Inbound's most important milestones to remember in 2022

Today, instead of showing you one of our usual posts, we have created something different because we need to ask you this question: Is there anything that still makes you think that you don't have the potential that a business needs to succeed?

Well, today we want to make it clear that no one works magic with companies, nor are they showered with sales, nor have they been blessed with any gift. Behind a video that receives thousands of views there is always a person who, before recording it, has thoroughly analysed who the potential customer is who is going to see it. And behind each text, there is a copywriter who knows in detail the needs of the target audience to realise that what they are offering is important to them.

The only thing that those of us who know how to create a successful marketing strategy have is a method, and it is called Inbound Marketing.

Now that we are in the final stretch of the year, it is impossible not to spend a few minutes reviewing the latest in this methodology. Normally, you have to understand the past to build the future, so we have compiled some of the news, anecdotes and events that have taken place over the last 365 days. Of course, we have taken advantage of INBOUND 2021, the digital event of the year par excellence in the marketing sector, held in October. Three days in which the bombardment of knowledge, experience and professionalism was more intense than ever .

But what are the keys and novelties?

Remembering what Inbound Marketing is

Before getting into the subject, remember that Inbound is a commercial methodology that allows you to attract customers through the creation of valuable content and tailor-made experiences. It differs from Outbound Marketing because the latter bursts in directly presenting the audience with material that they do not always want. Moreover, it has gained great momentum in recent times as a result of new consumer and communication trends.

If you bet on useful connections to solve real problems, you are on the attraction marketing wave. Now, get ready, because today we are going to tell you about the most recent changes in the Inbound universe. Remember how to create a complete Inbound Marketing strategy through our guide (here we leave you the link).

whatever your goal, here you will find all the details you need to know to improve your digital strategy in the coming year, making it generate value for your community and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Are you ready?

3 things INBOUND 2021 has left us with

There are many formulas, templates and tips on Inbound and they are free, but they are useless if you don't have a method to get to that point where your head clicks and you can clearly see what your audience needs to hear to convince them.

That's why, every year, we attend the biggest Inbound Marketing event held by HubSpot, either remotely or in person. This year, we have attended some of their most interesting virtual conferences with professionals from the sector.

we tell you what they are!

1. Changes in HubSpot's CRM (Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, co-founders of HubSpot, and Christopher O'Donnell, Head of Product)

HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah launched the latest developments in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to the world, and were joined later in the conference by Chief Product Officer Christopher O'Donnell to give the green light to what's new in the software.

Here are the most important changes:

• Increased customer focus

You already know that the customer is the most important part of any business. Now, HubSpot's CRM is even more consumer-focused with features such as: personalised surveys (the customer will feel valued and listened to during all stages of the buying cycle), customer portals (manage and query support tickets, knowledge base analytics and service experience monitoring) and native payment processing (payment links can be embedded in emails, websites, quotes or live chats).

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou

• More connected

The latest CRM updates (including the new Operations Hub Enterprise software) will align your data to optimise reporting. The result? A much cleaner, more connected database that reduces errors and headaches. Your customers will be happy from the very first minute, as well as creating a pleasant user experience. As the company itself points out, "in 2021, more than 50 new built-in data synchronisation integrations have been launched with some of the most in-demand tools, such as NetSuite, AirCall and Xero".

With the new updates, there are no longer any barriers to building bespoke reports from all the data collected in your CRM (contacts, campaigns, events, custom objects, etc.).

"Get closer than ever to your customers - so close, in fact, that you can tell them what they need before they know it themselves " - HubSpot.

• More personalisation

Surprising your customers will be easier than ever. HubSpot's CRM offers all the flexibility you need to meet your needs and those of your customers: "allows account managers to easily customise and design their HubSpot account, leverages business units to seamlessly manage multiple brands in a single portal, uses best-of-breed partnerships to tailor the CRM to how the business operates, and implements a new set of administrator roles to seamlessly manage users".

• Further plans for the future

HubSpot has also announced a number of product plans in upcoming releases:

• Sales Hub- an exceptional experience for the sales team, advanced enterprise features (custom data structures and tools to better manage user roles and permissions) and management of the entire sales process, from the moment a person first visits the website to when payments are made.
• Marketing Hub: Further business expansion with powerful and intuitive tools, marketing team alignment and performance optimisation.
• CMS Hub- CRM-enabled websites for all growing businesses (creating personalised content for each visitor), easy management of marketing content at scale, and improved development team expertise to design digital experiences.
• Service Hub: Optimising customer communications, improving team efficiency and expanding customer relationships.
• Operations Hub: Grow and integrate your resources quickly, flexibly adapt your business process and provide clearer information and a more informed perspective.
• Developer Platform: More and better functionality (from creating the digital experience to connecting technical tools and internal processes), a unified experience to create anything, and support at every stage of the process.

"Style is a way of saying who you are without having to speak " - Rachel Zoe

Before we move on to the next topic, we'd like to ask you something: Would you like to grow with HubSpot? We'd be very happy to hear from you.

2. How to use video in Sales (Tyler Lessard, Head of Video at Vidyard)

In a world of remote business, video is no longer an option, but a must-have tool for sales professionals. It's true that many companies have discovered during the COVID-19 pandemic the benefits of video conferencing tools like Zoom, but very few salespeople know how to make and share personalised videos to deliver key messages or explain what they do to their audience.

Vidyard's Head of Video, Tyler Lessard, told us through his virtual room how to succeed with video in sales and how to be confident in front of the camera. Below, we've put together the top questions the video guru provided answers to at INBOUND 2021.

• how does bespoke video influence the buying cycle?

"72% increased, 24% stayed the same, 5% decreased. Most people think of video as an engaging way to get attention, but videos are also the best way to educate a customer, to schedule a live meeting (by sending a short demo video) and to walk the user through a response. It's part of the sales process. What's more, it serves to help the user move through the buying cycle."

As Lessard points out, "at any time, we can book a call for next week, and instead of writing a long email explaining why or summarising the key points of the meeting, what can you do?

1. Open your screen share.
2. Record the response.
3. Guide the user.
4. Send the video.

As a result of the bespoke videos recorded during the buying cycle, salespeople create a better customer experience with the company. In the end, the team is investing time and effort in recording personalised videos tailored to each stage of the sales cycle, so they expect to generate a better experience as well as productivity. This is very interesting because "many of us think of video as cumbersome and slow, but when you use it effectively, it can save a huge amount of time".

• at what point in the sales cycle is it most beneficial to use video?

While many people use it as a way to get their audience's attention, many salespeople are getting high response rates by using it to reach their prospects. However, Lessard believes that "video is actually more impactful at other stages of the sale". For example:

• Before and after a meeting with a prospect. "It's likely that many sales reps, or yourself, are sending an email to remind your prospect that you have a meeting.And it's also very likely that you're sending a recap and summary email afterwards.Instead of doing the same old thing, you can hit the record button and make a video.It's much more effective to send a piece in the 3 or 4 minutes after the meeting than to send a text-heavy email.Keep in mind that the video is not just for the person you met with, but also for partners who couldn't attend.It will be much more effective to watch a video summary of a few minutes than an hour-long meeting."
  
• When you are sending a sales proposal: "Not only should you send an attachment, you should also record a short video to tell the highlights, as well as go over the key points. Explain in your own words why to buy from you or why you have included some points in your proposal".

• how can a small marketing studio make an efficient video strategy?

"One of the biggest challenges with video is that it seems inefficient and expensive to create. Lessard says that "companies have people in their teams who can write blog posts all day long, but making a video is often seen as inefficient, as they need a team ready for it. And if not, they need to hire an inbound marketing agency.

Based on this, he believes that "marketing teams need to be able to create videos, ads and great designs", noting that this should be the next step for marketing teams that don't yet have video specialists. He says: "go to YouTube and look for a simple tutorial on how to do basic video editing". However, if you want to create great, impactful pieces, let an agency do it for you.

• tips for sending videos from HubSpot?

Send videos through HubSpot (video module of the drag-and-drop email editor) and keep in mind the following tips from Lessard: make sure you have the thumbnail image for the video in the email (a picture is worth a thousand words), make sure you have a real person in that thumbnail and use bold. When someone sees the thumbnail image with a video button, they are much more likely to click on it).

• how to create an impressive video pitch?

• Use video to bring your message to life- it's not just about reading, because the same thing you've written in an email, you can do on camera; your personality has the power to amplify the message you're giving; the visual nature of video allows you to show something rather than just say it; you can even record your screen to show something that complements or enriches that message .
• Show an opportunity for the user to click the play button. If you had read X information in an email, you wouldn't have clicked, and the reverse is also true, so put yourself in the user's shoes and think about what is the best message to get them to click on your piece .
• Make short videos. Try to make short videos when targeting prospects you don't have a relationship with yet (45 to 60 seconds). As you progress with the user, you can start to take the liberty of sending longer videos to explain things clearly or answer questions.

3. where to focus first, content or audience? (Stuart Balcombi, CEO of Procket, Kristen LaFrance, Community Manager at Repeat, and Connor Cirillo, Head of Customer Experience at Carro)

When a company is in a growth phase, there is never enough time or resources to do it all. So where to focus first: content outreach or community relationships? Kristen LaFrance, Stuart Balcombi and Connor Cirrillo have seen first-hand what happens when companies choose one or the other. Here are the key takeaways from this conference:

• When we talk about content, we quickly think of blog posts, but content is anything written or spoken by a company to its consumers, so it includes many different things.
  
• Many companies simply follow the trends of other businesses to be benchmarks, but that gets in the way of them delivering to the audience what they really need. Sometimes their communities require a certain type of content, so before they generate blog posts, social media copy, send emails, generate eBooks, etc., they need to listen to the concerns, needs and problems of the people they are targeting.
  
• First you need to focus on the community to understand their needs and then deliver the appropriate content, being empathetic with them and putting yourself in their shoes to know what they need at all times.
  
• The most important thing when creating content is to deliver value to the audience. However, many companies forget to solve their customers' problems and are not aware of it. Moreover, they spend too much time writing content, but too little time thinking about how they are going to distribute it. In short, many businesses do not exploit content marketing as they should.
  
• The most common mistakes companies make in their content strategy are: lack of listening, lack of empathy, writing without knowing the potential customer, their problems and concerns, lack of value and lack of consumer orientation.

"We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we talk" - Connor Cirillo

Inbound's key findings for 2022 - let's practice what we've been told!

Only that which evolves is capable of generating noise. The novelties gathered in this post on Inbound Marketing strategies are not only the reflection of a methodology that continues to advance, but also the new keys that are added to marketing to achieve success.

At Occam Digital Agency, we are specialists in this methodology, we trust in its fruits and we have the services that brands currently need to improve their results: from web design, Inbound landing in their business (with their respective phases and onboarding), definition of the buyer persona, monitoring of the buyer journey and website audit, to the management of social networks, content marketing (keyword research, writing, publishing and distribution), video marketing strategy, analysis and measurement of the results of the strategy.

If you have read this post carefully, we can assure you that you are already halfway there. What cannot be measured, cannot be improved. And what is not improved, falls into oblivion.

make your corporate wishes for the new year and let them come true with Inbound!