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Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Justin Gracey. Justin is a marketing Fellow at HubSpot and works with and through ecosystem agency partners for go to market efforts. A marketing Fellow at HubSpot is described as a highly experienced and accomplished individual who brings a unique and specific subject matter expertise that is difficult to find in the market. Justin truly brings that to life in this conversation, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with all of you. And this episode, we discuss how agencies can embrace AI to avoid disruption. How partnerships between solution and app partners are driving success. Why comprehensive solutions for specific industries are game changers and more. Today's episode is brought to you by Zen pilot. There are lots of tools out there for agencies to manage projects, but any project issues aren't usually caused by the tool. They're from your own processes. Zen pilot helps agencies implement their project management tools while streamlining operations. So you can move your team from chaos to clarity, you can see for yourself at Zen pilot.com. Now ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce Mr. Justin Gracie.
Unknown Speaker 1:12
It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward.
Unknown Speaker 1:31
How can agencies avoid the disruption caused by AI? Yeah, that's been a obviously a hot piece debated topic on LinkedIn recently, there's been some fun threads I've been following. But uh, ya know, I'm in the camp, there's definitely two camps right now, which is, AI is gonna steal our jobs, ruin our business. And then there's the other side, that's, hey, this, there's a ton of opportunity here. And I'm in that second camp. Like the disclaimer upfront is that I don't work at an agency. I don't come from an agency background other than working with agencies every day and our partner ecosystem here at HubSpot. But really, my take on what I've been seeing is that the partners that are going to avoid disruption with AI are the partners who are leaning into it, and not leaning out out of fear.
Unknown Speaker 2:19
I think though, agencies that are leaning out of AI because of the fear that they have, or the anxiety or the unknowns,
Unknown Speaker 2:27
those are the partners that are playing and testing around with these tools. They're not trying to figure out like, Hey, how can I optimize my processes internally? How can I gain efficiencies with these tools? How can I deliver better results for my clients with these products, and these platforms, and that's a huge mess, that's going to lead to disruption for them for sure.
Unknown Speaker 2:48
But on the flip side, with the partners that are playing around, they're testing on a daily basis, they're trying new tools, they're having conversations with their clients about AI, those are the partners that are I think, already starting to win more. And they're going to avoid I think total disruption. For sure. There's of course going to be changes to how they work. But that's like been my big thing so far. Right? It's almost there, or I'm assuming it's a job requirement now at HubSpot to to kind of be bullish on AI. Ya know, it's been a for us, we've had a directive. And luckily, we've got like the right resources to be enabled through it. But the directive to get involved with AI to start playing around with it, testing it, and we've been given like the tools to go do that in a safe way where we're not, you know, putting any of our data externally into these other platforms. We've actually built our own internally that we can test around with us.
Unknown Speaker 3:43
But yeah, it's becoming definitely a standard for HubSpot at this point as a business. Right? I guess how much of it like a culture shift? Is it where you get a lot of team members, I'm sure who are fearful initially of AI taking their jobs, but instead having you know it coming down from higher that like, no, no, we want you to go explore so we can make your jobs better. Right. And actually, like leading into that.
Unknown Speaker 4:08
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 4:10
I think there's definitely been more concerned and anxiety for on like, the content side of the house with marketing of if you're a blogger, if you're creating content offers, things like that. I think it's starting to trickle in a little bit. Not just sounds, but but in general have like, other functions now where AI can be applied.
Unknown Speaker 4:30
But yeah, it's been more of a, hey, we're going to create a task force or tiger team internally, that's going to take your ideas on how you would like to use AI, the different tools you're seeing out there, and then they're going to evaluate, implement some of these for you to use. So they made it really like a collaborative process, which I think has helped reduce, like the anxiety and it's more of like enabling us to get involved with it, which is, I think, helping in a big way. Right. I was on a webinar actually last week just to learn more about content hub.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
and gave him his name. We're doing a great job of like fielding the questions where it seemed like everyone was just like, oh, this is gonna let me do everything so much faster. And I think was Lucas jumped in and just gave like this.
Unknown Speaker 5:14
It's like, the goal isn't necessarily just to do things faster, but it's to free you up to do things better. And it was like hearing that from from HubSpot who's really like promoting all of these AI tools with the Cotonou content hub. And so that was pretty powerful. But in the chat, it was still people just talking about how it's, oh, I can get more content out now and do all like, you find agencies are probably like focusing on kind of the wrong side of this.
Unknown Speaker 5:43
Yeah, yes or no, I've seen both. Like the more and more and more model, I think it's only gonna go so far. And it's actually gonna start, it's already penalizing people who are doing that. So the whole and this has been like HubSpot message, too, with all of our products, is that a volume game is not going to win. It's a quality game that's going to win. So quantity and quality, like, you need to balance that. And it's been interesting, too, because I think what, especially with agencies that grew up in the inbound marketing wave, and helped establish that in the market,
Unknown Speaker 6:20
where it was like this huge influx that Google saw on search of human generated content, and now you're seeing the other end of it, which is AI generated content.
Unknown Speaker 6:32
And at the same time that we saw that things kind of evened out on the human generated content side, it was like you couldn't just game the system that was gonna end up penalizing you, you couldn't just create keyword heavy content that was kind of like spammy, that was going to penalize you. But at first, you have to take advantage of that, because the system didn't have the guardrails in place yet. So that evolved, and I think that's what we're seeing now on the
Unknown Speaker 6:56
the AI side, and what agencies are probably experiencing of,
Unknown Speaker 7:01
if you play that, like gamifying, spammy game, like, yeah, you might get some short, quick results from it, but long term, you're gonna fail, and Google's gonna penalize you to the point where you can't come back from it.
Unknown Speaker 7:13
Alright, that's where the the information gain, that you're able to contribute now through using AI. So speeding up the things that you don't necessarily need to spend a ton of creative thought on. Like, let's become super efficient on those so that we can now spend a lot more time thinking through things and bringing new value
Unknown Speaker 7:34
to our audiences. Yeah, that's been the big for me anyways, not even being at an agency. But as a marketer is still
Unknown Speaker 7:43
the administrative mundane work, like maybe there are people out there that do enjoy those things. In which case, I'm sorry about that.
Unknown Speaker 7:53
But those are the things that I can't stand and it's like you spend hours and hours of your week doing some of that, and yet, like the gains that you can have of removing that off of your plate, so that you can actually focus on adding quality to the content you're creating, putting more time into the work that's more meaningful to you. And that's going to have a bigger impact on the business. That is huge. So yeah, the productivity gains on is big and
Unknown Speaker 8:22
kind of related to
Unknown Speaker 8:24
a threat of that with tying back to your you know, your background at lean labs, one of our partners in our ecosystem. When I was talking to Kevin Barber, the CEO and founder there.
Unknown Speaker 8:35
Early on, when this was beginning of last year in 2023, when AI was starting to hit the masses, and people were like, Oh, what do we do? What are we doing?
Unknown Speaker 8:45
And Kevin was mentioning how you guys were leveraging AI in a way that you could plug in like the Esso w the statement of work up front. So you know, it's almost like the intake process, the client fills in their information. Here's what I'm looking for the timeline, the deliverables, here's our target, market, our target buyer. And then instantly, that gets ported into a large language model spits out, you know, recommendations and an outline, which your team can then bring it to the client and present like, instantly, like, hey, right on top of this, we understand your business.
Unknown Speaker 9:18
So those in the agency world, like those are the types of examples of like use cases, to get those productivity gains of removing that mundane work. So that way, you can actually focus on the client work rather than like the administration administrative work, right? We actually, we had tasked one individual on the team who was really good at writing prompts. And his job was to just go interview the rest of the team and see how you can make their lives easier using AI. And that was his responsibility for a bit and so like, there's a lot of really cool things that came from that and Kevin is gonna have some, some awesome
Unknown Speaker 9:55
I mean, they're packaging it all into a something that other people can benefit from. Like that's going to be great.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Once I once he announces then gets it out there. Yeah, that's super cool. And like that. Yeah, that's like the whole point of like, leaning into AI and like HubSpot did a similar thing. Like I said, it was like, Hey, we're gonna give you the tools, we want to hear your ideas, we're gonna start like giving you these things to work with.
Unknown Speaker 10:19
And, again, I don't think all agencies out there are doing that. And that's definitely a risk of being behind in the game. So
Unknown Speaker 10:29
yeah, the sooner you can do that.
Unknown Speaker 10:32
The faster I think roles even evolve
Unknown Speaker 10:35
into AI content marketers and AI, you know, Bartek, marketers, and operations, folks. So, alright, so inbound has been like a cornerstone of, of HubSpot approach the marketing, and everything do you find now with with AI being like, coming in kind of disrupting some of the content game? Are people looking for agencies specifically looking for other approaches more openly, like now bringing in more outbound more, like, near man, like really just focusing on other elements rather than niching? into like inbound methodologies?
Unknown Speaker 11:15
Yeah, definitely, for sure. I think we're all feeling the impact of AI and AI generated content on you know, obviously, the search results in Google and what that's turning into. And
Unknown Speaker 11:29
so agencies are definitely feeling that impact. It's hurting.
Unknown Speaker 11:33
Google's death or AI is burning the search results, essentially, temporarily, we'll see what happens next. But for me, it's more about Yes, outbound is becoming a bigger thing again. And you have to do that in the right way. It can't be spammy. So again, taking like the inbound principles of like, giving value before extracting value, and all of those types of things need to apply to outbound as well. Because we know that outbound is even struggling with the way that buyers are shifting their behavior.
Unknown Speaker 12:05
But it's not just about outbound, I think there's still this component of inbound that I often see overlooked in the agency world,
Unknown Speaker 12:14
which is like a bias towards just written content for inbound marketing. So again, writing blogs, content offers that are going to surface in Google search results or Bing search. You can't do that solely today to when you actually have to go and expand into new channels that are still inbound channels. So HubSpot especially is leaning heavily into YouTube right now. We've got our whole like,
Unknown Speaker 12:41
podcast network, our YouTube network.
Unknown Speaker 12:46
And like, those are the channels that are starting to see a huge uptick. Because those are where buyers are going. They're not just going to the Google search results to look for information and help. They're going to YouTube to get how to education, they're looking to Reddit, community forums to get like their peer feedback, they're going to tick tock now, which we'll see how long that last year in the US. But those are all inbound channels to me, but oftentimes, I think they go overlooked by agencies because they think inbound marketing is content, SEO, etc. Right? Well, I think so I've talked this on a bunch of podcasts. Now buyer behavior is changing. But it is probably a little surprising to to go to tick tock looking for like b2b type content, right? Same thing, even YouTube to an extent. It's like, I think that's shifted in recent years.
Unknown Speaker 13:38
It has.
Unknown Speaker 13:41
And that's why I think it's such a great untapped opportunity, too, because, you know, it just wasn't there before. But now we're seeing more and more b2b content popping up in those channels.
Unknown Speaker 13:54
And you have to get like the message and the content, right? channel by channel, trying to remember the company
Unknown Speaker 14:03
and lapsing on it right now. But it was one tick tock, and they did it really well, where it felt like just regular entertaining, tick tock content. But then it tied, had, you know, stitches back into their brand and their product in a very light way. But it kept it engaging, and it wasn't like an ad or anything like that. So getting the content right, for each channel is also key can't just put it all on the same, same content on every channel.
Unknown Speaker 14:31
Right? And similar to what people are doing with written content, like their AI tools and ways to expedite some of the creative process so that you can actually make your content now stand out on all these different channels and think, but like even looking at outbound approaches,
Unknown Speaker 14:50
as one of the things that Marcus Sheridan brought up on our episode was
Unknown Speaker 14:56
you can find an AI sales rep. And like something I think it was an error.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
dot AI? Yeah, it's like you can't you really can't tell. Like if you're not paying attention. Like it's a little terrifying. Right, but it's a person or not a person. And yeah, the SDR world that is super interesting when it comes to AI.
Unknown Speaker 15:18
I personally haven't dug in deeply there, but I know like Kieran, who's on the marketing Instagram podcast with Kip.
Unknown Speaker 15:27
He has been digging in there. And I think he's invested in a few AI SDR platforms. They I think in the next few months, that's going to start heating up even more, but it is becoming kind of remarkable that what can be done? Yeah, no, it is a it is ever, which does bring on the the question of like, what, what can you trust these days? Right. So if people are coming in being skeptical about everything, then inbound methodologies, where you're trying to actually build trust and bring people to you now become more
Unknown Speaker 15:57
of a requirement, really for business. And so I think you have the great resurgence of Mmm,
Unknown Speaker 16:04
yes, for sure. And that's what Google is even starting to, again, they're always iterating on that, but like, rewarding high quality content that, you know, ties in,
Unknown Speaker 16:16
you know, when you have other thought leaders that your backlinking or quoting and including in your content that improves that trust throughout it.
Unknown Speaker 16:27
But yeah, the whole idea with like misinformation, or not trusting the content that's spit out.
Unknown Speaker 16:34
That's a big issue and something that the whole inbound principle, I think, can bring life back to.
Unknown Speaker 16:41
And
Unknown Speaker 16:42
you're even starting to see this now with when agencies are thinking about, you know, their consultants, are there content marketers being displaced by AI, or put made obsolete?
Unknown Speaker 16:56
You know, there's new jobs opening or job roles that are evolving now to start building into that trust, pillar of like, reviewing the content that AI generates, and not just relying on it being 100% ai generated, it needs to be
Unknown Speaker 17:12
collaborative with AI and the human, that making sure that a human is going through it and reviewing for accuracy of the data, all the sources of you know, did they did it quote somebody by the wrong name. And now you have to go make sure that that matches up, like those are all things that AI currently doesn't get perfect. And that's where the human element has to come in to maintain that trust. For me, at least.
Unknown Speaker 17:38
So, I want to talk about the HubSpot ecosystem. Has a lot of agencies tied in there, I guess, where are you seeing partners kind of interacting the most? Or how is the ecosystem kind of changing, shifting for the future that is gonna kind of dictate that portion of the business.
Unknown Speaker 17:56
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 17:59
It's great moment, I think for the HubSpot partner ecosystem. So consisting of the solutions partner program, the app partner program, HubSpot for startups program.
Unknown Speaker 18:14
And
Unknown Speaker 18:16
funny enough, we recently did a reorg internally. And now all of these partnership teams live under one master umbrella, which is opening up a ton of opportunity to collaborate across these different partner types.
Unknown Speaker 18:28
But we're definitely at an inflection point, I would say, it's kind of evolved with the product as well. So you know, we started with our marketing product way back in the day, and Peekapoo to build the partner program for HubSpot. And of course, marketing agencies were a big piece of that at the time. But then as our product has evolved, and we've added sales hub service of our CRM offering, operations, hub CMS, like all of these different things, we've seen our partners also evolve with the product and expand into new service opportunities, developing deeper skill sets in different areas. So I've kind of call them like the full, the full flywheel partner type, which is like, they can kind of do it all across all of our products. We've seen that happen throughout time in our ecosystem. And then we've got partners who have maintained where they started, just like, hey, my niche is marketing, and I'm gonna spit stick to being a marketing agency, and then there's always going to be a place for that. And then we're now starting to see a new partner types coming into our ecosystem. So more of like the technology integrators, the builders that are, you know, building new products and apps for our marketplace.
Unknown Speaker 19:45
So that's definitely been a clear change for where the program's going.
Unknown Speaker 19:50
And I think it gets a lot of, I don't know, there's a lot of feedback. We've heard out there from different partners around you know, hotspots of
Unknown Speaker 20:00
corpse growing and trying to go up market and sell to larger organizations and the enterprise space.
Unknown Speaker 20:06
And I think there's this feeling for some partners that HubSpot might be like moving in a different direction and leaving them behind. And they feel like you know, maybe the HubSpot ecosystem isn't the same place that it started at. But really my take on that is that HubSpot has grown around the small business segment. And our products were built for that segment originally way back in the day. And then we also built a partner program that could serve that segment. And then over time, we've had to evolve as our product offering has evolved as the market has evolved. And
Unknown Speaker 20:43
the way I put it is, we've built a great muscle around that small business segment, and you know, the marketing agency world like we've gotten that, like really tight. But what we haven't yet mastered and where the big opportunity is for us is going up market and establishing that whole new muscle. And that requires understanding new buyers, new buying committees, how the sales process is totally different. The
Unknown Speaker 21:11
services are very different for you know, needing to connect a large tech stack that consists of hundreds of applications, not just a couple applications in their front office.
Unknown Speaker 21:23
So I think the reason why some partners feel this way of like the ecosystem growing away from them is that we're putting a lot of attention in this new bucket of building this new muscle. And it's not to say like, we don't care about the other muscle anymore, it's like, we just know, that's a well oiled machine at this point. And that we just need to put some resources to towards this other end of the bimodal strategy.
Unknown Speaker 21:45
So that's been like a clear future of the ecosystem for me is
Unknown Speaker 21:50
the bimodal strategy that we have of going down market to the small business segment, and then up market to the enterprise segment. And some partners will play in one of those, some can do a little bit of both are in there, maybe sitting in the middle.
Unknown Speaker 22:06
But that would be my advice for I think some of the partners out there is
Unknown Speaker 22:10
just because we're putting time and energy and resources and messaging in this one place that's new to us, doesn't mean everyone needs to run to it.
Unknown Speaker 22:19
Yes, you can. And there's a path for you to get there. But
Unknown Speaker 22:23
you know, there's also plenty of business opportunity and growth in that small biz section with marketing services. It's just like, we just need to go build this out. And there's paths for you to get there if you want. And we're seeing that happen in the ecosystem, too, with different things that partners are taking as approaches to do that. Right. Have you seen a like any shift in kind of a thinking now that channel account managers have been kind of swapped out with over the new roles? I can't think of a title right now.
Unknown Speaker 22:54
But I have agency seeing, are they talking differently now that they have someone who is also working with them on just how do we help you go to market? Right with all of this? Yeah, I think we're definitely in a transition period right now. So what you're referring to is
Unknown Speaker 23:09
the cam Channel account manager, and then the channel consultant, the CEC, we used to refer to it as so basically, partners each had
Unknown Speaker 23:19
both of those roles. They had a channel consultant, and that channel account manager both mapped to them. But over time, the swimlanes got very blurry around like, Who do I go to for what problem who's focusing on what? And that compounded when we started moving the channel account manager role to be less about being a quote, a caring role on the sales side, and actually just helping partners develop their own sales muscle?
Unknown Speaker 23:47
So it was like, Well, do I go to you for development? Do I go to my channel consultant for that. And that's really where we saw like the consolidation to a single partner development manager, the PDM rule now, making,
Unknown Speaker 23:59
making a whole lot of sense.
Unknown Speaker 24:02
There's a lot of acronyms and abbreviations.
Unknown Speaker 24:06
But
Unknown Speaker 24:08
with that, there's definitely some bumps that we're seeing right now, with partners having to re establish relationships with new partner development managers that they hadn't have before, the process looks a little bit differently.
Unknown Speaker 24:22
You know,
Unknown Speaker 24:23
maybe they're
Unknown Speaker 24:25
not getting the consistent communication upfront immediately, just yet. But this is also because PDFs are going through this transition internally as well. So we're training them, enabling them making sure that they have the right process and they're mapping to it. So that you know, I think over the next few months going ahead, now that we've been a couple months into it, we're gonna see that smoothed out and I think it's going to be a game changer for partners to have a single point of contact who's like their support figure. They're going to be coaching them developing them and facilitating like what they need internally. So
Unknown Speaker 24:57
definitely a little bumpy I think at first with any change
Unknown Speaker 25:00
and transition, but I think it's definitely the right direction for the ecosystem. Yeah. And I would agree with that.
Unknown Speaker 25:08
So at every point, and you've probably heard this directly from agency owners. At some point, every agency owner says something to the effect of I should just own a SASS company, or I should just have some tool that I can sell instead of doing all of these services. I know a lot of agencies that have now created things that are in the app marketplace at HubSpot, have you been noticing a trend with agencies also kind of creating that separate offering now and getting further involved in the ecosystem? Big time. That is a major trend that we're seeing right now. And we're actively encouraging at the moment.
Unknown Speaker 25:46
So when I joined HubSpot, over five years ago, we had just kind of built the app marketplace. I think at the time we had, it was a big milestone to hit 100 app partners in the ecosystem. And now we're five plus years later, we're probably approaching like 3000 app partners, I might be inflating that, it's definitely over 1500, maybe closer to 2000 at this point. So as a whole, the HubSpot platform is attracting other vendors into the ecosystem, you know, your air calls your zoom infos, your, you know, success that's been here for a while too. But all of those partners are now or businesses are partnering with us and building integrations, which is great. But then like you'd mentioned, we saw partners early on starting to launch their own products in the marketplace. And for them, there was like a really cool use case of
Unknown Speaker 26:41
Yeah, I can offer an app and customers can install it. And maybe I'll get some revenue from from that purchase of my app in the marketplace that they're using. But also, whether you have a free app or a paid app, that's a huge lead gen stream for your services side of your business. So, you know, I've seen app today with you know, they partnered and launched happily as a separate company, but it's under the same umbrella. And Bayard Bradford with data warehouse as one of their products that they have
Unknown Speaker 27:16
tried to make it so instrumental group has a couple of products out there new breed, there's a ton of them. But
Unknown Speaker 27:23
I know for AP to date, we've I've had good conversations with them about you know, they can have their product business that drives revenue, but then it's like, hey, let's talk about the services you now need. Now that you're integrating our product in with HubSpot, what do you need help with there, we actually have this whole side of our business that can support you. So that has been a great mix and kind of like a flywheel for them. Yeah, I think we saw that. Similarly, at Lane labs, with having Sprocket Rocket marketplace as well as as a theme. And not everybody wants to build their own website. And so it's very yell transition.
Unknown Speaker 28:02
And with Sprocket Rocket, the cool thing that has happened with that, too, is that so many, it wasn't just customers purchasing Sprocket Rocket to build their own websites. It was other agencies in our ecosystem that were partnering with you all to say like I'm going to offer Sprocket Rocket has like the go to
Unknown Speaker 28:21
theme and templates to build websites through. So like that's been a huge recurring theme for as long as I've been here too, is like the whole partners helping partners
Unknown Speaker 28:33
aspect to our ecosystem, which is very different from a lot of other ecosystems out there. Yes. Yeah, I would agree with that sentiment entirely. I think some of the first when I started this podcast, some of the first people I reached out to were HubSpot agencies that I knew while like from being a HubSpot solutions partner, and their response was so positive and so quick to make things happen. And yeah, that is definitely something worth
Unknown Speaker 29:01
voicing like vocalizing promoting more about the HubSpot ecosystem.
Unknown Speaker 29:07
Yeah, and I'm curious from your end to like,
Unknown Speaker 29:11
in terms of when it comes to saying like, hey, we want to launch a new product to the marketplace, or maybe it's Sprocket Rocket that's been there for a while for you is that you kind of had to go out on a limb and kind of take that lead yourself as a business to go build that, you know, your funding and all of that.
Unknown Speaker 29:27
We're starting to see now from the HubSpot side, whether it's investments into some of these partners out there, like I believe arrows has gotten investment from HubSpot, or happily there's been others as well.
Unknown Speaker 29:43
But for you, like
Unknown Speaker 29:45
how does that feel for you like in terms of opportunity to see like a company investing back into the partners to say like, Hey, we want you to build these things like we need this and how much quicker that can actually accelerate the build and launch of those. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
I mean, no, it's it's huge to know that there there's potential support, if you can find a mutual win for the, for the environment, I'm a huge fan of positive sum games. So it's like, yeah, we're gonna win, right? We're in business, we have to win if we want to stay up, but is there a way that we can win with everybody and actually bring everybody up, because there really isn't enough money to go around. Like, it's, it's not a smaller pool as we think it is. But with Sprocket Rocket, so creation of that started before I was even with Lane labs, but it was the idea of like, we need a tool to be able to do this better. And so it was very self serving tool, but then it was like, hey, other people can benefit from this. Let's get it out there. Let's, you know, set it up. So other agencies can use it, customers can use it. And I mean, we've use it for multiple HubSpot builds, as well, like some landing pages, different things like that. And, like, it's a very versatile tool helps a lot of people, it's awesome. But knowing that, like if if it does benefit HubSpot to that level like that, they would be willing to put money back into it, in order to promote it to get it up, like Bill refined, like, yeah, like that goes a long way for, especially for smaller companies, that it's like, you just got that idea to help people like, it can be a huge win. Yeah, and like you said, there's like no shortage of opportunity at this point. And I think that's what all has also facilitated that, like partners helping partners mentality of like,
Unknown Speaker 31:20
they're like, I don't have to worry about giving you my IP or my like any of that, like, there's gonna be plenty of business for me to go out to get for you to go out to get. And we're just seeing more and more of that unlocked. And like when it comes to partners building for our app marketplace, and building solutions, and customizing HubSpot, in particular, as we go up market to, but like industry verticals, that's like somewhere where we want partners to really own that space for HubSpot similar to how you know Salesforce did this really well, with partners building on their platform, building the CRM for Finance, Financial Services, and having it productized
Unknown Speaker 31:59
we're seeing more and more of that pop up, whether it's for home builders, or,
Unknown Speaker 32:06
you know, manufacturing with like custom integrations into NetApp, or any of those solutions that a manufacturer will need or use. But for me, that's a huge opportunity going ahead, we've been talking about it that ecosystem kickoff with our partners this year about
Unknown Speaker 32:22
whether you go like very deep and vertical, or at least choose the few that you want. Like even just like positioning yourself around those is a huge opportunity. But then building specific solutions for each of those industries, is going to be game changer. And it's what our buyers actually need. So like terms of the app marketplace, we're seeing an influx of that focus, but there's still a ton more when it comes to that. Yeah, that's that's something I was talking to Pete about were like, the number of times, like we get asked, like, oh, what agency would you recommend for this. And so if I don't have a bucket that I can put you in, right, as an agency owner to know like, right housing, I will send everyone for housing projects to you.
Unknown Speaker 33:08
If I can't do that for you, like you're just getting piled in with everybody else, and I'm gonna send them to the HubSpot directory. And they're gonna, someone's gonna soar through and you're now in competition with everybody. But I also didn't think about it from the from the app level, like there are other solutions that can be provided, like down to that granular level of detail.
Unknown Speaker 33:28
It could go a long way.
Unknown Speaker 33:31
Yeah, and to your point of
Unknown Speaker 33:34
who should I recommend when I'm seeking out a services partner,
Unknown Speaker 33:39
branding and messaging and how you position your business is so critical, and yeah, being more of a generic partner, and how you represent yourself, like, you'll still have business and all of that, but when someone speaks, seeking out a specific need and a specific solution, the more you can showcase that, at the very least, like I've seen some of our partners, you know, you go to their website and the navigation, they have like an industry drop down. And they're not choosing every single industry in the world because like, you know, that's not going to help you there. It's here are the five or four three industries or maybe in some cases, one industry that I specialize in and have messaging around that have case study and proof around that have services that you offer that are specific to that industry.
Unknown Speaker 34:24
That's somewhere that I think a lot of partners could lean into a little bit more going forward.
Unknown Speaker 34:31
Like I know we've got if you're looking for if you're in the roofing business, and you're looking for a partner, we're like, we literally have a business partner called roofing business partner. Or if you're looking for property management solutions, and a partner that can help they're like deeply media is has it's really established that as a niche for them. Hub gem they focus on education as like their vertical specifically so like those are like very narrows examples.
Unknown Speaker 35:01
But on the app side you're seeing, you know, not just building apps for each of these segments or industries or whatever it might be. But it's also about, can you connect the technologies that into a full stack that you can offer to any of those. So you don't necessarily have to build and launch a product that's specific to the industry. But you have to actually know
Unknown Speaker 35:23
what, what platforms what software, are they is that customer using oftentimes? And then like, how can we become experts in all of those pieces of software, and then be the one that orchestrates and connects? It All? integrates it, we're seeing more and more of that. So partners,
Unknown Speaker 35:41
who are partners with HubSpot, but now also partnering with some of the app partners we have in our marketplace. And that's another big theme of itself for this year. Heading into inbound is how can we bring solutions partners and partners together closer.
Unknown Speaker 35:59
And we're seeing some big wins with that six and flow. They've established a relationship and partnership with Dialpad, and they're doing some really cool stuff there. And the Better Together story of
Unknown Speaker 36:12
customer intelligence platform plus the customer platform with front office tools with HubSpot, plus the service
Unknown Speaker 36:20
provider that can kind of bring all those things together and orchestrate it for you like that three ways, like so big right now. Yeah, that is, honestly, probably the future of the, of the ecosystem, getting that comprehensive solution
Unknown Speaker 36:37
for your buyers. Yes, exactly. And we're, you know, internally, we're seeing big wins with this, where, when you're marketing together, selling together
Unknown Speaker 36:51
in a thoughtful way, the ASP is or higher, the, you know, you can accelerate your pipeline faster and get faster close rates, you can have higher retention and stickiness with the, with the customer, because, you know, they didn't just buy a bunch of separate disparate point solutions. And then just like they're using them in silos, like all of that data is connected, their workflows are connected.
Unknown Speaker 37:17
That is definitely the way of the future of like, best of breed and like having like the right tech stack. Right. Awesome. Justin, I got two more questions for you. With the first being what book do you recommend every agency owner should read? Yeah, literally just bought at the small earning. But I'm gonna start reading near bound.
Unknown Speaker 37:40
Jared fuller. Then I've also got ecosystem led growth.
Unknown Speaker 37:48
Something ecosystem led growth by Bob from crossbeam. So those are two books I would recommend in terms of thinking about like the future of where things are heading.
Unknown Speaker 37:59
There's definitely a lot of other great books, but those two are top of mind for me right now in terms of the future. Awesome. Yeah, I am, I started near bad. I need to finish it. Like, it's one of those books that I keep, like having other things that pull me away, and I start reading those. And it's like, but I keep going back to and I'm like, I'm fascinated for that like that sit down where I get through part of the book, and then I have all these things to think about now. Yeah, have you been enjoying it? Yeah, no, it's great. Like variants, even just the introduction. I was like, I had to stop. I was on a flight. And I actually had to stop and just kind of think about it like, Oh, he's right. So yeah, they're gonna shout out for the book. Everyone can go grab a copy. Last question. Where can people find more about you?
Unknown Speaker 38:43
Yeah, I'd say LinkedIn is probably the best spot. linkedin.com/jay Gracie, I think is probably it. But Justin, Gracie, check that out. I do have a Twitter. I'm not as active on there. I can't keep up with or sorry, x.
Unknown Speaker 38:56
Can't keep can't keep up with the speed of Twitter. But yeah, LinkedIn, I'm pretty active on or connect with me there and I'm happy to give my email and I mean, can I connect one on one as well?
Unknown Speaker 39:08
Awesome. All right, Justin, thanks for Thanks for joining. Appreciate the conversation. Yeah, always a pleasure. Thanks for calling man.
Unknown Speaker 39:20
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai