Hello everybody. Welcome to Inbound. I'm Yamini and I work at HubSpot and I'm so glad that you're here this week. You know, this Inbound is extra special for me. There's just a certain kind of energy that you only find in San Francisco.
And I have my family and my friends here for the first time watching me live. A little extra pressure for me. San Francisco is unlike any other city. This is where founders pitch startups in line at Starbucks, where people prototype on the back of napkins, and you hear the word moonshot multiple times before lunch.
Here, innovation is just the way of life, which makes this the perfect place for all of us to connect, to figure out where technology is heading and where we all as humans fit in. Speaking of which, do you ever hear a question that just stops you in your tracks? One of those very human questions. You know, it just happened to me.
We were dropping off our son in college two weeks ago. Big milestone. And like any kid his age, he had questions for me. Am I going to make friends? How often should I call home? And do I really need to separate my lights and darks when doing laundry?
And like any parent, I had answers. Of course, you're going to make friends and call at least once a week if you want us to pay your bills. And laundry? No, just don't ruin your nice shirts. But then he asked me a tougher question. What should I learn if I want a great future?
I paused because that's a question not about college. It's a question about how we all stay relevant, where we fit in, about feeling a bit rudderless in the world of AI, not knowing where we're going to be in four months, let alone four years. You know that pause, that uncertainty, that is the moment that we're all in. Not just as parents, not just as professionals, but as people.
With AI, we're not just adapting to a new technology. We are questioning human value. What is our role? What is AI's? What does our job look like in three years, our teams? And what do we tell our kids today so they're ready for their careers tomorrow? Big questions.
Now, in every technology wave before — PCs, internet, mobile — we have adapted to that technology and we've scaled, but we've never questioned human value. Now we do. It feels very personal, right? And a bit unsettling. And that's because this moment is not just about human productivity. It is about human identity. Not what we do, but who we are and how we grow.
And just as we are grappling with all of these big questions in life and at work, let's think about our customers. Well, they are grappling with this too and they're trying to grow. Our customers are not on some neat, predictable path to growth. They are fighting noise, chaos, and an overwhelming sense of pressure. And that is because the growth playbook that we all followed, it's not working anymore.
So, how did that happen? But more importantly, what do we do next? Well, to find answers, we got to rewind. Rewind all the way back to the early days of the internet. Now, the internet made information searchable. So buyers searched and sellers like us, we built strategies to attract them to our websites. That playbook was straightforward. It was simple and it was called inbound.
And at HubSpot, we know that playbook better than anybody because we wrote it. Now that playbook moved our customers through the funnel. We drove awareness through brand. We created content. We optimized that content for search. And when buyers searched, they clicked and they landed on our website. We collected their emails. We sent them even more content. And we nurtured them as leads. And if we did all of that right, they became our customers.
But now this funnel, it looks completely different. The top of the funnel, awareness, has scattered. Buyers are on TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, everywhere. Podcasts. They are swiping, scrolling, switching apps every few seconds. Buyers used to start with your content on your website. Now they are everywhere but your website.
And now the middle of the funnel with consideration, that is broken. Buyers would click and get to your content. Now AI overviews, they're providing the answers at the top of every search. 60% of Google searches end up in zero clicks. Zero. That is why your organic traffic is down. It's so bad that people are calling it the traffic apocalypse. Your content isn't broken. But that link from search to your blog, it's just gone. And that's a big shift and it's going to accelerate from here.
Now, here's the silver lining. The bottom of the funnel with conversion, it is transforming. AI is making it much easier to get to know your customers better and it can map the intent of those customers to the information they need. And that means buyers get content that feels personal, contextual, relevant, content that converts.
So in short, the funnel isn't flowing because that playbook has played out. Awareness was centralized, now it's dispersed. Traffic was abundant, now it's shrinking. And conversion was slow, now it's actually fast and AI-assisted. So, if you're all sitting there thinking like George Costanza, 'every decision I've ever made my entire life has been wrong,' well, don't worry. You're not alone.
Here's the truth. Content still matters. And focusing on your customers still matters. But like George here, it is time for us to try something different. All right, where do we go? Well, we did what we always do here at HubSpot. We talked to customers, many of you, and we launched pilots and we dug into the data and we put all of that together to create something completely new, a growth playbook built for the AI era. And we're calling that playbook the loop.
This is not static. It's not linear. It's dynamic. Always learning and always evolving. And at the center of the loop is a new kind of partnership between humans and agents. Each doing what they do best. Okay. Let me walk through the loop in four steps.
You start by expressing who you are. You got to define your taste, your tone, your point of view before you bring in AI. Then you have to tailor that message to your customers. You got to use AI to make those interactions feel very contextual, personal, relevant. And then you amplify to meet your customers where they are. And you diversify your content across multiple channels. And then finally, you evolve in real time. You iterate effectively and quickly with AI.
This is the new growth playbook. Human authenticity with AI's efficiency. Yeah. Now, let me break it down: what it is, how it works, and how it can drive your growth. And you start by expressing who you are before you create any content.
Look, AI can generate content in a matter of seconds, of course, but if it does not have a clear point of view, that content will be bland, off-pace, otherwise known as spam. And that is exactly what you get when you give AI a directionless prompt. You know, it is like typing 'restaurant' into your GPS and driving to the very first restaurant it suggests. Now, a better prompt would have taken you to the best Indian restaurant in San Francisco, which by the way is Copra. You got to check it out. Yeah.
And instead, you will land in Bob's House of Spinach. Not where you want to be. This is why Express matters so much. It makes AI work for you, not the other way around. So, how do you express? Well, you start by defining your ideal customer profile. You got to get really specific: their taste, their goals, their challenges, their intent. And then you define your voice and your tone. You got to create a style guide and the brand guide that AI can work with.
And then you test your content. Does it sound like you? Does it actually resonate with the audience that you're trying to reach? Now, many of you here already know how to build an ideal customer profile. You've been doing it for many years. So, the question is, how do you define your voice? How do you stand out?
Let me give you a personal example. So I use AI every day, every hour to write board memos, strategy updates, even this keynote. Now the number of em-dashes on this thing was just out of control. But I never start with AI. I start with my voice and my tone and my thoughts. So, I've created a style guide that represents who I am that I give to AI. And it goes like this.
Be clear. I'm direct. Ask anybody who has been on a Zoom meeting with me. Be curious. I ask a lot of questions, so I'm not going to write like I have all the answers. And then here's a difficult one for LLMs. Be human. Write like a real person. No jargon, please. In fact, my team created a Yamini jargon detector to catch all of the buzzwords before I see them. And then be concise. No fluff. And certainly no em-dashes for me.
Now, this is the guide and the foundation of everything that I create with AI. I'm not letting AI replace my voice. I'm using it to reach more people. And that is exactly what our best customers are doing as well. So let's hear from Morehouse College on how they're doing this.
Now, Morehouse College did an incredible job of defining their brand and that is exactly the place to start. When you express who you are, you unlock two big wins. Your content speed goes up and your content cost goes down. And that is exactly what we want for all of our customers. So to recap, the very first step in the new growth playbook starts with something deeply human. Taste, clarity, voice. No LLMs can replace those things because AI needs a point of view and that is the point of view.
Okay. Now that you have expressed who you are, the next step is to tailor the message to your customers. And Tailor is all about making that message feel personal, not just personalized. Now, remember the '90s? Well, if you recognize the picture of George Costanza earlier, then you probably do. You know, back then, 'Dear Yamini' in an email was enough to get my attention. Whoa, they know my name. But now knowing your name or your title, it's just not impressive. It's noise. But AI changes that game.
It lets you treat every single customer like a segment of one and maps their intent to the information that they need to see. So here's the big unlock with AI. It is one-to-one relevance delivered at scale. So how do you tailor? Well, you got to start with data. You have to enrich your data with all of the intent signals. Did your customer check out your pricing page or a competitor, or did they open up a support ticket? All of those are intent signals that tell you what your customer is thinking about right now.
Then you have to craft hyper-targeted messages with AI. So if your customer did check out your pricing page three times, then AI should send a follow-up message. 'Still comparing options? Here's a nice breakdown of the pricing plans,' a nice little nudge. And then through all of it, you stay in the loop and validate the message because nobody knows your product and your message better than you do.
Okay, the thing is, if you do all of this, you get higher engagement with your content. Every marketer's dream here, and it's working for HubSpot and it's working for our customers. So, let's hear from Kelly Services on how they're doing this.
