HubSpot Inbound 2021 Event Takeaways

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Devin, uh, I noticed you were out of the office a couple weeks ago attending the, uh, HubSpot— the big HubSpot event, um, and, um, Inbound, I think it's called, right?

Yep, Inbound 2021.

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

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 RevOps, or revenue ops opportunities, or optimization, excuse me. Um, 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, you know, 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 3 days it's, you know, it's just a lot of— it's a firehose of content, so to speak, around, you know, marketing automation and, and just kind of new hot marketing trends and, and things to keep in mind particularly centered around marketing automation, CRM tools, and things of that nature.

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

Yeah, yeah, there were several. And I think there were a couple of 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. But then revenue, or RevOps for short, is another term that I think was pretty consistently used throughout. And it's really, uh, for the latter, RevOps anyways, the core behind that is a lot of education right now. And that's a relatively new coin term. It's not something that has been used for super, super long. And HubSpot's really trying to They're 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. That's the simplest way that I could put it. They are certainly kind of the glue that brings the pieces together of, you know, 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 RevOps to be kind of the new way in which marketing automation is considered. 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, you know, filling the top of the funnel with leads and quality leads. And then subsequently, the other side is ABM, right? And, and account-based marketing is definitely a hot term now for you know, 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.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the whole tension between sales and marketing in 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 salespeople felt like they were being asked to, you know, be data collectors for the marketing people. You know, how well did the trade show work? And, you know, follow up with all these leads. And, you know, the salespeople 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. So, 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 salespeople and the marketing people kind of get on the same team and also reduces the need for the salespeople to be data collectors for the marketing organization. So that makes a lot of sense. Are these, are these talks, are they staged online somewhere where people can see them now after the fact, you know, or do you have to be a HubSpot user to get at them or what's the deal?

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, though certainly, you know, Market Advantage as an attendee, we have access to them. Um, 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 giving, um, just feel free to reach out, let us know. But it's a good question.

Yeah. All right, great. Um, anything else? Any, uh, breakthrough takeaways? Any, uh, shocking, uh, revelations that, that came from this? Or was it, uh pretty much what you expected?

Um, I think it's reasonably what I expected. Uh, there were a couple features, of course, that kind of HubSpot talked about near the end of the, the 3 days of conference. And interest— well, somewhat interestingly, uh, they actually enabled a new payment feature as part of the platform. So pretty, you know, up until, uh, inbound, you could do quotes, you could have products kind of all hosted inside of your account, um, now you can actually also process payments inside of, uh, inside of HubSpot, which, I mean, I don't blame them. They're getting into the game of, uh, you know, getting their cut of this, getting their cut of the pie, so to speak. You know, whenever a payment is being processed, they're pretty— I think they're following a pretty typical payment model, you know, 2.9% plus 5 cents for any transaction, right? Or something to that effect. I don't know the exact details, but they are absolutely getting a cut of the— getting a piece of the pie when a payment is processed. 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 and 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 big, biggest takeaway is the alignment, right? Getting marketing and sales and even, you know, operations on the same page about specific accounts and define goals, and et cetera, et cetera. So, more on that coming soon for folks that are watching or listening to this. But yeah, I mean, 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.

[Speaker] 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 Cliff Notes version for those of you that couldn't attend. And yeah, thanks for the, thanks for the wrap up.

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

Okay.

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