Barack Obama and Jane Goodall, at the same event...What more could you ask for? HubSpot's annual INBOUND conference in Boston brought together again the top experts in marketing, sales and customer service, alongside world-renowned public figures and thousands of attendees from across the globe.
The mbudo team had the pleasure of attending this amazing inbound marketing event to learn from industry experts, partners, and HubSpot users around the world. mbudo is a HubSpot Diamond Partner, and we are always looking to improve our inbound expertise. Our top 4 conference highlights included:
- Hearing from exceptional speakers like Darmesh Shah, CTO and co-founder of HubSpot; Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot; Neil Patel, New York Times bestselling author and digital marketing guru; Tusar Barik, Marketing Director at LinkedIn; and many more.
- We learned more about tools in the HubSpot ecosystem such as Zuper, PSO Hub, Panda Doc, mobilforce, Chili Piper, northpass, Aircall and many more.
- We met HubSpot gurus like Kyle Jepson - you'll recognize him from all of the HubSpot videos!
- And finally, we sat less than 10 rows away from Barack Obama and got to witness a great speech from him!
For a more in-depth look at all of the learnings we acquired during INBOUND 2022, which defines existing and future functionalities of the HubSpot ecosystem, keep reading below. We discuss product features, strategy, and some truly inspirational ideas that we had the pleasure of being part of:
1. HubSpot Spotlight from HubSpot's leaders
In the opening spotlight talk, Yamini Rangan (CEO of HubSpot), and Darmesh Shah, (co-founder and CTO) welcomed us to the event discussing the challenges of connecting with customers, new features in the various Hubs, and how creating community is one of the challenges of today's society.
Steph Cuthbertson, (HubSpot's Chief Product Officer) introduced us to HubSpot's new features that help us offer a more flexible customer experience by connecting information, pipelines, and above all, customers and people. Watch the video below to learn all the little details!
Source: HubSpot
2. The power of creativity in B2B marketing
In this session from Tusar Barik, Marketing Director at Linkedin, we discovered how creativity is an essential aspect in B2B marketing and how companies like HubSpot exploit creativity to sell very specific products and services. Despite what many people think, B2B marketing can generate emotional connections with the public, just like B2C. Key insights were:
- Bet big on your marketing campaigns.
- Decision-makers in B2B purchasing processes are also human.
- Establish an emotional connection with your audience.
- Exploit creativity and make your brand shine in B2B: #B2Brilliant.
3. How to use video marketing throughout the Customer Journey
In this workshop, Taylor Corrado and Chris Lavigne from the Wistia team, showed how video marketing can help us throughout the entire customer lifecycle, explaining which types of videos we can use depending on the phase the user is in. This helps to differentiate us from other companies, connect with the audience, and make the brand much more human.
During the session, we put our skills to the test and got to carry out the implementation and recording of a marketing video from script to production!
4.How to navigate digital marketing using algorithms
In a world marked by algorithms, where it is increasingly difficult to position ourselves in social networks, Neil Patel, New York Times bestselling author and digital marketing guru, helped us understand algorithms and revealed some of the keys to succeeding organically online:
- Know your audience and your ideal customer profile (ICP).
- Content that works interests our audience.
- The best moments and formats to publish.
- The seasonality of your campaigns.
5. Change CRMs, don't be afraid!
In this session, Frank Loughan, Dilo Wijesuriya, and Kari Fairbanks from ARC Document Solutions explained their internal process and case study for migrating their CRM to HubSpot from Salesforce, (which they had been using for more than 10 years!) They shared key learnings, improvements in business processes, and their overall satisfaction in the outcome.
6. Keys to prepare the new generation of sales laders
David Mattson, CEO of Sandler, explained the 5 keys to success for sales managers. This is an urgent need because 43% of sales managers do not receive specific training in their position. Sales managers should be working on:
- Use playbooks, not only to group sales techniques, but also as a management guide.
- Convey to the team the "triangle of success": a three-point formula (attitude, concrete actions and sales techniques) that should be the mantra of every sales manager.
- Develop a culture based on expectations and accountability.
- The importance of coaching in sales teams.
- Selecting the best talent, participating in both the hiring and onboarding process.
7. The 3 keys to double your sales
Amanda Holmes, CEO of Chef Holmes International, presented her experience on the best way to increase sales in the short term:
- Correctly define your audience.
- Consider what moves your prospects to make a decision.
- The dream 100, in other words, how by narrowing down the number of potential clients to our Buyer Persona we can obtain better results with less effort and resources.
8. How to budget fast and close deals even faster with HubSpot
Jagadish Bandhole, CEO and co-founder of Mobileforce Software, presented his solution for customizing and automating quotes in HubSpot. Among other things, Mobileforce's integration with HubSpot allows you to generate different price lists based on business properties (dynamic pricing), create product groups, apply variations to products in terms of sizes or features, and, of course, automate the creation of quotes.
Moreover, in this talk, we were able to explore the functionalities first hand, since we did a real-time demo, installing the integration within our own CRM to be able to see everything related to quotes in depth.
9. How to maximize the use of Service Hub with integrator partners
In this session, led by Catie Moynihan (App Partner Manager at HubSpot) and Eric Brenner (GTM Specialist at HubSpot), five tools were presented that complement the functionality of HubSpot's service module, Service Hub:
- ChurnZero, a Customer Success platform, generates analytics to know which customers are more or less likely to stop being customers.
- Clickup, an application for project management, allows you to create tasks and certain automations.
- Aircall, virtual switchboard that allows you to easily register calls in the HubSpot CRM and synchronize information.
- Timerman, an application that allows to measure in detail the time that tickets or business are in a specific stage of the pipeline.
- Zuper, connects HubSpot objects to service teams or installations, allowing for better time and team management.
10. How it started vs. How it's going - How dealing with failures can create great opportunities.
Jay Schwedelson, founder and CEO of Subjectline.com told us the story of his professional career, from his beginnings at Outcome Media, to the founding of Subjectline.com, a web platform that allows you to assign a score to the subjects of marketing emails in order to develop the best strategy.
In this talk, full of motivational messages, he explained the best lesson he learned along his entrepreneurial journey:
"Differentiation is one of the key points when it comes to developing a strategy; if they don't know you for something, they don't know you at all". Jay Schwedelson
11. Leadership Lessons with Brian Hallingan and Dannie Herzberg.
In this session, Dannie Herzberg, partner at Sequoia Capital, interviewed Brian Hallingan, co-founder of HubSpot. Brian shared with the audience personal anecdotes related to his leadership within HubSpot over the years.
He highlighted the moment when they decided to transform the Hubspot product and turn it into a full CRM, despite the existing competition in the market, and how he convinced the team to follow that path. HubSpot's CRM is currently one of the highest rated inbound marketing platforms in the market.
Source: HubSpot
12. Lessons in community building with Dharmesh Shah
Dharmesh Shah, CTO and co-founder of HubSpot, in conversation with Sam Parr, Host at My First Million, reflected on the sense of community and how important it is for individuals to feel like part of a group where we are valued and where our interests are shared.
We must always be very focused on something specific, whether it is our career, our new hobby, our friends or a new sport..., because this is the way to grow and be better at whatever challenge we set for ourselves. Darmesh Shah
Over the 4 days of INBOUND 2022, these were our top moments and learning. To discover new products presented by HubSpot, you can check a preview on their website: hubspot.com/new. Do not hesitate to contact mbudo for more information on HubSpot and Inbound Marketing.
Ana Botija Loaísa
Ana is Inbound Marketing director in mbudo. She has worked with multinational IT and Telco companies in the areas of Engineering, Business Development, and Marketing. Ana doesn't try to deny her past as an engineer, which helps her enjoy the most complicated challenges. She loves art history and travel.