"I have no idea how to get Millennials to _______________"
-Every client that I've spoken to in the last 16 years.

Ever since 2002, business owners have struggled to attract the Millennial generation, those born between 1981 and 1996. Millennials are quite different than the Boomers and Gen X who I worked with during my tenure at my advertising agency in the 2000's. And it has taken the marketing world, especially the small- and medium-sized businesses a long time to figure them out (if they have at all).

But to be honest, that's not important right now.  

Uber has disrupted and transformed the transportation business because they focused on being easy to do business with. They’ve eliminated as much friction in the sales process as possible. No more standing in line to hail a cab. No more stumbling for a credit card or scrounging for cash. No more stuffing hard-to-read receipts in your wallet. And because Uber is easy to engage and easy to work with, they have experienced dramatic growth.

Learning from your peers is one of the best ways to see if you should get started with inbound marketing, or whether you're on the right path to building a solid lead generation strategy

That's why we started the "5 Questions With..." series. In today's edition, we get to hear from Mark Zimmer, Owner of Zimmer Radio, Inc., out of Joplin, Missouri. 

As we've shared in previous posts, our team recently attended Hubspot's annual conference in Boston, INBOUND. Each year, INBOUND marks a monumental time for Hubspot's product updates and announcements, and this year didn't disappoint. This year's over-arching theme at the conference was, 'Grow Better,' and these product updates will assist Hubspot users with just that: growing better and growing bigger. 

As we've shared here and here, the entire LeadG2 team is currently in Boston at INBOUND, an annual marketing and business conference hosted by HubSpot. Tuesday was opening night kicking us off with a keynote speech from Deepak Chopra, yesterday was day two of sessions and keynotes, and today, we're wrapping up the last day at #INBOUND18. We've put together a few key takeaways that our staff found interesting, inspiring, or helpful from Thursday and Friday's sessions in this post. 

As we previously shared, the entire LeadG2 team is currently in Boston at INBOUND, an annual marketing and business conference hosted by Hubspot. Tuesday was opening night kicking us off with a keynote speech from Deepak Chopra, and yesterday was the first full day of sessions jam-packed with insightful information, industry updates, inspiring messages, and of course all things sales, marketing, and business. We've put together a few key takeaways that our staff found interesting, inspiring, or helpful from Tuesday's sessions in this post. 

It’s Tuesday, and while many of you are slowly starting your week after a long, holiday weekend, our entire team is in Boston for Hubspot's annual INBOUND conference. This year we’ve got 12 of our team members in town to learn and network with some of the industry’s best. At LeadG2, we put a huge focus on continued education and always staying up to date on the latest news, trends, and best practices that will help us service our clients. We’ve even spoken at this conference quite a few times in the past (including Managing Partner, Matt Sunshine, and General Manager, Dani Buckley).

Marketing is notorious for its jargon. And while the terminology itself isn’t necessarily what's important, what you do need to know is how these strategies and tactics can help you. In this post, we’ll explore inbound marketing and lead generation, and what each can do for you.

It’s easy to put inbound marketing and outbound tactics into two completely separate buckets. We’ve got online lead generation, content marketing, blogging, thought leadership, lead nurturing, SEO, and organic social media that fall under the umbrella of inbound marketing. While TV and radio ads, database marketing, cold-calling, digital ads, paid search, and sponsorships fall under outbound. However, what I’ve come to believe is that neither is as strong on its own as it would be if integrated with the other.

You see, “Together we stand, divided we fall,” is a great patriotic motto but it is also very applicable to marketing and sales tactics.

I spoke with a business owner recently about their revenue growth objectives. They were frustrated because the first half of the year didn’t go as planned, and their new business revenue numbers were lagging behind the goals they set at the beginning of the year. They were very optimistic, however, that the second half of the year would be different. They were confident they would eventually exceed all their growth goals.

When I asked what they were basing this optimism on, they went on to tell me that they had just hired a new salesperson. And this was not just any salesperson. This was someone with deep connections in their industry and a network of relationships that could get them in front of the decision-makers at some of their most attractive target accounts. In fact, this salesperson was even bringing a few deals with them that they expected to close very shortly. They had hired a rainmaker.       

I hope it works out for them.