Inbound Marketing University – 5 Reasons I Liked It

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A couple of weeks ago my TweetDeck popped up a Tweet from someone I was following, telling me there was to be an “Inbound Marketing University” offered by HubSpot, from here in the Boston area. While I have more than my fair share of free webinars to attend, the word “University” caught my eye and I decided to click in. I’m very glad I did. This is my review of the IMU event, which I am told will be held again in August. Here is what I liked about it …

What first attracted me to it was the fact that it looked like something substantive, especially when you scanned through the list of topics and presenters (some of whom I recognized and some I didn’t). There would be 2 courses per day, an hour each, for five days. It looked like it covered a lot of bases. Yeah, OK, and it was FREE!

The Inbound Marketing Topics

In my view, the team at HubSpot did a great job of selecting a good mix of subjects that covered the key elements involved in inbound marketing. At a high level, these included:

• How to Get Found
• Converting Traffic to Leads
• Nurturing Leads to Sales
• Analyzing Your Work To Focus Efforts to Improve

Embedded in these topics were many supporting subjects that ranged from the essentials of blogging to establishing your marketing persona, developing landing pages and a whole host of other topics. When you pull the lens back and look at how HubSpot orchestrated the various topics, delivered by more than ten speakers into a cohesive online marketing program … well maybe you don’t have to be impressed but I certainly was.

Flowing through most of the non-technical presentations was the all-important theme of:  “Nobody wants to hear about your dumb products because it isn’t about you, your company, or your products – It’s about giving, not getting.” The presenters stuck to this theme by giving freely of their time and expertise with hardly a mention of their own products and services. And when they did talk about what they do, it was typically to add meaningful substance to a case study.

Making it Real

Speaking of case studies – they were used frequently and really served to demonstrate how various speakers plied their trade to take the otherwise theoretical parts of what they do to actual customer situations. Some of the “before and after” discussions were very impressive in terms of how far they were able to move the various measurement needles. More traffic, more clicks, more conversions to leads, and more sales were central themes in many of the examples given. It was refreshing to see how the various elements of what we were being lectured on were being applied on a daily basis in the real world and the results that could be achieved. It was stimulating to say the least.

Striking A Balance

While some of the advanced SEO stuff was just a tad out of my league (or way out in a couple of instances) a subset of the audience made it clear that this level of detail and expertise was something they had been looking for through ongoing Tweets at #imu. While I don’t have audience statistics, direct and indirect comments I received painted a picture to me that I was sitting in a class with people that had varying levels of skill and interests. It is virtually impossible to represent perfection to different experience levels, but I believe IMU must have struck a good balance for many people in different stages of their inbound marketing careers. If you need evidence of this, just look through all the positive comments in the IMU hashtag.

Making it Accessible

This is really a no-brainer for anyone that does online anything, but since I’m writing about what I liked, it doesn’t matter how simplistic the thought is. The sessions were all archived so attendees could catch up on sessions they missed, or, like me, review sessions you didn’t quite fathom the first time around. On24 deserves a few rounds of applause for donating all the hosting for the event and making sure the sessions were archived soon after the event was over … for the most part. (A full plate kept them from getting the final class and review session posted with their usual due diligence, but post it they did.)

It Created Community

I got to make connections that I probably would have never made because of my participation in IMU. Furthermore, the connections I made were with people with similar interests. Initial banter over the pre-exam study agita and study plans (yes there is a certification exam at the end) quickly grew to more meaningful electronic exchanges and resulted in a number of new Twitter and LinkedIn connections.

Thank You

This must have been quite an effort for all involved and I sincerely hope that you all get more than you gave as a result of your efforts. My personal thanks to all the Inbound Marketing University sponsors and presenters. Sponsors included:

• Hubspot
• On24
• Constant Contact
• Intouch
• Marketing Experiments
• MarketingProfs
• New Marketing Labs
• TopRank On Line Marketing
• SEOmoz.org
• Silicon Valley American Marketing Association

If inbound marketing is a passion of yours, a field of study or just a passing interest, I highly recommend you keep your eyes peeled on the August horizon for the next coming of Inbound Marketing University.

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