Paul Guenther: Assisting Companies with Innovative Media Solutions

Paul Guenther, the founder and CEO of Knowledge Hub Worldwide, a U.S.-based company specializing in B2B advertising and various marketing services, including high-impact online advertising, lead generation, demand generation, white paper, and content syndication, mobile and account based marketing. Knowledge Hub Worldwide leverages content syndication via assets like white papers, webinars, case studies, and the like to generate highly targeted leads for Meet its clients. Most of the organization’s clients serve the software and technology industry, and when they are not, they are usually advertising/media agencies working on behalf of the former.

Paul’s personal story started at Penn State University in the Fall of 2002. At that point of time, Paul was unsure about his future. So, after some time, he became determined to go to law school and decided to major in Crime, Law & Justice. Eventually, he got his B.S. in the spring of 2006, followed by a short stint in Law School. In 2008, Paul returned to school to get his MBA with a concentration in Marketing Management. In 2009, he started working on what would later become “I.T. Knowledge Hub,”- which is now known as Knowledge Hub Worldwide. Upon completing his MBA, Paul worked tirelessly to get things up and off the ground. He worked on everything from sales to marketing to accounting to website development.

“I was truly a one-man shop back in those days… But (very) fortunately for me, over the next couple of years, I was able to bring my first few employees on – Anthony and James, running Sales, and Chris, who filled my first Client Services role,”- he remembered. “I had also gone back to school by that point to get my Doctorate in Business Administration – finally finishing my dissertation and graduating in January 2020.”

Standing Apart from the Competition

Working with big data and business analytics is something that Paul and his team at Knowledge Hub Worldwide have not only engaged in for a long time, but it is also something the company has always taken very seriously. Knowledge Hub Worldwide has been analyzing data and creating models and simulations before the term ‘analytics’ became mainstream. Also, a few years back, the company internally started an intent data analytics platform. Known as “Intent DataCloud,” Knowledge Hub Worldwide’s intent analytics platform measures the consumption of B2B content across several channels, including organizational content consumption via content syndication, white paper and webinar registrations, website and landing page analytics, and social listening.

Customers are most important to the organization, so offering a great customer experience has always been Knowledge Hub Worldwide’s number one goal. “Without customers, you don’t have a business, and by proxy, you don’t have a business. Enhancing the customer experience is always at the top of our list, and at the end of the day, we always want to ensure that everyone is completely satisfied. It usually comes down to a few things: responsiveness, quality of the product, and customizability,”- explained Paul. “When a customer has a question, we’re there to answer it immediately – even when we don’t yet have a complete answer. Over the 12+ years that we’ve been doing this, we’ve evolved our practices and QA/QC measures to ensure only the finest in data quality – in terms of both data integrity and lead scoring mechanisms.”

When Efficient Management is Key

Paul firmly believes in efficient management- essentially trusting and allowing everyone to do their job. There is some level of micromanagement early on, that is, the first few months an employee works with the company. Once they are comfortable, and get the idea of what they are doing, and can be trusted to be customer-centric, they gain a high level of autonomy.

“At the end of the day, I give everyone the ability to make decisions where they see fit, and overall, I’m against the idea of micromanaging. It creates unnecessary pressures and stress that really don’t have to exist. We have a pretty good culture here,”- stated Paul. “We’re very customer-centric and employee-centric. Those things really matter (a lot), and the positive vibes tend to keep everyone happy… Wanting to stay onboard and help navigate the company’s continuous growth.”

Navigating the Pandemic

Like every other company on the planet, the pandemic also impacted Knowledge Hub Worldwide to some extent. However, the onset of the pandemic did not cause too many changes from a business operations standpoint. Knowledge Hub Worldwide was already working remotely at 40% before the pandemic, so the switch over to 100% telework was relatively seamless. Some of the major changes the company made were in sales outreach and client services. Like most others, Knowledge Hub Worldwide immediately adopted video meetings via Zoom instead of the old-school conference and direct calls. It also replaced travel, as no one could travel much during the pandemic.

Paul and his team also emphasized e-mail marketing, as most of their clients and prospective customers were suddenly displaced and out-of-office. So, e-mail marketing analytics became very important as they helped the firm to establish best practices for send times, send days, and subject line content to encourage increased engagement rates.

Awards and Accolades 

Knowledge Hub Worldwide is a b2b advertising company with demand generation and content syndication as its core competencies. The firm had several major accomplishments over the years, including making the Inc. 5000 list three years in a row (Inc Magazine) and being honored as an Entrepreneur Magazine Entrepreneur 360 company. It was also recognized as one of the 360 best privately owned companies in America – three years in a row. Additionally, Knowledge Hub Worldwide has been highlighted in several renowned publications, radio shows, etc., and was selected as one of the most creative advertising firms of 2020–2021 at the InterCon awards convention.