It's a Whole New HubSpot Calls-To-Action World ... Or Is It?

Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub Heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the Hub Hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the League of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute Hub Heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode. Recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.

Welcome back to Hub Heroes. We are totally on our best behavior today. Everything is fine. And for those of you listening at home, rest assured, we started recording on time today and everything is fine. We're doing fine. Right, fellas? How she keen argue? George, tell us how peachy as a.

Peachy keen can be. I don't know what that means, but.

I'm good to Keem Town, Max.

Oh, yeah.

I'm good.

No, because he's not doing good. He's a little under the weather, you know. It's not under the weather. HubSpot CTA. Oh, it's a big baller right now.

Okay, you know what? I have a whole thing. I have a whole thing set up for this episode. George, are you ready?

Oh, yeah, I'm ready.

Ready.

I was born ready.

Great. Was born ready. But your equipment wasn't that. There's that.

No, yeah, there's that.

We are kicking off.

You know, thinking of the other day.

Oh, no. What? Max, if.

If matter cannot be created nor destroyed, how did it get there in the first place?

You are absolutely right, Max. HubSpot CTA is a great topic, and it is unbelievable that it's taken us so long to bring it up here on this podcast. In. There's probably a great way for my elder millennial self to make some sort of inbound analogy about content and CTAs and milkshakes, and which of those things brings all the boys to my yard, but I can't figure out which one is the milkshake. So we're not going to be doing any analogies today. But needless to say, Max, like you said, we've somehow gone more than 50 episodes without ever talking about HubSpot's most powerful feature that basically makes the whole inbound flywheel run because there are no conversions website visitors into contacts, contacts into qualified leads and so on without a ye olde call to action. Now, recently HubSpot rolled out a massive overhaul to the CTA tool that is both modernizing and refreshing. And we're going to talk about what those changes are. In fact, that's where we're going to be starting our conversation today. But we are going to be digging into some deeper questions. For example, are CTA still effective? What does a great CTA strategy look like today? And what are some of the horror stories we've seen from the inbound front lines, as well as what could be possible with these new changes on the horizon. So, George, are you excited?

Oh, I'm excited, yeah.

Why are you excited about this now?

I love the new tool.

Yeah. Well, actually, let's start with you, George. Can you give our listeners at home a quick overview of A why you're excited and B what's changed with the HubSpot CTA tool?

Yeah, well, a lot has changed. Like that's the answer to that one enough that we can do an entire episode and talk about all the things that you can do that you once could not do in a way that is actually built for mere mortal humans. And here's why I think I'm so excited about the conversation just in general. 1 CTA is a place where people historically have really loved them to the detriment of what they're trying to do or had a love hate relationship with them and didn't want to use them at all. You know, and I'm talking to you guy or gal who has nine CTAs on one page and is wondering why it takes forever for that page to load. But I'm also talking to you, guy or gal who has written a thousand and one blog articles but have taken nobody anywhere except for the author bio at the bottom. Like there are just reasons to have them and reasons not to have too many. And historically there were like a but which when I would train it and do onboardings, I'd be like and we're gonna show you how to do this using stupid buttons. And then we could talk about image based CTAs because you could do like a faux title and a faux, you know, but that wasn't readable by Google the text because it was an image. Well, that's one of the first features that I know we need to Talk about today, because now you can create CTAs that are lighter in weight, have more of, like, readable by Google, and therefore the action can be placed on a button, but it not just be a dumb button sitting there by itself. Which boggled my mind when I would go to people back in the day and they would just have like a single blue button at the bottom of a blog that said, get your guide now. Like, that's really exciting. But now it can be exciting. Anyway, those are some of the reasons why I'm excited of just the overall conversation about HubSpot call to actions.

You know, I mean, you know how like, there's just been the bigger conversations around, like, ungating your content. Right. And doing less of just like, you know, lead capturing earlier on in the. In the, you know, buyer's journey or whatever, and stacking it mostly at the. At the end when the intent's much higher. Are you still doing a lot of, like, the classic, you know, awareness stage blog post, CTA to a landing page, like, type motion, or has it kind of shifted more to, like, how are you using CTAs to more like, support a logical, you know, experience through your website? Right. And when I say that, actually, wait, I'm going to. I'm going to pause there. That first part of the question. Does that, like, classic. That classic HubSpot marketing hub meta setup of blog posts, CTA landing page, is that still something that, like, people are doing a lot of and still seeing it be as effective or no?

So I love this question.

Yeah, me too. Do you want to go first or should I.

Go ahead. Go ahead, Liz.

Okay. I think for me, it's a both. And I think there are definitely circumstances in which you're doing that, more of that ungated organic nurturing. But I'll be perfectly honest. Let's say, for example, the CTA is going to a pillar page. That pillar page is ungated by nature, but there is a conversion option if somebody wants to have it. I think I get really kind of stressed out when anybody tries to get me to think along the lines of, well, the old is old, so we're not doing that anymore and we're doing it this new way.

Yeah.

Whenever I sit down and I'm optimizing a piece of content for conversion, I'm always doing it for the. Do you want to say humans for me, George? Can I get a good. Can we get a good humans here?

You're doing it for the humans.

Yeah. So I'd like to sit down and I like to Think about the humans. In many cases the CTAs I'm actually kicking people out to are are alternate related articles. But in other cases I'm also still bringing them to a relevant resource that is directly tied to what it is that I was writing about. So it's more about being contextual. It's. It's less about. I think sometimes as inbound marketers, it's that whole idea of like, blogging is dead. SEO is dead. Everything's dead. Everything's on fire and terrible and dead. Like, that's not how any of this works. We have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater or once we've decided that a particular way of doing things is antiquated. Now, I think to your point, Max, it used to be much more binary of like there is a blog and then there is a bottom of the blog cta and it is a gated thing with a tiny landing page that doesn't give anything away because they must give us their email in order to get anything. Like, I think that level of gatekeeping is over. But I think in general, if you're doing content correctly, your blog articles are a lot more selfless. Like, this is the thing I don't think people realize when they talk about the CTA conversation that's changed. Those CTA used to be paired on articles that were like five or six hundred words long that weren't giving anything away.

Yeah.

So I think what I've seen mostly with organizations that are doing it correctly and also through the work that I'm doing is that content in general is more selfless. It's more open, it is more giving. And if you're doing it correctly, you can have it either way.

Awesome. George. Say what you're going to say and then I want to talk about why I love what you just said. Liz.

Yeah, so I'm gonna say it depends which is a great marketing answer. There are still some industries and still some spaces that that will air quotes. Old school playbook works. Yes to everything that Liz said. But here's what boggles my imagination and my brain right now is that we're having a conversation around call to actions. And we immediately went to this conversation of gated and ungated content, which actually the call to action is just a small piece of that. But to get into that conversation, we heard the word call to action, our brain had to go to conversion. And then we asked the question of, well, is that still working? Here's the thing. CTAs aren't necessarily just for conversion. There are CTAs for conversion and there are CTAs for navigation. And let me actually get you to stop and think for a second, especially with a new reporting tool in HubSpot called, oh, I don't know, the journey mapping tool. What is the actual glue that takes them from point A to point B when you're trying to actually navigate them? A call to action. So if you're going to say, hey, did they go to this page and did they fill out this form? One of the things that you're going to put in your journey mapping is it was this call to action that got them there. Also, you talk about ungating Max or asking a question about ungating. I've had people use the CTA's tool just so they could understand how many times something that was ungated was downloaded, because every click now equals a download. So like many other HubSpot tools, we have to realize there's 1001 ways that we can use this tool and there's 102 reasons why we might do that. For instance, without saying too much, we're in the middle of a really big project at gbt. One of the things that we're battling against is making the most optimized thing that we can make. One thing that makes it the most unoptimized thing that it can be is having a form on the page because it's heavy and it slows down site speed. However, you can create a CTA now with the new CTA's tool that we're going to talk about that actually enables a pop up. And in that pop up you can have guess what a form and guess what doesn't load on page. Load the CTA and the form popup. Because it only loads once, you actually have to use it. So your page can be fast because you understand the functionality of a tool and you layer it into a thing in the way that you want to use it.

Yeah, because it comes up. Oh God.

All of these things I'm saying is like if you hear the word CTA moving forward and you're bringing historical baggage of what it once was and you're thinking of it as only a small micro fraction of a conversion process. Stop it.

Yeah, yeah.

Give it a chance. Rethink it, look at it and use it for what it can be. Moving forward.

Yeah. And it's. It is one of those things that were, you know, as we're all coming up in, in the inbound world, in the early days, it was probably all beaten into our heads that it goes. Blog post, cta, landing page form conversion. I. And I'm part of the problem too. I preached that to thousands of hubspotters during my time being a trainer. Right. Um, but I remember so to going back to what you were saying, Liz, is I think there is, there's like going on to that, like convert that. That question of like having to convert them. Right. Or gating or not ungating. I think the reason I love that you're talking about bringing someone to another article or navigating someone to another article. Right. I think the question marketers need to like ask themselves when they're in that situation of just like, okay, I wrote this piece of content. It's playing some part in the road that's leading to changing the hearts and minds of the people that are reading it to, you know, further their decision making process and exploratory journey, if you will, of hopefully leading down the path to wanting to buy something from us. Right. And I think what happens is like, cool, you write this blog article and then you have like a call to action in there. You really kind of have two choices. One, do I potentially throw off all this momentum of someone who has actually stuck with my content enough and read through it enough to get to this button, realize that it's not an ad and it's something else, read it and understand that there's something cooler that they're interested in when they click this button. Right. You have the option there to either continue to another piece of content that can help continuing to shape that mind and that thought process and that, that buyer's journey, that decision making, or you have the option of, man, I really want that email. Maybe I'll roll the dice and fuck this whole thing up by putting a form in front of them. And I think that's like another sort of, you know, we talk about risk and reward on forms. I think we also got to think of like risk and reward on calls to action. Right.

Well, the way I like to think about it with calls to action is this. It's kind of like the rule of designing a website, right. When you think about what is the goal of a homepage, it's to get someone to page two. When you think about what people are doing when they are scrolling around on a website or a piece of content, do you know what they are searching for? If you're doing your job correctly? Okay, what am I supposed to do now? Your call to action is just quite literally telling them, okay, so here's what you do next. And so Max, to your point, it's like sitting down on a date, right? Well, we just had a really nice dinner. I think I know what her last name is. I bet this is the perfect time to tell her I love her. Like that's what some people are doing when it comes to their CTAs, their calls to actions. You know, it's, it's that strategy that we, we teased at the beginning of this episode where people get tripped up. Your people, your visitors on your website. All they want to know is, okay, so what am I supposed to do next? Where do I go now? How do I keep digging more deeply? How do I continue to solve my problem? George, what do you got for me?

Yeah, and Max, here's another problem. Is that because you trained a thousand and one people how to do it and because, and because HubSpot showed the way to do it. One of the things that I've been a big advocate in the background for many people that I've talked to is this idea of singularity when it comes to CTAs, right? Like literally how you are talking, they get to the bottom of this article and they see this thing. What if they could see these things? What if you started to think of the bottom of your blog articles as the potential of a choose your own adventure. You can go here or you can go there, meaning you could have two CTAs kind of side by side. And I'm not talking about buttons, I'm talking about visually designed dope text, nice little button. And I'm like, oh, do I want to turn left or do I, do I want to turn right? You know, in this circumstance for me, I want to turn right. I'm going to click on that one versus it's this or nothing.

I said, yeah, I, as soon as we started talking about this, I, I had a flashback to you, George, talking about this like choose your own adventure experience type thing, right? So outside of the use case of blog article going to somewhere, right? Even I think people could be a lot more thoughtful in how they're using calls to action even at the bottom of the funnel or in your decision stage content or decision stage offers that you're giving people, right? I was always a, like a practice that I really, really tried to always focus on or always try to do with a customer when I was working with them and specifically the ones that only just had a Contact Us page to get to sales, right? Is try to come up with like different ways that those folks that are in that decision stage but like, to initiate that decision st in different ways, giving them alternate avenues that they're comfortable with doing that. Right. So, for example, that could be something like having a form and simply asking a question on the form, like, what's your intent of this? Oh, I want a demo. Or, oh, I want a. Oh, I want a. I just want a consultation with someone. Or, oh, I just want to talk. I just straight up want to talk about pricing. Right. And because. Because. Because people can come into those decision stage offers in such different mindsets that it can throw those initial conversations off like crazy. Whether it's like, oh, I'm just a bdr, but I didn't know you wanted a demo of this. Right. Or people going in and it's like, I don't know if I need a demo of the software yet or a demo of the solution. I just want to talk, like, I want to have, like, a lightweight conversation with someone to see, like, if we should even be talking about it. Right. And you create all these, like, awkward interactions between sales reps and customers because customers are approaching the decision stage in different ways, while salespeople are always just approaching it in, oh, I need to sell something to you. And then that ends up creating these really awkward moments where I think CTAs help a lot is what you were talking about, George, is you have these opportunities to go down these different paths for folks that are in these. In the decision stage to make sure they're engaging with that decision in that decision stage in a way that they're comfortable with. Whether it's like, you know, they get to a page where it's like, obviously a page about your product. You could have one CTA that says, are you interested in a demo? Click here. Want to just learn a little bit more? Click here. And those go to two different experiences where someone can still consume a Decision Stage offer somehow, but they're doing it in a way that they expected to and that they wanted to. And there's no confusion with whoever gets assigned to that conversation being like, a sales rep of what that person's actually expecting in that interaction. Right. But instead people are just saying, here's a demo page, and it doesn't really matter if that's what they wanted. And then creating these, like, weird, you.

Know, And Max, you're bumping against something that. While I am super excited about the new CTA's tool, I'm hoping there's functionality that has disappeared that is coming back, because I painted the picture of having two CTA side by side. Which I still agree and believe, like choose your own adventure in that way when we get contextual. Again, because in beta or in legacy, sorry, we did have where we could do smart rules based on, you know, awareness, consideration, decision in a list that's missing in the new CTA's tool. But when they take what they've got and they add in that layer of also being able to make them not just dope and cool, but like smart in that fashion, now you could literally have two CTAs for, if they were an awareness subscriber to MQL, you could have two CTAs if they were sales qualified and you could have two different CTAs if they were opportunities. Right. You could get that granular. And that's the thing. This is one of the areas in HubSpot where for years I've talked about this is more of a scalpel strategy instead of a sledgehammer. This is where you could, where you should stop and strategize and really come up with a method to the madness of why you're using a button versus a cta, a CTA versus an image based cta. Historically or now, a freaking button versus all the ways that you can actually do it. So sticky banners pop up boxes, slide ins, embeds, embedded images, embedded buttons, and now even embedded HTML CTAs. So you have a plethora, a freaking arsenal of new things and new ways that you can do everything that we've kind of bounced around from a strategic standpoint as you kind of move forward with the new tool.

So let's actually get into the new tool a little bit because it's interesting we ended up in the strategy portion of this discussion, which is exactly where I wanted to go. But before we, before we continue further, George, I want to go back to one of the initial questions I asked you at the start of this conversation, which is at a high level. What are the big takeaways, the big bullet points, the big headlines of how the CTA tool has changed? Because the way I remember how I used to use it, and I'm. I've already become more familiar with the new tool. But just for those who are listening, the old tool, it was like you had to upload an image, you could make them smart. So if somebody was on a mobile device, a mobile version could show up. But These were graphical CTAs that you had to upload manually into HubSpot and set smart rules if you wanted different ones to show up based on a variety of dependencies.

Yeah, so I'm Going to talk about a couple things. One that actually has nothing to do with the graphical side of this, but one that's very important to user experience. Here's two things actually around user experience. Everybody listening to this podcast knows that they've surfed around the Internet, come upon a website and immediately went, oh, they use HubSpot. Yes, because the pop up shows up and you know, because you could never edit it, that this is a HubSpot website. By the way, if you're a sales rep and you didn't realize this, you still have some glory days of prospecting for HubSpot users. Just by knowing it's the stupid forms based pop up CTA that just looks like garbage. Okay, so that's one. Now we can actually create CTAs that you're not going to know if it was created in HubSpot or not because it's literally, you can design it with any type of background, any type of size, any color of overlay. Like you can change the X to close it out after it's done popping up. You can make bottom banners look three dimensional dependent upon the graphics you use. So, so those old school days of like, oh, it's a HubSpot website or a HubSpot user are going to be gone. The other thing too is historically you would get this pop up and you'd be like, I don't want to see it. And depending on if the marketer was a butthead or a good human, you'd either see that CTA in another two days or you'd see it in 30 days. Here's another piece of functionality that's changed is you can literally, let's say all of a sudden, by the way, you know, the pandemic, a lot of websites were putting these messages out, we need to get a message out to everybody. And those messages kept showing up even after you saw it. You only needed to see it once. Now the new functionality says and never show again. So you can literally show something once and never show again, or you can do it based off of time. So now you have this rubrics of I only want to show this CTA to these people in this list on this page and only show it once. Or I want to show it to only these people on this page and show it every 30 days unless they converted because now they're not in that list anymore. So again, this is. I talk about that scalpel strategy now, Liz, where you are kind of going is this graphical side of things. The fact that you can go in and in an editor you can go into like let's say embedded. And inside of that editor you've got like the drag and drop email tool or the drag and drop website pages or landing pages that you're used to. You have modules that you can add, buttons, dividers, forms, images, rich text, video, and even WhatsApp link if you, if you're a WhatsApp user. And so now imagine being able to create navigational call to actions because you're using a button. Or conversion call to actions because you choose to use a form or just a call to action that pops up that they can actually contact you using WhatsApp. Even better, the fact that it could be a pop up and it could be an explainer video with a button to the freaking webinar or event you want them to attend. Because there was a 30 or 40. So user experience that you can create using this tool has gone from zero to freaking hero. Historically, if you're a WordPress user, you've been attaching HubSpot to WordPress. You may have heard of like the, the monster thing, whatever it is, like, I don't remember the name of it, but it was literally like a WordPress plugin that you could do these kind of cool pop ups and slide ins and you don't need that anymore. Cut it out of your budget, use this tool, design the crap out of it. Create a better user experience.

I just want to say we just need to take a second rip to the goat and pour one out for the corduroy style unbuttoned CTAs.

So bro, that little story, I had.

A little troll that I did with my customers where I told them that that style converted more than the other ones.

What? Why are you such a chaos goblin? What is wrong with you?

But here's the thing. It was hilarious to me and I needed to entertain myself and I said, I don't know what it is guys, but like the corduroy button converts 25 more than the other style.

But here's what's funny, Max. I too, during onboarding would talk about the corduroy button, but I would do it in a different way. I would say, listen, some of these buttons don't ever need to be used. For instance, go ahead and click and check out that corduroy button. And they click on it and they start laughing and I'm like, am I right? Am I right? So the corduroy button.

Listen, here's the thing, if you're listening, product team, if you're listening, you need to bring Back. So smart. Ctas. And theing corduroy button.

No, no, do.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know what we're learning today, George? You know what we're learning today, George? Do we think that Max is like the patient zero of all bad CTA practices?

It might be possible.

Use the corduroy button.

It's very possible.

No, don't do it. That.

That's me.

Yeah, that corduroy button in the download button that were in the original CTA tool. Like, good riddance. Bye bye.

The other thing that was weird about this though, George, and I have to say this is that we're talking about this as it's like, this is breaking news. It just happened. No, I've been getting like tormented by legacy versus new CTA tool for months. But the rollout was so weird. You, they were like, hey, do you want to switch to this thing that you do not understand? And it's completely different and it doesn't make any sense and it's counterintuitive and there's no video here to tell you what's happening or what's change every single time. I'm like, I don't want to change. What are you doing? And it kills me the way it was rolled out.

Well, you have to remember the. See, here's the thing. Having almost 11, 11 plus years of being in the HubSpot ecosystem, you had two different tools. CTA's tool and the forms tool. And the forms tool had forms and then pop ups and slide ins, right? And so now what does that mean? That means you have two different sets of code, you have two different sets of teams, you have two different PMs. And so now all of a sudden it's like, well, how do we take this and that and mash it together? And when we mash it together, how do we do it in a way that people just don't like immediately have a shit ton of work or lose their minds. And so like I can, I feel like if I was to correlate this to anything in like the back rooms of HubSpot, if you've ever played that game where it's like, it's the little sticks and you pull it out and the marbles drop down and you're trying to like pull every little stick out with like the marble staying at the top. It was like doing that until they could get like a beta version version for people to start to play with than for them to immediately start learning how those beta folks were using it and buying them time to get the stuff out of the forms tool and over into the new tool. So here's the thing. This is in still what I would probably call a growth mode if I had to guess. Meaning that's why A B testing isn't in it right now. That's why smart content isn't in it right now. But I believe it will be in the future. And so we have to think about that process that they've been going through. And that leads me into Liz. Like one of the things they are paying attention to is this massive amount of work that one immediately might think that they would have to do to get like into the new tool. There is a private beta that the hub heroes listeners need to know about. You can go into your HubSpot, go into your right panel, scroll down to updates. There's a private beta legacy CTA migration feature which allows you to migrate the buttons, allows you to migrate the image based, allows you to migrate any historical HTML CTA that you've created and get them in the new tool. Now there's if you've ever read any article, this is an article to read because it explains to you like where it's going to show up. Even when it's not the like historical one, but in reporting, it'll still show there. So your reporting is not jacked up. It'll show you the exact way that you should clone it. It also tells you that you can build one first and then attach the old one to the new one. So there's a couple different ways you can work around this. It tells you how it will actually impact lists and workflows and emails. Like one of the gotchas that I know I'm going to hear from a client. It's like, hey, I updated my CTA and I still see the historical CTA in the email preview. You will until you actually like publish it. Then the new one shows up. It's just, it's a thing.

Yeah.

Or you can go and replace it and then all of a sudden it shows up. Right. So if you have some stuff that's been laying around, there's going to be a little bit of housekeeping that needs to happen. But at the end of the day, all of this change that sometimes can be difficult is worth the better. Listen up, please. Just put down your pencil, your phone, close the door. Whatever the user experience that you can create with the new tool, if you get strategic with it, could be a game changer to the way that people can navigate your site and convert on any of the Things that you're trying to do moving forward.

How funny would it be if they just came back and just started calling it lead flows again? Remember that?

No.

Remember that little. Do it.

Stop.

So.

We'Ve. We've talked about lead flows now, like, what else throw into this episode is.

An inbound chaos Goblin.

All right, here's the deal. I. I also agree, Liz. It was really confusing watching, like, because it was like, there's a new CTA tool and then there's this one, and then they're kind of like, side by side and like, you saw them both in the menu and you're like, what is that? And then they sunset one and folded in the other and this and that. What's crazy? And I think, like, a lot of people, like, you know, outside of us who, like, know all this stuff is like, the CTA tools so crazy woven into, like, everything, if you think about it, right? Like, it's in your analytics because it's a button that, like, tracks analytics events. It was in the cta or. Sorry. It was in the workflows tool because you could trigger workflows off of CTAs. It was in your list tool because you could trigger people going on the lists from that, right? There was, like, all these different things. And then on top of that, HubSpot changed, like, their CMS platform completely. So you had this, like, old CTA tool, which I don't even know how well it worked in the new, like, drag and drop CMS stuff. Like, it was fine. Okay, cool. So they figure that piece out somehow, right? But then you've got this, like, old tool that, like, works with this classic CMS tool. Working in this new CMS editor, people are, like, bringing stuff over, but then they have to sunset it. And, like, there's so much stuff that they had to untangle that, like. Yeah, doesn't surprise me at all that, like, everyone on the outside was just like, what is happening with this simple, like, button?

I don't like it. Stop it.

Yeah, but, like, it's just it, you know, it speaks to how interconnected everything in HubSpot is that, like, even the button tool was like, a real pain in the ass to, like, replace, shut down and rip out.

And shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you for calling the CTA tool the button tool. It's not a damn button tool.

You could do a corduroy button tool for.

Oh, my God, he called it the button tool. All right, so. But. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. I got Because I got to get this out too. Because Liz, you mentioned like, yeah, you could use smart content and you could have like a, a mobile version and a tablet version and like a desktop version of an image CTA that would show up in the right place at the right time. What I want, because we mentioned now that that functionality isn't in there right now, I don't want the listeners to go, well, shoot, I should probably wait because that functionality is in there and I have these three different size of CTAs. The magical thing about the embed, right, not the image embed, but the embed is that you can make it mobile responsive, meaning you just design it the way you want it, make sure you click on a button here or there, make sure you set the things the way they need to be and it shows up magically on desktop the way it should, tablet the way it should, and then flows to look right on mobile the way it should. And therefore, now you don't have to be Einstein and ask your designer to do three different images just to create a user experience. You just create the CTA one time and it works everywhere.

So here's the only thing I want to say because I want to go back to this thing that we're talking about with change for a moment because often I will ask the question of what do you guys have a wish list item for HubSpot? Right. I usually don't answer that question, but I have a very distinct one now. HubSpot is super invested in video. They do a great job of using video and HubSpot Academy and through their marketing. What I would love is that when they don't have the ability to do a big campaign or a big cam push around a critical change to a tool like the CTA tool, if they could just have a small video that says, hey, what's changed? And it's just like a two minute primer. Because what I think is, on the one hand, I get it, they now have, we're not dealing with one hub, we're dealing with what, six, seven hubs. There are things changing constantly all the time. But lead capture is such a core component of how the inbound flywheel works. It is the fulcrum around which what so much functionality is built off of in the HubSpot marketing hub.

Yeah.

So to have that change and to basically make it be like, well, we're not going to tell you what it is, but do you want to do it? No.

Yeah. See, this is where I have to, this is where I have to apologize to the audience, though. I have to apologize to the audience because historically, this wasn't. This wasn't HubSpot at all, Liz. This was me. This was me making a video, putting it out on YouTube, putting it out on LinkedIn, keeping the people educated about the latest and greatest things that are showing up across the Hub. And I haven't been making. We're changing that in 2024, by the way. But I haven't been making those videos in the moment. I did make one on this. This was that important that There is a YouTube video that shows you how to do the new embed, how to design them, how they go responsive, how I put them on a page. So I did do that one. But just know that I apologize for not creating the amount of videos that I once did. We're changing that in 2024. I do agree with you. It'd be great if HubSpot could help with that. As a matter of fact. Wait, wait, wait, wait. They have. If you're not following, Kyle Jepsen. Yeah, I was gonna say Jepsen does daily updates. And by the way, my homie is backlogged for, like, six months.

Yeah.

Because he does a video a day, but he's got, like, six months of backlog of things that he could talk about that HubSpot's changing. Listen, I went yesterday and searched for the CTA beta that I talked about, and it was on the first sheet of, like, updates. I had to load the page a couple times to find it because of the updates in the last day that have happened in the platform.

Yeah, I was gonna say Kyle Jepsen is those videos right now. He's.

I know the challenges, though, is that you have to go to. That's like following a hippie to a second location. Most people are not gonna do it, even if it's a very nice hippie. Like, it's just not gonna happen.

He is a nice guy. Let's just throw that out there.

He is a very, very nice guy.

That's the thing. Like, that's the only thing I will say is, like, I'm not expecting HubSpot to roll out the red carpet on every tiny change, every micro shift. But this is a fairly substantive one, a change that most people have slept on, if not outright opted out of, and sticking with that legacy tool until it kills them, which is why we wanted to have this conversation today. So I want. I know we only have a few minutes left in today's conversation, so I want us to look at future forecasting okay, so given these new features, George And Max of HubSpot CTAS, what are the new best practices and tactics you want folks to keep in mind? Are there new ways that people should be thinking about CTAs that they may not be doing so right now?

Yeah. Max, do you want to go first? You want me to go first?

I mean, for me, I think the most important thing is like, break, break the break. The cycle of thinking this must go to somewhere where I get someone's email address. Like, it is much more valuable to you as a marketer that you bring that person to a next logical step that can continue to educate them and change their mind. Because ultimately that is what's going to lead to you eventually, hopefully selling something to them one day, if that's the ultimate goal. Right. You know, not just, oh, can I email blast them after this thing that I taught them? So that's the one thing, right? So think about like guiding them to the next logical content experience that makes the most sense. The other thing though, and this is more just like a tactical thing, I think of CTAs a lot. Like, I think about ads that you run on search engines, right? One of the worst things you can do with an ad is promise. One thing when someone sees the very. Because if you think about it like an ad on you see on a web page is almost the same thing as a cta. Like tip, physically, technically, right? It's like, here's the thing, do this, click here and it goes somewhere. The worst thing you can do in those situations is promise something, then bring that person to a page. That's not what they were expecting, right? The good old Learn more. Just kidding. It's requesting a quote, right? Just trying to get eyes on that page. But then, oops, it's not what you were expecting and now your trust is broken and you're, you're leaving and you're wondering why your bounce rates are sky high, right? So the biggest thing that I would say is that what you are promising on the cta, through the words, through the imagery, through the button itself, through the video, through the whatever, when I click that or go to that place, if I take that action, ensure that what I see on the other side of that is what you promised to me before I trusted it, took your hand and went there, right. If you care anything about bounce rates on your pages or not totally disrupting someone's experience on your website. Yeah.

So what I need people to do this is I need them to embrace the growth mindset principle and Ask themselves, is it possible not make knee jerk responses to what once was HubSpot CTAs or what they thought HubSpot CTAs could do? For instance, one of the things I've just embarked on this whole episode is user experience, the understanding or realization of that. You can create a more simple page for people to navigate because there is now a trigger on button click that you don't need a developer for that. You can put a button on a page, they can click it and it can equal navigation or it can equal conversion, totally up to you. But the fact that you can put that on a page using a button module and inside the drop down like a normal human being without a developer, you'll see the freaking name of your CTA that you want to pop up. It's that simple. It's that easy, right? Think to yourself, is it possible, like, go in and take it for a test drive again, going back to those frequencies, those timings you now have, after a set period of time, repeat or don't show again. And by the way, on the same after a set period of time. I got giddy when I saw that it could be every year, show them this thing every year or show them this thing every three months. Or there's also show them this thing every 30 minutes. But I tell my clients, if I see you select show them every 30 minutes, I'm driving to your location and I'm ripping your HubSpot out of your server. But that's not even a thing. So you get my point. I just get mad because every 30 minutes is come on, come on. But like once a year, cool. And then again repeat like it can literally remember to be considerate and do not disrupt your visitors more than necessary. This is by the way, when you put it on that in the software, it gives you that the CTA will be shown to visitors each time they visit selected web pages and perform the trigger action, even if they've already interacted with it. Some things I agree with HubSpot, some things I don't. If you want to annoy the crap out of your users, go for it. But no, no, don't.

Anyway, do we have time for me to ask Liz one more question?

Yes, I do.

I need a hot copyright take. Is there any good way to do a pop up? Like a pop up from like a, like a copywriting perspective? Because like, I feel like I am so muscle memory, hit the X button, get rid of the pop up. Because like, remember how pop ups were such like a negative thing? Especially in the age of like, there's always that meme of like getting a virus in a million pop ups and pop up blockers and like, be careful when you hear a pop up. When you hear a pop up, you. We, I was taught to cringe, right? But like, from a copy perspective, is there any way to do a good pop up?

Yeah, I've seen tons of them.

All right, give me, educate me.

Because I first of all have to.

Start with a close.

It has to, it has to. First of all, you can never be writing copy from the posture of I know you don't want to be here, but look at me. So there's that, that's number one from a copy.

Is that like exit? Are you talking about the exit intent stuff? So like I got to leave your page and it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're, you won't even stay on my website, but will you buy something if I give you 10 off Go yourself website?

Well, there's that, but then there's all, there's also the idea of like, I remember there was somebody I was coaching that they were gonna go do a big presentation at a conference and they wanted to work with me to help them on their presentation skills. And he said, I know exactly what I'm gonna do when I walk up there. I'm gonna let them know, hey, I know you don't wanna be here either, but I promise you, this is valuable. No, no, no, no, no, no. You can't show up with the posture of I, I, I don't, I know you don't want to be here. Like that's there, there, that will show up in your writing and it will show up in the way you position it. The other thing you have to keep in mind too is you actually have to be offering something of value. Like nine times out of ten, the copy. The copy is what will, will seal the deal. But often the reason why people are clicking off of those CTAs is. Or those pop up CTAs is something they're seeing. It's like, oh, it's the 25% off. It's the generic offer. It's the generic thing. But if you're offering something genuinely of value, that's going to get you a really long way. Then from a copy perspective, in terms of honesty, I've seen a couple of websites do it really well and I wish I could remember them off the top of their head. But it's not like they're overly clever or quippy, but they kind of Speak to the elephant in the room of, hey, we know your time is valuable. This may not be for you, but we think it might be.

Can I give an example?

Maybe like, like for example, there was a website that I went to and it was the typical exit intent pop up cta. Right? And the thing the headline was, the last thing you need in your inbox is another email. I'm like, go on. And that was what caught my attention. And I thought that was interesting. And they didn't do it to be overly clever. It wasn't clickbaity. They said, so each week we're going to earn your spot in your inbox.

Yeah, I almost wonder.

May not be for you, but it is for you if you are X.

Y, Z. I wonder if with pop ups there is a, a tactic you can take to say, hey, think about what this person's doing on this page right now. And is there anything that you can do to support whatever the end goal is that's not just, that's not just buy, right? So if I gave an example here, let's say you're a, you're a, let's say you're a retail E commerce. Maybe you sell clothes, right? Could an example of a good use in this case be like, hey, if you see someone's browsing one of your, you know, clothing items or whatever and it's like your listing page for all your pants or something, Right. Could you maybe say like wait seven seconds or do a page scroll and then like offer a sizing chart? Like try to find the right size sizing chart but not gate it behind something. And maybe that might be something that aids in the experience versus you're just trying to get something from them. Is that like kind of what we're saying or.

Yeah, it is kind of like that. I think what it comes down to though is really just I write my CTA copy. The way I'm talking to George, I'm going to be direct. I'm going to think about.

No, I'm going to be direct swearing.

About A lot of swearing. A lot of mixed minuses. George, by the way, I know you're. You are. I will get to you. One sec.

He's actively having an aneurysm as we're.

I know. So we're going to make him wait a little bit longer. No, I write my struggle the way I talk to George, the way I talk to you, which is I'm going to speak directly. I'm going to speak like a human. And I think there, I think Maybe it could be called a somewhat ironic tone, it could be called a little bit glib, but I'm just being honest. You have better place, places to be you gotta go. So let me make this fast. Let me just tell you what this thing is. Get a little bit unsexy about it. Be direct, George.

I'm gonna turn down the volume of my headphones just a little bit before George talks.

Hold on, I'm stepping away for. Okay, George, how you doing bud?

Let's cut the brass taxes here. If you're sitting here and you're pulling a PDF out of your butthole and you're putting on a page because you got to generate more leads for a frickin some a leads you need. It's all about conversion. Sit your butt down, Jabroni. Because that's not what the inbound strategy is about. This is the thing. Specificity wins the day. If there is no action, next action or value, then don't put a frickin pop up or any type of CT on the page. Leave them alone, let them be. But if you can create a great user experience, if there is added value or specificity to the thing that they need to do, if you are there to be human and help them their hurdles and reach their aspirational point, then use all the tools. But again, if you are just trying to crap something out, fake somebody out and get a lead, sit down, take a nap, you don't belong here.

George, I gotta ask you a follow up question here.

Do you feel like I'm gonna have a heart attack?

I know, I couldn't tell. I couldn't tell if you agreed with me or, or called me the dumbest person on the face of the planet? I couldn't tell.

No, no.

George, do you struggle to emote, do you struggle to share your opinions and thoughts clearly in a way that can be well understood by the masses?

You know, I've, I've some medical chart asked me that same question at some point in my life. The answer is no. Like, like. But it all foolishness aside, right? I have said in this podcast, it's about a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. I have said in this podcast, specificity wins the day. I have said in this podcast, it's all about user experience. If you just take those three things and then use what is now turning into a super dope tool in HubSpot, you'll be okay if you come at this from what I was joking around about, in all seriousness, no, sit down, shut up, figure out a better Way Fortnite. I don't think that really fit in there, but okay.

He's been doing that the whole show, George.

I feel like that was supposed to be. That's odd.

Well, it's a random Will Smith button, so we get what he gives us.

Oh, can we get another one? Can we get another one?

Fortnite.

Careful.

The next one might be something about Jada, but anyway.

Oh my gosh. And on that note, gentlemen, do either of you have a parting word of wisdom you'd like to give to the masses if they remember nothing else from Today's episode about CTAs? What should they remember and why? I will go first this time. For the love of all that is holy, stop getting hung up on blueprints and tactics and frameworks and binary two dimensional by the book strategies that you think you are supposed to be playing with. When it comes to CTAs, remember a call to action, whether it's navigational, whether it's going to an offer, whether it's going to another article is about giving the most purposeful, thoughtful and logical next step to the people who are there. It should be in service of them and no one else. That is how you do CTAs correctly, George.

What I would want them to realize, and we kind of spun around this in all sorts of different ways, there's a saying in sales, don't sell out of your own pocket. Meaning just because you couldn't afford $50,000 for that widget doesn't mean that there aren't a hundred thousand people that could. People do this with CTAs, they as humans, hate pop ups, slide ins, banners, drop downs. Therefore, because as a human, they hate that experience, they put their heels in and they refuse or choose not to do it. Listen, I'm with you. As a human, I hate pop ups, banners, slide ins, all the things that we can now do with the CTA's tool. But as a marketer, God, I love them because they work. I've sat and watched us go from like almost no conversions to like a 400 conversion increase with some of the clients that I've helped because we added a very specific, very user friendly, very hey, that's just the right next thing. And people were like, I'll take it, I'll take it. Because it was all about the human.

There we go. Look at that Maxi. Do you want to talk about matter in the universe or are we going to talk about CTAs?

One last thing I'm going to leave you with. If you think corduroy is just for pants. Oh Jesus, you've already lost.

Okay, Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend, leave a review if you like what you're listening to and use the hashtag Hub Heroes Podcast on any of the socials and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like. Like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.