Alex Birkett 
I travel a lot for both work and pleasure, and I’ve developed some idiosyncrasies and some wisdom as well. I won’t write any basic advice down here such as “eat local food,” “get travel insurance,” or “slow down and enjoy the scenery.” Here I present some things I’ve learned about travel (as well as some … Read more
A/B testing is an important skill for anyone to learn, whether you’re a marketer, product person, designer, or an analyst. It’s also a great framework for managers, as Elliot Shmukler has noted. Once you learn about A/B testing, you look at decision making, probability, innovation, and risk differently. It’s an attitude shift as much as … Read more
New Year’s Resolutions™ are overrated, but time-based goals are nice, and so are general life reflections. I find it’s valuable to put them in writing and in public, mostly for reference and reflection down the line. I’ve been doing these since 2017 and find them fun and useful. 2019 Was a Good Year (Recap) I … Read more
A/B testing (i.e. running a controlled experiment, normally in a digital environment like a website or an application) is prevalent nowadays. All of the biggest tech companies you know – Microsoft, Netflix, Booking.com, Google – run thousands of experiments per year. Now it’s weird if you don’t run A/B tests. There are dozens of tools … Read more
More data isn’t necessarily better, and in fact, sometimes more data leads to much worse decision making. We’re all trying to make better business decisions (I hope, at least). All decisions include some level of uncertainty. Properly collected and analyzed data can reduce that uncertainty, but never eliminate it. However, in practice, I’ve noticed many … Read more
Content marketing is often looked at as a “brand” channel. In opposition to a “performance” channel, brand channels tend to be unmeasurable, emotional, and yet, still perceived as important (especially in larger companies and in consumer spaces). Despite this clearly being a false dichotomy (why can’t performance channels build the brand, too?), it’s also directionally … Read more
I’m a marketer, but I spend a lot of time in R. I use it to analyze A/B tests and explore data sets. I’ve also built fully functional web applications using R and Shiny to enable new processes for my team at HubSpot using the language. There are so many free resources for learning technical … Read more
“Kmart has plenty of awareness, so what?” -Purple Cow by Seth Godin I hear the term “brand awareness” all the time, but to be honest, I don’t really know what it means. On its surface, it’s somewhat obvious: it’s the amount of people who know about your brand. But that simple, stupid Google search definition … Read more
Content creation has a cost, both directly and indirectly. Knowing that cost lets you make better business decisions (and choose what to read)
Content marketing strategy is something few companies do well. This is something I’ve focused on for years, mostly because all the companies I’ve worked for, from super early stage startups to HubSpot where I work now, have been largely supported by content marketing (in one way or another). However, each company’s content marketing strategy was … Read more