Inbound15 - Insights and General Thoughts from HubSpot's Annual Conference

What a week!  First and foremost, thank you to the team at HubSpot for a great event, which included wonderful keynote sessions from not just Inbound Marketing folk, but also the likes of Dr. Brene Brown, the comedians Aziz Ansari and Amy Schumer and last but not least Chelsea Clinton.

The event also allowed us to network with the global Inbound Marketing community with every continent in the world represented by the 14,000+ audience of attendees.  There's no doubt that this audience is growing, which is not only supported by the increase in attendance compared to previous years, but also HubSpot's announcement that over 15,000 companies around the world are now using their platform.

Inbound Marketing in our minds (I'm speaking for the entire www.DigitalNexa.com team here) is the future in terms of how businesses migrate and streamline key operational activities such as Marketing and Sales.  Actually, scrap that.  Inbound Marketing isn't the future, it's very much for now and those businesses who understand this are positioning themselves for future greatness.  That's the reason why this year, 4 of our team flew to Boston for the event.  

You see, business has changed and it has changed because customers have changed.  Today's customer has never been so empowered.  The access to information that the average internet connected customer has today is mind-blowing.  Today, over 70% of customers will research a product or service online BEFORE speaking to a company or sales representative about their need.

The conference addressed this very change in a meaningful way for attendees by providing actionable insights not just for companies looking to improve their own marketing activities but also to inbound marketing agencies such as Nexa, who can take some of the global learning shared and provide these insights to clients for whom these tactics may be applicable.

It's always difficult to share almost a week's worth of content into a single blog article, so I've decided to share some of the key insights in the bullet points below:

• The Team Perspective:  Which type of company is ideally suited to provide Inbound Marketing Services:
  • There's no doubt that there is a huge crossover of activity when it comes to providing the vast range of services that encompass Inbound Marketing.  For example, the content used to create a inbound campaign is often created by specialist content writers or journalists.  Those who then publish the content are more technical and are often found within website design companies.  Next, those who market and distribute the content across multiple platforms so that the content becomes visible for the desired audience for which is created, are often found within social media and paid marketing teams.  Then finally, when working out the effectiveness of a campaign, having Analysts who understand Inbound Marketing is undoubtedly a key requirement.
  • The big debate in Boston was whether a specialist Inbound Marketing Agency offers the best solution or a Digital Marketing Agency with vast resources in terms of the different areas of skill sets highlighted above.  In my mind, the answer is simple.  Nothing is more effective than a specialised Inbound Marketing Team that is set within a integrated digital marketing agency.
• Content is key: Customers today have expectations.  One of the findings of the event came from a Neuroscience themed session that analysed the expectations of customers.  The findings were interesting, to say the least:
  • People forget over 90% of content that is shared with them.  This is a remarkable statistic but makes so much sense when you consider the vast amounts of content shared with friends, family or colleagues today.  The main take-away from this, from a strategic perspective is that although the focus of a bradn should always be to create engaging content, there also needs to be a mission to create some form of conversion from each piece of content created.
  • Brands should appeal to customers using familiarity and create campaigns that drive memory retrieval.  Statistics indicate that brands who do this have a greater chance of initiating a action from a customer or prospect.
  • According to Ann Handley (from http://www.marketingprofs.com/) Content needs to Bigger, Braver and Bolder.  To support this, Handley shared a number of case studies highlighting how brand's can use tone of voice as the backbone to the content they create and the impact this has both internally within the organisation and externally with customers and potential customers.   One huge take-away from this session focused around how each brand should ask the following question "If you cover up your logo and read the content on your website - would you recognise you?"  The message was clear - if not, create bigger, better, bolder stories
• New, advanced website CMS' are the future:  A big push from Hubspot this year was based around their new website content management platform, which looks like it's had a drastic overhall recently.  Aside from excellent features such as live website personalisation, whihc is the ability for a website to show content that is relevent and highly customised for a specific viewer, there was also a push on the security features that the platform now boasts.  According to HubSpot, Wordpress websites are attacked 17 million times per day across the world.  At Nexa, as HubSpot partners, we'll be testing the new website platform in the coming weeks and will keep you updated in terms of our findings.

Clearly, this is just a small synopsis of a large event dedicated to Inbound and Content Marketing.  If you would like any more information, please feel free to reach out to us.  In the meantime, if you're interested in learning how Content Marketing can impact your business, please download our free e-book below: