Hey there!
Welcome to The Gist. We're excited and grateful to be partnering with you. This page is going to share some information about our team and provide you with some resources to help us get started.
Contents
About The Gist
We're an inbound marketing agency and HubSpot Solutions Partner that helps B2B companies achieve scalable growth, organically.
We are exclusive to:
- The inbound marketing philosophy
- B2B clients
- HubSpot CRM
We believe marketing is about influencing people, and relationships are the currency of your influence. When you produce quality content on a regular basis, you attract more leads and followers. When you educate your prospects and eliminate friction in the buying process, you'll close more deals. And when you listen to your customers and keep them engaged, they'll stick around longer, buy more and spread the word.
We believe paid advertising campaigns should be supplemental projects to core marketing and growth initiatives. Advertising is renting exposure on someone else's platform for short periods of time at ever-increasing costs. Becoming overly-reliant on this depreciating, pay-for-play cycle is a marketing poverty trap.
The Gist was founded in 2019 by CJ Maurer in his home office in South Buffalo. A couple months in he and his wife learned a third child was on the way. Two months later we welcomed a global pandemic. Needless to say, creating order out of chaos is baked into our DNA as an organization.
The Team
Collectively we boast decades of experience in growth strategy, content marketing, HubSpot, revenue operations and more. Our core team is small and focused by design. Our extended team of partners includes writers, designers, developers and other experts which allow us to expand and contract as your needs demand.
Phil Smith
Account Management
AJ Hilton
HubSpot + Systems
Kelly Kerl
Content + Operations
CJ Maurer
Strategy + Partnerships
Values
In addition to position specific experience, skills, and abilities, prospective members of our team will also identify with and live our core values, which are:
BENEVOLENCE
We have an unwavering desire to do good by others, even when it’s not expected or requested.
OWNERSHIP
We willingly assume accountability and own our successes and shortcomings equally.
UNITY
We see ourselves as part of a larger whole and value the systems and processes required to sustain it.
HEALTH
We always put our jobs and our work in perspective. Health, family and overall well-being always come first.
Expectations
We believe growth is part of the operating system, not something you do when you feel like it. Building the assets you own or control creates inertia that propels scalable, organic growth. You rank higher on search engines and get more website traffic. Your email list grows. You gain more followers on social media. As these platforms grow they appreciate in value over time. And since you own them, your baseline marketing capacity scales. It's the ultimate get rich slow scheme.
Here's what we provide to ensure this happens:
Lead Strategist
An experienced inbound marketing professional that understands your business and guides all strategic decisions.
Project Manager
A smart, organized, effective communicator that ensures all projects are executed on time and at a high quality.
Production Team
We have a team of writers, designers, web developers, video producers and other production specialists.
Client Dashboard
Our shared ClickUp dashboard will allow you to visualize all active projects, open new tasks and collaborate with our team.
Monthly Meetings
We meet monthly to discuss strategy, share feedback, approve content and make sure all projects are running on schedule.
Reporting & Visibility
We'll build reports that track and analyze real-time progress toward our goals you can review whenever you want.
Frequently Asked Questions
Clear expectations and open communication are critical for a successful partnership. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any additional questions or requests.
How do meetings work? What can I expect during meetings?
We typically conduct three types of meetings:
- Recurring Status Meetings
- Strategy Sessions
- Training Sessions
Here's what they mean:
Recurring Status Meetings
Your recurring status meeting should be scheduled during your kickoff meeting. This is typically once or twice a month depending on our engagement and shared needs as a collaborative team. During these meetings we provide updates on projects, discuss completed tasks, solicit feedback on delivered work and maintain an active dialogue with your team to ensure we're staying in tune with your goals and needs. These meetings are run by your Account Manager.
Strategy Sessions
These are "one-off" meetings scheduled outside of the recurring status rhythm as needed and typically run by your Lead Strategist. If your project includes a more strategic exercise that deserves more time that's available in a recurring status meeting (like determining how to configure a deal pipeline or a lead nurturing process, for example), we'll schedule a strategy session to give the objective the time and attention it's due.
Training Sessions
These can be used for a variety of purposes, but they're most commonly used for providing HubSpot training to members of your team. All HubSpot implementation projects include training session(s) at the end to ensure all key stakeholders understand how your HubSpot portal has been configured. But many clients also schedule these training sessions when they hire new employees that must learn how to use HubSpot.
What is the client dashboard and how does it work?
We manage all of our projects for all of our clients in a project management system called ClickUp. This helps us keep track of open projects, deadlines, assignees, statuses and other information that's critical to getting a job done well.
When our engagement begins, we'll create a folder for all of your projects and tasks. Then we'll invite you and anyone else on your team to the dashboard. This will allow you to:
- View all open projects
- See your "homework" or anything we're waiting on you to provide to us in order to advance a project
- Filter projects by assignees, due dates, statuses and more
- Collaborate with The Gist team on tasks by writing messages, uploading files and more
- Complete a form to create a new task for our team
Who do I contact when I have a question?
When in doubt, contact your Account Manager.
Partnering with The Gist is a collaborative experience. You'll regularly communicate and attend meetings with various members. But your Account Manager is your primary contact and advocate to the rest of the team. You should never hesitate to rely on your Account Manager for anything.
Your Account Manager will be assigned and introduced to you no later than your kickoff meeting.
What happens if I want to do something outside the scope of our agreement?
First off, you should not expect The Gist to provide any solutions that fall outside the scope of your agreement. We went outside the scope on a regular basis frequently in our early days, but we'd have a hard time staying in business if we continued that practice.
You should always feel free to request anything from us. (We would prefer if you used the new project submission form to request new tasks from us.) If that project or task is included in your scope, we will get to work on it as soon as we can based on your instructions. If it falls outside of scope, we will let you know as soon as possible (a) if we can do that for you, and if so (b) when we can complete it and (c) how much we would charge for it.
If you feel your needs will vary on a monthly or even weekly basis, we can offer flexible agreements that include a "bank" of hours that can be used for a variety of projects as needed.
Please direct any additional questions to your Account Manager.
Thank You.
We're so excited to work with you.