HubBox and the Blog: The 2019 Edition

However, as a month of reflection and new beginnings, January is still an optimal time for reviewing and recalibrating on a number of marketing fronts. One of those fronts is of course, this blog.

There are plenty of listicles floating about along the lines of ‘10 reasons why your B2B business should have a blog!’ but I think it’s helpful to consider why it makes sense for HubBox, specifically, to run and maintain a blog.

We launched this blog in April 2018, alongside our ‘new’ website (remember when it used to look like this?)

The truth has been that, for the rest of the year, writing for this platform has continuously been shunted down an ever-growing list of priorities. This wasn’t because it there was no value in blogging, but as a small marketing team (spoiler alert: it’s just me!) there’s just a limit to how much it’s possible to get done in a calendar year.

And 2018, to misappropriate a classic Sinatra song, was a very good year for HubBox. We were named one of the Top 100 Startups in the UK.  Our product was recognised as the most disruptive retail technology at Retail Week Live, and we were shortlisted for a number of other prestigious awards.

We launched our Shopify App and rebuilt our whole website to reflect the fact that HubBox is a global Click & Collect software provider for global retailers of any size.

We unveiled HubBox Connect, the first BOPIS system which covers the shopper’s Click & Collect journey from the moment they place an order online until they collect it from a retailer store. Today, Connect powers in-store Click & Collect in hundreds of brick & mortar retailer locations across the UK.

But perhaps the best indicator of the pace of success in 2018 are the hundreds of retailers, from fast-fashion behemoth Boohoo through to high-street stalwarts such as Whistles and TM Lewin who chose HubBox’s software to power their Click & Collect solution.

Our goals for 2019 are ambitious, but in essence can be boiled down to a single aim that whilst straightforward, is by no means simple, namely:

To build the best possible Click & Collect product for our customers.

This means not just the best possible product for our retailers, but for every customer who chooses to Click & Collect their orders using HubBox, whether from a local Collect Point or retail store.

So, where does the HubBox blog come in to all of this?

Well, this blog has to be part of making the product the very best that it can be.

Towards the end of the last year we spent some time working out what it was about HubBox that made us unique, or rather, whittling away through layers of extraneous messaging to uncover what our core values were.

In a relatively unanimous decision we settled on: nimble, authentic and inventive.

In order for these words to actually mean something and not merely languish in the recesses of some remote Google Drive folder (the filing cabinet of the 21st century), we have to give them a practical application. So, how do those values translate in terms of this blog?

• No more cookie-cutter posts: If there are already 10 quality posts on a given topic, we probably won’t be wading into the fray unless imperative
• A willingness to try new approaches: This is less about flip-flopping if we feel something isn’t working instantly
• No jargon, buzzwords or fluff: To be honest, this one might be entirely for my own sanity and to prevent my brain from turning into a giant pile of LinkedIn clickbait mush
• A fresh perspective: Most people working in any given industry are constantly overwhelmed with a deluge of ‘content’ vying for their attention. This ties into the note on cookie-cutter posts; if we can’t add anything of value to the conversation, we’ll be keeping schtum.

So, what can you expect?

• Answers to questions we’re actually qualified to answer: We’re uniquely positioned to have insight into a range of issues and questions that omnichannel retailers are grappling with
• Interviews with Retailers: All kinds of them!
• Case Studies: What worked, why it worked and how we made it happen
• Ecommerce resources that you actually want to read
• Clear, easy to understand user guides on how to make the most of your Click & Collect solution
• Product Updates: What we’re developing, improving and launching, and why
• Occasional content relating to Ralph, our tiny lil’ head of Barketing  
• Behind the scenes: What actually goes into making all of this possible and the occasional humblebrag