Grow & Manage Your Marketing Team with HubSpot's Inbound Certification

The landscape of the Internet is changing everyday with frequent Google algorithm updates taking place and new social media networks continuously being created. In order to maintain high productivity levels in an organization, it is important that disruptions are minimized and momentum is maintained.

As managers and leaders, the burden falls on you to ensure that the right employees are on your team, and the right culture is in place, to successfully address each new change and capitalize on new opportunities to drive positive results for your business.

There are 5 key areas in which I have found HubSpot's Inbound Certification valuable to help grow and manage marketing teams:

• Hiring

• Teaching & Coaching

• Cross Training & Retention

• Efficiency & Planning

• Leading by Example

Adding a new member to your marketing team is a large commitment and investment for your business. From the top to the bottom, there are many different areas in which you and your company's employees will have to invest their time, money and energy into onboarding a new hire. The cost of a mis-hire is more than just dollars and cents, it is a disruption to the growth and development of your entire marketing team. You're counting on this new hire to address the skill sets laid out in the job description for the open position and if you're unsuccessful it will be that much longer until you have your team complete and everything firing on all cylinders. 

As part of my interview process I have asked candidates to read the book Inbound Marketing written by HubSpot's co-founders, Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah. I've asked the candidate to call me when they've finished the book and they like what they've read because the book outlines all of the moving pieces that you as a manager will need to successfully address day in and day out. 

HubSpot's Inbound Certification has provided me with a second line of defense when vetting candidates to join my team. The same way the book requires an investment of time by the applicant, so too does the certification exam. The exam is free to take and you don't need to be a HubSpot customer to take the exam so the value is immeasurable as you can not only measure the level of commitment the candidate is willing to expend, but you can also review the results in a quantifiable manner. 

When finishing the exam, a score will be delivered and one step further, the score will be broken down by exam sections so that you can see exactly where the candidate is proficient in and where the candidate may be weak in.

You can purchase the book on Amazon for short money ($7.72 to $15.48) and you can administer the test for free. I guarantee you both will be the best return on your investment when you've avoided a mis-hire and added a key addition to your marketing team.

Having your marketing team take HubSpot's Inbound Certification will provide you with a valuable resource to teach & coach your team throughout their tenure at your company. After take the exam, the results will provide the person with a breakdown of their score for each section of the exam. If you find that your employee faired less than desired in the SEO section, you can use this as a resource to focus your efforts with this person on increased education surrounding the concepts of SEO. Conversely, if you have an employee who aced the convert section, you can use this as an opportunity to introduce more advanced tactics when it comes to landing page optimization, A/B testing or even using them as an internal champion and leader to help bring your other team members up to their level of proficiency. 

Either way, HubSpot's Inbound Certification is a great resource for managers to use as a means to continuously teach and coach your team, improve overall productivity and maintain a high-level of momentum critical to long-term success.

In 2 recent articles and radio broadcast from Bentley University, (How to build a successful startup culture: Tips From HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan; How Millennials Think and What To Do About It; The Millennial Mind Goes to Work) HubSpot's CEO, Brian Halligan, shared some valuable & powerful advice regarding successful company growth as it pertains to attracting & retaining Millennials as employees of your company.

In one article he talks about OCD vs. ADD and how "..This new generation works diligently in hopes of learning as much as possible and moving on to the next challenging project." He goes on to advise leaders to, "Lean into the ADD by creating formal rotation programs, innovative leading-age training programs like the one at Zappos, and work environments that leverage social media interactions instead of discouraging them, and you'll see these Millennials become just as loyal as we were 'back in the day.'"

HubSpot's Inbound Certification will provide you with the resource to address this advice by using it as a discussion piece when exploring which areas your employees are passionate about and which they would like to learn more about.

Address this area and you will retain employees, create unwavering loyalty and ultimately maintain the level of momentum that you've become accustomed to and the level of success you desire.

Some will say that money is your greatest asset; others will say employees carry that title for your business. I'm not exactly sure of the order each's asset should be ranked in, but what I am sure of is that "time" is an asset each of us possess, is continuously depleting and many of us wish we had more of.

Understanding that it is very easy to get caught up in the rat race and subsequently become spread too thin, it is becoming more and more critical that each of us are as efficient as possible and planning is one area that can help address this.

HubSpot's Inbound Certification is a great resource to help you map out the areas that need to be focused on, plan for these accordingly and efficiently manage all of the moving pieces so that time is always being well spent.

Each component of the certification addresses the different areas of the inbound methodology that need to be executed on in order to generate maximum results. By leveraging the sections of the exam as a roadmap, and applying the first 3 areas of this article, you are ultimately left with a plan in place and the key players on your team, both of which are needed to bring your visions to life. 

No one likes a leader who lives by the "Do what I say, not what I do" approach. If you are going to require job applicants to take HubSpot's Inbound Certification, you should too. If you are going to require your employees to take HubSpot's Inbound Certification, you should too.

HubSpot's Inbound Certification gives you as a leader an opportunity to collaborate with your employees and become more relatable so that they see just how important this is and that they have a leader who instead lives by the "We're all in this together" approach.

Who knows, by taking the exam, you just might learn something and improve on the skills and knowledge that you bring to the table.

"An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."

HubSpot's Inbound Certification is your "unbalanced force" that when used to act upon your existing efforts, will make sure that the motions of your team are heading in the correct direction at speeds fast enough to achieve success.