HubSpot's Inbound 2017 Conference Recap

Once again HubSpot’s Inbound conference did not disappoint. The Diagram team traveled to Boston for the 4th year to partake of 4 days of learning, inspiration, and of course, lobster rolls.

With a speaker lineup of Michelle Obama, Brene Brown, Issa Rae, Ed Catmull, Rand Fishkin, Adam Grant, Billie Jean King, and John Cena to name a few, just by attending the keynotes and spotlights, your Inbound experience would be phenomenal. Then, add on the hundreds of options for more concentrated learning experiences in breakouts sessions on topics ranging from analytics, video, social media, sales strategies, content market and personal development and growth. Wow. Inbound 2017 is hands down the best marketing/sales conference out there.

As Inbound is about sharing your authentic voice and story, let’s hear from a few of the Diagram team members that attended.

My Thoughts

There are so many options to be inspired and to learn how to be better at your job, better at connecting with people and having a stronger voice for yourself, your customers and your organization. Inbound is not just about the HubSpot software, but how we can impart change in our organizations. This change can take the form of making adjustments to existing marketing/sales strategies or tactics; or change can mean re-evaluating how you interact with your customers across different digital channels; or change can mean examining your company’s culture to offer the kind of environment that the people that work there can flourish, find their voice and have the flexibility they need to balance work/life/professional growth (as masterfully taught by Ana Auerbech of WERK).

I came away from Inbound 2017 with a desire to shake things up in my department, push for greatness within the executive team, and to re-evaluate how we truly communicate with our clients and prospective clients to give them the experience that they desire (and want!)

Sarah Corley

Over 21,000 people from 100 countries were at Inbound this year. Let’s just stop and revel in how much diversity was present—diversity in thought, company, job profession and worldviews! It’s one of the main reasons I love INBOUND—the people and the stories they share.

Some of the most prominent themes from the entire conference were: diversity, failure, creativity, passion, and the customer experience. These themes were echoed throughout the keynote, spotlights and breakout sessions.

Five of my takeaways from Inbound were:

1. Quality over quantity.The message that you give your audience is more important than the volume of content that you produce.
2. At the heart of everything is a story. We only purchase from people who we like, love and trust.
3. Give your audience what they want on their own terms. Messaging is becoming the more preferred method of communication.
4. Email marketing’s still got it. It’s the only way to be directly in front of your target audience without spending a dime.
5. Facebook has the most engaged users! 75% of people are using Facebook for professional purposes.

I’m so thankful to have gone to INBOUND this year and can’t wait to implement everything I’ve learned—personally and professionally.

Katelyn AhERN

This year’s INBOUND was the best I’ve been to thus far and for many reasons that go well beyond marketing and sales tactics. I have always been extremely impressed with the pages of tactics, testing ideas, and strategies that I come away with from INBOUND to apply to my day-to-day responsibilities. This year I not only walked away with pages of new ideas to implement but also with an inspired sense of purpose in my role and the roles of those around me.

At INBOUND we spend breakout sessions deep diving into tactics, new technologies, and exciting examples of how to get things done in marketing and sales. Sometimes in HubSpot and sometimes with the help of other tools, as well. During the Keynote presentations and spotlight sessions, we had the opportunity to hear from others who are making an impact on the world.

Going into INBOUND I expected to be inspired to come back to the office with many new marketing ideas, but the conversation continuously led back to a similar message for me throughout the week.

At the end of the day, we are humans working with other humans creating a life that we love, projects that we are proud of and working towards missions we are passionate about.

We all use different strategies that approach this goal in very different ways, but investing in our teams on a human level in areas of fear, courage, respect, passion, and relationships can not only push us to be better humans, but also drive us to work more synchronously as a team and dig deeper in our day-to-day with clients. Needless to say, I was overly impressed with the way that this conference moved to inspire me to advance myself on a personal and professional level, my company, my co-workers, and my client's benefit. With words of wisdom like the one below and new tactics to reach our goals in marketing.

Conclusion

Investing in going to Inbound next year should be at the top of your to do list from a budgeting and “save the date” perspective. Our calendars are marked for September 4th-7th, 2018 and we hope to meet you there. We’d love to hear your stories from Inbound 2017.