Episode 11: HubSpot Inbound 2021 Event Takeaways

Transcription:

Devin:

You’re listening to digital marketing Mondays. Each week, we bring you new and exciting content from around the marketing industry and help give you, the marketer, insights into what’s happening. We’ll offer our advice and share some takeaways to help you develop better strategies for your marketing. Ideally, this will also help you improve your ROI as well. So with that, let’s tune into this week’s episode.

Hans:

Devin, I noticed you were out of the office a couple weeks ago, attending the big HubSpot event. Inbound, I think it’s called, right?

Devin:

Yep. Inbound 2021.

Hans:

And so we missed you, but I haven’t really heard how that went. Tell us a little bit about what it’s about and who should attend that sort of thing. Who’s there and what are they talking about?

Devin:

Yeah, good question. And so this event is specific to anybody that’s really working in marketing automation, content development, a new hot term called “rev ops” or revenue opportunities or optimization, excuse me. There’s just a lot of good content that’s being produced at this annual event. Assumably a lot of folks that do attend are either HubSpot, CRM and marketing automation platform users, or they are solutions partners for HubSpot, of which we now are a solution partner, which is why we were there. And so there’s just a lot of industry-leading type content there. A lot of big thought leaders come and for three days, it is just a lot of… It’s a fire hose of content, so to speak, around marketing automation and just kind of new hot marketing trends and things to keep in mind, and particularly centered around marketing automation, CRM tools, and things of that nature.

Hans:

Okay. So were there any major revelations or takeaways that came up during the show that struck you as interesting and important and timely?

Devin:

Yeah. Yeah, there were several, and I think there were a couple keywords that were kind of the theme of the week and ABM is certainly one of them, or account based marketing, obviously centered on B2Bs for that particular term.

Hans:

Right.

Devin:

But then revenue or rev ops, for short, is another term that I think was pretty consistently used throughout. And it’s really for the latter rev ops anyways, the core behind that is a lot of education right now. And that’s a relatively new coined term. It’s not something that has been used for super, super long. And HubSpot’s really trying to be the thought leaders and kind of be the creator of that term, but effectively what it means is more than just having a marketing operations manager, it’s a person or people that are solely focused on helping blend the worlds of marketing and really sales and sales enablement, and being able to optimize and become more efficient in these certain areas that will ultimately benefit and increase revenue.

Devin:

That’s the simplest way that I could put it. They are certainly kind of the glue that brings the pieces together of making sure that drip campaigns are established. It’s engaging existing contacts inside of the database plus a whole lot more, right. I could spend a whole topic just probably talking about this, but that was really one of the biggest themes coming out of this, is that they want rev ops to be kind of the new way in which marketing automation is considered.

Devin:

I think they’re also trying to do a better job of educating marketing agencies on how to be able to offer that effectively as a service. And it goes just beyond your content development and filling the top of the funnel with leads and quality leads. And then subsequently the other side is ABM, right? And account based marketing is definitely a hot term now for business to business organizations. And I think there’s a lot of great opportunity for not only individuals, but also for agencies again, to be able to streamline and enhance marketing efforts to focus in on the target accounts that really matter. So there were a lot that were focused kind of in those two central tenets or themes throughout.

Hans:

Yeah. I mean, the whole tension between sales and marketing and B2B organizations. I’ve lived through that in my corporate career for many years. And it was really… There was like literally a gulf or a chasm between the two organizations. The sales people felt like they were being asked to be data collectors for the marketing people. You know, how well did the trade show work and follow up with all these leads and the sales people would look at them and go, “Hey, these leads are junk. You guys are just overhead. You’re not really producing for us.” And the marketing people going. “Yeah, well, you’re not following up with the leads that we’re creating,” and it’s an old, old story. And it sounds like… Well, I think the marketing automation actually helps bring the two together. I think that’s been a big bridge to the divide.

Hans:

So I’m, I’m a big fan of marketing automation, if for nothing else. I mean, obviously it provides a lot of good functionality, but if for nothing else, it also kind of helps the sales people and the marketing people to kind of get on the same team and also reduces the need for the sales people to be data collectors for the marketing organization. So that makes a lot of sense. Are these talks staged online somewhere where people can see them now after the fact or do you have to be a HubSpot user to get at them, or what’s the deal?

Devin:

I believe you had to have been a registrant in order to get access to the recordings and you had to buy a certain pass to be able to do so. I’m not sure that they’re publicly available after the fact, that was certainly a marked advantage as an attendee, we have access to them.

Hans:

Okay.

Devin:

So it’s a really good question. I know that they can be shared out amongst people. So I guess if anybody’s interested in hearing a little bit more about other specific talks that we’re given, feel free to reach out, let us know, but it’s a good question.

Hans:

Yeah. All right. Great. Anything else? Any breakthrough takeaways, any shocking revelations that came from this, or was it pretty much what you expected?

Devin:

I think it’s reasonably what I expected. There were a couple features, of course. HubSpot talked about near the end of the three days of conference. And interestingly, they actually enabled a new payment feature as part of the platform. So up until Inbound, you could do quotes, you could have products kind of all hosted inside of your account. Now you can actually also process payments inside of HubSpot, which, I mean, I don’t blame them, they’re getting into the game of getting their cut of the pie, so to speak. Whenever a payment is being processed, they’re pretty, I think they’re following a pretty typical payment model, 2.9% plus 5 cents for any transaction, or something to that effect. I don’t know the exact details, but they are absolutely getting a piece of the pie when a payment is processed.

Devin:

So, yeah. I mean, I think that was probably the only interesting or most interesting feature set coming out of this. But I really think more so or more important in a big takeaway is that especially for the B2B companies, ABM is really kind of the hot term. And I think for good reason. That’s probably a talk you and I should schedule and plan to have soon Hans, but really just centered on optimizing existing demand generation and inbound efforts to be able to just be a little bit more optimized in how it’s presented as well as then all, I think, biggest takeaway is the alignment, right? Getting marketing and sales and even operations on the same page about specific accounts and defined goals and et cetera, et cetera. So more on that coming soon for folks that are watching and listening to this. But yeah, Inbound, I think, was overall a great event, a great success, and I really, really hope that it goes back to in-person in Boston next year.

Hans:

Right. Right. Well, great. Well, thanks Devin. That’s a good summary. I’m glad you were able to go. We did miss you, but it sounds like it was worth it. So thanks for sharing the highlights. This has been the CliffsNotes version for those of you that couldn’t attend and yeah. Thanks for the wrap up.

Devin:

Awesome. Thanks everybody for tuning in. We’ll see you next week.

Hans:

Okay.

Devin:

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