We are incredibly excited to kick off our brand new “Launch Codes” podcast!
The show will be released on a weekly basis, featuring cutting-edge conversations on the latest in Marketing Ops, AI and more.
It will feature our CEO, Joe Peters, as he’s joined by a rotating cast of:
- Matt Tonkin (Sr. Director)
- Andy Caron (SVP of Consulting), and
- Lauren McCormack (VP of Consulting).
For our pilot episode, Matt Tonkin was out sick, so our Marketing Manager, Matt Burtney, stepped up to fill in! This episode comes fresh off of HubSpot’s INBOUND 2023, covering a wide array of exciting speakers, surprise sessions, and much more.
Listen Below
Episode Summary
HubSpot and AI
When Joe saw the opening keynote at INBOUND 2023, it was pretty clear that AI would be the star of the event. HubSpot went on to unveil some astounding AI features and innovations they’ve been working on. One of them was the evolution of ChatSpot, their current AI-enabled bot.
While it’s not a new feature (we first saw it back in March 2023), it has now reached a point where users can train it on a host of information including their blog, content, and even sales information. It can even be embedded straight onto your website and really represent your entire organization – HubSpot has said it can eliminate the need for almost 80% of customer inquiries.
HubSpot also introduced a range of AI assistants and agents to help expedite work within the platform. Joe had a chance to get a demonstration of the Campaign Assistant which quickly creates landing pages, emails and ads with generative AI. It works pretty well but requires some heavy human intervention. It won’t provide the brand control that many organizations will require, but it is 100% a step in the right direction. Campaign Assistant will only get better with time.
Going forward, Joe expects many companies to follow HubSpot’s lead to create a “one-stop” AI integrated CRM – we are now entering the era of what HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah calls the “Smart CRM”.
TikTok For Business
Perhaps the biggest surprise at INBOUND 2023 for Joe was the TikTok deep dive session. During this presentation, it was revealed that:
- There are over 150 million TikTok users in the U.S.
- They use TikTok for an average of 90 minutes per day.
- Users open the app an average of 17 times per day.
These are astounding numbers. And Joe goes on to say that a lot of brands and companies might dismiss TikTok as a platform that caters to a much younger audience. But when you’re talking about numbers like 150 million (half the American population), there is certainly a user base or community on there for your brand to connect with. Some of the business features TikTok has established were very impressive as well.
For example: Users now have the ability to integrate a lead gen form within a content piece that is submitted directly into HubSpot upon completion. In terms of service offerings for businesses, this is a massive step forward for TikTok and represents an incredible opportunity for companies to take advantage of.
With that said though, it’s important for brands to cater their content to the TikTok platform expectations. In other words, instead of posting a traditional ad or asset, brands need to approach TikTok with an “entertainment lens” and think about what will truly engage your audience.
The $1 Million Pitch Competition
One of the more unique events at INBOUND 2023 was the $1 million pitch competition. Essentially, they had 6 VC’s (including HupSpot’s CMO) set up “Shark Tank” style. There were 6 companies who each had 2 minutes to do a pitch, with some time for the VC’s to ask some quick questions.
Here’s a quick rundown of the companies involved:
Stack Moxie: A testing platform that allows you to test your forms – such as lead gen – to make sure they’re all being executed properly.
NLX: A conversational AI platform with mobile UX support. So if you lose a credit card, for example, you’d have an entire visual interface provided as part of your support experience.
Chatdesk: A social conversation engagement service that uses AI to analyze engagement opportunities that are passed on to human agents who facilitate organic conversation.
ServiceBell: A service that provides live call integration into your website. Leads engaging with a form on your site (for example) may have a live call opportunity appear in real time.
Doola: A service that helps companies start doing business in the US – taking care of all your corporate compliance requirements for an annual fee.
Tavus: An AI video personalization service that will actually create videos of yourself talking based on a script you provide (and a 15 minute audio and video training process/sample upload so it can learn your voice etc).
All of these companies had exciting ideas with a lot of promise, but the two winners turned out to be:
Doola and Tavus!
Rapid Fire Questions:
- Which speaker resonated with you the most?
- What was the best hook for attracting people to a booth?
- Did any of the speakers surprise you?
- What new feature that HubSpot announced will have the biggest impact on Marketing Ops in the next year?
- What was the most exciting AI feature you heard about at Inbound 2023?
- What was the most memorable swag?
Read The Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was created by AI using Descript and has not been edited.
[00:00:00] Joe Peters: Welcome to Launch Codes, the podcast from Revenue Pulse, also known as RP. It’s a podcast about marketing operations, artificial intelligence, and more. I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Joe Peters, CEO of Revenue Pulse, and each week I’ll sit down with an expert. In the marketing ops space to discuss the latest news, insights, and concepts.
[00:00:26] Joe Peters: So be sure to subscribe, rate, and review to help other people find this podcast. This is our pilot episode. I’d like to introduce you to my colleague, Matt Burtney. He’s joining us today. He’s stepping up for Matt Tonkin and Matt Bertany. Not to confuse. We have too many mats in the organization. Uh, not to confuse things.
[00:00:49] Joe Peters: Matt is our marketing manager and, uh, the wizard behind our production of launch codes. So, um, over to you, Matt. What are we going to cover today?
[00:01:03] Matt Burtney: Thanks, Joe. So on today’s episode, we’ll be covering our trip to Inbound 2023, which is HubSpot’s marketing and sales conference. So the big things that we want to talk about are the new AI releases from HubSpot, TikTok for business, the million dollar pitch competition, the good and bad of Inbound, uh, the takeaways and insights.
[00:01:25] Matt Burtney: And, uh, a few of our hot takes. And, uh, for everyone who’s watching or listening, be sure to stick around for the end, uh, because at the end of our conversation, Joe is going to have a delightful little surprise for us, uh, that you don’t want to miss, and it’ll better explain our time at Inbound.
[00:01:43] Joe Peters: Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure about that, but, um, it will, uh, add a little flavor.
[00:01:49] Joe Peters: You may have heard it at the intro, uh, some of our quality background, uh, music. Before we jump into today’s conversation, I just want to shine a bit of a spotlight on a game changer in the world of email marketing. And that’s our fantastic sponsor, Knack. Knack provides email and landing page creation for enterprise marketing teams in minutes.
[00:02:14] Joe Peters: And the best part is there’s no coding required. So Knack makes it easy for marketers to expand their creativity to create stunning on brand emails and landing pages that customers will love. Learn more by visiting knack. com. That’s K N A K. com. Alright, so back to you, Matt.
[00:02:39] Matt Burtney: Perfect. Well, so there was quite a few things going on at Inbound this year.
[00:02:43] Matt Burtney: I was watching it back here on Twitter, or X as it’s called now. Uh, and one of the things that seemed to really stand out was, the artificial intelligence piece. So Joe, do you want to talk to us a little bit about HubSpot and AI?
[00:02:59] Joe Peters: Yeah, for sure, Matt. Um, sitting in the opening keynote, it was pretty clear that the star of the show was going to be AI.
[00:03:09] Joe Peters: Uh, no doubt about it, actually. And, Uh, when you sort of open up the hood and have a look at what HubSpot is doing, there are some pretty serious investments and innovations related to AI. So, um, in particular, what you can see are the campaign assistants and agents that they’re introducing, um, The chat spot, which is their AI enabled bot and, uh, in highlighting how those integrate into the platform to allow marketers to create, um, content better and to allow customers to access, uh, knowledge bases faster.
[00:03:56] Joe Peters: So, uh, I sat down with. One of the, um, uh, HubSpot, um, uh, gurus at their, at their booth at the show and had a really good look at how the assistants and agents are working right now. So the interesting thing is there is a little bit of a difference between. Uh, with the functionalities and and they’re almost like separate infrastructures.
[00:04:28] Joe Peters: So you you would see chat spot is probably the most sophisticated element when it comes to AI and they’ve are they introduced that I think back in March of this year and it continues to evolve so you can train it on a whole host of information. Uh, not only in your from blog or knowledge based content to sales information so that, um, chat spot, uh, uh, bot, uh, can be embedded on a website and really represent the organization.
[00:05:02] Joe Peters: One of the key things that they said, it can eliminate the need for almost. 80 percent of the inquiries. So that was, that was pretty interesting. And if we flip it over to the other side, uh, and look at the, uh, agents and, um, and assistants, those are a little bit on the lighter side. Um, uh, very easy to use.
[00:05:29] Joe Peters: You could create emails and landing pages, uh, and, uh, full campaigns. Transcribed with, uh, using, uh, GPT to generate content for you, sort of embedded right in the platform. It works pretty well, uh, but it doesn’t allow you sort of the brand controls that you would get from, uh, a Jasper. You’re only going to be able to.
[00:05:52] Joe Peters: Pick thematically what your, um, interest would be. Would you like to be friendly? Would you like to be witty? Would you like to be helpful? Um, like it’s those types of tone controls that you would have. So that was pretty interesting. What does that sound like to you, Matt? Like, are those the types of functionality you wish we had embedded right into our site?
[00:06:14] Matt Burtney: Yeah. So this sounds like it’s instead of having to go to five different places to create it, it’s all coming into the one spot, eh?
[00:06:22] Joe Peters: Yeah. Yeah. There definitely, definitely has that one stop integration, which I think we’re going to see a lot more of. Um, as, uh, as these platforms evolve in their integration with, uh, A.
[00:06:39] Joe Peters: I. Um, and then a kind of a final note on this, uh, Dharmesh Shah, um, the CTO and one of the founders of, of HubSpot, uh, he, he made a post last night talking about, You know, what do we call these CRMs now? Is this an AI CRM or is this a smart CRM? And, uh, that’s a very interesting, uh, way, because even a taxonomy for talking about what we’re doing, um, uh, is, uh, and what is being enabled here within these systems is, is is a pretty interesting, um, challenge today.
[00:07:20] Joe Peters: And so the prevailing wisdom today is that we’re entering into the smart CRM era.
[00:07:27] Matt Burtney: Well, it seems really smart too, because even just the amount of time you spend as like a marketer, just switching tabs to all of these different things that are supposed to be saving me time. It’s. Still spending more time and so to have it all in one spot to know that you’re having good technology behind it, I think it’s genius.
[00:07:52] Joe Peters: Yeah, exactly. All right, well, why don’t we move on to our next topic then?
[00:08:00] Matt Burtney: Yeah, so one of the things that sounded like was a little bit more of a surprise for you when you attended inbound was TikTok for business, so Can you walk me through what we’re working
[00:08:12] Joe Peters: with here? Yeah You know, it’s really interesting Just to see the maturity that’s happening with the platform and TikTok and, uh, my colleague, uh, Matt Tonkin, uh, not to be confused with, uh, Burtney here, um, and I, we had some different experiences.
[00:08:35] Joe Peters: I got to go to a really great, uh, session. Uh, he had a not so good session that he attended to, uh, attended and that, that’s kind of one of the funny things about these conferences. Um, You know, if you’re talking about table stakes or introductions, sometimes, um, the deeper dive sessions, uh, can be pretty interesting.
[00:08:56] Joe Peters: And, and that’s one that I went to, uh, and was just kind of blown away. I, I feel like I should know these things, but I didn’t know these things, but I didn’t know that there were 150 million users of TikTok in the U. S. Um, that’s pretty much half the population and, uh, they’re using the app for 90 minutes a day, uh, which is, uh, pretty incredible on a, for an average, uh, along with 17 opens of the app, which really is kind of mind boggling.
[00:09:31] Joe Peters: And I think, uh, a lot of. Brands and, uh, kind of dismiss TikTok as, you know, a platform for youth or a platform for, you know, a much younger audience. But I think when you’re, you’re talking about numbers like 150 million or half the population, well, that doesn’t really connect to that. So you’re seeing.
[00:09:53] Joe Peters: Really interesting communities form within TikTok and incredible opportunities now for business to connect to these communities. Uh, I think some of the fundamental differences that, uh, you have to see here is that there’s an. entertainment expectation. So, you know, it can’t just be posting, uh, you know, our traditional type of ad or asset within the platform and think you’re going to get away with that or that’s going to resonate.
[00:10:24] Joe Peters: No, you have to kind of think with an entertainment lens, uh, and how you’re going to engage. So, um, I was really, really impressed by some of the business features that they had established, uh, especially as, um, for asset creation and content promotion. I think as well, another thing that was really surprising was looking at something like lead gen and having lead gen forms.
[00:10:57] Joe Peters: Integrated into, uh, a tick tock, um, content piece that is when that is completed is being submitted directly into HubSpot. Now that to me is, you know, kind of taking it to the next level of that kind of integration and real business service being provided. So I think. We’re seeing it, it, it was giving me flashbacks to, I don’t know if it was 2008 or 2009, where the na naysayers were saying that, you know, Facebook and then Instagram, we’re not gonna be places for business or weren’t gonna provide real opportunities.
[00:11:37] Joe Peters: And, and the real, um, The real truth in that is that this is a platform that’s got a humongous audience and there’s a real opportunity to engage within it.
[00:11:51] Matt Burtney: And do you think there’s the same opportunity for B2B, or did they talk about B2B, or is it largely? For B2C
[00:11:58] Joe Peters: companies. Uh, well, that’s where I feel like that lead gen form really provides B2B companies with a, uh, a tremendous opportunity there.
[00:12:09] Joe Peters: Uh, and remember, while, you know, there are going to be certain communities, like I’m, I can only assume the Taylor Swift community would be a giant community within TikTok, uh, and, and that might be millions or hundreds of millions, uh, of. Of members of that type of community. But if you have a community of, I don’t know, 000, that is really connected to what you’re doing.
[00:12:36] Joe Peters: Um, then, then why wouldn’t you kind of explore this as an opportunity? It’s. Especially when you have kind of that opportunity to capture that important lead information for follow up, if someone wants to get more information. So I think it’s, it’s, it’s a time, uh, for, uh, Exploration and an opportunity kind of evaluate and, and think of TikTok as being a real opportunity for, uh, businesses, whether it be B two C or B two B.
[00:13:14] Joe Peters: Um, uh, it kind of won’t really matter. Cool.
[00:13:20] Matt Burtney: All right. Well, thank you for, uh, yeah, bringing us that little surprise from Inbound. And, uh, our next segment we’re going to talk about is the Million Dollar Pitch Competition. So I saw this one quite a bit on, um, on Twitter. Uh, there was a lot of excitement for it.
[00:13:38] Matt Burtney: Uh, so what exactly was it? And, and walk us through the whole, the whole idea.
[00:13:42] Joe Peters: Yeah, this was a real, uh, surprise session for me. I really enjoyed it. Uh, it was entertaining and interesting and they did a really great job of putting together this kind of, I’m going to say kind of shark tank, um, uh, type of process, uh, within a very short period of time.
[00:14:05] Joe Peters: So there were six VCs. Uh, and I’m going to say some of them were VC light. Like there was the, uh, CMO of HubSpot, which I’m not sure he’s a. He’s a VC, uh, you know, uh, in pure function, but, um, they’re, they’re, they’re an interesting element is that both HubSpot and AWS have a venture arms where they kind of, uh, fund different startup opportunities, um, uh, as an organization.
[00:14:39] Joe Peters: So that was news to me. I didn’t, I didn’t know that. And so, but there were some other VCs outside of HubSpot and AWS as well that were in the conversation. And so there were six companies that had two minutes to do a pitch and then there, each of the VCs could ask one quick question. So it was kind of like.
[00:15:00] Joe Peters: Eight to 10 minutes for each, uh, organization. And, um, and it was, it was really entertaining. So let me just kind of run through a few of the companies, uh, so that, uh, and give you a little sense of who they, who they were. So the first was Stack Moxie. Uh, we’re big fans of Stack Moxie. Um, and, um. So she, she did a great job pitching, uh, the company.
[00:15:32] Joe Peters: Uh, and so that was fun to, to see, uh, them in the game. There was this, so for those of you that don’t know, stack Moxi is kind of like a testing platform that allows you to go through and make sure. All of your forms, whether it’s for different lead gen or are all being executed properly. So someone doesn’t have to go in and manually error test to make sure that nothing is being lost.
[00:15:59] Joe Peters: Uh, it’s pretty, pretty incredible, robust platform for doing that. Uh, the second was one called NLX, which was a customer service experience thing. So imagine you call. I don’t know, American Express, and you’ve lost your credit card. There would be a phone interface and a goo, and uh, imagine your phone would transform, and you would actually have a visual interface to your customer support call where you could do certain things at the same time being navigated through that.
[00:16:32] Joe Peters: I, I, I think there are tons of applications for that, and that was really interesting. The third was one called Chat Desk. Uh, and that was social conversation engagement. And so what happens is there’s a listening function with AI that triggers it to be queued for a brand to respond to organic conversations happening.
[00:16:59] Joe Peters: And then there’s an army of human agents that can be mobilized to engage in conversation. So you start sort of starts a natural brand consumer. Engagement in the platform. So kind of really interesting how they set up with AI analyzing opportunities and then humans starting, um, to engage with those opportunities on social platforms.
[00:17:29] Joe Peters: Uh, the next one was a service called Service Bell, and that was live call integration into your site, which is pretty cool. So imagine someone comes to your site. And, uh, they fill out, uh, a lead gen form or they’re on your pricing page and you know a little bit about them and, uh, so imagine it’s connected to HubSpot and then would fire up a video call opportunity right on the site.
[00:18:04] Joe Peters: So instead of a chat spot. Bought or, um, you know, looking at a calendar link and trying to find a time, you could actually speak to someone right away and it routes it within the organization, even to who the deal owner is, if you have some kind of ABM process or existing customer play, uh, there. So pretty cool stuff.
[00:18:24] Joe Peters: Um, but the last two were the ones that, uh, were very impressive. Uh, a company called Dula spelled D O O L A, uh, which is. Sounds a lot like a doula that you would have if you were, um, expecting a child and, uh, it’s kind of had the same concept. It’s like giving birth to your company if you’re trying to have operations in the U S so all the.
[00:18:51] Joe Peters: Legal incorporation, all the compliance things, even banking access, all of these things that are hard for companies outside of the U S to set up that can, uh, you know, cost lots of, uh, of dollars in accounting and legal fees. And they kind of have like a 3, a 300 incorporation fee, and then a 2, 000 a year to do your compliance, um, for IRS and things like that.
[00:19:18] Joe Peters: So really, really cool, uh, service that they’ve. Wrapped into all into one there, and then, uh, the last one was one called Tavis or Tavis. Not really sure. I can’t really remember the exact pronunciation, but it’s spelled T A V U S, and it’s AI video personalization. So we’ve all seen these kind of video pitches that we get from BDRs, where you kind of create a little customized video and send them off to people.
[00:19:48] Joe Peters: Well, imagine. That instead of, um, you having to record 100 or 1000 or 10, 000 of them, you kind of trained an AI, uh, by performing a sort of video and audio test for 15 minutes. And once you’ve trained the AI, you can actually just put your script in and it will know your voice. And move your mouth and make it a real natural conversation while you’re making your pitch and then it’ll green screen in the background.
[00:20:26] Joe Peters: Well, not really green screen, but kind of overlay in the background, a small video window. And then if you’re talking about a company’s website, it can kind of scroll in the background while you’re talking about it. Super cool for creating personalized videos at scale. Uh, the only thing is, I mean, I kind of feel like.
[00:20:46] Joe Peters: I don’t know, Bert, you might think that this might I kind of feel like this is one of those AI innovations that in the beginning will be super cool, but we’re going to be super saturated by this. You know, let’s say a year from now. Yeah, I was just thinking that. Yeah. So, um, all right. Based on my introductions to those concepts and do you know who won or, uh, can I, can I get you to guess who you think would be the winner?
[00:21:18] Matt Burtney: I’m hoping that number four, the people who you can do a video call with them after you filled out the form one, I love the concept.
[00:21:25] Joe Peters: Okay. Well, unfortunately you’re not where the VC money went. And, and so , the winners, they actually made two winners, which was the doula and the TAUs. So the Oh, okay. Giving birth to your company and the ai, uh, video personalization.
[00:21:45] Joe Peters: So, um, really, really cool stuff. And, uh, I think, um, they looked like all of the technologies had promise and. Definite use cases, uh, today.
[00:22:02] Matt Burtney: Oh, that’s cool. And I, I haven’t heard of them doing this before at inbound. Uh, I’m not sure if this is their, their first go at it, but I think it’s a great idea for adding a little bit of excitement to, uh, to the conference.
[00:22:15] Joe Peters: 100%. 100%. It’s going to be really funny to, uh, with, um. Our listeners in the U. S.,
[00:22:23] Joe Peters: you’re going to hear, uh, Matt say A at the end of questions. So, you know, it’s, it’s not going to be hard for you to tell that, um, there is some Canadian influence to this.
[00:22:35] Matt Burtney: Yeah, that was, that was my thought both times I’ve done it.
[00:22:40] Joe Peters: But, you know, that, that, that’s fine. And I also like teasing, uh, Bert because he, um, He can’t help but flush a little bit when I, when I do give him a good, uh, good, uh, little tease every now and then, but, um, yeah, so I, I don’t know, I don’t remember this from last year.
[00:22:59] Joe Peters: Uh, I don’t remember being on the agenda. If it was, I definitely missed it, but this one was really, really quite interesting. And they did a great job of curating some interesting, uh, companies to, to pitch.
[00:23:15] Matt Burtney: Yeah, yeah. There’s quite a diversity in that.
[00:23:18] Joe Peters: Yeah. The also hilarious thing is they were only supposed to have two minutes, but there was really funny to see, like.
[00:23:24] Joe Peters: Them blow through those two minutes and just do longer pitches. Cause what were they going to do? Like just cut them off. Like it was pretty funny. So some of them kind of, some of them stuck right to the two minutes, which obviously they got a little bit penalized by because they didn’t get to do like a five minute pitch, like some of the other ones.
[00:23:43] Joe Peters: So anyway, it’s kind of a funny, uh, funny, uh, little. Uh, loophole that some of them, uh, found and, and went through, but, um, it was really good stuff.
[00:23:56] Matt Burtney: Yeah, When a million dollars is on the line, I guess you’re willing to skirt the rules a little bit.
[00:24:01] Joe Peters: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:24:05] Matt Burtney: So I guess we will, we’ll, uh, transition into our big thoughts on inbound.
[00:24:11] Matt Burtney: So, uh, what was the good and the bad of your time there, your week in Boston?
[00:24:18] Joe Peters: Yeah, having been to, you know, quite a few conferences now in the, uh, since our post COVID, uh, lockup, I have to say, I really love the format of inbound, the way they kind of integrate the trade show into several main stages and, and activity centers so that, um, it’s not like you’re just.
[00:24:43] Joe Peters: Going to the trade show or going to a session. There’s like a real opportunity to, you know, just move around and see things and have conversations at booths. Uh, so I liked that design. Uh, so that was excellent. I thought some of the, some of the sessions were really, really good. Um, the one problem that they had and which was slightly frustrating was, uh, you go in and you book and reserve a seat.
[00:25:16] Joe Peters: Um, I, there was a session that I reserved a seat. I wanted to see Pierce from, uh, from NAC give a session and, uh, I had reserved my seat. I was there 15 minutes before with about 450 other people that couldn’t get into the session. Uh, so. That was a little bit frustrating, um, when you’ve kind of done that and and didn’t get access to, um, to a session.
[00:25:44] Joe Peters: So, yeah, I think they could do a little bit better on that. Um, but, um, yeah, that was that there were some funny sessions like telling you AI is important. It’s time for you to experiment. You know, those those were Those kind of table stakes conversations were a little bit funny because, you know, there was probably, I was in a session, they said, how many people are using chat GPT, there’s probably 1000 people in the room, and every person put their hand up.
[00:26:17] Joe Peters: So why do you give a presentation that says, you know, it’s time to experiment. You know what I mean? So those were some of the, um, some of the cool and slightly, you know, maybe frustrating parts of it, but, um, there were some, there, there was a, a couple of other nuggets that came out. Uh, I was at a one session.
[00:26:45] Joe Peters: Um, that’s a couple of different speakers, but there was a speaker from jasper. ai that there and she was excellent. I’m sorry, I forget her name right now, but she said with all of these AI productivity enhancements, uh, and if you’re freeing up time, well, what are you doing with that time? What are you doing with your free time?
[00:27:08] Joe Peters: And I thought that was a really important question because she said, if you’re just going and doing eat more email, uh, or, you know, what are you going to do with your free time? And I think that that was a really great, um, point in, in, in, in question. Um, and then there was another session that talked about, we’re just going to have, like, Mail it in marketing or me too, or following, you know, following the leader kind of marketing and those are going to have a lot of trouble moving through the volume of content that we’re going to see from a, from a marketing perspective that is supported through AI and really solid original content.
[00:27:56] Joe Peters: It’s going to be so important. So, which is a challenge. How do you create great original content? Well, that means you’re going to have to spend the time and resources and AI isn’t necessarily going to advance that. It’s going to probably give you the kind of follower, follow the lead or mail it in kind of.
[00:28:21] Joe Peters: Content that, um, people won’t really be interested in.
[00:28:26] Matt Burtney: Yeah, especially if, you know, the sound of, of what is coming with Google is that, uh, it’s going to be so much harder to rank in that first position. So creating that high quality content matters so much more and hoping you can find your audience who wants to keep coming back for it.
[00:28:44] Matt Burtney: So it’s definitely something to keep in mind for, uh, people attending either HubSpot or just in marketing in general.
[00:28:51] Joe Peters: Yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%. But, uh, yeah, those are some of the, the takeaways from, um, from my experiences.
[00:29:05] Matt Burtney: And, uh, the one last thing we’re gonna do about Inbound right now is, uh, speed things up a little bit with a rapid fire session.
[00:29:14] Matt Burtney: So, uh, basically the goal here is to, uh, in just a few words, give us, uh, your feedback on a few of the topics that we were curious about. Uh, so first off, which speaker resonated with you the most?
[00:29:27] Joe Peters: Yeah, I, this is an easy one. Dharmesh Shah, uh, the CTO and founder of HubSpot, is just an incredibly, uh, entertaining and, uh, provocative, uh, speaker.
[00:29:45] Joe Peters: Like, I just, I really, I’ve really enjoyed, uh, every time I’ve had the chance to hear him speak, and he never kind of, uh, fails to, um, Uh, uh, fails to impress. Like he, he, he’s, he’s, if you ever have a chance to see him speak, you need to.
[00:30:06] Matt Burtney: I’ll co sign that. So, you know, a couple of times he’s great. Um, what’s the, uh, best hook you saw for attracting people to a booth?
[00:30:16] Joe Peters: Well, our friends at Chili Piper had an amazing booth design. Um, they. They drank their own champagne in the sense that, uh, you could get a free professional headshot done at the conference in their booth. And you had to like sign up for a time slot, like they were doing them every five minutes or something like that.
[00:30:38] Joe Peters: And then after they had the headshot and sent it out to you, they kind of said, Hey, wasn’t that easy? And that’s because it was all being done with the Chili Piper platform. So I thought that was super smart. And a really great way of booth platform integration, like, I give them two thumbs up for that.
[00:31:03] Matt Burtney: Yeah that’s genius. Um, did any of the speakers surprise you this year?
[00:31:11] Joe Peters: I would say I was really blown away by the group from TikTok. They did a great job. And there’s probably five or six different members of the team that kind of did this overarching presentation, and they did a fantastic job. So, I would say it wasn’t just one, it was that, that one really surprised me.
[00:31:33] Matt Burtney: And what new feature that HubSpot announced do you think will have the biggest impact on marketing ops in the next year?
[00:31:40] Joe Peters: Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that these assistants and agents, like the campaign assistant, uh, is really, really going to provide, I’m going to say companies on the smaller side, you know, uh, with a real opportunity to integrate AI into their work and their campaigns, like generating, uh, um, The content for emails and landing pages like that.
[00:32:17] Joe Peters: It’s definitely worth, uh, keeping, um, track of the innovations that they’re adding and HubSpot seems to have no end to it’s the innovations they introduced in a year. I think they, they showed quickly like this funny screen that just flashed up like 250 things that they integrated last year of new features.
[00:32:37] Joe Peters: So they’re really continuing to advance. Uh, Vance it like, and I’m only joking, but like some of them might have been like, we now allow font sizes to be 12 or 18 like some of them were not super humongous, uh, changes, but, but some of them were quite significant, especially their, their AI integrations.
[00:33:01] Matt Burtney: Yeah. Um, and there might be a little overlap in the next question, but, uh, most exciting AI feature you heard about at Inbound 2023?
[00:33:08] Joe Peters: Uh, I, I would say just what I, uh, just kind of following up on the HubSpot side, which is that, um, The campaign assistants, uh, I think are really going to be, uh, helpful. And if we see this is just the beginning of them and they’re only going to get better from here, that, uh, that’s pretty, that’s pretty great stuff.
[00:33:39] Matt Burtney: And the hardest hitting question, what was the most memorable swag?
[00:33:48] Joe Peters: There was these guys, and maybe we’ll like make a, uh, a social post on this. We’re walking around in these adidas. Blue Adidas, uh, track suits and they had a giant QR code on their back. Like this, and these were tall men, like maybe six, four, six, five. So imagine like a basketball player walking through the
[00:34:16] Joe Peters: You know, convention floor, they have these giant QR codes on their back. Um, so that was, that was, I don’t know. They weren’t handing out those, uh, track suits, but it was something that was pretty memorable. I’m not really like a booth swag, uh, collector. I kind of find that most of the time it collects dust.
[00:34:37] Joe Peters: So I don’t do that, but that was something like that was, I’m going to say swag and action. That was pretty funny.
[00:34:47] Matt Burtney: Yeah, that’s a good way to get some attention. And, uh, we’ll move on to our pairings section. So, uh, Joe, do you want to, do you want to take this one over?
[00:35:00] Joe Peters: Sure. So with each podcast, uh, we want to show a little bit of personality. So Matt Tonkin was supposed to be on and he was supposed to show us his favorite beer of the week, his craft beer of the week, he’s not with us.
[00:35:14] Joe Peters: So we’re not going to put Bert on the spot to have to. Uh, respond, uh, to, to pull something out of his hat. Uh, but, um, as you, as you heard in the intro to this, uh, podcast, uh, a little bit of background music, and so I want to showcase, um, You know, some classic music, every, uh, session. So in every episode that we have.
[00:35:42] Joe Peters: So this week we have the smile, uh, opening things up with a song they have called the smoke amazing album. Had the chance to see them a couple of times over the last. Uh, two summers and they do really great production on their vinyl. Uh, like this is an example. They have some real sweet, uh, yellow vinyl here for you.
[00:36:05] Joe Peters: Uh, but, um, really great sound and great production. And, um, and if you ever get the chance to see them live, well, just for those of you that don’t know, it’s like Tom York. Um, and, uh. Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead. So it’s kind of like a mini Radiohead. Uh, uh, with, uh, this band is, I kind of feel like they were just like bored during the pandemic and just started to record some out, uh, some music together and they came up with that.
[00:36:37] Joe Peters: So, uh, give it a listen and, um, it’s, uh, it’s really just a great album to have in the background while you’re cranking through, uh, Reports or emails or projects that you’re working on.
[00:36:57] Matt Burtney: Awesome. Thank you very much. And, uh, yeah, so I guess we want to thank our audience for joining us on this, on our pilot episode of, uh, Launch Codes.
[00:37:08] Matt Burtney: And, uh, uh, you know, a reminder to everyone to please subscribe and rate and review. Uh, you can stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Revenue Pulse or by joining our newsletter at the link in the footnotes. And, uh, Joe, I’ll pass it off to you for final thoughts.
[00:37:24] Joe Peters: Well, thanks a lot, Bert, for stepping up and coming on to the podcast today.
[00:37:30] Joe Peters: Um, we knew we really wanted to get this out. And, uh, so, uh, thanks for, for being a great, uh, co host today. And, um, really appreciate that. And, um. And thanks to all of
you that listened to this point. It’s probably just my mom at, uh, at, at this point that’s, uh, got through to the end, but thanks a lot for listening.
[00:37:56] Joe Peters: And, you know, we hope that you join us next week too.
