Marketing Happy Hour - Why Your Brand Partnerships Aren’t Working (And How to Fix Them) | Carly Baker of HubSpot

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

What makes a media partnership actually work? In this episode, Carly Baker, Media Partnerships Lead at HubSpot Media Network, pulls back the curtain on what makes branded content succeed. With experience spanning talent management, business development, and audience growth across podcasts and YouTube, Carly shares what brands often get wrong when working with creators and how to think beyond vanity metrics. She offers a fresh perspective on how earned media can drive real growth, the underrated power of organic partnerships, and how to build content strategies that resonate in a noisy market. Key Takeaways:// How to measure what actually matters in podcast and content partnerships.// Why putting a human face to your brand is essential for audience connection and content performance.// The biggest mistakes brands make when working with creators—and how to avoid them from the start.// How to align partnership goals with outcomes that match your brand's stage and strategy.// Why video matters in podcasting today, and how to use platforms like YouTube for visibility and discovery.// How to build better relationships with media partners by treating them like people—not just placement opportunities.Resources from HubSpot:The State of Marketing in 2025The Power of Partnerships + Innovation____Say hi! DM me on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - I can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠Join our FREE Open Jobs group on LinkedIn: ⁠Join now⁠Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Be really aware of your media diet. When you work with influencers or with creators, there's people of all different shapes and sizes who do their content really differently. So the more exposure you can have, the better because if you start to work with clients, you're going to want to be really well versed in different topics, different tactics, different audience growth, all of the analytics. Like you really want to have that backend knowledge too of how the platforms work.

But if you don't understand the backend and how to read that data, having taste is only gonna go so far. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. I'm Cassie, consultant, podcaster and your host. Every Thursday, you'll hear episodes packed with insights from brand leaders on an array of topics from crafting effective marketing strategies and hitting career goals to building leadership

skills and launching your own business. Inspired by those unfiltered happy hour convos with peers, this show is all about practical empowering chats to support your professional journey. So grab your favorite drink and let's get to the episode. Karly, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I am great. Thank you so much for having me on. It's definitely been on my list to come on for a little while. So super happy to be here today. I love it. I know. I'm so grateful. We were talking off record. HubSpot is one of my favorite brands as a marketer just the resources you all provide The podcast network and learning from the shows that you all are collaborating with. I mean, there's so many offerings

The certifications, I mean I the list goes on right? there's just so much that you guys do and I love any chance that I get to chat with a team member and kind of hear what you're working on behind the scenes. And also I will say kind of the partnership space is something that we need to chat about more. And so I'm really grateful that you're coming on just to share that side of what you do and, and just shed light on what other industries, what other professionals can kind of apply to, to their strategies as well. So looking forward to it. Yeah. Well, I got to ask you what's been in your glass lately. I am definitely in my tea era. I live in New England and it's very cold here in the winter.

And so over time I've been kind of honing in my taste of tea. So right now I've really been into jasmine tea. So trying like different types of jasmine, loose leaf, tea bags, infusions, all that stuff. So it's really nice. Especially in the spring, it's like feels like a very like springtime tea since it's not too heavy. So yeah, I've been going hard on the jasmine tea. What about you? I love it. I love a good jasmine tea. Yeah. I'm a big tea girly myself too. I don't really drink coffee every day. So that's something that I will grab for green tea, whatever. And it's perfect. And it's good for you. So we love a health benefit. So Carly, share with us, if you don't mind, just your journey, how

did you land at HubSpot and where you are today? Yeah. So I have a kind of a more non-traditional corporate background. I always joke and say that a lot of people do the corporate to creative path. I did the creative to corporate path, which is definitely a little bit more unique, I think. My background is actually trained as a professional musician. I started playing music at a really early age. I ended up transitioning over for my master's degree to learn about music business and had my first marketing job and was really wanting to understand a lot more about the business side and how to work with artists and creative people and sort of what that infrastructure looked like. I graduated during the pandemic, which was a really

hard time to find a music business job because music business was primarily put on hold, performing was unsafe, there wasn't really a lot going on. A lot of venues were closing, it was a really unstable time. And I had a job and was working in content strategy for a nonprofit, was looking for something a little bit different different and this job came up at HubSpot. And when I joined, it was just myself and my manager. It was about five months after the acquisition of the hustle and we were starting to build the podcast network. So I joined the team and it was just the two of us and I had seven clients and I was a long-time podcast appreciator and listener and had that content strategy background and had worked with talent, but was definitely a little bit of a stretch, I think,

for me. And I just jumped right in and that has led me sort of down a very interesting path that Hubspot and me, we were talking a little bit before. I've worked with many creators, had many different roles here and have really been able to touch the entire part of the talent life cycle and working with creators here, which has been awesome. Bekkah That's amazing. And I love this intersection of your music background now into this audio world and in a way, a similar field, not fully, but that's really cool too, to kind of see that through line across time. Yeah, definitely. And it's really shaped a large part of my approach, like working through and having the common thread of partnerships. Like when you're a musician and a freelancer like I was, you're really running your own business and most folks are doing it yourself.

And so I understood what it was like to be that creator who was trying to do everything themselves and needed support. And so that really shaped fundamentally how I thought about creators and how I wanted to support them and like what I thought that that relationship would been like, because I had wanted that relationship so badly for so long for myself. And so that really, I think, set me apart at the start of how I wanted to gain trust and just work with people in a way that's really authentic. And that's been a through line through all the different work

that I've done here at HubSpot. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the cool part, too. You know, I talk about this on the show all the time. But there's a lot of professionals out there who do have very diverse experience in being able to kind of make that connection across time and say, you know, I learned so much in this previous space, even though it's not directly connected

to what I'm doing today, but look at how much I'm able to kind of pull from that. And there's always situations where that's possible. And so never discounting or never looking at past experience as feeling unrelevant. I mean, there's so much to take away. And to your point, it all kind of unfolds properly, you know, down the road. So I love that. I think that's great. So as you've shared already, you've worked across talent and media partnerships and all these other categories. I would just love to hear kind of what excites you most about where content and media are heading here in the future. Yeah, that's a great question. I think we're really seeing just a diversification in media

across the board. When I first started working with podcasters and I've had the great pleasure of working with podcasters specifically in the business space, which I think has, you know, so much of the way that these podcasters and creators in the business space have run their businesses, like we're just seeing that sort of evolve across like the more general and more broad creator space, I would say, outside of the business category. So that's been really exciting. A lot of the tactics and just business practices and lead magnets and all these things that I taught my clients years ago are now, we're now seeing embraced across the board and the beauty category and sort of all of these more broadly accessible creator categories I would say. And so I love to see that. I love to see on the creator side less

reliance on advertisers, which I know is a funny thing to say as someone who works for an advertiser, but I love to see folks really embracing having their own monetization strategy, being able to have more of a financial relationship directly with their audience, I think is really exciting, especially because we're seeing things are so turbulent. There's a certain sense of empowerment, I think, that comes with being able to have a business that's run in that way. And so I find that really inspiring and I do love to see that. I think creators are the future. I mean, I know everyone says this and everyone's been saying this

for years, but I do think that personalities and really relying on that as a way to stand out is going to continue to be the next wave. I am interested particularly in sort of the arc of individual creators who focus a lot of their audience building tactics on their individuality and whether or not they're able to maintain that over time. I think that's a really big topic that maybe folks more on the industry or the business side are really thinking about is like how long can you stay original? Like, is that even something that people can do?

And like, what does that look like? And how does your audience change over time? And these types of things are some things I'm really interested and excited about right now. Yeah. Well, I'm curious, too, kind of your viewpoint on just podcasting as a medium in general. You know, there's a lot of deliberation.

I still feel like, I'm curious if you feel this, but I still feel like podcasting in a way is still very new and fresh to a lot of brands and businesses. I mean, it's been around forever. However, I think we're now just understanding the value and impact of it as a channel. And so you have an interesting perspective

because you're working with these individual creators developing these shows, but also being a brand kind of investing in that show and whatever they're talking about and building. And so just overall, what do you feel is the value of podcasting for both a brand investing in that as a channel, but also a creator, individual, personal brand as well. Yeah, I mean I think there's probably 25 different things that I could call out that provide value besides just generating leads for a brand. I know for us at HubSpot we really have approached building our network in a very specific way. We treat our network as a very top of funnel initiative for us as HubSpot as the brand. So,

we view podcasting as a way to get in front of our target audience, which is people that are potentially going to end up becoming buyers for HubSpot. We're not approaching it as we're using podcasts to force people down the funnel. We're kind of doing actually the opposite approach. We want HubSpot to be top of mind if these listeners are ever going to decide to either invest in a CRM or if they want to change a CRM that they have a positive association with us. But really we're just focused on working with creators that are providing value and education through their content and sort of continuing those educational themes and topics that we talk about as a brand in our own content and through certifications and other ways

that we engage with potential customers. So we really try to strategically align closely with our business priorities. So an example of this would be, if we're gonna be re-releasing an updated version of our sales product, we wanna work with more sales creators to let them know like that's our target audience. We have updates. This is just good people to get in front of and it's very cost effective for us in terms of ROI and where we're spending our dollars, which of

course is really important as well. The other thing that I think is really important to us as well is we only do long-term engagements. We're not working with creators for a short period of time. All of our engagements are really long. We want to have a very long and very deep relationship with them. We essentially purchase ad inventory on every single episode that they do for multiple years. We view it as a really long and deep relationship. At the same time, we're also very unique as a network because we actually don't do ad sales on behalf of our creators. So most networks will go and work with other advertisers, they'll broker deals and they'll take a cut of that. All

of the folks in our podcast network, they're just advertising for HubSpot products and that's it. And so it's a CPM based deal. Their audience knows what they're talking about. They know what they're talking about. There's a sense of security for them. They feel comfortable that they're going to be endorsing our products and our brand for a long period of time. It's much more like an ambassadorship in that way, but it's very different than most networks. And then of course on the back, we also try to offer a really robust community. We work with shows of all different shapes and sizes with all different audiences. We really

encourage knowledge sharing, I think in the business category specifically. There's a lot of gatekeeping and a lot of information that's not relevant to a lot of folks. And so we try to be anti gatekeepers and really encourage a lot of knowledge sharing and provide a lot of value through our community as well in the backend. Yeah, I love that. And it's cool too for me, just as a listener, some of the shows, for example,

you expect to hear about HubSpot and I think that's a really cool situation for a brand to be in. For example, there's brands out there who will invest in like a one-time partnership, right? And you almost feel surprised to hear about it, but now this longevity is, it becomes a normal narrative element, and it

just becomes comfortable and normal. So as a consumer, it doesn't feel as out of place, if that makes sense. So I love that just as a strategy overall, that brands can be thinking about, and we talk about this all the time in marketing, but it's like, how can you build that longevity with partnerships and Go beyond the one or two time engagement just because your audience starts to connect with that and and look forward to it and and everything So it's a great strategy I think it's it's it's really motivating or I we like to think about it is very motivating for the creator as well and for

Us as a brand we really have a shared interest in growing our shows And so there's a lot of one-on-one support that goes on on the back end of the network. We want them to continue to be motivated to grow their audience and for us to help them and for us to leverage our resources and for there really to be an ongoing dialogue and a shared goal of growing their audience. And so we really try to keep it, we don't want to be transactional at all that's like the last thing that we want to do and so everything and all the ways that we provide support is really through that lens. That's great. So kind of on that topic let's talk about just mistakes that brands often make when working with influencers, podcasters, youtubers, you name it,

creators all across the board and how can they avoid them? I know this is kind of a loaded question, but I'm curious to hear what you have to say here. Yes, this is definitely a loaded question. We could do a whole two hour episode just on this. Going back to what I had said earlier, it's like the word transactional. This is the biggest thing that I see brands doing it wrong. It's just bad. It's just a bad business practice, honestly, being transactional and someone as someone who's worked in partnerships, I feel like I'm qualified to say this. For instance, now I go on a lot of calls with a lot of creators, with a lot of other publishers,

and I always try to frame these calls through wanting to leave them with an understanding of what their goals are, what their challenges are, how they're hoping to work with us. I, of course, am coming to these conversations with these things in my mind, but I don't want to be in a position where I'm selling, and they don't want to be in a position where I'm selling. So, the best thing you can do is equal the playing field. Everyone has a chance to say, this is what I'm struggling with, these are my goals. How can we work together so that both of us are getting closer to either achieving those goals or, you know, going over those pain points? Like, it really truly should be as equal as possible. And when I say that, I don't mean I'm going gonna give you one newsletter ad from

one newsletter ad. Like value comes in different ways, right? And so, when you're thinking about how to work together with someone, it really is kind of a song and a dance of this is my strongest channel, this is your strongest channel. How can we collaborate in a way that makes sense and brings us both results. So I think keeping it not about you as much as possible is super important. Everyone has a bottom line. Everyone at the end of the day is trying to hit their goals, but I think the least salesy that you can be as possible is really important. I mean, I've said no to a lot of people who I've gotten on calls and I just, from the start, I'm like, this is not a good fit for how I want to work, for how our brand wants to work, those types of things. At the end of the day, you know, we're all individuals and I think keeping that in mind is really important. The pricing conversation is another thing I think that especially we see with

brands just having bad pricing practices and just not having a fundamental grasp on pricing when working with creators. There's a lot more I could say about that, but I'll keep it tight. I also see it on the creator side too, where I sometimes get in calls where I wish that creators would advocate for themselves more and would charge more. There's many times where I've left the call and said, they're not charging enough. I would be happy to pay them double what they've given me. And so know your value, know your worth. There's a lot of great resources out there about how to price yourself. Justin Moore, the sponsorship coach, he's a great resource for just understanding how to work with

brands, how to know your value, how to negotiate all of those things. Those are really important. The other thing that I would say is when you're penning a partnership with someone, have really clear expectations about who is doing what and the timeline of who is doing what. I constantly see creators on LinkedIn who are like, I worked with this brand and they wanted 20 rounds of feedback and I didn't know that, you know, we didn't bake into the timeline 20 rounds of feedback and they had to do internal reviews. And it's like, so much of that stuff is a headache for both parties. And the more you can do to set expectations and be extremely clear at the start, the better. For me,

I do co-marketing or I do agreements for most of my partnerships, even if it's just swaps. That way, it's crystal clear at the start of the engagement. This is who's doing what, this is the timeline, these are the deliverables. And then you just kind of have that agreement from the start. And so I wish that people were harder about what they needed when they needed and just the clarity from the beginning of the relationship. Yeah. Oh my gosh, such good tips. And I want to give another shout out to Justin Moore. His content is so good. I'm literally staring at his book, Sponsor Magnet right now. So good. Highly recommend if you're in that space where you're looking to just monetize any channel, definitely check that out. But thank you for those tips. Those

were amazing. And you already kind of alluded to some of these different elements of just a successful impactful partnership. But just curious if there's anything that you would share in terms of what do you feel really separates a impactful, you know, this is actually a successful partnership versus something that just looks good on paper and that's kind of it? Yeah, this is a great question. I think I'm still figuring this out myself, I would say. And I say this because there's been a lot of agreements and a lot of partnerships that I have run in Q1 of this year that on paper, I was like, this is going to been a lot of agreements and a lot of partnerships that I have run in Q1 of this

year that on paper I was like, this is going to generate a lot of subscribers. This is like the perfect audience overlap. Like everything is here. This is going to go out and it's just going to be amazing. And it falls flat. The mistake that we make is I would say doing partnerships that feel very comfortable, that feel very safe for your brand where everything looks so good that it's not going to convert, right? But it's hard to know where that line is and I'm still learning that for myself. The question of impact, I think, going back to your question before, impact looks different probably for both parties and that's something to be aware of. There's also a lot of impact that we can't measure. So impact is a

tough word I think to tie to partnerships. If you're looking for subscribers and your partnership doesn't generate subscribers then it didn't work but maybe it did other things for you. So I try really hard not to think of things as like sort of a pass fail. Like any partnership is beneficial no matter what. I've also worked with other publishers before where from a conversion standpoint the first couple of times we've worked together we don't see the conversion, but the more that we work together, the more conversion goes up. And so I really try to not judge partnerships based on the first time that we've worked together. And because in media partnerships, there's a lot of levers that you have. You can change your

messaging, you can change your creative. Like, I really don't try to walk away from things as much as I can. Just I'm always willing to give things another chance, I guess I would say. That's the most non-answer answer to your question that I could give you. But I don't know. I'm maybe more generous than others in terms of how I think about it, I would say.

Yeah, no, I love that, though. I mean, that's such a good, important reminder to brands. I feel like, to your point, you know, you do one partnership and maybe it's one piece of content or one asset that you're putting out there and you're like, why didn't that convert? And there's a number of different reasons

that could have happened. So to your point from a brand standpoint, giving that grace of, okay, maybe there's just a slight way that we need to change the way that we're talking about this product, or maybe it's the a slight way that we need to change the way that we're talking about this product or Maybe it's the type of content piece or whatever and so having that flexibility as a brand to say we're gonna try again and we're gonna maybe adjust one element and see if that makes the change and Do not recommend completely overhauling just in case you want to kind of track what actually was the measure But I think that's a good reminder to brands to be open to that too. Be flexible.

Absolutely. And I mean, even when we work with, you know, of course our podcast engagements are very long term, but our YouTube engagements, we were booking like multiple ads at a time because we know that like, especially on really algorithmic driven channels, like if the video doesn't hit on the algorithm and it doesn't get views, then yeah, the conversions are going to suffer. But if the next one does, then the conversions could be great. And so it's hard. You never want to just judge by performance on one, but if we work with them for four or five or six videos and none of them are performing up to what we had expected, then okay, we have enough reasonable data to move on.

And so it's a little bit of a... You have to be a lot more patient as a brand than I think people tend to be in terms of seeing those results. Just doing that testing that we see media buyers doing and people just broadly across the content space doing. A lot of those sort of practices and methodologies I think haven't quite made it over to more of the work that we do quite yet. Yeah.

Fantastic reminder. Thank you again for that. So I want to hear your thoughts too on long form versus short form content. I know the approach to this really depends. It also is changing all the time. I feel like we're in this era of short form content and now we're kind of shifting back to long form. Of course there's a time and place for both, right?

But I'm just curious from you, where do you feel brands and creators should be focusing? Is it either or is it both? What are your thoughts on this? Yes, this is definitely the hottest question of them all right now, I would say. I want to back up and just talk a little bit about my perspective or POV about video in general.

I think Harry Morton was the one that had shared this or I saw some comments somewhere, I think it was from Harry who had said, like, video is a winning strategy, but it's not the winning strategy. And I'm very much like middle in the middle of the road when it comes to telling people yes or no, should they invest in any type of video at all. And that saying or that notion really just resonates with me. I do think that for some people it makes more sense than it does for others, especially in the realm of podcasting, which I think is like the video is like the biggest question and hot topic right now. I really think it depends what your goals are and what your audience is. And I think about this through the lens of

distribution as well. Like you shouldn't just create one piece of content and put it everywhere and expect that it'll get engagement in the same way where you shouldn't invest in making long term YouTube videos and think that your channel is going to blow up. I love Shortform and I love that creators are using and podcasters are using Shortform a lot more because it is a great discoverability tool. As you said, Shortform is everywhere. The platforms are heavily pushing it.

It makes total sense for us to want to move into that space to get in front of more people. Where I think the disconnect is, is I see brands all the time who think that posting an Instagram story with a link that sends someone to their link tree, that then sends them to 25 links is like the expectation that people are going to see that and then become customers I think is just like totally wrong. So I think there's like a little bit of education in terms of what short form can do for brands and when it's a conversion place and when it's not. That you know, we'll just hopefully the platform literacy will continue to grow will continue to grow in terms of that. Long form video, you know, I have a lot of experience working with YouTubers and I think it is like, YouTube is like a very sexy thing right now and will probably continue to be a very sexy thing. But people often don't understand the back end of YouTube, how to understand what the metrics are, how to optimize, and just the sheer amount

of work that goes into producing a video that can compete against people that are professional YouTubers. There's a really steep learning curve. And I always say podcasting is the world's longest marathon that never stops unless you shut down your show. And YouTube is somehow like the Iron Man compared to the marathon. I think there's a kind of a notion going around right now that as soon as you start to incorporate video into your strategy either as a brand or as a creator that you're going to blow up. And I think the reality of people that have been doing it for a long time is just that it's not the case. And so I hope that that notion sort of dies down a little bit. To go back to your question, I hope that brands will continue to have more of a creator first

approach or will tie a personality to their content. And I think we do this really well at HubSpot on the hustle, which is our one of our, you know, it's one of our pillar media brands, but we also have a YouTube channel as well. We do explainers about different businesses and different things and we have anchor hosts that do that and it performs really well because our audience knows those people and thinks about the hustle YouTube as Noelle, our host, and not about it being the hustle YouTube. So I hope that in video similarly in the way that we've sort of seen newsletters or other media channels, I hope that that sort of continues. I think people don't really

care about brands as much anymore, which this is not anything new, but the more that you can attach sort of a face to your brand, especially in video, I think the more that it'll benefit that and sort of be a two-for-one where they have the credibility of having really well-researched content and having a deep understanding of the audience, but it not being seen as like a selling vehicle or Something that's just like only for the benefit of the brand. I guess you could say yeah and to your point kind of what you were Discussing is just this long game of content growth, you know You said something that really stood out to me is just because you start posting video content Doesn't mean things are just gonna to pop off overnight and your brand's

going to go viral and all of this stuff. But there are some things that I feel like as brands or even as creators, we can be doing over time to build that audience engagement, that retention and growth. So what have you just seen from all of these different content channels and even creators that you're working with that has been effective for audience growth whether it's for a YouTube channel a podcast or any other category again I know this is kind of a loaded question

But I'm sure there have been maybe some trends or things that have popped up that you've said You know, maybe this is an effective tool that other brands or creators can implement. Yeah, I would say partnerships 100%. Whether it's paid partnerships, whether it's earned partnerships, partnerships are really valuable. In the podcast space, there is a very strong community of collaboration and just wanting to work with one another, whether that's through shared guesting, whether that's through ad swaps, whether that's through co-creation of content. And it's really just honestly a backbone of the industry, but it's interesting because we really actually don't see those types of partnerships more broadly really in the creator space.

There's not really an infrastructure or really a precedent for that on the YouTube side and in the more broader creator space. And on the brand side, that's the initiative that I lead is earn partnerships with other publishers, other creators. And at the end of the day, that's putting me and my brands and my channels in front of the most highly qualified audience that we have. And there's no money spent, right? The best thing that you can do is just do that value exchange. And so I wish that more people had an appetite for that. It's very interesting. I'm pretty new or newer, I guess, working in the newsletter space and the newsletter

infrastructure is completely different. On the newsletter side, it's a lot of, unless you're paying for my ad inventory, I don't want to work together. And I think they're really missing the mark of, there's a lot of people that want to do this and maybe don't have those ad dollars to spend, but know that there's other ways that we can collaborate. And so I do hope that the shared goals and wanting each other to grow and that kind of culture of collaboration continues on through the rest of the creators' sphere. I know it's something that we use a lot of on our side, both on the creator's side and what we advise creators to do, but also what

we do on our own brand channels. It's really hard. It's a sea of sameness, especially with AI. There's a lot of content out there that's the same. And finding and getting in front of your audience is a lot harder than it was ever, than it's ever been in that regard too. And so I think the more that you can work with other publishers to have direct access to those audiences is really, really powerful. So I would say that's a big one for me, is just really investing in partnerships. The other thing that I would say is I would encourage people to increase their data literacy. So understanding the metrics that matter and the metrics that don't matter,

and understanding what it tells you about your audience and about your content strategy. I see this all the time and even on the branded side too we see this even at HubSpot even internally. There's often a difference in who you think your audience is and who your audience actually is and there's a lot of ways that you could tell those things without having to do a survey. But the more that you can actually understand like who your audience actually is and to serve them, the better. Excellent, excellent tips. On the data point too, I am glad you brought that up, because I feel like that's one thing, especially for brands,

that are always like, they have this vision in mind of what they should be tracking or what is most important and what isn't. Any advice for just discerning that I know it can depend on the campaign and the objective that you're trying to achieve, but how do you just kind of as a brand like go through that thought process of aligning those KPIs and making sure you have that data that you're looking to track? Yeah, absolutely. I think it definitely depends on channels. I always have like sort of first,

second and third objectives for any sort of campaigns or any kind of swap or partnerships that I have. And I have kind of a tiered system for how I evaluate too. And again, this kind of all goes back to that initial intake call or that start of that relationship building of understanding kind of what they can like feasibly provide, who their audience is, what kind of engagement to expect, like kind of that song and dance of initial data collection. I always try to have input and output based goals. So an output would mean, okay, I want this partnership to generate 350 subscribers, and an input would be, you know, I want to have

X amount of ad space or whatever. So even if I don't generate those 350 subscribers, I'm still, hey, we had four ad slots and like, that's great. Their audience is growing so we got in front of X amount of people. You know, it's still a win even if the output goals were not reached. So I try to have like sort of different tiers of success or different outcomes. In terms of working with podcasters, downloads are not people. This is the one thing I will say that I'm very loud and proud about. Look at the metrics that matter. Look at how long people are sticking around and listening to your content. Look at actually unique verified listeners, which are the individuals that generate those downloads. I would recommend Bumper as a great resource to learn more about data and understanding the success and growth of your

show on that end. And then on YouTube, for YouTube partnerships, that's like whole other ballgame because you have the back end. One thing that I think is interesting and is getting harder is that we do see in the content world sort of it being more of a pay to play space than it was before. I mean, you could buy a YouTube view, you can buy a YouTube subscriber, you can buy everything. And so understanding how to sort of look at the numbers and sort of be able to decipher, okay, is this a real audience? Is this a fake audience? What is the engagement telling me? Because at the end of the day, that's going to really impact those input and output numbers, how much of that audience is actually able to engage with that content.

Yes, such a good reminder again. So I want to kind of pivot a little bit towards more of the career conversation here. I would love to know, there's a lot of listeners who are interested in going into a similar field. They want to work in influencer partnerships or media partnerships or whatever. And so just advice that you would pass along to a professional looking to get their feet wet in that space

to build their experience and maybe get their foot in the door with an opportunity. Yeah. Yeah, great question. And I think you mentioned this on an episode a couple. I think you just maybe released an episode about this, but networking is really important. Every opportunity that I've ever had, including coming on this show, has been through my network. I'm very lucky because I work in partnerships, so I meet with people all the time who do lots of different things. That's a big,

a big one is not being afraid to network, not being afraid to get out there to go to events, go to conferences. If you're already working on building your media presence, you could actually attend a lot of those for free. I think this is something that a lot of people don't actually know about. So don't be afraid to ask for a ticket or for a press pass, just to get out there. So definitely invest in networking and meeting people. The other thing that I would suggest is like be really aware of your media diet. When you work with influencers or with creators, there's people of all the different shapes and sizes who do their content really differently. So the more exposure you can have to people that are doing things differently, the better.

Because if you start to work with clients, you're going to want to be really well versed in different topics, different tactics, different audience growth, like how all the different channels work, all of the analytics. You really want to have that backend knowledge too of how the platforms work. This is something that I had to learn really quickly when I started this job and was very, very overwhelmed and wished that I had invested more in before I had started because I think it's easy to have, it's easier to identify as someone that has taste and can identify creators. as someone that has taste and can identify creators, but if you don't understand the

back end and how to read that data, having taste and identifying a quote unquote good creator is only going to go so far. So I would say that as well. And then I would say just like have fun working with creators, like working in the influencer space is really fun. It's really rewarding. You get to meet so many people and at times, especially amidst the TikTok shutdown, it's a very exciting industry. There's definitely going to be a lot of ups and downs, but it's really rewarding to work directly with people who are really solopreneurs in kind of a new way that we're seeing for the first time. So it's really exciting. And then on that too, another loaded question for you. Is there anything that you know currently

in your career, whatever it is, even just outside of the space that you're in, that you would love to pass on to another professional? Maybe it's something you learned recently or in the last few years that you're like, hey, this would have been great to know kind of earlier on or, you know, when I was getting started too. This is a great question. If you want to go the relationship path and work with creators or other brands, the best relationships that I've ever had with creators have been built just on like having a deep empathy and understanding for the other person and where they are.

I mean, I've been on calls with clients where they've cried, I've cried, stuff is going on. It's a very, the thing that has benefited me the most is showing up as my whole self and encouraging other people that I'm working with to do the same because at the end of the day, we're all human. I think especially for people that work in the corporate world it can be really scary. I mean when I first started in the corporate world I was terrified. I'd never worked a corporate job, HubSpot is really big. I think being a woman and working

remotely comes with its own challenges and the more that you can settle in to just being yourself and reminding others that you're a person, even if you're behind a computer screen all day, that they're a person and just having that be the foundation of the relationship is huge. The other thing that I would say is, especially for someone like me, if you're coming from having a really set idea of, I want this to be my career, everything I'm going to do is going to be in service of me having that career as someone who's been through that, it's never going to go as you expect it to. And that's okay, and that's beautiful, and life is

a journey, and there's going to be so many things that you're going to do that are going to surprise you and also that are going to be really hard. But at the end of the day, that's just life and you can only stay immune to that for so long. Especially for someone like me, I've had a crazy journey of being a musician and working a corporate job and having lots and lots of ups and downs. And it's not somewhere that I would have ever, I think if you told me five years ago that I would be working a corporate job that I would have like laughed and said, no way. But it's taught me so much more about myself than I could have ever expected even when things were difficult for me. And so I would say embrace the journeys as much as possible and things always ebb and

flow. So, it's always ebb and flow. So it's good, and bad, and good. And that's just the way it is. It is. It is. And it's such a, I mean, it takes a lot of growth and time to come to that realization and be OK with it, too. And I know, at least for me, and I'm

curious if you agree, that feeling towards it ebbs and flows, too. And I know, at least for me, and I'm curious if you were great, like that feeling towards it ebbs and flows to like, there's some points where I'm personally like, okay, this sucks. Like this door just slammed in my face that I thought it was going to be open forever. And I'm not okay with it. And I'm going to sit in that frustration. But then being able to kind of pick yourself up like the next few days or even weeks from then and be like, okay, that happened. There's nothing I can do about it. Now what's the next step? And even if the next few days or even weeks from then and be like okay that happened there's nothing I can do about it now what's the next step and even if the next step isn't something I imagined for

myself it's gonna work out and long term like sometimes you look back and you're like man I'm actually really glad that happened because now I'm in a place that I couldn't even imagine for myself but it's it's incredible but it's it's's a big mindset shift and it takes so much time and that's something I know I'm still figuring out and learning to. I'm still figuring out and learning too. And I'm glad that we talked about this and I wish that people were more open about it. I'm such a stubborn, I'm such a stubborn person and I swear I like mentally spend so much time resisting and something that I'm trying to do more and more so. And the longer that I've been in my career, I think it's become easier

where I just am truly, I don't want to go against the grain, I guess, in that way. Whatever is happening is happening and I'm gonna embrace it and it's gonna teach me something and that's fine and stuff is gonna be uncomfortable and that's okay. I just am at a point where I'm not fighting the things that are happening to me in that way anymore. I don't know if I'm exactly coming off in a way that makes sense, but that's how I think about it, at least personally. And because of that, I'm able to appreciate things so much more and be surprised by myself so much more because I'm not thinking about things in more of like a limiting way or seeing things only through one specific lens that I think is best. For sure, for sure. No, I couldn't agree more and I think to just remembering with that you

know life is fluid as you mentioned and there's always opportunities to you know you step out of an industry or a career that you loved and you're like, this is where I'm going to be forever. There's always opportunities down the road for you to flow back to that. Like you never know what's going to happen. And so I love just your encouragement of being flexible and just going with the flow of life. And you really never know what can come from that. But I think unless you're truly open to opportunities, that is when things start coming to you. But you have unless you're truly open to opportunities, that is when things start coming to you. But you have to be open. Like, yeah, it's important. So yeah, such a good

reminder. Thank you for sharing that. I have to ask you too, Carly, as we close out, this has been absolutely amazing. And thank you for all of your strategies and tips. but would love to give us an opportunity just to stay connected with you and HubSpot as well. So where's the best place we can connect with you online, but also find all things HubSpot and what you're working on. Yeah, absolutely. So the best place to connect with me is on LinkedIn. We can link it in the show notes.

So please feel free to connect with me. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a DM. I always try to get back to folks. So yeah, LinkedIn is definitely the place to find me. In terms of where you can find all of everything we have going on at HubSpot, you can head over to hubspot.com. We have a landing page that has all of our YouTube channels, all of our podcasts, our newsletters, our blogs, all of that good stuff. So if you want to stay up to date and subscribe to any of those, you can head over

to our website, which we'll also link below and I'll share a couple of my favorites and must have resources for the audience too. Oh, amazing. Amazing. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much again for joining me today. I can't wait to just stay in touch with you and everything you have going on and just super excited about the growth that HubSpot is seeing lately and can't wait to stay tuned for that. So thanks for being here. And thanks so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love your feedback. And if you're ready to take things to the next level, sign up for my weekly

newsletter and the show notes. You'll get weekly career and marketing insights straight to your inbox. And if you have an idea for a future marketing happy hour episode, shoot me an email hello at marketing happy HR.com. Thank you again. And I'll see you next Thursday.