As a sales-brained person (not marketing-brained) I tend to stay away from marketers, but these last two days have been different and very rewarding. I've spent time at Inbound 2012, Hubspot's summit for marketers - an event which is growing dramatically year to year. I was surrounded by 2800 marketers who are doing inbound marketing or learning all about it.
Inbound marketing is a term coined by Hubspot in 2005 to refer to making yourself easy to be found on the web.
With six different tracks and 60 breakout speakers, it has, so far, been making my brain ache due to so much information floating around. What I like, though, are all the success stories people are sharing about how sales have grown due to the implementation and practice of inbound.
Here are 5 things I've learned so far (and I still have one more morning to go tomorrow)
1. 1+1=3. This is in reference to Hubspot's new marketing software platform, Hubspot 3. Users will now have more tools in a convenient location to do everything they need to draw more prospective customers their way. Brian Halligan, co-founder of the company gives his take on their big announcement and the ties in the love of marketing. Or is it the love of their customers? Hard to say, but that's why 1+1=3.
2, Cyndi Lauper can really sing the blues. Wow. All sorts of folks snapped some video during her performance. Somehow while I had my back turned, she created all sorts of amazing projects and I was proud to hear her perform at this event.
3. Boston could really use a SXSW-type of event, so why not a bigger Inbound 2012 next year? (and the next year). I heard the parties were a lot of fun.
4. Laura Fitton's presentation on PR could help anyone grow their visibility. Her session had practical, simple tips about how to work well with media and what not to do. It's great that Laura is Hubspot's Evangelist. Not many people can pull off that title, but she does it well.
5. Marcus Sheridan is a funny man - an entertaining speaker with great presence and content strategies to get you dominating your market. He presented numerous ways that your content can bring you more prospects to your website. Download his no cost ebook (230 pages!) and we can read it together.
Points 2 and 3 were not really sales and marketing lessons - so here are two more:
SEO (Search engine optimization) has many myths surrounding it yet is necessary for growing visibility online. Keynote speaker Rand Fishkin gives some tips here.
Commitment to customers pays off. This whole event was created for users of the Hubspot software platform- and now it is attracting everyone in marketing. My hat is off to co-founders Dharmesh Shaw and Brian Halligan are really onto something here.
Did you get to Inbound 2012? What did you learn or confirm?
As a "sales type" I have to say that I'm convinced marketing and sales are really converging. Learn and be ready.
Lori Richardson speaks, writes, and trains on sales strategies for B2B mid-market technology front-line sales teams. Why not sign up for our twice-monthly newsletter, “Sales Ideas In A Minute” or the award-winning blog rss feed?