Bentley Students Test Digital Marketing Skills with HubSpot Partner accelant

For Bentley students in the course Digital Marketing (MK361), acing their marketing assignment wasn’t just about boosting their GPA. They had the chance to showcase their business skills to executives from accelant, a HubSpot partner founded by Bentley alumnus George Roadman ’00 in 2023. More specifically, they developed a comprehensive digital marketing plan and campaign for a B2B client scenario, meeting regularly with accelant team members for feedback. At the end of the semester, some students landed internships with the company. 

“This assignment reflected both a digital marketing project and collaboration, whereby George designated experienced digital marketers at accelant to work with six Bentley student teams that had access to accelant’s HubSpot platform,” says Senior Lecturer in Marketing Ian Cross, who taught the course and facilitated the relationship with Roadman. “The goal was for students to find ways to enhance brand visibility, engage target audiences and ultimately drive qualified leads. I firmly believe that you learn the most by doing.” 

Allison Carrara ’25, a Marketing major with a minor in Public Relations, had high expectations for the course, which leveraged a collaboration with accelant and HubSpot’s Education Partner Program to provide opportunities to learn about content and inbound marketing.  

“I enrolled in this course to learn more about digital marketing, specifically, as a career option in the world of marketing,” she says. “I also had heard great things about Professor Cross and his real-world application teaching style, which is something I value. After finding out that we would be working with accelant, I knew I had made the right decision to take the class.” 

Carrara’s group designed a mock digital marketing plan — including buyer persona and journey; social media, emails and landing pages on HubSpot; and measurements and analytics tracking — for a crisis management software company. “We got to explore all the areas of a digital marketing campaign, working on each one separately throughout the semester and then compiling all our work into a final group presentation at the end of the year,” she says. 

Coop Caiozzo ’25, who is majoring in Marketing and is in the Advanced Standing in Business MBA program, was on a team that created a digital marketing plan to attract leads for a shipping and logistics company.  

“The course built on itself throughout the semester, so we started with the basics, like who the ideal customer was,” Caiozzo says. “From there, we started building out customer journeys and identifying where they spend their time online so we could tailor specific channel campaigns directly to our target demographics to increase the efficiency KPIs across the board.” 

Caiozzo, who was among two Bentley student interns at accelant this summer, worked directly with Roadman during the course. “As someone particularly interested in the startup space, I was really excited to hear about his experience bringing an idea to market and seeing the infrastructure mechanics behind the scenes,” Caiozzo says. “The course gave me a diversified understanding of the inner workings of digital marketing, and it was awesome being able to study the marketing levers that push consumers toward specific calls to action. I especially learned from the little things, like being asked to visualize the customer journey or articulate a customer persona.” 

BREAKING BOUNDARIES

From the start of his work with students, Roadman had confidence in what they would deliver.  

“I had such a great experience at Bentley that I wanted to give back to the students through this hands-on learning opportunity, including thinking about how to run a business,” Roadman says of partnering with Cross to develop the curriculum and deliver the course. He serves as accelant’s CEO and has worked in the technology industry for more than two decades. “It also gave me a chance to potentially recruit top talent. Spending time in a college classroom certainly gets you excited about the future.” 

Integrating HubSpot Academy technologies provided a platform for students to try out HubSpot software focused on inbound marketing, sales and customer service. “Students applied tools and techniques and learned tips to build a digital plan within an industry-recognized framework and certification program,” Cross says. Students earned HubSpot certifications in Digital Marketing and Content Marketing at the end of the course. “Just as importantly, they got to work with successful business professionals from accelant who served as mentors. It was a win-win.” 

Roadman agrees. “Our goal, really, was to ignite a passion in students. Whether or not this is the track they want to follow, they’re closer to finding what they want to do. 

“What’s probably most interesting to me is that we’ve learned so much about ourselves through the course,” he continues. “Working with students has been like a training ground for my own team. It’s refreshing for us to come into an environment where the sky’s still the limit. We’re invigorated by their willingness to share and take on new ideas; they provided a very fresh, new, innovative perspective. They didn’t set up arbitrary boundaries; students were willing to scribble outside the lines — and we like that.”