This year’s HubSpot Inbound conference was held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center September 25-28. With more than 21,000 attendees representing 104 countries from almost every industry imaginable, it was truly an event to remember.
The conference featured four fun-packed days of keynotes, innovative talks, educational breakout sessions, hands-on lessons and tons of networking. HubSpot did not disappoint, bringing in big name keynote speakers such as former first lady, Michelle Obama, WWE superstar, John Cena, HBO’s Issa Rae, and many more. We are still reeling from all of the excitement and wanted to give you a quick recap of the conference and key takeaways for your marketing programs.
Search Engine Optimization
Leslie Ye, an acquisition marketer on HubSpot’s Sales Products Team, led the session, “Topic Clusters Over Keywords: It’s the End of SEO (As we know it),” where she discussed how search engine optimization (SEO) is changing rapidly and keywords, backlinks and anchor text isn’t going to cut it anymore. We’re moving to a world where topics matter more than keywords and effective SEO involves more than optimizing a URL. Ye also addressed how consumers now search the way they talk, for example, “good restaurants near me” would have been an absurd search term five years ago. However, today it is a very common search term due to the rise of local search and device distinction.
Creating Content That Stands Out
In a world where consumers are bombarded with information 24/7, how can you make sure your content does not get lost in the background? In the session, “Content Hacking: Creating Content That Stands Out and Actually Builds an Audience,” CEO and co-founder of CoScedule, Garrett Moon, emphasized the importance of finding competition-free content that differentiates you from your competitors.
Other sessions focused on the importance of visual content. With ninety percent of the information our brain stores being visual, it is important to have clear and high-quality images on social media when promoting content. Video Content is extremely important as well. In fact, one company saw a forty-four percent reduction in sales cycle length by using video in their marketing initiatives.
The Product Launch
HubSpot has some new and exciting products up their sleeve that have launched or are in the process of launching going into 2018. Here is a quick summary.
Facebook Lead Ads
Companies now have the ability to create Facebook ads in HubSpot that are specialized to generate leads. All leads generated by Facebook are immediately synced into HubSpot, which is available to everyone who uses the platform.
Conversations Tool
HubSpot is launching a new free conversations tool in 2018. It is an aggregate tool that connects all conversations whether they are through your website, via a messaging app or on social media. HubSpot is launching this tool as recent data shows while typically two percent of website traffic fill out a form, ten percent want to have a conversation.
Customer Hub
Launching in 2018, HubSpot is trying to create technology tools for every part of the sales funnel. The focus of the tool will be on how to delight your existing customers, essentially extending inbound to customer service and managing customer notifications.
This feature is currently in beta over the next month, but customers will be able to post to Instagram from their HubSpot account.
We are excited about all of the new products and features HubSpot is launching this year. For more information or to discuss HubSpot updates in depth, please contact kt@williammills.com.