How HubSpot Helped Me Get Back In The Game [Customer Story]
Guest post by Laurie Patterson Monahan, Principal of Bay Area Inbound. Laurie is a Partner with HubSpot, and her company recently ranked in the top 10 on the customer happiness index out of more than 4,000 of her peers.
I took eight years off from the full-time workforce to raise our twins and feel really lucky that we could afford for me to do it. But when I was ready to dive back into the workforce, I was discouraged by how hard it was to find work in the high-tech sector that was commensurate with my previous experience; I'd been in high-tech product management and sales for 10 years. What I really wanted was to work from home.
Finally I gave up and went back to work full-time at a hot networking security startup where I was responsible for lead generation. That's where I learned about inbound marketing and how it can drive traffic to your company's website, capture warm leads, and nurture them into sales. I'd never seen so many warm leads in my life!
I realized at once that inbound marketing was something I could do from home, something that built on the skills I already had, and something that would continue to be in high demand for years to come. I bought HubSpot and signed on to the Partner program so that I could get started.
I had already created my own marketing consulting company a while ago. I rebranded my marketing company as an inbound marketing company, Bay Area Inbound. Following the training I received as a HubSpot customer, I changed my URL, optimized my site, blogged, trained my team, extended my online footprint, created videos, CTAs and landing pages, and got the word out about my company via social networking and email lead nurturing.
Then in May 2012, HubSpot ranked me 7th out of more than 4,000 Partners for “doing inbound marketing right." Naturally, I blogged about this achievement right away and added it to my resume. These great results made my family and friends comfortable referring me for inbound marketing work at their companies.
First, my husband referred me to his company’s Chief Marketing Officer. That got me an interview, and I landed the job ghost-writing blog articles for the CMO.
Next, because I’ve been posting blog articles on LinkedIn, I get a lot of traffic on my LinkedIn profile. I noticed that a VP of Marketing had been looking at my profile, so I contacted him to ask if he needed any of my company’s services. He referred me to a friend of his at a very early-stage startup. They hired me to do all of their marketing.
Naturally, I recommended that they use HubSpot.
I'm really grateful that I invested in HubSpot software and learned to specialize in inbound marketing. It allows me to work in the field that I love, from home, and to grow my company at www.BayAreaInbound.com. It's all thanks to HubSpot.
