 Okay, there, I think so, it's working. No, no sound, no sound, thank you. I think we're gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you all for coming, I really appreciate it, I know it's getting a little late in the day, everybody's excited for the parties tonight. My name's Molly Nelson and I'm the marketing manager at Promet Source, we're a digital agency based in Chicago, but I am based in San Antonio, Texas. So to start out today, I wanted to introduce you to a concept that really resonated with me as a digital marketer, the first time I heard about it a few years back, because it really kind of made me take pause. This concept is the idea of more social, less media, and it really intrigued me when I first heard about it, because the implications of this concept, I think, have a large impact on our personal lives, talking about, you know, separating ourselves a little bit more from our digital interactions and making sure that we're prioritizing our human interactions. And it got me thinking about how this had implications on me as a marketer and the way that I'm, you know, going about marketing from a business standpoint. So what it really did for me was it got me thinking about how this could be applied to business, and more importantly, if as a marketer, if I had been placing enough weight on the tactics that encourage real, meaningful human connection. So really the focus of this presentation today is going to be talking about ways that we as marketers, as business professionals, as developers, really as people who are touching any part of digital marketing and business can start to prioritize those meaningful social interactions. So I wanted to just start out to, you know, by kind of inviting you to take a step back from the numbers, from the tactics, from the analytics, from all those marketing metrics and things that we're having to measure on a daily basis and even just take pause and step away from the marketos and the mail ships and the hub spots of the world and focus a little bit more on the things that will kind of drive that human connection. And these are all excellent things. I'm sure a lot of the digital marketing tactics that you've heard a lot of folks speak about this week, but for now, I want us to kind of pretend those things just don't even exist. Pretend we really only have the tools at our disposal that don't have to do with technology to utilize. So really we're gonna focus on what's most important. And that's all the people. Those people include your team, your clients. The Drupal community, which of course we're here to support this week. And the one that's often overlooked yourself. You can't overlook yourself as your most important resource to be able to leverage any of your marketing tools from. So what will we be chatting about? We'll talk about establishing real, lasting connections with your clients and with your team, harnessing the strengths of your team and then finding and focusing what your team is really great at. Because I know as marketers, of course we're always looking at the data and we're looking at all the tools that we can be utilizing, but it's also important that we're really finding what separates us from our competitors, what's separating us from other teams out there, trying to do the exact same thing that we are. And then how are we going to use all the above to not only market ourselves, but also market our brand and ultimately grow our business as well. So I wanna give you guys a little bit of history about how as a marketer, I ended up in the Drupal space and specifically working with Promet. So back in 2011, I was right out of college and I was kinda thrown into my very first job as a marketer and I was told, okay, we've got this Drupal site, it's four months into a project that was supposed to take four weeks. I'm sure you guys have all been there before. And I knew that I had to just make this site go. And at the time, the extent of my content and site building experience was basically building a GeoCity site for my high school softball team. I didn't know what a CMS was and I had no idea what to do. So I literally put out the SOS. I had no idea what I was doing and of course, there were other web shops out there that I could have reached out to and I did a little Google searching and came across Promet and in this instance, of course, the digital marketing side did really help because they were one of the first ones to pop up. And even though I met with other development shops, even though I talked to a lot of teams and they told me all the webby digital things they could do, ultimately, we as a team, as a team at the time, engineers, we had no idea what we even needed. What we ultimately needed was somebody to sit with us, to talk through what we were trying to accomplish from a business standpoint. We needed somebody to really hold our hand and connect our business goals to the technical solutions that they could put in place. So we didn't need somebody to sit there and show us all the analytics and all the case studies of all the great things they've done. We needed somebody to really meet us where we were and that was the thing that made the biggest difference for us. So from there, my team that I was working with at the time had the confidence in Promet and the confidence that they really understood our business. So when it came down to scoping the project and really getting into the technical details that we didn't fully understand, we felt like the hard part was over. We felt like we could step back and we understood and we trusted that we were in good hands. But the thing was, it didn't stop there. It wasn't signed contract, launch website and we're done. The real long-term impact for me especially, being that I went from a client to an employee down the road was the fact that the team continued to reach out even once the website was launched. Every so often I'd hear from my project manager via phone or email. She even goes far as passing along resources to me that as a new content manager and somebody who's brand new to Drupal that I would find useful. So now as a marketer for Promet, I see the impact that our team continues to have by reaching out to not only our current clients but potential clients and even previous clients to try to continue that relationship and mainly to continue to provide value to them. So it was all of those important check-ins, all of those little human touches, not necessarily the technical aspects of the site, not necessarily the ROI and the things that we saw from launching the site that really made the biggest impact. So can anybody guess what the main element was that continued to be so important to that relationship? Anybody? Just yell it out. Exactly, trust. That is so true. So your clients need to trust that they're in good hands. When they can rely on you no matter the issue, no matter the problem, they're going to be the ones that are gonna continue to come to you for your expertise. Even if there might be somebody out there who's got a new whizzbang technology that they wanna try out, they're gonna go back to the people that they know had their backs and the people that are continually checking in to just say, hey, are you okay? Is there anything we can do to help? So once you have that trust, the key is to set about keeping it. So oftentimes that means having the hard conversations. Oftentimes it's approaching them and saying, hey, maybe we screwed up. Maybe we could go about doing this a little bit differently. But ultimately one of the fun questions that sounds a little strange but I always like to ask people is what would I have to do for you to fire us? If me as a client, I wanna know exactly what it is that it would take for our clients to move on and figure out how to not do that thing and figure out how to continue to improve. And oftentimes the reasons that they wanted to work with you to begin with might not be the reasons that they wanna stick around. And this is where that important human connection comes into place. A lot of times it has much more to do with those emotional, intangible connections that they've established with their project managers with your customer service reps, with your engineering team, with your developers. And those might be things that you don't necessarily see on a day-to-day basis. So as marketers or as business development reps, when we're reaching out to clients we need to ask those questions and find out why is it that you continue to work with us? Why do you come back to us and then on the more tough side of things if they've moved on, why did they move on? Try to get that feedback and find out what you can do differently next time. And maybe in the future, find a way to work together again. So with that in mind, it's so important to build up your team and make sure that they have that skill set as well. Because ultimately, everybody is in marketing. Everybody's in business development and everyone on your team has something of value to share. At the end of the day, the collective experience of your team is completely unique. No two companies, no two teams have ever had the exact same experience. They've not worked on the exact same projects, they've not had the same challenges to overcome. So chances are, if your team has built something of value over the years or addressed a need internally for your clients, someone out there is looking for that exact same solution. So it's really up to you and up to the entire community, really the spirit of the Drupal and open source community to share that information, to make sure that we're getting our stories out there so that others can learn from them and do better. So when defining differentiators, this one can often be overlooked because the projects that you've worked on or the problems that you've solved are never going to look exactly like any other team. So as marketers, how do we do that? And there's a few ways that of course, you've been here at DrupalCon this week, I'm sure are a little bit more obvious, sharing the knowledge at camps, at cons, getting out there and getting involved in the Drupal community and even branching outside of Drupal specific events. One thing that's really great to always do is reach out to your clients, find out what industry events they're attending because oftentimes there's gonna be some overlap there. Another one that we've really started doing a lot is developing joint case studies with your clients. That's one way that you're able to not only get your message out there and tell the story about the great things your team has built, but it gives you a way to kind of prop them up as well. And then also, of course, hosting webinars and then working on press releases, blogs and even podcasts. And a lot of times as marketers, it's tough for us to step away from always pitching and wanting to start first with getting new sales. A lot of times it's about building that credibility versus always going for the sale first. So opportunities for your team to share, to really pour into the community and pour into others their knowledge. Even if you're not necessarily focusing on selling a product or selling your services, that's really gonna build that credibility that you're looking for not only as an individual, but also for your team ultimately. Because they're gonna know that your company or your team or even you as a developer, as a marketer, they're gonna be someone that they can rely on when they have a problem and they do have a project come up. So that brings me to another concept that has really always been something that I've tried to keep at the core of the way that I approach marketing and especially marketing with partnerships or with any of the other businesses or clients that we work with. And that is just to fill the other guy's basket to the brim. When we're doing that, when we're pouring into others and making sure that we're working towards the collective good of the community, making money and making new business is gonna become an easy proposition at that point. So one of the core philosophies of Container Store's business, which is one that I've personally always admired, is that they've always focused on building up the people that are doing business with them. The vendors and their stores, the people who are just starting out businesses and they might be small potatoes at the time, they might have just one small product that they're gonna place on their shelves. And as a huge corporation, Container Store focuses on building up those businesses and making sure they have the resources that they need because they know that ultimately that's gonna pour back into their business as well. So the more win-win situations that we can create for us, that we can create for our clients, the more we're all gonna succeed at everything we do. So with that being said, the great thing about all those tactics that we talked about, the speaking at camps, the speaking at cons, the developing case studies, posting educational webinars, putting out blogs, press releases, podcasts, those are all great things that you can reach out and you can do with your clients as well. So asking them, hey, we really wanna put out our experience about Drupal Lake Commerce, we wanna submit a session on this. Why not invite them to do that session with you? Or invite them to provide a testimonial or invite them to post it on their website. Anytime that you're creating those experiences for your potential clients, it's gonna help them to show off all the great work and the investment that they've put in it as well. So a lot of times that customer loyalty, it's not about how much money they have to spend, it's not about their budget, it's not about the next project that they think is gonna make this huge impact. A lot of times it's really based on those more emotional factors. The thing is, they're wanting to engage their potential contacts, they're wanting to engage their communities, whether it's a higher ed organization, they're trying to get more students, they're really trying to connect on an emotional level with their potential individuals that they're gonna work with. So ultimately a healthy mix of digital marketing and human connection is what's really going to make the biggest impact. So you wanna turn those customers into advocates. You wanna earn the right to those referrals because they're not automatic. They take work and they take really building those relationships over time because ultimately is what's somebody gonna remember more? Are they gonna remember the really greatly timed automated email that you sent out or are they gonna remember the time you guys grabbed coffee at DribbleCon and talked about your mutual love of Game of Thrones? So you just wanna think about finding that mutual ground, finding those common interests and continuing to nurture them over time. So I wanna thank you guys again for sitting in today and one thing kind of in the spirit of sharing and community that I wanted to share with you guys today is a resource guide that I put together that some of my favorite books and websites and things that I kinda draw from as a digital marketer who's trying to focus not so much on only the digital tactics all the time. And then I'd also like to get your feedback I put together just a short survey so we can all kind of share some of the tactics and things that have worked for us and what I'll do is I'll actually compile all that data at the end of the week and send it out to everybody that takes the short survey. So any questions? Got just a couple minutes left I think. Well I'll let you guys all get on to your next session early then. Thank you so much for coming. And it should be working. Maybe the connection's not good in here. Once I get some service I'll get it working. All right thanks for coming. Oh shut up. Are you hired? You're so good.