already brought this up, George. So I
want to I want to bring thisright back to you. So over the
years, HubSpot has rolled out somany different tools in regards
to how you create morepersonalized experiences or
deeper content experiences. Sofor example, AI driven tools or
as you mentioned earlier, smartcontent features. Now as someone
(22:38):
who has a lot of experienceswith these tools, George, I
would love to hear you talk toour audience for a bit about how
we should be leveraging thosetools today to optimize landing
pages in ways that weren'tpossible five years ago.
Because I know you and I stillboth encounter landing pages
where we're like, you guys, thisis this this is 2018. What are
(22:59):
we doing here?
George B. Thomas (22:59):
Well, well, in some of this, what's funny, I
I'd like to go back to by theway, I can't move forward
without saying if there's not abook called The Moral Marketer,
somebody needs to write the dangbook, The Moral Marketer. I'm
just saying. Anyway, but
Max Cohen (23:13):
Somebody said not be me because I can't write a book.
George B. Thomas (23:15):
Well, you know, but maybe it should be
you, but with a ghostwriter.Anyway Right. Like Liz, here's
the thing. What's funny. I'dlike to go back and see when the
contextual marketingcertification came out, because
it might have been five yearsago.
You might have been able to dosome of the things that I'm
about to talk about five yearsago. However, like people don't
(23:35):
watch that certification. Theydon't understand that the thing
lives in a left hand sidebar.They don't realize exactly what
they can do. Maybe they're justtrying to get a landing page out
and they're not focused onexperience.
Right. And that's the thing likeyou have to have, and I don't
mean to sound like a brokenrecord, but if you're doing
value first human centric userexperiences, and the things are
(24:00):
being birthed out of trying tocreate those experiences. Now
you realize that you've gotsmart content that you can do
some really cool things. AndI'll just tell you like this,
one of the clients that we get aprivilege to work with, they
help solopreneurs, right? That'stheir sole focus is to help
people either go from being in ajob to being a solopreneur, or
(24:21):
having a solopreneur businessthat isn't the greatest, but
they want to make it great.
And just being like thiscommunity for solopreneurs. They
literally have used what, twopieces of HubSpot in a magical
way. Number one, they usepersona, the property, and they
use it properly. They've gotpositive and negative personas.
(24:43):
They're using the I'm Astatements and they're
leveraging it for bettercommunication, segmentation, and
smart content.
Instead of just having a landingpage, they actually have
multiple landing pages perpersona. So now what they can is
(25:03):
they can literally go and sendthat human to the landing page
for the right conversation forwho they are and what they know
about them. So they're creatinga one to one instead of a one to
many experience at a per humanlevel based on a conversion and
an understanding of who theyare. And so like, I want you to
(25:26):
think about what you currentlyhave as for, and this is for the
listeners, the viewers, what youcurrently have as a landing page
and ask yourself how much moreeffective would it be? Not only
if we were going to AB test it,that can be, we'll talk about
that later.
Know I keep kind of pushing itback, but how effective could it
be if we actually had five,four, three different landing
(25:50):
pages and we were using imagesand video and text that actually
resonated with who they were. Wetalked to them like we know who
they are. We talk about theproblems that they're actually
facing. Like Ricky, theresearcher wants it to come to
them different than the actualCharlie, the CEO. And I'm just
(26:13):
making up persona names becauseit helps tell the story.
And so that's, that's the thing.If you're not looking at list
segmentation for smart content,if you're not looking at life
cycle stage for a smart content,it like, and there's so many
other things that you could bedoing with this to just create a
(26:34):
better user experience and whatmight be considered your most
important area conversion,because that starts the
conversation to which thenequals the cash flow. And so
taking the extra time tounderstand, hey, there's a
contextual marketingcertification. Let's take that.
Let's look at our existinglanding pages.
Let's look at how we're usingpersona. Let's look at how we're
(26:56):
using lifecycle stage. Let'slook how we're using list
segmentation and let's actuallybuild a real conversion strategy
around the tools that HubSpothas given us.
Liz Moorehead (27:05):
So I wanna take it a step deeper actually,
George, if you'll bear with mefor a moment. So I remember when
smart for content first cameout, everybody was excited.
Right? They were like, oh, I canchange it. So it says, like, if
I have two different personas.
Right? One is an IT manager inan organization, one is a CTO at
an organization and they havedifferent thoughts and opinions
(27:25):
about a certain topic that wewant them to convert on. I can
change the introductoryparagraph. My understanding is
that the capacity andcapabilities of smart content
are much deeper than like, well,you could put a different
paragraph here.
George B. Thomas (27:39):
Oh my god. You can have a different form. You
can have a different video. Youcan have a different image. You
can have different copy.
Like now, especially if you'reusing the Content Hub, like
almost every module or everysection can be smart. If you're
like and by the way, we'retalking about landing pages, but
(28:01):
this in email is amazing aswell. Because now not only have
you created a dope experiencewhere the form, the module, the
copy, the video, the image issmart to them, but when you,
they get communication, thecommunication in the email is
smart as well with the rightimage, the right verbiage, the
right subject line, because youcan have smart subject lines.
(28:24):
Again, this is one place where Idon't think enough marketers,
enough business owners dive inand take the time to understand
the power that they have withsmart content inside of their
HubSpot ecosystem.
Max Cohen (28:38):
Yeah. Mean, most of them still think it's it's
witchcraft to even just say hi,first name on a
George B. Thomas (28:45):
page. Right?
Max Cohen (28:46):
I think well, I think the other thing that's
interesting too is, like, youknow, thinking, you know,
outside the box there, it'slike, what if if if if you're
using, like, smart content,like, in mind, you can make,
like, entire sections of thepage totally different. Right?
And, you know, sure, maybe youcan show a different form or
maybe if you have everyone'sinformation and they're already
on a list, don't even show aform at all. Just replace it
(29:09):
with a section that lets themdownload the piece of content
immediately without having towait for an email or take an
unnecessary step. Right?
Because again, like I think westill, you know, when we don't
think about how can it how can Imake my content delivery even
easier? Right? Like we're we'restill like forgetting the fact
that like someone actuallyconsuming the content is
(29:31):
important. Long as you're makinglike, so long as like whatever
that thing is, so long as thatebook is actually valuable and
not just some garbage, whatever.Right?
Yeah. You know, like you do wantpeople to consume the content if
it's good content. If it's notgood content, you probably
shouldn't be putting it outthere, right? Because you're
just increasing the likelihoodthat someone's gonna have a bad
(29:52):
experience with you, right? Youknow, and so like, I'd say like
what the smart content piece,like think about ways where you
can make it not a landing pageand just like give someone what
they need.
Like if you already have anyinformation you'd be collecting.
George B. Thomas (30:05):
I mean, that's that's such a good value piece
there because I mean, listen,you could have it be smart and
it could just be a CTA because Iknow even the moralist of
marketers out there is like, buthow do I track success? Listen,
if they're in X, Y, Z list, youcould have a CTA. And when they
(30:28):
click that CTA, they could bedownloading it without needing
to fill out a form. And by theway, then your measurement of
successes, you know, every clickon that CTA is a download. So
you can now have theconversation of, well, this
piece was downloaded by peoplein our database a hundred times
this month.
Max Cohen (30:45):
Sure.
George B. Thomas (30:46):
The people who click the CTA, 27% of them also,
we have deals that have beencreated in the pipeline. Mhmm.
And and the human never had tofill out another form ever.
Max Cohen (30:54):
Yes. Funny way she tried stuff without, like,
forcing a conversion. Yeah. Youknow?
George B. Thomas (30:58):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (31:00):
I feel like I used to have a really, really good talk
track about this, and Idefinitely have forgotten it
because I'm not repeating itevery two weeks to a bunch of
new hires. But I think the thebig thing that I was trying to,
like, get across, like, okay, ifyou are making a landing page or
for that matter, any sort ofpage with a form on it, which I
(31:20):
guess is always gonna be somekind of Well, it
George B. Thomas (31:23):
could be product. It could be service.
Max Cohen (31:25):
Sure.
George B. Thomas (31:25):
Like So much so much in this last week and
this week, we were talking aboutebooks, guides, checklists, but
let's be honest.
Max Cohen (31:31):
Yeah. Yeah. I guess if we think about I think I
guess if we think about, like,you know, a form in the
marketing sense. Right? Becauselike, let's be honest, the only
piece of information you youprobably think you need is
email.
Right? But, you know, the thething that I always tell people
is when you're deciding whatquestions to put on a form on a
landing page, you you have toplay the risk and reward game.
(31:55):
Right? I think I've talked aboutthis before in the show like a
long time ago. But like everysingle time you put another
question on a form, Right?
And I still think this holdstrue to today. Right? You are
risking that someone is gonnago, that's too much information
to give away, or it's gonna takeme too long to fill the form
out, or I'm not comfortablegiving that away. Right? Like
(32:17):
every single time you addanything else onto that form,
you're increasing that chance alittle bit that you're gonna
turn someone away from it.
Right? So what you need to do isyou need to say, hey, if I'm
gonna risk putting this questionon this form, is there a big
reward for me as a marketer? Sothe question is Or sales team.
True. Yeah.
(32:37):
But still it's it's, you know,if it helps your sales team, I
guess it helps you. Right?
George B. Thomas (32:42):
Yes. Yes.
Max Cohen (32:42):
So the reward is what what would be reward is like,
can I use this piece ofinformation to market to this
person more effectively andcreate a better experience for
them? Right? Creating a betterexperience for them is not
rewards. Ready is not. Let meget their phone number super
fast so I can have a BDR gointerrupt their day.
(33:04):
No. Right. But a good example isasking that persona question,
getting a general idea of whothis person is. So like, yeah,
getting their phone number andhaving someone call them way
before may appear as a valuablepiece of information for your
sales team who, sorry guys, allthey know is just how to just
(33:24):
incessantly pester people untilthey say go away. Right?
But again, maybe ask thatpersona question so I can at
least get a slight understandingof what might be relevant to
send to you in the future.
George B. Thomas (33:37):
That's snap shot.
Max Cohen (33:37):
Just because I wanna be a moral marketer. So I don't
send you stuff that makes yougo, wow, these people are
annoying. Right. And immediatelylose credibility with you. Okay.
I try
George B. Thomas (33:47):
to look at it as like, what information can I
ask for the value I'm givingthat is a snapshot of
understanding?
Max Cohen (33:53):
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (33:55):
You know what I mean? The rest of the journey,
can get more, but I at least seethat initial snapshot to to
provide better pathways in thefuture, we'll say.
Max Cohen (34:04):
Correct. Yeah. And and and, you know, just making
it so that like the productbecause the product that you
provide to them before theyactually buy the thing that you
sell, the product that yourcompany provides is a marketing
experience. Yep. Right?
And so you gotta say, whatquestions can I ask to deliver
that product in the meantime?Much better. Right? I think a
(34:28):
lot of it comes down even tojust like the same conversation
we have around why we do thesethings or why we think about
these things in this way is thesame reason why we talk about
why customer service is soimportant, right? It's another
one of those things where itfeels really good to do it and
sure you have a lot ofopportunities to do the morally
good business thing and a lot ofcustomer service situations, and
(34:52):
you have a lot of opportunity todo the right thing, right?
But it's not just doing theright thing because it feels
good. It's doing the right thingbecause that's good for
business, right? Yeah. You know,the same thing goes for a lot of
the stuff that we're talkingabout.
George B. Thomas (35:04):
Yeah. You you have said do the right thing so
many times in this episode. Itmakes you want to go back and
watch the movie, do the rightthing. I haven't watched it in
so many ways. People want to
Max Cohen (35:14):
actually do the right thing.
George B. Thomas (35:15):
Yeah. Right. The right thing is always the
right thing. Liz, what's next?We're we're we're hurt.
Heard us. We're we're having agood conversation.
Liz Moorehead (35:22):
What I want to cover. No, I want you just have
heard us conversation for areason.
George B. Thomas (35:26):
Now, heard, heard,
Max Cohen (35:29):
Like, yes. Heard us. Heard us, please.
Liz Moorehead (35:33):
What?
Max Cohen (35:33):
Do you ask us a painful question?
George B. Thomas (35:35):
No. No. I don't want a painful question.
Max Cohen (35:38):
I
Liz Moorehead (35:38):
don't like needles. Well, I'm gonna call
out a painfully obvious pointthat we need to address. Right?
So one of the things that we'vebeen talking about over the past
this episode and the lastepisode about landing pages is
how so much of the content hasbecome transactional, flimsy.
You're not really digging intothe depth of what it is that's
being offered, things like that.
(36:00):
But we also have to contend withthe fact that people's attention
spans are getting shorter. Sohow do we check both of those
boxes? Right? Because I think wecan all close our eyes and
imagine a circa twenty fourteenlanding page. Would you like
this ebook?
Download now. You will learnblank, blank, blank and more.
(36:22):
Please give us your name, yourphone number, your firstborn's
child's name, like all of thesedifferent things, right? But
still the meat of that landingpage was pretty weak sauce. But
today people have shorterattention spans but they want
more value and they want moresubstance.
So how do we, how? How? And why?Do you like that, Max?
Max Cohen (36:43):
We stop using landing pages. We just start creating
content where people actuallywanna get it.
Liz Moorehead (36:48):
Like, I George, you and I did that with content.
Like, we, like, just don'there's the whole thing. If you
would like it for later, you canstill also download it.
Max Cohen (36:58):
Yeah. See, the thing the thing is is, like, where so
before people were okay, Ithink, getting their value by
going, let me go find the thing.And let me go fill out this form
so I could then get the thing.And then let me go into my email
address and open up the file andread it. But now we're in the
zero attention span.
(37:19):
Swipe from a swipe. Go throughNo.
George B. Thomas (37:21):
I agree with that.
Max Cohen (37:23):
No. No. What I'm saying is lean into that stuff.
Right? Like and and and andhere's the question.
Okay. Hold on. Ready? I think ifyou were to sit somebody down
and say, is it more important toyou? Well, actually, George, let
me ask you.
George B. Thomas (37:39):
Oh, God. Here we go.
Max Cohen (37:41):
Yeah. Is it more important to you that somebody
consumes a piece of content andthen in their in their brain
feels better about you andbetter about your brand and
maybe learn something or you getan email address. What would you
rather have happen?
George B. Thomas (38:01):
I would rather have the human consume the
content, but I'll add a caveatand they would feel better about
themselves or the situation thatthey're in. Sure. Because of the
content that we've created.
Max Cohen (38:14):
Way, way more valuable than an email. Getting
an email. Right. So my questionwould be, if you want to create
more opportunities for that tohappen. Right.
You're probably going to go theroute that puts the least, you
know, in front of that aspossible and gets people there
quicker. Right. And I wouldthink you do what I mean,
(38:37):
George, you already do this. Youcreate an insane amount of
content that's ungated.
Liz Moorehead (38:42):
You know
George B. Thomas (38:42):
what I mean?
Max Cohen (38:43):
And I think like that's in and when we talk about
the age of shortened attentionspan, I was saying this back
when I was doing marketingonboarding. So I was like, we're
in the age where people wannawatch, not read. So, like, go
instead of writing this freakinggiant ebook, dude, go start the
(39:03):
YouTube channel. Right? Go,like, get the content out there
that's gonna change the heartsand minds and, like, put a % of
your focus into that than hyperfixating on getting email
address.
George B. Thomas (39:15):
I mean, listen, like Landing pages have
their place like they do.Without a doubt. For sure.
Max Cohen (39:22):
But like when we talk about short attention stuff,
short attention span stuff andhow to combat that, I mean, if
it's in the context of landingpages and the shirts like
minimal questions on the form,right? Maybe you do limit
distractions in ways that aren'tsuper sketchy. Right? But I
think also make it likeabundantly clear what someone's
(39:44):
getting if they do fill the formout. Right?
So there isn't any ambiguity,right? Because the last thing
you want someone doing whenthey're going like, oh, no, I
really want to fill this formout is them going, I don't
really know what I'm getting ifI fill this out. Right?
George B. Thomas (39:58):
I'm not filling it out if I don't know
exactly.
Max Cohen (40:00):
Right. So be super clear on what the offer is or
whatever it is that thatsomeone's happening or
George B. Thomas (40:05):
what's happening now. Don't don't be
fluffy with like, download ourebook. Just shut the no. Like,
actually, like, anyway. Sohere's the thing, My brain is
battling with this because Idon't know if we have a short
attention span.
And let me explain. I think wedo when things might be crappy
(40:28):
or when we're trying to escape.Right? Like we're just trying to
escape. And so we'll go onFacebook or we'll go on YouTube
and we'll watch the shorts andwe'll, you know, get thumb
cramps because we're just like,we're just, we're checking out,
we're escaping.
When it comes to what'simportant though, I think, or
what's good, I don't think thatwe have a short attention span.
(40:51):
Like, listen, I've sat andwatched both Avatar movies back
to back. Right? I didn't have ashort attention span. Shoot,
this weekend, I made it a pointto have some downtime.
I watched almost a season and ahalf of The Chosen. That was not
a short attention span, a seasonand a half of The Chosen, right?
(41:11):
And so, but it was somethinggood. And here's the key that I
want people to think about. It'sthe journey.
You're on a journey, and if yourcontent, whether it be landing
page, because now you're usingit as a pillar page, but if your
content can put them on ajourney. And so maybe you do
have a couple micro videos thatare actually in some copy, and
(41:33):
maybe you have some other mediaelements, like a podcast that
happens to be embedded in, like,whatever it is. You're trying to
create a journey, a good journeyof valuable information that may
eventually lead to a conversion.Listen, I wanna circle back
around on something else here.Max, you said you've you've
(41:54):
created a lot of ungatedcontent.
Me. Right? Brother, I've beencreating content since 2013 and
I've given a lot of it away. Andlet's be honest with you, I'm
still kind of giving it away andI'm realizing that it's less
about any type of conversion andit's more about maximizing
conversations and it's aboutscaling who I am. And this is
(42:18):
literally, we're talking aboutone of the reasons why I've
createdhelper.georgebthomas.com, which
is the HubSpot slash humanhelper, the clone that has all
of that free content that hastrained it in to be what it
needs to be or what it can befor people.
And now you can go in and youcan extract whatever value you
(42:39):
need out of all of that contentat any given point in time,
twenty fourseven. So scalinghelpfulness, forgetting about
conversion, by the way, there'sonly there's, you can use it for
free or you can get unlimitedaccess for $25 a month. 20 4 7
HubSpot help no matter what. I Iand if you go to the landing
(43:00):
page for it, by the way, it'sgeorge b thomas dot com forward
slash helper. There's not afreaking form on it.
It's a button that takes you tothe clone so that you can start
a conversation with it. Becauseagain, you got to start thinking
about the experience. You got tostart thinking about the
journey. You've got to startthinking about the human. And if
you're going to be a moralmarketer, what does that mean
that you might have to changeover time?
(43:21):
By the way, in the last twoepisodes, we've given you an ish
ton of things that you need togo back and look and see about
changing your landing pages.
Liz Moorehead (43:30):
You know, you said something, George, in your
answer there that I wanna pointout. I think sometimes we have a
very reductive thought processwhen we hear someone say, well,
our audiences have shorterattention spans. They will
commit to deep, lengthy contentif they see the value in it.
George B. Thomas (43:47):
Yes. So is it the overall
Liz Moorehead (43:49):
attention span short? Is it the overall
attention span that'sshortening, or is it the window
you have to demonstrate thevalue that is short? Yes.
Max Cohen (43:57):
And part
Liz Moorehead (43:58):
of the reason why I think it's getting shorter is
because historically marketershave not done a very good job of
demonstrating value. We eitherbelieve that it what we are
trying to give them is obviousor quite frankly, that you
should just understand you oweus your information we show you
what is actually valuable.
George B. Thomas (44:19):
Listen, I was, oh God, I was on It's been a
while since
Liz Moorehead (44:24):
I've made George that. I'm very proud.
George B. Thomas (44:25):
Oh, my god. I was on a so I love all of the
humans. Alright. I love all ofthe humans. I was on a marketing
professor's webinar.
If you happen to be the personwho was on the webinar and said
this, and you're listening tothis podcast, I apologize. I
don't know your name. I can'tuse your name. I won't use your
name. But I literally got aquestion at the end of a forty,
(44:49):
thirty five, forty minutesession about all the strategy
and tactics B2B marketers shouldbe using when it comes to video
nowadays in 2025.
And the question came to me of,yes, but how do I do this
without giving away the secretsauce? And I about lost my dang
mind because the value is in thesecret sauce. The conversion is
(45:14):
in the secret sauce. Theconversation is in the secret
sauce. The cash flow, the ROI,the revenue is in the secret
sauce, share it.
That's what you do. I might needa minute.
Max Cohen (45:31):
I mean, it's it's and there's there's a lot of truth
behind that. Right? Like, Ithink you gotta remember when
you go and share the secretsauce. Right? There's, I think
it was just what?
One of two or one of threethings that happened, right?
Actually, yeah, it's one ofthree things that happened,
right? The majority of peopleare gonna just read it and go,
(45:53):
oh, and not do anything. Thenthere's going to be two people
left. Right?
The folks that take the advicethat the secret sauce offers and
goes and solve their problem orhits their goal or challenger
does whatever with that. Andthen you've created a really
great promoter of your content,which is something that you
want. So you want other peoplegoing, this content's good, it
(46:15):
helped me do this thing. Andthey're going to share it out to
other people and then otherpeople are going to see it. It's
going to have a compoundingeffect.
Right? And then as the otherpeople are gonna go, oh, that's
an interesting way to solve mygoal or challenge. Thank you for
the secret sauce. They're gonnaslip the secret sauce and then
they're gonna go, oh, this isactually way too hard, but you
guys seem to know what you'redoing. Let me hire you.
That's literally all that couldhappen. Right? What a lot of
(46:37):
people think is they're gonnatheir competitor is gonna go,
oh, that is their secret sauce.We are going to then steal their
idea and do exactly what theydo. Nope.
No. They're no. That's notwhat's gonna happen. What's
gonna happen is those twothings. Right?
It's again, physics of content,physics of physics of marketing.
But yeah. I mean, give away yoursecret sauce. That's the whole
point. Guess guess what?
If you don't put any secretsauce in your content, your
(46:58):
content's going to suck. Imagine
Liz Moorehead (47:00):
a Big Mac without secret sauce.
Max Cohen (47:02):
Exactly.
George B. Thomas (47:03):
That's not a Big Mac. It's just a bun and
some burger.
Liz Moorehead (47:05):
Sad meat.
Max Cohen (47:06):
Yeah. Butt and some burger.
George B. Thomas (47:07):
That's right there.
Max Cohen (47:08):
That's the Just the
George B. Thomas (47:10):
bun. The bun and some burger. Wants landing
pages that are sad meat. Justgonna throw that out.
Max Cohen (47:15):
Yo. Sad meat is wild, dude.
Liz Moorehead (47:20):
Thank you. Thank you. I try to have at least one
good punchline per quarter. Yep.See you on q two.
Alright. So, George, I want youto take us home. Yeah. We've had
a really interesting, expansivediscussion today about the
nature of quality content inlanding pages and how we
(47:42):
actually create that. What arethe between one and seventy five
thousand things you would likeour listeners to walk away from
today's episode with?
George B. Thomas (47:50):
No. One thing.
Liz Moorehead (47:52):
Oh my god. Are you serious?
George B. Thomas (47:53):
Yeah. No. One thing. One one thing. One thing.
Here here's the deal. This iswhat I want you to do. I want
you to go look at your landingpage or landing pages, and I
want you to ask you a questyourself a question. Is this
landing page all about thehumans or all about us? If it's
not about the humans and theexperience and the value that
(48:18):
you can give them, fix it nowtoday.
Okay, hub heroes. We've reachedthe end of another episode. Will
Lord Lack continue to loom overthe community or will we be able
to defeat him in the nextepisode of the hub heroes
podcast? Make sure you tune inand find out in the next
(48:39):
episode. Make sure you head overto the hubheroes.com to get the
latest episodes and become partof the league of heroes.
FYI, if you're part of theleague of heroes, you'll get the
show notes right in your inboxand they come with some hidden
power up potential as well. Makesure you share this podcast with
a friend. Leave a review if youlike what you're listening to
(49:01):
and use the hashtag hashtag hubheroes podcast on any of the
socials and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next. Until nexttime, when we meet and combine
our forces, remember to be ahappy, helpful, humble human,
and of course, always be lookingfor a way to be someone's hero.
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