Jen Spencer, of SmartBug Media, on “Intelligent Inbound Marketing”

SmartBug Media — whose founder and CEO Jen Spencer I was lucky to meet for an interview — has billed itself as a “remote-first” full-service agency since its founding in 2008 (the company’s website notes that many people said this was a “wrong move” and “would never scale.” Instead, the remote-first strategy proved invaluable for weathering the pandemic.

SmartBug Media bills itself as the “intelligent inbound agency” whose services include inbound marketing, website design & consulting, creative & branding, paid search & social, sales enablement, and public relations. Jen explains how her holistic, data-driven approach to inbound yields results superior to those that might be obtained using a less sophisticated approach.

We discuss how businesses should properly value the leads that flow through content marketing channels, and the need to build a sustainable lead pipeline consisting both of “whales” and “smaller fish.” We also touch on what the proper role of a CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) is with respect to the CMO and CEO.

We converse about how the management of B2B companies, which often mistakenly views content marketing as an inappropriate channel for “boring industries,” can be convinced that content market is a feasible channel for them. As Jen notes, B2Bs “have plenty to talk about. And my very tactical advice is: record your sales calls, record your customer service calls, and answer the questions in writing that your customers are already asking on the phone. That’s the first way to get started. So be the source of truth, for the person who you want as your future customer — the person you can really be helping. And if you start doing that, you will undoubtedly attract the people who are searching for that information, because if one person is asking for it on a sales call or on a customer service call, I guarantee that there’s somebody else that has that same question.”

We also talk about what Jen expects to transpire on the digital marketing front in 2023.

This was a highly informative interview — if you’re doing any kind of inbound marketing — or are thinking of launching inbound marketing campaigns — Jen’s insights will be helpful to you.