Inbound 2022 Recap

 

You Should Steal These Inbound Tips, Tricks & Teachings

In-person conferences are BACK and we’re here for it. Especially when said conference is in Beantown with wicked awesome 70° weather. Late summer in Boston is truly a site to behold — the perfect escape to offset hours of indoor information overload.

Whether you’ve been to Inbound before or still have it on your continuing education bucket list, these marketing tips & tricks we picked up are sure to inspire a visit.

 
 

How Your Business Can Use Video Across The Customer Journey

We all know video is important but it’s way more important to create the most impactful videos and get them in front of the right audience at the right point in the customer journey. Taylor and Chris from Wistia broke down the three core marketing goals where video can make a big difference - Acquisition, Adoption, and Brand.

Don’t forget to amplify your audience. Strategize around a distribution plan. It’s like installing a brand new tire…that’s flat..or putting a Porsche engine inside a Pinto…enough analogies, you get the point. How are you reaching your audience with your brand new assets? You have to be ruthless about prioritizing your audience, and delivering them what they want when they want it. This ultimately creates amplified marketing creates Trust, Efficiency, Alignment, Revenue.


ACQUISITION

These video campaigns help turn leads into customers. They’re the first video you see on the homepage or help explain a product on a PDP. Acquisition videos highlight team values, product value props, and need to have personality to hit home. Users spend 88% more time browsing on websites that have videos (Social Media Week)

Pro tip: inset a lead capture form in the first 10-20% of your homepage video.

Examples of Acquisition videos:

ADOPTION

Knowledge is power and highlighting the value or your products & services can help change behaviors in the customer journey. Adoption videos should be fun, personable, and an opportunity to get your team involved. Including a video on your landing page can boost your conversion rate by up to 80% (WordStream).

Pro tip: take your FAQs and make a video with a fun culture/personal touch.

Examples of Adoption videos:

BRAND

The holy grail video. Brand videos help show your values and turn customers into advocates. Another great opportunity to get the team involved so your customers know you’re human. 84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video (Optinmonster).

Pro tip: introduce your audiences to a long-form brand video by onboarding them with trailers weeks ahead.

Examples of Brand videos:

 
 

How to Navigate Marketing Around Search and Social Algorithms

When Neil Patel speaks, you listen. Over the years search engine algorithms have gotten harder to crack. At the same time, social media platforms have reduced your organic reach. Learn how you can beat search and social platforms as well as how you can leverage unconventional marketing techniques to beat your competition.

Learn how to (currently) beat each algorithm on Linkedin, FB, IG, TikTok & more. Praise Patel!

 
 

Email Marketing Tips: Do This, Not That

Driving strong email marketing ROI should be on the forefront of any B2B or B2C’s marketing mix. Jay Schwedelson from SubjectLine.com dropped all the best practices to cut through the noise and capture your customer’s attention. Here are some of our favorite tips to stay ahead of the pack:

  • Subject lines that say “Most” and “Best” perform 22-27% better

  • Using the word “tomorrow” receives 28% higher open rates than those with a day of the week (ex: Thursday)

  • Additional “offers” on a post registration page on average receive 13% CTR

  • Use “Free” in subject line. Generates 2x open rate increase vs “complimentary”

  • Starting Sept 1, content related to 2023 does very well

  • Over 80% of all email campaigns are sent out on the hour. 70% of all email traffic occurs within first 10 mins.

    • Easiest hack is having campaigns go out NOT on the hour. This will help differentiate your emails from others.

  • Test your subject lines on the #1 free subject line rating tool: SubjectLine.com

  • Download the 2022 and 2023 Best/Worst Days Email Calendar

  • Download Jay’s email marketing presentation from Inbound 2022.

 
 

Connecting The Dots: Feedback for Leadership Development

From low- to high-tech, Katie and Rachel from Fringe Professional Development valuable options to immediately implement to gather the feedback we need to grow as a leader.

7 Primary Takeaways:

  • As leaders it is essential to create an environment conducive to giving and receiving honest feedback, even though it may be daunting! It’s not always easy to get feedback, but it helps you grow and understand. The more we talk about feedback, the more we normalize it and it becomes less uncomfortable over time. 

  • No matter where you are in the organization, you have influence! Giving and getting feedback is extremely vulnerable, but this discomfort is good because it means you care. We need to reframe feedback as a gift!

  • Here’s who you can get feedback from:

    • Supervisors / Managers - people you report to

    • Peers - people at a similar level, but who you don’t necessarily work with daily

    • Teammates - everyone on your team

    • Social - friends and family can help us grow at work

  • Ways to Gather Feedback (Find out what is right for YOUR organization!)

    • Performance, Psychometrics, Group Assessments / Questionnaires 

  • Feedback Tips

    • Ask Permission, Stay Focused (Especially digitally), Reserve Judgment, Be Specific, Clarify Understanding

  • Developing an Action Plan for Thoughtful + Intentional Growth 

    • React & Review 

      • Feel your feelings, they’re valid. Name them to tame them, this helps us process. Simmer on what is surprising and identify themes. 

    • Reflect & Focus 

      • Once you’ve had time to reflect and review the feedback, focus on your strengths, opportunities, and choose your focus area / prioritize those focus areas. Don’t get overwhelmed, and give yourself credit for and time to grow. Even if it’s a goal per quarter. 

    • Plan & Prepare

      •  Select actions, identify your first step, and set a deadline. Be specific, start small, and memorialize it. 

        • Calendar key events / reminders, use apps for automation, write it down, and have others keep you accountable so it gets done! 

    • Gather Support 

      • Tell people your goals so they know. Nobody ever ran a marathon and didn’t tell anyone! 

  • Remember, you are always the hero and the villain to someone, you can’t be perfect. Perfectionism isn’t realistic or healthy, but the relentless pursuit of “better” is what we should be striving for :)

 
 

Marketing Against the Grain: Does PR Still Matter?

One of our favorite parts of marketing conferences is diving into sessions we’re less familiar about. Take PR, for example — we don’t technically offer the service, but work with awesome partners and know that it’s an important piece of the marketing flywheel. Familiarizing ourselves with PR ins-and-outs helps us make the appropiate recommendations to our clients.

In a world of YouTube, TikTok, influencers, and rising media distrust, should companies still be doing PR? How? When? Marketing Against The Grain with Hubspot’s Katie Burke do a great job of playing both sides of the PR debate in this live podcast from Inbound.

 
 

#1 Takeaway from Inbound: TRUST

It’s not a groundbreaking new philosophy, but it’s about actually practicing it, and putting it into place in your business. I’m talking about trust. You have to build trust, and that was a major theme in many discussions. Pulling back the veil and being transparent on your offerings and fostering meaningful relationships. If you can build trust, you can build financial gain.

  • From Marcus Sheridan, to Dawn Dickson, to Voila Davis, Jane Goodall, and even Barack Obama… pretty much every session I attended at Inbound touched on the concept of TRUST in and around your business

  • Bottom line, trust is essential for the development of your team, as well as, your client roster in today’s world

  • During his session on “What’s Next: The “Seller Free Economy”— And The Future Of Sales And Marketing As We Know It,” Marcus Sheridan said to build trust with prospective clients, we must:

    • Talk about what others do not in your space, that includes pricing

    • Show what others do not in your space, video is key

    • Have a willingness to sell in a way others won’t in your space 

  • Rachael Bosch noted that in order to create shared trust on our teams, we must build psychological safety through credibility + reliability + relatedness. This backed up what Jane Goodall told us when sharing that, similar to relationship-building with the chimpanzees she studied, gaining professional trust happens through gentleness, patience, and consistency. 

  • In the Hubspot led fireside chat session on How Sales & Revenue Leaders Create & Manage Change Effectively, we were again reminded that trust is built through authenticity. We must tell people our ‘why,’ so whether inside and outside of our organizations, they’re just as passionate about the mission as we are! 

  • Jeff Rosenbum even got into the science of trust and how to market effectively in today’s society in his captivating session, Ignite Your Brand With Empowerment Over Interruptions. He explained:

    • Decisions made in the prefrontal cortex of the brain

    • The innermost part of the brain is the oldest part, while the outermost part of the brain is the newest

    • Every brand is trying to access the prefrontal cortex through interruptions because they shock us and make us pay attention 

    • Interruptions are still important for our vitality and safety, but what if we tried to empower instead of interrupt to gain attention?! 

    • The brain is a cognitive spam filter so this empowerment vs. interruption creates more trust because people are encouraged to be better than they were before, and as a marketer you’re improving consumers' lives. This tactic allows you to help people in your industry; we give them help and they will feel inclined to invest in our businesses

    • It’s simple.. Oxytocin = trust chemical. Build oxytocin (trust) and people will convert!

    • Power has shifted from brands to consumers in today’s world so we must tell people why they should believe in our brand; we must embrace transparency to build that necessary trust

    • Modern marketing is a value exchange more than ever, people are giving you their time and attention.. the money is secondary. Through learning their unique customer journey and building unshakable trust, we can give them what they want to believe and invest in our product. 

Finally, listening to Dawn Dickson's incredible entrepreneurial advice and perspective on the Inbound Podcast Stage, was one last reminder that more than anything, we must trust ourselves. In her words, “Anything you want in your life, you can and have to design.”

 
 

New Podcasts We Picked Up

Here are three new marketing podcasts we discovered at Inbound so you can drop knowledge and brag about to your coworkers and friends:

 
 

Top Things To Do in Boston While at a Conference

Get outside!! One of the most important things to do at a new conference in a new city is to get out and enjoy it as a team. Information overload is a real thing at these events and you have to get out of the fluorescent lights to debrief and re-energize for the next day. This is crucial team building time and when you’re in a place like Boston, the options are endless. Here are a handful of our recommendations around The City on a Hill.


EAT

Italian, seafood, coffee and lobster rolls. Lots of it. Our favorite spots:

  • SRV - Located in Boston's historic South End, SRV is Boston's first Venetian style Bacaro and wine bar.

  • B&G Oysters - Located in Boston’s South End, B&G is chef Barbara Lynch’s modern take on a classic oyster bar.

  • Bar Mezzana - Chef Colin Lynch's Coastal Italian Restaurant in the South End's Ink Block Neighborhood.

  • Tatte Bakery & Cafe - coffee, food, & desserts owe their exceptional flavor to carefully sourced ingredients and a passionate team of people.


BIKE

Boston is extremely bike-friendly and a really cool way to see the city:


EXPLORE

There are endless opportunities to explore the great outdoors:

 
Agency, SocialHart RobertsComment