On the final day of INBOUND21, I attended some very unique sessions. One of those was a cooking show style session led by Chef Philip Speer of Assembly. The following are my takeaways from my favourite sessions.
This session was filled with ideas on how to marry together the marketing team and the sales team. They spoke about how no webpage will ever be human so you have to humanize your brand. Google’s core updates have a lot to do with the trust levels so you have to make sure that your bios show that you are trustworthy. They recommend that you add the correct trust signals in you bios and your profile. If you don’t have a trustworthy bio and profile than your blog post has no chance of ranking well. Essentially, make sure that your bio is optimized – so that your blog will rank well.
The group spoke about SEO strategy and they stated that you do not need to worry about backlinks if you're creating valuable content for users you will get backlinks automatically. When creating valuable content ensure that you are answering those customers needs and problems. On the topic of key words, they spoke about how key research is changing in the coming years. We now look at keywords in SEO as an entity. We should, as sales marketers, start thinking about SEO and about content as entities. How can we best model a particular page to show that this is the best answer.
Denise started off the conversation with the statement – you should not stay in one area too long, if you have that opportunity in a company to move around you should definitely take that opportunity. She said that, consistency is they key to build the trust with your customers. Snowflake was now 90% inbound and it all comes back to the quality of the content, all the educational content you are investing in. An important takeaway from this session was to find customers that have an interesting story to tell, then use that in your marketing. Aspire to have customer’s stories sprinkled across all your marketing. In the early days, no one trusts you but they trust their peers so this means put out customer reviews, case studies. Denise explained that the best marketers at snowflake aren’t the marketers it’s the customers.
Snowflake decided early on that they are going to be the most customer centric company and market organization in the cloud computing industry. On the topic of partnerships and how you go to market through partnerships - If you look at the largest tech companies in the world they are the ones with the largest partner ecosystems. If you don't have partners there's really a ceiling on how much you can grow. Your customers are buying you together with other technologies. The partner solution is customer centric. Show them how you work together with your partners which makes it easier for the customer.
This is a bio from the Assembly website that describes what they are all about – “Assembly is a team of hard-working, passionate professionals with years of experience in the hospitality, food, and event space. We share a deep love for bringing people together over thoughtfully curated culinary experiences. When Austin, TX restaurant, Comedor, was faced with unexpected closures and a newly restricted social terrain due to Covid-19, the owner and executive chef were determined to discover a new way for the food industry to thrive. Enter Assembly. A revolutionary experience that allows individuals and groups to easily create a multi-course meal that tastes even better than it looks.” When I read that bio it peaked my interest as I love cooking. Chef Philip Speer took us through the preparation and cooking of a Mexican meal. Assembly wanted to create something that you could enjoy as if you're still dining out. A wonderful quote from the Chef was,
the dinner party has changed and we want to invite everyone to the table.
They realized they could take this nationally and can bring people all over the country together. Essentially, they are a virtual dinner party, led by trained chefs. They brought in different chefs from all over the country to teach us about their life and their backgrounds and what foods made them happy and inspired. It is a multicourse experience that your company can do as a team builder. In this session, he showed up how to made a quesadilla as a first course. The next course was an avocado tostada – toasted on a flat top.
This Assembly meal kit would make the perfect experience for a team. The team would follow a chef’s instructions as they cook together at home. If we can’t have an in person dinner party then this is the perfect replacement. Chef Philip reminded us that sharing a meal together is the oldest human ritual and it can bring new concepts into the workplace through team building and eating.