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. Of heroes,
(00:47):
it's time to unite and activateyour powers.
Liz Moorehead (00:53):
And we're all back, and we're all reunited.
Who? Maxa is sick. I'm not inGeorgia. Georgia.
George, you're back fromvacation. And Chad, I feel like
you're the most consistentperson for our audience
over the
past few weeks.
Chad Hohn (01:05):
Well, you know, sometimes. I mean, I'm gone
George B. Thomas (01:08):
out
Chad Hohn (01:08):
Chad's and out like,
George B. Thomas (01:10):
I do what I can. I do what I do. I show up
here. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:13):
We dabble. We dabble.
Chad Hohn (01:15):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:15):
Gentlemen, are we ready to dig back into our
second part of our conversationabout loop marketing?
Chad Hohn (01:21):
What did I miss?
Liz Moorehead (01:22):
George, you wanna help out on that one? Other than
everything?
George B. Thomas (01:25):
Yeah. I mean, So here's the thing. One of the
things I said in the previousepisode about Loop Marketing,
and by the way, if you're alistener and you're like Max
right now, and you're like, whatdid I miss? Go back and listen
to the other episode. Because Italked about things like
everywhere I looked on theinternet, everybody's trying to
cover loop marketing in onevideo.
(01:46):
It's impossible. Yeah. We talkedabout how HubSpot themselves
even said like more coming onthe actual loop marketing page
because they know they need tobuild it out. And my brain went
to like seven to eight differentthings in each of the stages
that are like more across theentire organization instead of
just marketing or even likesectors of marketing. And so we,
(02:10):
we were able to do what I'd calla, a pretty good job at an
overview of loop marketing andteasing the fact of like, were
gonna do an episode per stage ofthis to kind of dig in deeper
and really give people the, thejuice or the meat or whatever
analogy you wanna use.
(02:30):
And so-
Chad Hohn (02:32):
The taters.
George B. Thomas (02:33):
The taters to go along with the steak,
whatever it is. Cause, cause weare serving up a seven course
loop marketing meal over thenext couple of weeks. And, and
again, we'll probably put it alltogether for some type of pillar
page loop marketing piece ofcontent. Where all four
episodes, actually, I'm sorry,it'll be five, overview, and
(02:53):
then an episode for each of thestages. So that's kind of what
you missed, Max.
You might go back, you mightlisten because who knows? You
might actually hate somethingthat one of us said and wanna
combat against in the nextepisode when we talk about, you
know, the next step of, or thenext press of the gas pedal
(03:17):
around the racetrack of
Liz Moorehead (03:18):
The next swoop of the loop.
George B. Thomas (03:20):
The swoop of the loop.
Liz Moorehead (03:21):
I love it. The only other thing I think, that
is worth mentioning, and I thinkit's good for Max to hear, but
also just as a reminder for ourlisteners who may want to loop
back to that episode. Wow. Alsohad a really good debate about
why we are even here with LoopMarketing to begin with. Because
(03:42):
there is some conversation aboutis HubSpot solving a problem for
their platform?
Are they solving a problem fortheir users? Are we just
rebranding the things that wealready did? Wait. But what
about the flywheel? So Yeah.
Mhmm. For Max and our listenersat home, it gets a little spicy,
but it was good.
It's the good kind of spice.
George B. Thomas (04:03):
Yeah. It was Yeah. It was good. Chris
Carillon even, like, reached outto me almost immediately when
listening to the podcast episodeand mentioned something that Liz
said and had feelings andthoughts. So it's it's it's very
much a feelings and thoughtsprovoking episode, Max.
That's that's what you missed,my friend.
Chad Hohn (04:22):
Best feels. I'm sure
Liz Moorehead (04:23):
I'll have some feelings today.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
George B. Thomas (04:27):
Might even turn your glasses around the
right way. No. Been here to playthem all game. Okay? Yeah.
Yeah. By the way, just so youknow, I'm ready now for any of
the loop jokes that do happenthe rest of the episode. I've
got our little thing there. Oh,Alright. Prank them, John.
Liz Moorehead (04:49):
Well, this is the exact episode designed per I'm
just gonna move on, guys. We'rejust gonna move on. We're just
gonna keep yep. Alright. Yep.
So this is the precise episodeof both fortunately and
unfortunately for all of thesefeelings and shenanigans because
we are talking about the firststep in loop marketing, which is
express. We be expressing It'sabout clarity. It's about
(05:12):
identifying your brand identity,tone, values, any way that you
can get your content to movefrom generic to greatness. From
slop to unforgettable. SoGeorge, you've already given a
great overview at a high levelof what we talked about last
time with loop marketing.
But I want you to just tap intothat superpower of yours of
(05:35):
simplifying the complex, right?We've got four steps.
George B. Thomas (05:39):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (05:39):
What is Express for our HubSpotters out there?
And where does it fit in thatcycle?
George B. Thomas (05:45):
Yeah, it's the place where I want people to
slow down. Like seriously, thething that I'm worried about
most, what I fear most is thatmarketers will rush past this
part because they're like, oh,we've already got that or
somebody put that in place fiveyears ago or like, we've got
(06:06):
this, you need to slow down andyou need to kind of look at what
you have or build in what youneed to build upon what maybe
you have, or if you don't haveanything that you're paying
attention to. Again, I feel likemost marketers were busy or
trying to keep up, especially inthe world of HubSpot and HubSpot
updates and, you know, AI and AIchanges and, like, just take a
(06:31):
deep breath because the expresspart of this, it's makes or
breaks everything that followsin loop marketing. And so here's
the deal, when I think aboutExpress, it's where you plant
your flag. You plant your flagin the ground and you say, This
is who we are.
(06:52):
This is what we wanna soundlike. It's the, this is who we
help and here's how we show updifferently than the rest of
everybody else. And if you thinkabout loop marketing cycle,
express, tailor, amplify andevolve the four stages or swoops
or swooshes of the, of the loopexpress sits right at the start
(07:15):
and it sits at the start for areason. It's, it's again, that
foundation, Every strategy,every email, every piece of AI
generated content that youcreate later, every podcast
episode, every video, whateverit is, depends on how clear you
are here in this express stage.And so again, without it,
(07:39):
without that clarity, withoutthe context to kind of move
forward, your Taylor stage isaimless.
Your Amplify stage becomes noisyand your Evolve stage ends up
optimizing what couldpotentially be chaos. So like,
again, think about what youshould be thinking about or to
(07:59):
simplify maybe this into likethree main things, what you
should be doing in the Express.I feel like, and we're going to
probably talk about this in alittle bit more in today's
episode, one, voice and vibe,Right? In express, want you to
think about voice and vibe. Howdo we sound like when we show up
in the world?
What do we sound like when weshow up in the world? Who do we
(08:20):
want to be? For years, guys, youknow, Liz, you know, I've been
showing up in the world, happy,helpful, humble human. Like
that, that's my voice, that's myvibe. But for you listening to
this, are you playful?
Are you direct? Are youtechnical? Are you
inspirational? This becomes yourlanguage DNA. And you can kind
(08:40):
of hand to your team and hand toyour AI tools.
There's a word here that you'vegot to kind of be paying
attention to what HubSpotHubSpot said, and it was kind of
an undertow in different areas,there's going to be hybrid
teams. So when you're thinkingabout the Express and all of
these things, voice and vibe,and what I'll talk about here in
a minute, it's because you gotto let the team needs to know,
(09:01):
humans need to be educated, butAI needs the context or AI needs
to be on board educated to thatthing as well. The next thing
that I think is highlyimportant, and again, I've
talked about this historicallyin other podcasts and stuff, is
like one of the things that Ithink was the most fascinating
thing that I did for my AIassistant and for my team is I
literally have a document thatis top 10 mindsets, top 10
(09:24):
beliefs, top 10 core values.Well, what does that do? Well,
creates a point of view.
What do you believe in yourorganization, in your industry,
in your products and services?What do you believe that others
might not? So you've got to havethat point of view. It's our
take on the world, right? It'sour take on the problems we
(09:46):
solve.
It's our take. This, by the way,listeners, is how you rise above
the copycat content that isbound to happen, that is already
happening. And you createthought leadership that builds
trust, you build a thoughtleadership that sticks. And the
third thing that I want tomention here, Liz, is ideal
(10:07):
customer profiles or personas.Who are we really for?
We're literally having a meetinglater today at Sidekick
Strategies about like, hey, in2026, who do we want to serve?
Because I want the team to bepassionate about who we're
serving. And so I literallythrew this out of like, moving
(10:28):
forward in 2026, do we want ourideal client profile to be
gaming companies? Do we want itto be, you know, pet companies?
Do we want it to be churches?
Because I know the humans insidethe organization and things that
they're passionate about, and ifthey could be helping these
ideal client profiles orcustomer profiles, these
(10:48):
personas with things thatthey're already passionate
about, now, do we enter a worldwhere it's a win win situation
versus just taking what's comingdown the funnel and closing it
and saying, this is who we'refor because this is who's
showing up. Right? And so whenyou think about that, does your
AI or hybrid team know aboutwhat they care about, what they
(11:11):
fear, what they dream of, andhow you make them feel, how you
make them feel understood, howyou can pull the lever of
feeling before you ever try tosell or grab their wallet.
Right? And so when you combinethose three, Liz, I think it
(11:32):
makes a good package of whatExpress is.
It's your voice and vibe, it'spoint of view, and it's the
ideal customer profiles orpersonas that you, with that you
get clarity. And again, youmentioned it before I even
started talking about this, withclarity, this is like clarity is
your ultimate contentaccelerator. I mean, gives AI
(11:54):
something meaningful to mimic.It gives your team permission to
create confidently withoutsecond guessing tone or message
every single time they go tocreate something. Liz, I'll shut
up here in a second, but the wayI like to think about this is if
if it if your marketing was aband, okay?
Express is where you tune yourinstruments. Because if you
(12:16):
don't tune your instrumentsbefore you all start playing,
then it's gonna be chaotic. It'snot gonna sound good and nobody
wants to hear it anyway. Sopeople have to slow down.
They've gotta tune theinstruments in the express
stage.
That was some loud dunking.Thanks, Vax. That was the double
D coming in at the very end.Anyways, that's that's what
Chad Hohn (12:39):
Oh, Oh, wow. We
Liz Moorehead (12:40):
don't need that either. I'm at the slurp stage.
Chad Hohn (12:43):
Yeah. Just A some more slurp. We Looking to hub
heroes.
George B. Thomas (12:47):
So, yeah. So that's what I would say about
Express and where my mind goes.
Liz Moorehead (12:51):
Yeah. I mean, I think a really good way to think
about it, and this is how Iteach it a lot. Because I work
with a lot of companies andbrands to do messaging
strategies and content styleguides. And people will often
think they need one or theother. They do not realize they
need both because your messagingstrategy is what you say and
your content style guide is howyou say it.
(13:13):
Yeah. And it's a really it's areally critical thing to keep in
mind. We always learned thatwhen we were younger kids,
right, it's not just what yousay, it's how you say it. You
have to have both. You have tohave that really dialed in
clarified view of what ourexpression is.
How do we say things? How do wetalk about things? That is how
(13:37):
people start to connect withyou. Also again, like we always
like to talk about, you know,humans buy from humans. There's
a lot of automation thrown inthe mix here now, but ultimately
at the end of the day, or if youjust wanna even get a little bit
more practical about it and youwanna step away from the human
side, you wanna do it?
Give me a good old human.
George B. Thomas (13:56):
Yeah. The human side. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (14:00):
Yeah. If you don't have this kind of stuff
dialed in, what's gonna happenis that your everybody on your
sales team, marketing team,everybody's gonna be agreed on
the what. And then every pieceof content, every website page
you create, every blog articleyou create under that kind of
omniscient voice will all sounddifferent depending on who wrote
it. Mhmm. And that's it gets alittle dicey.
(14:22):
So I wanna dig into this claritypiece just for one layer deeper
because you already startedtouching upon this, George, and
actually, I'll open this up toMax and Chad as well. When we
take a look at this clarity ofexpression that HubSpot is
really pushing with this firststage, why is that important
right now, particularly with thecontext of AI?
Chad Hohn (14:43):
Like for me, you know, again, not not a marketer,
right, is not a marketer.
George B. Thomas (14:49):
But but you are human.
Chad Hohn (14:51):
But I am human.
Liz Moorehead (14:52):
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (14:52):
And I do encounter a lot of marketing in my day to
day life as we all do. And Ithink, like, the being able to
keep everybody on the same pagein plat in your platform gives
your anything that anybody seeson anything because not, you
(15:13):
know, sometimes in anorganization that's even larger,
like, the same person who'sdoing some of the social media
stuff isn't doing some of theweb stuff and isn't doing some,
you know, like, different peopleare doing those different pieces
sometimes. And, like, the thethings that HubSpot's pushing
you to, me coming at it from atechnical perspective as always,
(15:33):
is to make sure that everybody'son the same page if they're
performing all of this inmarketing studio is using the
ICP AI data source setting andso ideal customer profile, and
then the brand identity sectionas well of your AI data source,
(15:54):
as well as the products andservices, and then finally
crafting for each campaign youbuild to be more specific if
it's outside of your normal, butbuilt from that foundation so
that everybody's on the samepage. That way, when you see
some add on, you know,somewhere, if you're seeing an
(16:14):
advertisement or if you'reseeing any kind of content or
any kind of you know, that'srelated that's being pushed
through a marketing source, thatit all stems from that same, you
know, mission or same companycustomer profile, same company
perspective, you know, all thethings that you're solving for
is the same across all of it ifyou're able to use the platform
(16:37):
to accomplish it.
I think that's the beautifulpart of, like, if you're fully
using all the tools, that's thethat's the ideal way to look at
it. You know, if you're tryingto say what are they solving for
and how do you do it in thesystem. Right? So there's all
those different features,buzzwords or whatever, if you
(16:58):
will, that I just listed outthat are all things that they
want that they that at least intheir documentation, they say
this is the the where you wouldgo to do that to make sure that
everybody is evolving betweenyour AI and your humans doing
the all the stuff and and yourmessage is the same because it's
great. When, you know, when yousee weird stuff across multiple,
(17:23):
This happens a lot with smallerorganizations.
Like, I have some friends whomanage some construction company
ads. And, like, sometimes yousee what these people do on
their own, and you're like, oh,yeah. Like, I mean, if I, you
know, saw that on Facebook intwo differences, just like not
even the same, or it takes youto a page that says nothing
about what the ad's about.Right? And so this, I think,
(17:43):
will help with that.
Right? That's the idea anyway.
Liz Moorehead (17:46):
That'd so for real. Yeah. I've never been more
lost in a conversation than I amat this moment right now.
Fascinating. Tell us why.
I don't even know what we're talking about at this
point, and I've been payingattention. I don't know. Like,
the like, I I I what was theoriginal question you had asked,
Chad, Liz?
(18:07):
All I had asked was that why was this type of
clarity in the in the context ofExpress this specific stage, why
is it important against thecontext of AI and what's
happening in content right now?
I don't even know what that means. My brain can't
can't process that at all. Like,I and I'm looking I I'm, like,
(18:28):
looking at the loop marketing,like, playbook page. And I've
I've I've my brain is justcompletely shutting off. Like,
I've gotten to this point whereI'm, like, looking at, like, you
know me how it like, when I whenI talk about the flywheel a lot.
And I'm like, there's these verynatural sort of progressions
through where these chevronsmeet, and it really makes a lot
(18:51):
of sense. I'm trying to applythat same and maybe you guys can
tell me if I'm just looking atthis the wrong way. Right? But
I'm trying to take that sameidea, especially looking at
stage four, which is evolve andhow it swoops back up into
express. And I'm sitting herewondering, is this is this
(19:11):
insinuating that you'reconstantly re expressing
yourself and constantlyrevisiting expression all the
time?
Like, because the, like, the thevisual just doesn't work for me.
Right? Maybe I just don't getit.
George B. Thomas (19:28):
This
Liz Moorehead (19:28):
is
George B. Thomas (19:28):
this
Liz Moorehead (19:28):
is And I'm not saying this is bad.
This is needed
because no one knows how to do this in this
crazy age, especially when we wejust we we just figured we just
became comfortable with with thefact that we could instantly
turn ourselves into a Pixarcharacter. And then before we
were even comfortable with that,Sora two came out, and we're
(19:51):
like, we don't know what reallife is anymore because we could
literally create anything, andwe can't trust video at all.
Right?
George B. Thomas (19:58):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:59):
And then when I think I think someone who sees
this is gonna be like, uh-huh.What? It sounds like a lot of,
like, woo woo, you know,craziness that is thousand times
deeper than, like, mostmarketers are gonna be able to
understand.
George B. Thomas (20:13):
So I don't
Liz Moorehead (20:13):
know.
George B. Thomas (20:14):
Max so first of all, let me just say this.
Max, I love you.
Liz Moorehead (20:18):
I love you so much.
George B. Thomas (20:19):
Because I think that you are expressing
pun intended.
Liz Moorehead (20:22):
We're just a blue collar marker, Roca.
George B. Thomas (20:25):
You're, you're expressing how I feel a lot of
humans will feel in the moment.And this is why I said it
inbound, these words. I believeeverything that was on each of
the slides for the four phasesor stages, I don't necessarily
(20:45):
agree with the visual of theloop. Now, understand what was
trying to be portrayed of like,it's just a crazy time in the
world and buyers are doing allthese things, but because buyers
are doing all these things,marketers, they think in like
steps to get thingsaccomplished. Now, while I do
believe that you might iterateyour voice and tone over time,
(21:08):
or like we are at PsychicStrategies, we're pausing for a
moment to see what do we wantour future ideal customer
profiles to be that we want tostart targeting or attracting,
right?
To go back to some terminologythat we all know. But Max,
really the crux of theconversation that Liz was trying
to start there is like, so manymarketers are going to think
(21:32):
that they need to do this AIstuff. They're going to be
HubSpot users. They may not haveeven used ChatGPT or Claude up
until this point. So they'reliterally getting their feet wet
and they haven't heard the wordsof context and how AI needs
context to actually give you anoutput that is consistent with
what you might want to put intothe world.
(21:53):
So like clarity is important,but to have clarity, you said,
Max, something that I love. Mostmarketers aren't ready for the
deep exploration that they'regoing to have to take to get the
clarity that they're going toneed. Listen, I'll go back to
the fact that we have thedocument about beliefs,
(22:14):
mindsets, and core values. Ionly have that because I went on
a year and a half explorationwith Liz on another podcast
called Beyond Your Default, towhich then I used AI to reverse
engineer out of all of thoseepisodes, what must be the
beliefs, mindsets, and corevalues of the human doing this
to then be able to feed it backinto AI for clarity in which it
(22:38):
should create in this manner orway. And I know we're getting to
a question that is going to bemore of like, well, how do you
do said thing?
So, I don't want to spoil that.Like, how how do you train your
AI? Because there's outside ofHubSpot and there's inside of
HubSpot that want to talk aboutthat. But Max, I don't think
that the loop is a track thatmarketers are actually
(23:01):
following. The loop is what thebuyer is doing.
The stages are more of a, Iguess I'll use linear set of
things that you might want tothink about doing in the
production or creation of thethings that you're creating.
I'll shut up, Liz. I think youhad some thoughts too because we
both were shaking our head no atthe same time when Max is having
(23:23):
his crisis there.
Liz Moorehead (23:24):
My episode. Wait, but wait, what do you mean about
the customers are doing theloop? So I like when I go out
and buy a Snickers bar, I'm notexpressing tailoring or
amplifying or evolving any wayyou should
George B. Thomas (23:36):
You running through a loop of thoughts in
your brain. Do I want a Snickerstoday or do I want this?
Liz Moorehead (23:43):
We're talking about the buyer's journey
though. That's the buyer's
George B. Thomas (23:46):
I I don't disagree, that's where this was
born from. If you hear theoriginal story, literally I'll
just, here's Here's what I Iwhat I heard somebody was
standing in front of a room, notto be mentioned. And they were
talking about how everything waschanging and SEO was broke and
(24:06):
this is happening. And theyliterally were making this hand
gesture as they were talking.And somebody said, kind of like
a loop.
And exactly. And that's whereloop marketing was born from
what I've been told by sources Iwould believe. And so again, I I
(24:27):
say, I don't know if it's agreat visual, but I do believe
in the things that we talk aboutin each one of these stages to
be important and true. And see,here's the world that we live in
right now is it is confusingbecause you're trying to roll up
the inbound methodology. You'retrying to roll up the buyer's
(24:47):
journey and you're trying toshove it into something that
really is a marketer's playbookto get the things out for the
methodology and the journey.
But people are looking at it asit's like all in one
encompassing, and it's not.
Liz Moorehead (25:02):
Yeah. I mean, I'm still in the camp that this is
this is a big sign that says useAI tools. That, like and I I
hate that. I hate it. Yeah.
I hate being in that mindset.Right? But when I look at this
and it's and it and it clearlyuse it says literally says use
AI. Like, it it it and and,again, don't get me wrong. We
(25:27):
gotta give people a framework todo it.
I'm all for Right? Yeah. I Itake umbrage with the idea that
this is this has anything to dowith the buyer's journey. Right?
Like, that's a fundamentallyseparate concept.
But, yeah, it's it's weird. Youknow, I I will say it would be
weird from an optic standpointfor them to come out with some
(25:50):
kind of strategy that terminatesat the end. You know what I
mean? Like that because thenit's like, oh, wait. It looks
just like the original inboundmethodology, which looked like
it ended, but really didn'tbecause it always had that thing
underneath it.
Never did. All the way back tothe front. And then they just
they just curvatured it whenthey did the flywheel. Right?
Yeah.
But yeah. I mean, it the the youknow what would be the most,
(26:13):
like, useful thing for me, and Ithink for a lot of other people
that might be a little bit moresmooth brained like me
George B. Thomas (26:21):
Do too.
Liz Moorehead (26:22):
Looking at express, tailor, amplify, and
evolve and breaking down. Okay.What does that literally mean
without the, you know, God, it'slike it's just like a white
woman's Instagram words that areon top of it. You know what I
mean? Wow.
What do you Live live, laugh,love, evolve
(26:43):
As the white woman in the room, I'm fine with
it.
Right? Okay. Okay. But you're wrong. Right?
George B. Thomas (26:48):
Not canceled. Not canceled.
Liz Moorehead (26:49):
This looks like something that people would have
on wooden plaques in theirkitchen. Right?
We're living, laughing, loving with HubSpot.
And and No. I completely agree.
I just wanna know what this stuff actually mean.
Like, I I I when I look at it, Ijust it's not tangible. You know
what I mean? Inbound wastangible. It was easy.
It was simple. This ain't dude.It's not.
(27:10):
I gotta be honest. I I'm feeling a little I
I gotta drop in with my thoughtshere, George. First, number one,
I'm feeling a little vindicatedbecause Max, in our last
episode, I was the one who waslike, not as hilarious as you,
but going like, what, what isthis and why are we here?
Because I could not figure, areyou trying to solve for a
(27:33):
product? Are you trying to like,are we, are we replacing?
Are we not replacing the flat?Where's the inbound method?
Like, what is what is happeninghere? Because this is the first
time they've rolled outsomething where I've looked at
it. And even though I willadmit, and we talked about this
on previous episodes with theflywheel, I was like flywheel,
ew.
(27:53):
But like I got where they werecoming from. I understood like
there was a real ethos behind itand this I'm just kinda like,
okay. So we're loop marketingnow.
George B. Thomas (28:04):
It's it's a marketer's playbook to hybrid
teams and AI usage. Let's callit what it is.
Liz Moorehead (28:10):
And don't get me wrong. I think it's just
explained in this overly fluffyway that makes it really
difficult to understand the thethe the what are you literally
doing through each one of thesestages? Because you can do that
for inbound. You can, like, goit's like, yeah, attracting
(28:30):
games and delight. Sounds prettyamorphous, but you you can
explain what you're literallydoing, like, behind each one of
those words.
Right?
If you're to take express, it's really simple. It
is a messaging strategy and yourcontent style guide.
Is it That's it. Literally.
George B. Thomas (28:46):
Yeah. But
Liz Moorehead (28:47):
It's a that's
it. Am I am I explaining it right? If it's
it's you define your buyerpersona. I'm still I'm gonna
call it buyer persona till theday I die. Okay.
We go. Sometimes a trial. Yeah.Yeah.
George B. Thomas (28:58):
Max got you on
Liz Moorehead (28:59):
that one. But but it also sounds like creating a
ton of documentation that makesyour AI understand how to talk
like you. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
It's Where is that writtenanywhere in this playbook? It's
not.
George B. Thomas (29:12):
Well, This is why we're having this episode.
Why should we be
Liz Moorehead (29:16):
the ones that have to do it? God.
Can I tell you as the content strategist person
here? I would love to tell youthis. You would be surprised.
This is something we've talkedabout with content hiring and
like very old episodes. Contentis the thing that makes inbound
go and it is the thing thatinbounders do not know how to do
and there aren't a ton ofspecialists who know how to do
(29:38):
it.
A lot of these disciplines arethings that you see at
enterprise levels. Like Ispecialize in creating messaging
strategies and content styleguides. Your normal inbound
marketer does not know how to doit. This is not something
taught. This is usuallysomething gate kept at a higher
level.
And I only learned how to do itwhen I was a baby content
(29:59):
manager at Quintain in 2015 whenI realized no one sounds the
same and there are no rules.Like, so I figured out how to
make rules. But that's prettymuch it. And this is the one
thing that I've always foundstriking and very confusing.
There are already terms forthese things.
Like, I love the idea ofexpress, but like it's literally
create a messaging strategy.Your messaging strategy begins
(30:21):
with your buyer personas and whothey are. That's how every one
of my messaging workshopsbegins. You do a messaging
strategy once you decide on whatyou're saying, then you do
another workshop or set ofexercises that helps you
determine your voice tone andstyle. Which are your rules for
how you sound and what youeditorially look like on paper.
Like, that's really what it is,and it's just, like, very
(30:43):
confusing in the way that theydescribe it.
Chad Hohn (30:44):
Yeah. I suspect the reason that they feel like they
wanted to change the terminologyis maybe not to encroach on that
segment, but also to likebecause it's in the context of a
hybrid team. Like, right on thefront page, you know, it says
express your distinct brandidentity. So it's like
Liz Moorehead (31:01):
Messaging strategies are built for
multidisciplinary teams.Messaging strategies are not
built for marketers. They arebuilt for everyone. I mean, like
right off the bat.
George B. Thomas (31:10):
Chad, I agree with you. And listen, I, if I'm
being completely honest rightnow, which I, I typically am, I
feel like when we entered thisworld of AI content creation or
this express phase, that I'vehad an unfair advantage the
entire time, because one of thethings that I did almost four
years ago when I started thebusiness is I actually hired Liz
(31:31):
to help me do a voice and toneworkshop. Along the entire way,
I've had an entire presentationdeck and information that I
could feed to my AI assistantand say, this is who I am. This
is how I want to show up. AndI've continued to add layers
along the way, which again, ifwe ever get to the next
question, I'll talk about thoselayers.
Liz Moorehead (31:52):
Gosh, we got two minutes left. I know.
Like, how do we wanna-
Chad Hohn (31:57):
An eight part series?
Liz Moorehead (31:59):
No, but I think this brings up a really
important point. You know what,we're gonna do a second second
version of this and that's fine.But I think this brings up the
larger point because we havedone lots of product rollout
announcements together. We'vedone new initiatives, We've done
new hubs. We and this one hasbeen the messiest.
(32:19):
Yeah. This is the one wheremultiple times throughout these
conversations, one summer, allof us are going, well, I guess
we're here and this is whatwe're doing now. Not entirely
sure why, but we think we kindof know why. And I think this is
something that needs to beaddressed because if we are
(32:40):
sitting here for yes, somewhatsmooth brained, but pretty smart
people who spend a lot of timein HubSpot and we're confused.
Can you imagine how the everydayHubSpot is feeling right now
looking at all of this?
Matt's face.
I just looked at no. I just looked down at this
stupid loop marketing scorecardCareful. Careful. No. It's just
(33:02):
like, never mind.
It makes it even more confusing.I'm sorry. So so
the more it looks, the more confused I get.
George B. Thomas (33:09):
So here's what I'm gonna say. And Max, you kind
of said like, why should it beour job? I was empathetic to
this at the very beginning,which is why I said, team, Liz,
Max, Chad, we're not gonna doone episode about this. There's
no way. No.
It is our job moving forward totry to do our best to simplify
(33:33):
the rest of these conversationswe have, Express B2, because we
didn't even get to like six ofour questions that we wanna talk
about. And then the rest of thethree that we need to hit.
Because again, I do think thatwe're normal humans, but I think
that we're smart humans. And Ithink that all of us have used
(33:53):
HubSpot for a lot of years andwere nerdy in different
directions to like Liz voice andtone, you know, technical stuff.
But literally one of theconversations that we need to
have is like, I, I so wanted toget to this question.
So I'm gonna tease out the nexttime we have the V2 of this. I
(34:14):
so wanted to answer thisquestion. How do you actually
teach? Because Max, you said,
Liz Moorehead (34:19):
What do you do?
George B. Thomas (34:21):
So one of the questions is, How do you
actually teach your brand'svoice to AI tools so they don't
spit out generic content? Whatparticular tools or processes do
you recommend? Style guides,prompts, training, etcetera.
That right there will helpsimplify the complexities in
people's brains because we'll beable to talk about the things,
the steps, the the have this, dothis, talk to it like this in
(34:45):
the next episode. Okay, hubheroes.
We've reached the end of anotherepisode. Will Lord Lack continue
to loom over the community orwill we be able to defeat him in
the next episode of the hubheroes podcast? Make sure you
tune in and find out in the nextepisode. Make sure you head over
(35:06):
to the hubheroes.com to get thelatest episodes and become part
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Make sure you share this podcastwith a friend. Leave a review if
you like what you're listeningto and use the hashtag hashtag
(35:28):
hub heroes podcast on any of thesocials and let us know what
strategy conversation you'd liketo listen into next. Until next
time, when we meet and combineour forces, remember to be a
happy, helpful, humble human,and of course, be looking for 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. Of heroes,
(00:47):
it's time to unite and activateyour powers.
Liz Moorehead (00:53):
And we're all back, and we're all reunited.
Who? Maxa is sick. I'm not inGeorgia. Georgia.
George, you're back fromvacation. And Chad, I feel like
you're the most consistentperson for our audience
over the
past few weeks.
Chad Hohn (01:05):
Well, you know, sometimes. I mean, I'm gone
George B. Thomas (01:08):
out
Chad Hohn (01:08):
Chad's and out like,
George B. Thomas (01:10):
I do what I can. I do what I do. I show up
here. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:13):
We dabble. We dabble.
Chad Hohn (01:15):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:15):
Gentlemen, are we ready to dig back into our
second part of our conversationabout loop marketing?
Chad Hohn (01:21):
What did I miss?
Liz Moorehead (01:22):
George, you wanna help out on that one? Other than
everything?
George B. Thomas (01:25):
Yeah. I mean, So here's the thing. One of the
things I said in the previousepisode about Loop Marketing,
and by the way, if you're alistener and you're like Max
right now, and you're like, whatdid I miss? Go back and listen
to the other episode. Because Italked about things like
everywhere I looked on theinternet, everybody's trying to
cover loop marketing in onevideo.
(01:46):
It's impossible. Yeah. We talkedabout how HubSpot themselves
even said like more coming onthe actual loop marketing page
because they know they need tobuild it out. And my brain went
to like seven to eight differentthings in each of the stages
that are like more across theentire organization instead of
just marketing or even likesectors of marketing. And so we,
(02:10):
we were able to do what I'd calla, a pretty good job at an
overview of loop marketing andteasing the fact of like, were
gonna do an episode per stage ofthis to kind of dig in deeper
and really give people the, thejuice or the meat or whatever
analogy you wanna use.
(02:30):
And so-
Chad Hohn (02:32):
The taters.
George B. Thomas (02:33):
The taters to go along with the steak,
whatever it is. Cause, cause weare serving up a seven course
loop marketing meal over thenext couple of weeks. And, and
again, we'll probably put it alltogether for some type of pillar
page loop marketing piece ofcontent. Where all four
episodes, actually, I'm sorry,it'll be five, overview, and
(02:53):
then an episode for each of thestages. So that's kind of what
you missed, Max.
You might go back, you mightlisten because who knows? You
might actually hate somethingthat one of us said and wanna
combat against in the nextepisode when we talk about, you
know, the next step of, or thenext press of the gas pedal
(03:17):
around the racetrack of
Liz Moorehead (03:18):
The next swoop of the loop.
George B. Thomas (03:20):
The swoop of the loop.
Liz Moorehead (03:21):
I love it. The only other thing I think, that
is worth mentioning, and I thinkit's good for Max to hear, but
also just as a reminder for ourlisteners who may want to loop
back to that episode. Wow. Alsohad a really good debate about
why we are even here with LoopMarketing to begin with. Because
(03:42):
there is some conversation aboutis HubSpot solving a problem for
their platform?
Are they solving a problem fortheir users? Are we just
rebranding the things that wealready did? Wait. But what
about the flywheel? So Yeah.
Mhmm. For Max and our listenersat home, it gets a little spicy,
but it was good.
It's the good kind of spice.
George B. Thomas (04:03):
Yeah. It was Yeah. It was good. Chris
Carillon even, like, reached outto me almost immediately when
listening to the podcast episodeand mentioned something that Liz
said and had feelings andthoughts. So it's it's it's very
much a feelings and thoughtsprovoking episode, Max.
That's that's what you missed,my friend.
Chad Hohn (04:22):
Best feels. I'm sure
Liz Moorehead (04:23):
I'll have some feelings today.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
George B. Thomas (04:27):
Might even turn your glasses around the
right way. No. Been here to playthem all game. Okay? Yeah.
Yeah. By the way, just so youknow, I'm ready now for any of
the loop jokes that do happenthe rest of the episode. I've
got our little thing there. Oh,Alright. Prank them, John.
Liz Moorehead (04:49):
Well, this is the exact episode designed per I'm
just gonna move on, guys. We'rejust gonna move on. We're just
gonna keep yep. Alright. Yep.
So this is the precise episodeof both fortunately and
unfortunately for all of thesefeelings and shenanigans because
we are talking about the firststep in loop marketing, which is
express. We be expressing It'sabout clarity. It's about
(05:12):
identifying your brand identity,tone, values, any way that you
can get your content to movefrom generic to greatness. From
slop to unforgettable. SoGeorge, you've already given a
great overview at a high levelof what we talked about last
time with loop marketing.
But I want you to just tap intothat superpower of yours of
(05:35):
simplifying the complex, right?We've got four steps.
George B. Thomas (05:39):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (05:39):
What is Express for our HubSpotters out there?
And where does it fit in thatcycle?
George B. Thomas (05:45):
Yeah, it's the place where I want people to
slow down. Like seriously, thething that I'm worried about
most, what I fear most is thatmarketers will rush past this
part because they're like, oh,we've already got that or
somebody put that in place fiveyears ago or like, we've got
(06:06):
this, you need to slow down andyou need to kind of look at what
you have or build in what youneed to build upon what maybe
you have, or if you don't haveanything that you're paying
attention to. Again, I feel likemost marketers were busy or
trying to keep up, especially inthe world of HubSpot and HubSpot
updates and, you know, AI and AIchanges and, like, just take a
(06:31):
deep breath because the expresspart of this, it's makes or
breaks everything that followsin loop marketing. And so here's
the deal, when I think aboutExpress, it's where you plant
your flag. You plant your flagin the ground and you say, This
is who we are.
(06:52):
This is what we wanna soundlike. It's the, this is who we
help and here's how we show updifferently than the rest of
everybody else. And if you thinkabout loop marketing cycle,
express, tailor, amplify andevolve the four stages or swoops
or swooshes of the, of the loopexpress sits right at the start
(07:15):
and it sits at the start for areason. It's, it's again, that
foundation, Every strategy,every email, every piece of AI
generated content that youcreate later, every podcast
episode, every video, whateverit is, depends on how clear you
are here in this express stage.And so again, without it,
(07:39):
without that clarity, withoutthe context to kind of move
forward, your Taylor stage isaimless.
Your Amplify stage becomes noisyand your Evolve stage ends up
optimizing what couldpotentially be chaos. So like,
again, think about what youshould be thinking about or to
(07:59):
simplify maybe this into likethree main things, what you
should be doing in the Express.I feel like, and we're going to
probably talk about this in alittle bit more in today's
episode, one, voice and vibe,Right? In express, want you to
think about voice and vibe. Howdo we sound like when we show up
in the world?
What do we sound like when weshow up in the world? Who do we
(08:20):
want to be? For years, guys, youknow, Liz, you know, I've been
showing up in the world, happy,helpful, humble human. Like
that, that's my voice, that's myvibe. But for you listening to
this, are you playful?
Are you direct? Are youtechnical? Are you
inspirational? This becomes yourlanguage DNA. And you can kind
(08:40):
of hand to your team and hand toyour AI tools.
There's a word here that you'vegot to kind of be paying
attention to what HubSpotHubSpot said, and it was kind of
an undertow in different areas,there's going to be hybrid
teams. So when you're thinkingabout the Express and all of
these things, voice and vibe,and what I'll talk about here in
a minute, it's because you gotto let the team needs to know,
(09:01):
humans need to be educated, butAI needs the context or AI needs
to be on board educated to thatthing as well. The next thing
that I think is highlyimportant, and again, I've
talked about this historicallyin other podcasts and stuff, is
like one of the things that Ithink was the most fascinating
thing that I did for my AIassistant and for my team is I
literally have a document thatis top 10 mindsets, top 10
(09:24):
beliefs, top 10 core values.Well, what does that do? Well,
creates a point of view.
What do you believe in yourorganization, in your industry,
in your products and services?What do you believe that others
might not? So you've got to havethat point of view. It's our
take on the world, right? It'sour take on the problems we
(09:46):
solve.
It's our take. This, by the way,listeners, is how you rise above
the copycat content that isbound to happen, that is already
happening. And you createthought leadership that builds
trust, you build a thoughtleadership that sticks. And the
third thing that I want tomention here, Liz, is ideal
(10:07):
customer profiles or personas.Who are we really for?
We're literally having a meetinglater today at Sidekick
Strategies about like, hey, in2026, who do we want to serve?
Because I want the team to bepassionate about who we're
serving. And so I literallythrew this out of like, moving
(10:28):
forward in 2026, do we want ourideal client profile to be
gaming companies? Do we want itto be, you know, pet companies?
Do we want it to be churches?
Because I know the humans insidethe organization and things that
they're passionate about, and ifthey could be helping these
ideal client profiles orcustomer profiles, these
(10:48):
personas with things thatthey're already passionate
about, now, do we enter a worldwhere it's a win win situation
versus just taking what's comingdown the funnel and closing it
and saying, this is who we'refor because this is who's
showing up. Right? And so whenyou think about that, does your
AI or hybrid team know aboutwhat they care about, what they
(11:11):
fear, what they dream of, andhow you make them feel, how you
make them feel understood, howyou can pull the lever of
feeling before you ever try tosell or grab their wallet.
Right? And so when you combinethose three, Liz, I think it
(11:32):
makes a good package of whatExpress is.
It's your voice and vibe, it'spoint of view, and it's the
ideal customer profiles orpersonas that you, with that you
get clarity. And again, youmentioned it before I even
started talking about this, withclarity, this is like clarity is
your ultimate contentaccelerator. I mean, gives AI
(11:54):
something meaningful to mimic.It gives your team permission to
create confidently withoutsecond guessing tone or message
every single time they go tocreate something. Liz, I'll shut
up here in a second, but the wayI like to think about this is if
if it if your marketing was aband, okay?
Express is where you tune yourinstruments. Because if you
(12:16):
don't tune your instrumentsbefore you all start playing,
then it's gonna be chaotic. It'snot gonna sound good and nobody
wants to hear it anyway. Sopeople have to slow down.
They've gotta tune theinstruments in the express
stage.
That was some loud dunking.Thanks, Vax. That was the double
D coming in at the very end.Anyways, that's that's what
Chad Hohn (12:39):
Oh, Oh, wow. We
Liz Moorehead (12:40):
don't need that either. I'm at the slurp stage.
Chad Hohn (12:43):
Yeah. Just A some more slurp. We Looking to hub
heroes.
George B. Thomas (12:47):
So, yeah. So that's what I would say about
Express and where my mind goes.
Liz Moorehead (12:51):
Yeah. I mean, I think a really good way to think
about it, and this is how Iteach it a lot. Because I work
with a lot of companies andbrands to do messaging
strategies and content styleguides. And people will often
think they need one or theother. They do not realize they
need both because your messagingstrategy is what you say and
your content style guide is howyou say it.
(13:13):
Yeah. And it's a really it's areally critical thing to keep in
mind. We always learned thatwhen we were younger kids,
right, it's not just what yousay, it's how you say it. You
have to have both. You have tohave that really dialed in
clarified view of what ourexpression is.
How do we say things? How do wetalk about things? That is how
(13:37):
people start to connect withyou. Also again, like we always
like to talk about, you know,humans buy from humans. There's
a lot of automation thrown inthe mix here now, but ultimately
at the end of the day, or if youjust wanna even get a little bit
more practical about it and youwanna step away from the human
side, you wanna do it?
Give me a good old human.
George B. Thomas (13:56):
Yeah. The human side. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (14:00):
Yeah. If you don't have this kind of stuff
dialed in, what's gonna happenis that your everybody on your
sales team, marketing team,everybody's gonna be agreed on
the what. And then every pieceof content, every website page
you create, every blog articleyou create under that kind of
omniscient voice will all sounddifferent depending on who wrote
it. Mhmm. And that's it gets alittle dicey.
(14:22):
So I wanna dig into this claritypiece just for one layer deeper
because you already startedtouching upon this, George, and
actually, I'll open this up toMax and Chad as well. When we
take a look at this clarity ofexpression that HubSpot is
really pushing with this firststage, why is that important
right now, particularly with thecontext of AI?
Chad Hohn (14:43):
Like for me, you know, again, not not a marketer,
right, is not a marketer.
George B. Thomas (14:49):
But but you are human.
Chad Hohn (14:51):
But I am human.
Liz Moorehead (14:52):
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (14:52):
And I do encounter a lot of marketing in my day to
day life as we all do. And Ithink, like, the being able to
keep everybody on the same pagein plat in your platform gives
your anything that anybody seeson anything because not, you
(15:13):
know, sometimes in anorganization that's even larger,
like, the same person who'sdoing some of the social media
stuff isn't doing some of theweb stuff and isn't doing some,
you know, like, different peopleare doing those different pieces
sometimes. And, like, the thethings that HubSpot's pushing
you to, me coming at it from atechnical perspective as always,
(15:33):
is to make sure that everybody'son the same page if they're
performing all of this inmarketing studio is using the
ICP AI data source setting andso ideal customer profile, and
then the brand identity sectionas well of your AI data source,
(15:54):
as well as the products andservices, and then finally
crafting for each campaign youbuild to be more specific if
it's outside of your normal, butbuilt from that foundation so
that everybody's on the samepage. That way, when you see
some add on, you know,somewhere, if you're seeing an
(16:14):
advertisement or if you'reseeing any kind of content or
any kind of you know, that'srelated that's being pushed
through a marketing source, thatit all stems from that same, you
know, mission or same companycustomer profile, same company
perspective, you know, all thethings that you're solving for
is the same across all of it ifyou're able to use the platform
(16:37):
to accomplish it.
I think that's the beautifulpart of, like, if you're fully
using all the tools, that's thethat's the ideal way to look at
it. You know, if you're tryingto say what are they solving for
and how do you do it in thesystem. Right? So there's all
those different features,buzzwords or whatever, if you
(16:58):
will, that I just listed outthat are all things that they
want that they that at least intheir documentation, they say
this is the the where you wouldgo to do that to make sure that
everybody is evolving betweenyour AI and your humans doing
the all the stuff and and yourmessage is the same because it's
great. When, you know, when yousee weird stuff across multiple,
(17:23):
This happens a lot with smallerorganizations.
Like, I have some friends whomanage some construction company
ads. And, like, sometimes yousee what these people do on
their own, and you're like, oh,yeah. Like, I mean, if I, you
know, saw that on Facebook intwo differences, just like not
even the same, or it takes youto a page that says nothing
about what the ad's about.Right? And so this, I think,
(17:43):
will help with that.
Right? That's the idea anyway.
Liz Moorehead (17:46):
That'd so for real. Yeah. I've never been more
lost in a conversation than I amat this moment right now.
Fascinating. Tell us why.
I don't even know what we're talking about at this
point, and I've been payingattention. I don't know. Like,
the like, I I I what was theoriginal question you had asked,
Chad, Liz?
(18:07):
All I had asked was that why was this type of
clarity in the in the context ofExpress this specific stage, why
is it important against thecontext of AI and what's
happening in content right now?
I don't even know what that means. My brain can't
can't process that at all. Like,I and I'm looking I I'm, like,
(18:28):
looking at the loop marketing,like, playbook page. And I've
I've I've my brain is justcompletely shutting off. Like,
I've gotten to this point whereI'm, like, looking at, like, you
know me how it like, when I whenI talk about the flywheel a lot.
And I'm like, there's these verynatural sort of progressions
through where these chevronsmeet, and it really makes a lot
(18:51):
of sense. I'm trying to applythat same and maybe you guys can
tell me if I'm just looking atthis the wrong way. Right? But
I'm trying to take that sameidea, especially looking at
stage four, which is evolve andhow it swoops back up into
express. And I'm sitting herewondering, is this is this
(19:11):
insinuating that you'reconstantly re expressing
yourself and constantlyrevisiting expression all the
time?
Like, because the, like, the thevisual just doesn't work for me.
Right? Maybe I just don't getit.
George B. Thomas (19:28):
This
Liz Moorehead (19:28):
is
George B. Thomas (19:28):
this
Liz Moorehead (19:28):
is And I'm not saying this is bad.
This is needed
because no one knows how to do this in this
crazy age, especially when we wejust we we just figured we just
became comfortable with with thefact that we could instantly
turn ourselves into a Pixarcharacter. And then before we
were even comfortable with that,Sora two came out, and we're
(19:51):
like, we don't know what reallife is anymore because we could
literally create anything, andwe can't trust video at all.
Right?
George B. Thomas (19:58):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:59):
And then when I think I think someone who sees
this is gonna be like, uh-huh.What? It sounds like a lot of,
like, woo woo, you know,craziness that is thousand times
deeper than, like, mostmarketers are gonna be able to
understand.
George B. Thomas (20:13):
So I don't
Liz Moorehead (20:13):
know.
George B. Thomas (20:14):
Max so first of all, let me just say this.
Max, I love you.
Liz Moorehead (20:18):
I love you so much.
George B. Thomas (20:19):
Because I think that you are expressing
pun intended.
Liz Moorehead (20:22):
We're just a blue collar marker, Roca.
George B. Thomas (20:25):
You're, you're expressing how I feel a lot of
humans will feel in the moment.And this is why I said it
inbound, these words. I believeeverything that was on each of
the slides for the four phasesor stages, I don't necessarily
(20:45):
agree with the visual of theloop. Now, understand what was
trying to be portrayed of like,it's just a crazy time in the
world and buyers are doing allthese things, but because buyers
are doing all these things,marketers, they think in like
steps to get thingsaccomplished. Now, while I do
believe that you might iterateyour voice and tone over time,
(21:08):
or like we are at PsychicStrategies, we're pausing for a
moment to see what do we wantour future ideal customer
profiles to be that we want tostart targeting or attracting,
right?
To go back to some terminologythat we all know. But Max,
really the crux of theconversation that Liz was trying
to start there is like, so manymarketers are going to think
(21:32):
that they need to do this AIstuff. They're going to be
HubSpot users. They may not haveeven used ChatGPT or Claude up
until this point. So they'reliterally getting their feet wet
and they haven't heard the wordsof context and how AI needs
context to actually give you anoutput that is consistent with
what you might want to put intothe world.
(21:53):
So like clarity is important,but to have clarity, you said,
Max, something that I love. Mostmarketers aren't ready for the
deep exploration that they'regoing to have to take to get the
clarity that they're going toneed. Listen, I'll go back to
the fact that we have thedocument about beliefs,
(22:14):
mindsets, and core values. Ionly have that because I went on
a year and a half explorationwith Liz on another podcast
called Beyond Your Default, towhich then I used AI to reverse
engineer out of all of thoseepisodes, what must be the
beliefs, mindsets, and corevalues of the human doing this
to then be able to feed it backinto AI for clarity in which it
(22:38):
should create in this manner orway. And I know we're getting to
a question that is going to bemore of like, well, how do you
do said thing?
So, I don't want to spoil that.Like, how how do you train your
AI? Because there's outside ofHubSpot and there's inside of
HubSpot that want to talk aboutthat. But Max, I don't think
that the loop is a track thatmarketers are actually
(23:01):
following. The loop is what thebuyer is doing.
The stages are more of a, Iguess I'll use linear set of
things that you might want tothink about doing in the
production or creation of thethings that you're creating.
I'll shut up, Liz. I think youhad some thoughts too because we
both were shaking our head no atthe same time when Max is having
(23:23):
his crisis there.
Liz Moorehead (23:24):
My episode. Wait, but wait, what do you mean about
the customers are doing theloop? So I like when I go out
and buy a Snickers bar, I'm notexpressing tailoring or
amplifying or evolving any wayyou should
George B. Thomas (23:36):
You running through a loop of thoughts in
your brain. Do I want a Snickerstoday or do I want this?
Liz Moorehead (23:43):
We're talking about the buyer's journey
though. That's the buyer's
George B. Thomas (23:46):
I I don't disagree, that's where this was
born from. If you hear theoriginal story, literally I'll
just, here's Here's what I Iwhat I heard somebody was
standing in front of a room, notto be mentioned. And they were
talking about how everything waschanging and SEO was broke and
(24:06):
this is happening. And theyliterally were making this hand
gesture as they were talking.And somebody said, kind of like
a loop.
And exactly. And that's whereloop marketing was born from
what I've been told by sources Iwould believe. And so again, I I
(24:27):
say, I don't know if it's agreat visual, but I do believe
in the things that we talk aboutin each one of these stages to
be important and true. And see,here's the world that we live in
right now is it is confusingbecause you're trying to roll up
the inbound methodology. You'retrying to roll up the buyer's
(24:47):
journey and you're trying toshove it into something that
really is a marketer's playbookto get the things out for the
methodology and the journey.
But people are looking at it asit's like all in one
encompassing, and it's not.
Liz Moorehead (25:02):
Yeah. I mean, I'm still in the camp that this is
this is a big sign that says useAI tools. That, like and I I
hate that. I hate it. Yeah.
I hate being in that mindset.Right? But when I look at this
and it's and it and it clearlyuse it says literally says use
AI. Like, it it it and and,again, don't get me wrong. We
(25:27):
gotta give people a framework todo it.
I'm all for Right? Yeah. I Itake umbrage with the idea that
this is this has anything to dowith the buyer's journey. Right?
Like, that's a fundamentallyseparate concept.
But, yeah, it's it's weird. Youknow, I I will say it would be
weird from an optic standpointfor them to come out with some
(25:50):
kind of strategy that terminatesat the end. You know what I
mean? Like that because thenit's like, oh, wait. It looks
just like the original inboundmethodology, which looked like
it ended, but really didn'tbecause it always had that thing
underneath it.
Never did. All the way back tothe front. And then they just
they just curvatured it whenthey did the flywheel. Right?
Yeah.
But yeah. I mean, it the the youknow what would be the most,
(26:13):
like, useful thing for me, and Ithink for a lot of other people
that might be a little bit moresmooth brained like me
George B. Thomas (26:21):
Do too.
Liz Moorehead (26:22):
Looking at express, tailor, amplify, and
evolve and breaking down. Okay.What does that literally mean
without the, you know, God, it'slike it's just like a white
woman's Instagram words that areon top of it. You know what I
mean? Wow.
What do you Live live, laugh,love, evolve
(26:43):
As the white woman in the room, I'm fine with
it.
Right? Okay. Okay. But you're wrong. Right?
George B. Thomas (26:48):
Not canceled. Not canceled.
Liz Moorehead (26:49):
This looks like something that people would have
on wooden plaques in theirkitchen. Right?
We're living, laughing, loving with HubSpot.
And and No. I completely agree.
I just wanna know what this stuff actually mean.
Like, I I I when I look at it, Ijust it's not tangible. You know
what I mean? Inbound wastangible. It was easy.
It was simple. This ain't dude.It's not.
(27:10):
I gotta be honest. I I'm feeling a little I
I gotta drop in with my thoughtshere, George. First, number one,
I'm feeling a little vindicatedbecause Max, in our last
episode, I was the one who waslike, not as hilarious as you,
but going like, what, what isthis and why are we here?
Because I could not figure, areyou trying to solve for a
(27:33):
product? Are you trying to like,are we, are we replacing?
Are we not replacing the flat?Where's the inbound method?
Like, what is what is happeninghere? Because this is the first
time they've rolled outsomething where I've looked at
it. And even though I willadmit, and we talked about this
on previous episodes with theflywheel, I was like flywheel,
ew.
(27:53):
But like I got where they werecoming from. I understood like
there was a real ethos behind itand this I'm just kinda like,
okay. So we're loop marketingnow.
George B. Thomas (28:04):
It's it's a marketer's playbook to hybrid
teams and AI usage. Let's callit what it is.
Liz Moorehead (28:10):
And don't get me wrong. I think it's just
explained in this overly fluffyway that makes it really
difficult to understand the thethe the what are you literally
doing through each one of thesestages? Because you can do that
for inbound. You can, like, goit's like, yeah, attracting
(28:30):
games and delight. Sounds prettyamorphous, but you you can
explain what you're literallydoing, like, behind each one of
those words.
Right?
If you're to take express, it's really simple. It
is a messaging strategy and yourcontent style guide.
Is it That's it. Literally.
George B. Thomas (28:46):
Yeah. But
Liz Moorehead (28:47):
It's a that's
it. Am I am I explaining it right? If it's
it's you define your buyerpersona. I'm still I'm gonna
call it buyer persona till theday I die. Okay.
We go. Sometimes a trial. Yeah.Yeah.
George B. Thomas (28:58):
Max got you on
Liz Moorehead (28:59):
that one. But but it also sounds like creating a
ton of documentation that makesyour AI understand how to talk
like you. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
It's Where is that writtenanywhere in this playbook? It's
not.
George B. Thomas (29:12):
Well, This is why we're having this episode.
Why should we be
Liz Moorehead (29:16):
the ones that have to do it? God.
Can I tell you as the content strategist person
here? I would love to tell youthis. You would be surprised.
This is something we've talkedabout with content hiring and
like very old episodes. Contentis the thing that makes inbound
go and it is the thing thatinbounders do not know how to do
and there aren't a ton ofspecialists who know how to do
(29:38):
it.
A lot of these disciplines arethings that you see at
enterprise levels. Like Ispecialize in creating messaging
strategies and content styleguides. Your normal inbound
marketer does not know how to doit. This is not something
taught. This is usuallysomething gate kept at a higher
level.
And I only learned how to do itwhen I was a baby content
(29:59):
manager at Quintain in 2015 whenI realized no one sounds the
same and there are no rules.Like, so I figured out how to
make rules. But that's prettymuch it. And this is the one
thing that I've always foundstriking and very confusing.
There are already terms forthese things.
Like, I love the idea ofexpress, but like it's literally
create a messaging strategy.Your messaging strategy begins
(30:21):
with your buyer personas and whothey are. That's how every one
of my messaging workshopsbegins. You do a messaging
strategy once you decide on whatyou're saying, then you do
another workshop or set ofexercises that helps you
determine your voice tone andstyle. Which are your rules for
how you sound and what youeditorially look like on paper.
Like, that's really what it is,and it's just, like, very
(30:43):
confusing in the way that theydescribe it.
Chad Hohn (30:44):
Yeah. I suspect the reason that they feel like they
wanted to change the terminologyis maybe not to encroach on that
segment, but also to likebecause it's in the context of a
hybrid team. Like, right on thefront page, you know, it says
express your distinct brandidentity. So it's like
Liz Moorehead (31:01):
Messaging strategies are built for
multidisciplinary teams.Messaging strategies are not
built for marketers. They arebuilt for everyone. I mean, like
right off the bat.
George B. Thomas (31:10):
Chad, I agree with you. And listen, I, if I'm
being completely honest rightnow, which I, I typically am, I
feel like when we entered thisworld of AI content creation or
this express phase, that I'vehad an unfair advantage the
entire time, because one of thethings that I did almost four
years ago when I started thebusiness is I actually hired Liz
(31:31):
to help me do a voice and toneworkshop. Along the entire way,
I've had an entire presentationdeck and information that I
could feed to my AI assistantand say, this is who I am. This
is how I want to show up. AndI've continued to add layers
along the way, which again, ifwe ever get to the next
question, I'll talk about thoselayers.
Liz Moorehead (31:52):
Gosh, we got two minutes left. I know.
Like, how do we wanna-
Chad Hohn (31:57):
An eight part series?
Liz Moorehead (31:59):
No, but I think this brings up a really
important point. You know what,we're gonna do a second second
version of this and that's fine.But I think this brings up the
larger point because we havedone lots of product rollout
announcements together. We'vedone new initiatives, We've done
new hubs. We and this one hasbeen the messiest.
(32:19):
Yeah. This is the one wheremultiple times throughout these
conversations, one summer, allof us are going, well, I guess
we're here and this is whatwe're doing now. Not entirely
sure why, but we think we kindof know why. And I think this is
something that needs to beaddressed because if we are
(32:40):
sitting here for yes, somewhatsmooth brained, but pretty smart
people who spend a lot of timein HubSpot and we're confused.
Can you imagine how the everydayHubSpot is feeling right now
looking at all of this?
Matt's face.
I just looked at no. I just looked down at this
stupid loop marketing scorecardCareful. Careful. No. It's just
(33:02):
like, never mind.
It makes it even more confusing.I'm sorry. So so
the more it looks, the more confused I get.
George B. Thomas (33:09):
So here's what I'm gonna say. And Max, you kind
of said like, why should it beour job? I was empathetic to
this at the very beginning,which is why I said, team, Liz,
Max, Chad, we're not gonna doone episode about this. There's
no way. No.
It is our job moving forward totry to do our best to simplify
(33:33):
the rest of these conversationswe have, Express B2, because we
didn't even get to like six ofour questions that we wanna talk
about. And then the rest of thethree that we need to hit.
Because again, I do think thatwe're normal humans, but I think
that we're smart humans. And Ithink that all of us have used
(33:53):
HubSpot for a lot of years andwere nerdy in different
directions to like Liz voice andtone, you know, technical stuff.
But literally one of theconversations that we need to
have is like, I, I so wanted toget to this question.
So I'm gonna tease out the nexttime we have the V2 of this. I
(34:14):
so wanted to answer thisquestion. How do you actually
teach? Because Max, you said,
Liz Moorehead (34:19):
What do you do?
George B. Thomas (34:21):
So one of the questions is, How do you
actually teach your brand'svoice to AI tools so they don't
spit out generic content? Whatparticular tools or processes do
you recommend? Style guides,prompts, training, etcetera.
That right there will helpsimplify the complexities in
people's brains because we'll beable to talk about the things,
the steps, the the have this, dothis, talk to it like this in
(34:45):
the next episode. Okay, hubheroes.
We've reached the end of anotherepisode. Will Lord Lack continue
to loom over the community orwill we be able to defeat him in
the next episode of the hubheroes podcast? Make sure you
tune in and find out in the nextepisode. Make sure you head over
(35:06):
to the hubheroes.com to get thelatest episodes and become part
of the league of heroes. FYI, ifyou're part of the league of
heroes, you'll get the shownotes right in your inbox and
they come with some hidden powerup potential as well.
Make sure you share this podcastwith a friend. Leave a review if
you like what you're listeningto and use the hashtag hashtag
(35:28):
hub heroes podcast on any of thesocials and let us know what
strategy conversation you'd liketo listen into next. Until next
time, when we meet and combineour forces, remember to be a
happy, helpful, humble human,and of course, be looking for a
way to be someone's hero.
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