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These are re-posts from the original sources. Author: imrcorp

My inbound marketing journey began a few weeks ago when I came on board Innovative Marketing Resources. As the agency's newest inbound marketing consultant, the very first thing I had to accomplish was to earn HubSpot's Inbound Certification Program  (not to be confused with the HubSpot Certification Program, this is the second step).

HubSpot Inbound Certification training consists mainly of informational videos that explain the concepts of inbound marketing and how to use HubSpot's software to interpret data for planning inbound marketing strategies. I found that the videos did a good job of preparing me for what I needed to know to pass the certification test, but the plethora of information available in the videos is almost too much to handle without the right approach.

When watching HubSpot's training videos, there were so many key takeaways that I didn't know what exactly to take away from them!

As I went further in my inbound journey, I realized that I was frantically writing down every word in the HubSpot training videos, believing that whatever I wrote down would be easy to refer to when the time came to take my certification test. This was not the case. I realized that HubSpot wasn't only testing my ability to regurgitate inbound language; it was also testing my conceptual understanding and my ability to understand and use the tools of the HubSpot platform.

Although I didn't pass the Inbound Certification test the first couple times I took it, I learned from my failures and realized that I was needlessly overwhelming myself with information that I didn't thoroughly understand. For those of you who are headed inbound, I have some advice to pass along that I hope will help you prepare for your journey.

Don't write down everything you don't know

Although this seems counterintuitive, what's the point in writing something down if you don't understand what it is? I highly recommend stopping the video and looking up buzzwords or concepts that you don't understand, because these videos will continue to use this vocabulary to explain the material. Therefore, if you don't understand the vocabulary used in these videos, you aren't really going to get a good understanding of what you are learning. One good place to start is the video page itself. HubSpot provides helpful additional information below their videos. I also found that using Google to find related course material, such as blog articles, helped me better comprehend the subject matter.

Only watch one or two sets of videos a day

In other words, take a breath and space out how many videos you watch. There can be as many as four videos per lesson, which can require up to an hour of watching (and that's not including note taking). It may be tempting to try to absorb as much information in one go as you can, but trust me, it is certainly not to your benefit. It is much easier to digest information if it comes in smaller doses because it allows you to solely focus on that material, thus increasing the likeliness of that material sticking.

Embrace and learn from your failures

Don't beat yourself up if you fail it the first few times! It's not uncommon for people to fail their first few times and, luckily, you are allowed to take the HubSpot Inbound Certification test up to three times a month. (If you don't pass the test initially, there's a 48-hour waiting period until you are able to take the test again.) A passing grade is a 75%, so don't be under the impression that you just need a bare minimum of a 60% to pass! Fortunately, if you do end up failing, HubSpot will show you what categories you need to work on by telling you what percentage you got correct for each section. For example, if you scored a 33% on the Landing Pages portion of the test, then you can always go back to the Landing Pages class section and watch the videos again to better understand what you don't comprehend.

Good luck on your inbound journey! I have provided some links below that I found helpful for preparing myself for the HubSpot Certification Test.

• "The 45 Inbound Marketing Terms You Should Know"
• "How to Pass the Inbound Marketing Certification 2013 by HubSpot Academy
• "Hub-Spot Inbound Certification Study Guide"