HubSpot’s (and indeed the industry's) biggest annual event GROW with HubSpot took place in Sydney yesterday. I say ‘biggest’ because HubSpot is no longer just a Marketing tool or platform but now includes Sales, CRM, Customer Service and Integrations. HubSpot also connects platforms as well for example seeing the launch of the XERO (accounting) <> HubSpot Integration, and more.
In this post (and if you’ve seen similar posts from me before) I try to consolidate the most important bits of the event, for those who missed it. And, I try to give more flavour to those who attended but wanted a perspective from my angle or if they attended different streams at the event. This time I am weaving in the video and pics (excuse poor quality but it makes for an authentic experience) to make it smoother and quicker.
Here you go.
Opening keynote - Scott Brinker (HubSpot VP, Platform Ecosystem)
Scott covered how HubSpot is playing, as a massive authority in the MarTech space, and meeting MarTech in a huge way through its Connect platform and channel partners, integrations, the platforms (Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service), and web hooks. Doing so is easy, centralised and fast and hugely beneficial on HubSpot. There was a discussion with Xero’s GM about the XERO <> HubSpot integration who reinforced the first major step between the two was the integration of basics first (for now). The future will see more sophisticated data but for now the initial sync is there.
The major benefit that comes to my mind around the HubSpot <> XERO integration is simply the ability to close the sales loop, in other words, if an invoice is raised in XERO then the lead becomes a customer and the loop is closed in HubSpot, automatically.
This integration is a massive step forward in closing the sales loop, especially for larger businesses where previously, meetings were necessary and people needed to do a whole lot of stuff, to close this loop without an integration.
The GROW with HubSpot Event agenda is broken up into time slots throughout the day with streams for each of the platform categories across Sales, Marketing and Service, and now Integrations too as well as the attract, engage and delight stages, so attendees get to customise their day and select the streams they wish to attend that are most relevant to them.
Therefor, I cannot go into the whole agenda after the keynote but below I do include the slots I attended and which I deem as super important to add value to me, but I think these will add value to you as well, because they cover sensational topics and trends of where the future of marketing is going - see topics below.
The list following is detailed below for each speaker around the trends - the topic covered by each speaker and you can click ahead, if you prefer:
- SEO by Matt House Barby
- Sales Prospecting like a Pro with David Shepard
- Conversational Marketing by Elissa Hudson
SEO by Matt House Barby
Matt summarised the past 2 years of Google algorithm updates all taking shape around AI and natural language processing (NLP) influencing the shape of Search ranking. Now that those aspects have taken shape, he moved into where he sees SEO and a little about predictions for the future.
Right now and first to note, Google updates are happening ongoing now, all the time. Waiting for major updates is no more, hence, spotting major trends = much harder than ever.
Matt identifies some major themes though for example intent matching. Matching the content you need to serve with the intent of the searcher and your audience whom you are preparing the content for. Peoples intent wants to cut straight to the point. Much more precise, shorter form content - packed with punch. Long form content is not the case any more but short form is not a rule either.
A massive recommendation if you are or are not a HubSpot user is to setup GSC (Google Search Console) and use it! It is an easy way to find SEO issues and opportunities to fix, for example to see the number of times a page shows in SERP’s and amount of times it was clicked. This would indicate changes in intent, what’s changed and then you can hunt why the change. Usually the exercise will indicate what needs changing on pages. Best of all with GSC is that you dont need to be a fancy SEO guru..
Another trend Matt presented is that the opportunity to squeeze organic search from Google search results is getting smaller for all marketers so you want as many of your relevant pages ranking together on SERP’s, as much as possible, so build content concise and pure for purpose based on user intent or repurpose old unseen content (after using the GSC tools mentioned above) to make it shine and reinforce topics your users are searching for.
Lastly Matt covered SERP features that are impacting SEO Search results in a big way namely;
FaQ snippets, Features snippets, how-to snippets, knowledge carousels, video answers, related searches, Google shopping - to mentioned a few.
In summary the question for SEO is how to compete - especially with the big SEO machines out there? A quick way is to go across all your content and re-structure it, where possible, especially restructure it around featured snippets. Go to GSC and look at queries leading to your site and check if any can be repurposed to featured snippets and if so then create them for your most queried search terms. This leads to the topic of content pruning. Criteria why you would want to do it and how. Matt sighted this checklist to do so:
Use these to answer, and if you need to get rid of content.
When you get rid of content, you can still try to recycle the content and use it for link building > maybe it has a use for other people that you can share it with, before chucking it in a bin.
Sales Prospecting like a Pro with David Shepard > the engage part of the flywheel (full-funnel sales process)
People have changed. Therefor, the way they shop, browse and explore have changed too. So, salespeople need to change ‘the way’ they are selling (if they have not done so already) or helping their prospects and leads.
At the dawn of the internet, anyone could start a business for free. People had access to endless points of data. However today that data has become super messy as have the myriad and plethora of platform available to do almost anything. To end users of the sales process (prospects and leads) and their customer experience (and the tech they choose to communicate with and the platforms they choose to be upon) anything that is a hassle for them, causing friction today, is gone tomorrow.
Humans seek a homogenous process, always, it’s in our DNA. So customers want a personalised, bespoke solution to their problem which means that what we sell and all the choices we offer are not primarily what customers want. ‘How’ we sell what we have, is what customers want. Industries have been re-defined on this principle, explained by the following:
- Old companies were 9am-5pm, new companies are 24 hr
- Old companies had a high upfront cost to their offerings, new companies tend to offer free and are quick to start
- Old companies offered generic solutions, new companies offer specific solutions
- It’s good to be helpful but it’s better to be easy
Over time, the world is becoming simpler. Additionally the market favours simplicity. So, salespeople need to meet customers with simplicity.
The grand questions is: “How to make the experience and process super simple?”
[I love this >] Marketers are storytellers - they make the content. Sales Reps are best at personalisation - they need to personalise the content (from marketing) for each individual leads and prospects needs.
The goal for todays sales people is to leverage the Insights that are available to them (with the right MarTech) into their sales process and then use those to leverage into personalisation to provide a seamless experience for the buyer.
A personalised sales example looks like this:
User engages with a tracked email, activity on Linkedin (for example or other social channel), sales person uses website tech like Datanyze or BuiltWith to understand the leads marketing and tech stack, the sales person sends email with personalised video, all of which can include a follow on of automated sequential steps, behind them, as well as tasks along the way to do things automatically, at each stage in the process.
So the theme is for sale people to sell better via personalisation for their end user. If you’re in sales and you’re sending template emails (versus personalised emails per user) then you’re killing your chances of selling easy.
Conversational Marketing by Elissa Hudson
Elissa addressed 3 primary elements around Conversational Marketing:
- Why bother with Conversational Marketing?
- Some industry results now factual around Conversational Marketing
- How to implement Conversational Marketing and a Conversational Marketing Strategy
A fact about Conversational Marketing: 90% of consumers expect an immediate response from a customer service representative. This means in they expect a business to have full funnel approach and therefor capability. To be always on, always there, always knowing who their customers are, always ready, willing and able to help.
‘Impersonal’ is not an option. 89% want to communicate in any channel they play on and choose. A staggering statistic from HubSpot: only 48% of business are equipped to connect.
So, conversations must be helpful, personal and authentic. Conversational marketing can and must also span across Sales and Service.
Some additional use-cases and statistics substantiating the need for conversational marketing to supplement traditional marketing and marketing channels:
To implement Conversational Marketing relies on an open minds and a meeting of the minds, across teams, departments, devisions and management. The company needs an appetite for growth and has the budget and is willing to invest it in their own sales, marketing and customer service. Then it is a matter of isolating the appropriate goals and very simple use-cases for the conversational marketing needs, identifying the precise buyer persona’s applicable and their journey, which in turn will output the relevant channels and appropriate technology to deploy to execute the conversational marketing structure.
Wrapping up, Ellisa provided some tips and things to think about:
- Start small
- Estimate demand based on traffic/ad spend and staff accordingly.
- Consider office hours and time zones
- Plan for anything that may increase demand for a certain period of time
- Train your staff thoroughly
- Start small
- Estimate demand based on traffic/ad spend and staff accordingly.
- Consider office hours and time zones
- Plan for anything that may increase demand for a certain period of time
- Train your staff thoroughly
At Lupo Digital, we are specialists and officially certified trainers on the HubSpot Platform. We love to help businesses grow to their next level. So if you need help or wish to discuss anything in this article, please reach out or book a free and no-obligation assessment ASAP to have a chat.
Written by Glenn Miller
An exceptionally experienced digital marketer, proactive and future-forward thought leader, I deliver exceptional customer experiences, industry leading digital strategy and superior marketing results.
