Marketing Trends & Takeaways from INBOUND 17

By Jenny Lockhart on 10/17/17
Updated on 11/17/21

INBOUND, HubSpot’s truly massive digital marketing conference held in Boston each year, really isn’t what you’d expect.

Mostly because I don’t think any one of us attendees can be totally prepared for the sheer size of the conference. 24,000-plus people from 131 countries . . . it’s a lot of awesome brain power in one place.

And a lot of fun — marketers really know how to throw a party.

INBOUND left us feeling both exhausted (we walked miles around the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center every day!) and motivated to make a difference in our industry.

Three of our team members took on INBOUND 17 this year, and we’re excited to share what we learned. Here’s what each one of us brought back from one of the world’s largest marketing conferences.

Reclaim Creativity

By Rachel Speiser, Creative Content Strategist

Being a Boston first-timer, I approached our time in this historic city with bright eyes and an open mind.

I set out to absorb as much information as I could pertaining to my digital marketing strengths — SEO and content marketing — at INBOUND 17. I had my laptop and speedy note-taking fingers ready to capture insights and new inbound marketing trends.

What I didn’t realize was how inspirational this conference would be!

Outside of the technical aspects of my job (which I have mad respect for), I became reacquainted with what I love most: creativity.

Courageous Creativity

When we create content, it often feels intimidating to come up with new creative solutions and ideas on repeat.

Going through this process of being creative can make you feel like you’re slowing down your rate or your caliber of work. You think too much about the quantity and not so much about the quality.

Piera Gelardi, executive creative director and co-founder of Refinery29, touched on this age-old conflict of quality versus quantity during her keynote speech on courageous creativity.

Piera explained how to apply courageous creativity to your work and life by establishing these three key tenants:

Be the most you. When every member of a creative team brings individual strengths and unique perspectives into the conversation, creative magic happens.

Create the conditions for creativity. Creativity takes cultivation and nurturing. Your environment is key to getting those big ideas out.

Friction creates spark. We shouldn’t shy away from tough conversations and challenges. Breathing life into hard topics can light up the room with amazing ideas.

New SEO Strategies

Creative thinking can be applied to any problem or strategy — including SEO. One creative SEO strategy I became introduced to was the idea of topic clusters.

Instead of a post written about one keyword, a topic cluster groups together multiple pieces of content around high-volume keywords. Topic clusters help establish an SEO lens into the architecture of your website, making it easier for Google to index.

If you want an in-depth look at how this strategy works and how to set it up, read on about the topic cluster SEO strategy.

SEO changes every day. Voice search is on the rise. In fact, 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020, according to ComScore.

When this type of verbal search is done, the user is typically expecting a quick response. Common voice search tools like Google, Siri, and Alexa are striving to provide a user with one clear answer.

Since there isn’t a separate index for voice search, you are expected to work in voice-optimized strategies with online content. Core SEO principles and on-page content marketing will help your voice search results.

The Future of Search

Unfortunately, even if you have awesome content, users might not actually click it. 34% of searches result in no clicks, according to Moz.

People don’t want to visit web pages to find answers, and Google knows this. So instead of pushing out helpful links, Google plucks content from top-performing web pages with high-volume keywords and displays the answer in a featured snippet. Google will only display a featured snippet if it knows for sure that the page contains the desired answer.

FAQ pages are already set up in a question-and-answer format, making them great content for voice search. Another way to create voice optimized content is to take note of common questions your current customers are asking and then build online content supplying the answers they need.

That wraps up the top-level strategies and trends I learned at INBOUND 17.

In summary, my main takeaways are to be brave when creating, establish new SEO strategies whenever possible, and keep looking ahead to the future of search engine and content marketing trends.

Lead with Empathy

by John Nelson, Creative Director

Inbound marketing has always been firmly rooted in empathy.

Instead of interrupting people, we learn about them. Instead of shouting commands, we ask questions. Instead of taking, we give.

And with the tide of technology infusing the marketing world, empathy deserves attention. It’s why so many marketers show up at this conference.

This year, my experience at INBOUND 17 included new tech, old friends, and a motivation to build better relationships with both.

New Technologies

The tactical inbound buzzword for 2017 is “chatbots.” Not only do chatbots promise intuitive experiences for potential customers, they’ll also become more common in the next five years.

At INBOUND, I learned that Taco Bell has gotten ahead of the bot-building curve by creating a $40,000 Slackbot, which has already sold millions of dollars’ worth of tacos.

In my view, it’s this sort of playful application that will tow marketing into a more automatically efficient future. We’re already brainstorming about chatbots in our creative meeting this week.

And while your business might not have $40,000 handy for this sort of thing, you should also know that messenger bots have a significantly higher conversion rate than emails, landing pages, search ads, or Facebook ads. Plus, quick-serve restaurants like Taco Bell also gain more revenue from orders placed online versus in person.

Another important technological advancement is the growth of the “screenless internet.” According to one presenter, 30% of online interactivity will be screenless by 2020. Hello, Alexa!

As a team leader, I’m torn by these technologies. I can’t wait to launch something like a voice-assistant bot for an auto dealer, but there is plenty of legwork needed in order to equip the 9 Clouds creative team with the right tools for the job.

Ditching screens will certainly be a healthy move for society, though, and we’ll be there when it happens.

The future is bright. Right, Siri?

People First

To be clear: I’m not complaining about these new gadgets or the task of relating tech to real-work application back in Sioux Falls. Any leadership position has its rewards, and I’m constantly rewarded by my fellow crew members, who are willing to indulge and learn about these interesting concepts — albeit without having to travel all the way to Boston.

The open-mindedness of my team and the new opportunities with inbound marketing excite me and bring meaning to my work as a creative director.

As I learned from Rand Fishkin, great teams need great environments built upon trust, and we need to build meaning into our work by making things we’re proud of.

To build upon that note, Dharmesh Shah instilled the need to align our personal “vectors” as a team — a concept he learned directly from one of my other nerd heroes: Elon Musk. Our success is well under our control, and it’s up to all of us to keep it in focus.

This year’s INBOUND also reconnected me with friends from places like Houston and South Africa, and — because Rachel and Jenny were there — I was able to better understand our vision and direction as a team at 9 Clouds. It clarified and validated where 9 Clouds sits in the pantheon of inbound marketing agencies.

After all, the inbound movement is about putting people first. It feels good to talk shop with someone from halfway around the globe, and INBOUND is the perfect place to make those connections that lend perspective to your professional life.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to return to Boston for this event. Now, I’m excited to apply what I learned to build positive results for 9 Clouds and our clients.

Build Honest Relationships

by Jenny Lockhart, Project Management Director

The world has felt really uncertain for a lot of Americans in the past few months, especially in light of several natural disasters.

Empathy for your customers should carry through when the fires are out and the water recedes.

Brené Brown echoed this sentiment, on a personal level, in her opening keynote at INBOUND.

Hate is hard to sustain up close, she told us, and she saw this firsthand after Hurricane Harvey hit her hometown of Houston. No one was checking for party affiliations or voter registration during the rescue.

Brené is an incredible storyteller, and this was an emotional presentation for a lot of us in the audience. Her presentation keeps coming back to me, well after the conference.

Image credit: Roketto

Moments of Humanity

When the devastation in Las Vegas happened soon after our time in Boston, my first thoughts were of the EMTs, police officers, and firefighters who responded to that mass shooting. You can bet none of them stopped to ask about party lines or thoughts on controversial social issues.

That was a moment of pure humanity.

Brené advocated for us to find those moments of humanity outside of disaster, and now I’m looking for those opportunities in my own life. I hope you, too, can find more chances to smile at a stranger or strike up conversation with a neighbor without wondering about the differences that divide you.

Many of the other sessions I attended at INBOUND 17 circled back to relationships. Even a talk on ROI really focused on building trust with clients.

And all the while, I kept thinking of Brené. Whether it’s with a business or a best friend, we all just need to communicate with a little more honesty and empathy.