Senior Account Manager Muyambo, who heads up our partnership programme with HubSpot, recently flew to Boston to attend Inbound 2024.  

Here are some of her key takeaways from the event, from how AI is changing marketing roles to how businesses can better engage prospects and customers. 

How was going to Inbound for the first time? 

It was really good! The energy was electric, and really contagious. One thing that stood out was a buzz of collaboration. Everyone was keen to share, learn, and innovate together, so I came home with loads of actionable insights!  

I also realised that the challenges businesses face are universal, but so are the solutions if you’re willing to adapt and evolve. 

What are some of these shared business challenges?

Well, organic search traffic is dropping, so there are fewer chances for brands to connect with their audiences, and fewer chances for their sales teams to convert prospects. 

Prospects are also spending longer researching brands, so that by the time they are ready to get in touch, they’re already well-informed about what you do. This means the traditional sales pitch isn’t so relevant anymore.  

Instead, prospects want tailored experiences at each touchpoint, and in real time. The problem is, so many businesses have really fragmented data sets across multiple channels, and so can’t act on their data quickly enough to meet these expectations. 

“So many businesses have really fragmented data sets across multiple channels.”

What can businesses do to overcome these problems? 

One solution is to focus on behavioral segmentation, so using real-time customer actions to inform marketing decisions. Rather than relying solely on their customers’ demographics or purchase history data, businesses can now track and respond to what customers are doing on their platforms much more quickly.  

Another is to use predictive analysis and lead scoring. This makes it easier to forecast customer behaviour and trends, so that you can be more proactive with your marketing.  

This can obviously be quite complex, but AI can help.  

How are businesses using AI to better engage with their customers? 

AI isn’t something we should rely on wholeheartedly in marketing. But, by automating tasks with AI, you can make sure you’ve got the time to apply human intelligence where it’ll make the most impact.  

Pre-AI, you might have hired a content writer to take care of everything from pitching ideas, to writing content, to proofreading and editing. Now, AI can do this, so why not free up your writers to focus on optimising performance? This could be by doing competitor research or crafting CTAs to generate conversions. 

AI is also something we can embrace from a prospecting point of view. As an example, you could use HubSpot’s AI tools to analyse a company’s URL and give you a summary of its size, operations, revenue, and so on. This helps you build a list of companies that are genuinely aligned with your ICP.

What did you learn about the future of the HubSpot platform? 

HubSpot is embracing AI, but its new tools aren’t designed to go away and do your job for you. They rely on your input in order to work. 

A good example of this is the Breeze Intelligence tool and Data Enrichment feature for prospecting. You need to input a contact’s name and email address, but HubSpot can fill in the gaps. It can give you really specific information, like where the contact sits in their company’s decision-making hierarchy. 

The platform can also prompt you as contacts take action on your site. For instance, it might let you know that a prospect has viewed your ‘Services’ page six times, and has now downloaded a sales brochure, instead of you having to check this journey manually. 

If you had to pick just one takeaway from Inbound, what would it be? 

Customer data is everything, and businesses need to view it holistically. By taking the time to understand your entire customer journey, and leveraging data across channels, you can have really meaningful conversations. 

The nature of data silos is also changing. So many businesses now use a CRM, instead of ten different spreadsheets across ten different teams. Yet even businesses that have all their customer data in one place are offering disjointed experiences.  

The issue isn’t centralising your data anymore. It’s knowing how to get the best from it every time.

“The issue isn’t centralising your data. It’s knowing how to get the best from it every time.”