We all want to change the world and as HubSpot Partners, team members from ParadoxLabs joined 14,000+ inbound marketers at HubSpot’s INBOUND Conference in Boston from September 8-11. We each attended sessions and keynotes to learn about inbound marketing trends and tips, as well as having  front row seats to the HubSpot software updates for 2015.

For me, I had no idea what to expect attending this conference. As a matter of fact, the first thing I learned was this was not a conference; it was a movement inspired by INBOUND! Instead of being just a group of people attending a conference, we were a group of people joining forces to advance our shared ideas to create authentic connections. As INBOUND drew to a close, I began to realize that this movement was even more than that. It was a revolution that was going to change the world of marketing, sales, and the online experience. No longer were we bound by old rules of marketing. Instead, we were part of creating a whole new set of rules focused on our clients. These new rules would build true connections with clientsby opening the door to mutual trust and understanding that would enable us to take our clients to places they had never before dreamed of going.

Over four days, five keynotes, and 170+ workshop sessions, we began our week with a training session designed to increase our knowledge so we can better help our clients. We left excited, inspired and ready to put those lessons to work. We were filled with anticipation for the week ahead, particularly the chance to hear Seth Godin, Brené Brown, Daniel Pink, and Aziz Ansari share their insights.

As we were busy running from session to session through the Halls of the Boston Convention Center, we quickly realized that the resounding theme fueling this revolution was the idea of the human experience; including how to accept and embrace change, how to disable and turn off the internal fear of failure, and how to make the often difficult, but non-the –less courageous, decisions necessary to help the Inbound movement become the standard. Although many of the sessions were filled to capacity and the lines stretched down hallways and around corners, we used a divide and conquer strategy that would ensure we would come home stronger, smarter, and more confident! We were determined to achieve success!

With that said, here are some of the takeaways from the place where the INBOUND revolution begins:  

Day #1

Partner Training: Agency Positioning and Targeting

  • Become an expert today through time, dedication and courage!
  • You need to determine for yourself what makes your agency different and what your agency does better than your competition.
  • Building a positioning statement doesn’t have to be scary. You know what your company is about. You just have to find out how to say it.
  • Remember: an agency that does everything focuses on nothing.
  • The internet is a big place and every kind of person is out there on it. You just need to decide who you want to talk to.

Keynote Speaker: Seth Godin

  • Be brave and accept responsibility, both good and bad while also giving credit to others if you want to ensure people want to work with you.
  • In order for us to make it to the path we want to be on, we need to be clear and honest with each other.
  • Stop scratching imaginary scratches. By taking your eye off the ball, you are taking yourself away from what you could've been doing all along.
  • You already have what you need.
  • The best gift you can give yourself is saying yes.

Day #2:  We in the INBOUND movement are the leaders, the pioneers, the firestarters and the champions. We are fueled by INBOUND!

The official #INBOUND15 charity partner The Malala Fund

  • The Malala Fund is officially described as being focused on helping girls go to school and raise their voices for the right to education. The organization's mission seems to be based on a statement from Malala: "They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices."
  • Become a symbol, a catalyst to get people excited about making an impact on the entire world
  • I’m not one; I am many

Keynote: Brené Brown, Ph.D

  • Every writer starts with a shitty first draft.
  • Remember this quote from Teddy Roosevelt: “It’s not the critic that counts.”
  • We think we are cognitive beings who occasionally feel. We are not. We are feeling beings who on occasion think.
  • We all feel shame and fear — how we overcome it is what defines us
  • Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.
  • Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.
  • To change people’s behavior, speak to their emotion. Humans are feeling beings who occasionally think

Dharmesh Shah

  • Marketers should spend less time reporting numbers and more time making numbers
  • The Hubspot Marketing Platform's user interface is now available in 6 of the world's most commonly used languages: French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish, as well as English.
  • HubSpot's marketing software is now used by people in more than 90 countries, signaling a growing demand from businesses eager to delight their customers.
  • 53 percent of HubSpot’s customers use some form of paid advertising. And, if HubSpot customer trends are in line with the general digital advertising trends, that number is probably on the rise.

Brian Halligan

  • Selling is about a partnership, not a power struggle.
  • Chances are you’ve exhausted or are near exhausting your channels of communication. Forming a strategic partnership will open up a whole other set of channels that were previously closed to you.
  • Sell unto others as you would have them sell unto you.
  • The mantra of Inbound still rings true. In sales, focus on partnership and helpfulness. Give before you seek to get.

Day # 3 Take what your clients, customers, and coworkers bring to the table and add to it. Build it together.

Keynote: Aziz Ansari

  • To explain that change is ultimately inevitable and we need to continually evolve and adapt, Ansari read this passage from his New York Times best-selling book, Modern Romance: “Every one of us engages on a journey to find love and companionship. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection and truly love. This journey seems fairly standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago… Some of our problems are unique to our time. ‘Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?’ ‘Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos!!?”
  • Put actionable content in it! That’s my actionable content Improve with Improv: Improv actors live and die by three rules that can be applied to your business.
  • The classic rule of improv is “Yes, and…” meaning whatever the person before you said, you accept it and then add something to it.
  • Try listening better –show and express interest at all times.
  • Don’t fear failure – You will fail. Don’t let it stop you.

Notes from sessions

  • 76% of views on the Hubspot blog come from old blog posts. Even more importantly 92% of Hubspot’s monthly blog sourced leads come from old posts.
  • Content is a long term game, the more historic content you have the more traffic and leads you generate. This is the content marketing “flywheel effect.”
  • “Depth of coverage matters to content performance.” -Hubspotter Matthew Barby
  • It is the depth of coverage that differentiates good from great posts.
  • Nobody clicks the links in your tweets.
  • People may share your links but they don’t click and read themselves.
  • Social Media is for engagement and content promotion. -Sonia Simone
  • There is simply too much stuff to read. You MUST to be worth it because no one owes you their time and attention. This is supported by a recent survey with Moz: 75 percent of content receives zero external links and 50 percent gets just two or less Facebook interactions. -Sonia Simone
  • People engage with passionate content and with people that have a view. Don’t sit on the fence. Create an angle and argue your case. -Sonia Simone
  • Focus on promoting your best stuff. -Larry Kim
  • Not having actionable content in your presentation/blog/advertisement makes you forgettable
  • Be very afraid of SWAM! Site-wide Auto Moderation is the punishment of choice for people who share spammy content on LinkedIn Groups. If you are SWAM’ed your posts will be stuck in a purgatory of moderation across LinkedIn, not only in the group where you were flagged. There is no known cure. -Viveka von Rosen
  • Do share on LinkedIn groups. Don’t be afraid to share content, but be sure it is content that interests people such as what’s trending, new insights and what’s controversial. Don’t share only your own content. Viveka von Rosen

Announcement of Product Improvements

HubSpot Ads Add-on

  • Gives HubSpot customers the ability to create and manage Google AdWords and LinkedIn Sponsored Updates campaigns.
  • Customers will have a more complete handle on how earned, owned and paid marketing activities work together to create leads and provide more data on what drives the customer journey.
  • Provides a stronger picture of the optimal mix of activities and your overall ROI.

Predictive Lead Scoring

  • All leads aren’t created equal. Having tens, hundreds or thousands of leads is only good if you have a way to easily understand which leads are hot, and which are not.
  • Provides a score based on behavior, demographic, social, email, and spam detection data.
  • Allows HubSpot customers the ability to focus their efforts on the right leads at the right time, while nurturing leads that aren’t quite ready based on their current score.

HubSpot LeadIn

  • Ability to capture leads from your current website and know what pages were visited and what social networks they’re on. You don’t need to switch your website CMS at all.

HubSpot Connect

  • Provides a timeline of every interaction a customer has within the HubSpot Marketing and CRM products. You see not just activities taking place in HubSpot, but also data from other popular systems you use, including Zendesk, Shopify, SlideShare, SurveyMonkey, Perfect Audience, PandaDoc, Citrix and others.
  • Ability to see when a customer pays an invoice, creates a support ticket, views a slide deck or fills out a survey in the same way you see when a friend’s update on Facebook shows up on your timeline.

Enhancements to HubSpot Sales Platform

  • Prospects (Sidekick for Business) — helps sales teams find important details on companies expressing early interest by visiting your website. Create filters and alerts when the type of company you target appears on your website.
  • Connections (SideKick for Business) exposes email connections across the team to facilitate introductions — similar to LinkedIn introductions.
  • Sequences (Sidekick for Business) is a simple workflow system for sales to use inside of Gmail to automate follow-up.
  • Insights (HubSpot CRM) automatically builds and updates a timeline (mentioned above) made up of account information and activity.
  • Meetings (HubSpot CRM) automatically sends you a cheat sheet 15 minutes before your sales call with the most up to date information about the account.

When Friday rolled around we couldn’t believe INBOUND 2015 was already wrapping up! We had such a great time! We came home eager and motivated about the possibilities of the inbound marketing movement. And, as we apply these lessons, we are excited to bring these new insights to the work we do with our customers. Do you have any questions for us about inbound marketing or how to create a successful digital strategy? Please contact us, and we’ll work with you to bring you the success you deserve in your online efforts.