(121) Marketing is Broken - This is the Future of Conversions (Loop Framework) - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqeMCk0Mx9U

Transcript: (00:00) Hey everyone, if you're a business owner, if you're a marketer, you know that things have gotten really hard over the last year to two years. Marketing feels tougher than ever before. Well, today we are here to save the day. We are rolling out a brand new marketing playbook at HubSpot that we're going to break down for you on today's show. (00:17) It's going to give you tactical frameworks and tactics to go and succeed in marketing in the AI world. I can't wait to get started and share it with you all. Let's get into today's show. [Music] Hey everyone, on this episode of Marketing Against the Grin, we have a very, and I mean very special episode because we are dropping a brand new marketing playbook for the AI world. (00:41) Uh, I'm joined by the one and only Asia Frost from HubSpot. Welcome to the show, Asia. Thanks, Kit. Excited to be here. And we are going to talk to you about something that I think Asia people talk to us about every day. And that subject is basically like AI broke my marketing. It's like things were going really well and then over the last year things started going less well and less well and less well and a lot of things have broken for the average marketer out there which kind of precipitates the need to do marketing in a different way. (01:14) But before we talk about that new wave want to break down so make sure we're all on the same page like what is actually broken in marketing. So Asia, I want to kick off with you to help us break down what are the parts of marketing that have actually just been broken by AI. Yeah, I think first there is way less traffic going to websites than ever before. (01:37) A stat that we've been talking about internally a lot is that 60% of Google searches now end without a click, which if you just take a second to reflect on is actually pretty bonkers. That means 6 in and 10 people who make a search are stopping on Google as an all-time high. And so a lot less traffic is going to websites. (01:58) We also see that a lot more people are going to places like chatbt and claude to really begin their evaluation journey for products. So you have fewer people going to websites from Google. You have fewer people going to Google. And then I think on top of that, you have a bunch of people who are now spending a lot more time on places like Reddit and Kora and LinkedIn. (02:20) They're starting their journey with AI and then they're turning to other people. And so the net is that if you're just relying on educational content to bring people to your website so they find out about your product, you're probably in a lot of pain right now. you have the numerator and the denominator changing at the same time, which if you're a marketer is a uh it's it's a scary phenomenon. (02:46) It's a terrifying phenomenon. And most of the marketers I'm talking to, they're spinning on advertising at break even. They're losing 10 to 20, 30, 40% of their website traffic largely to these search disruptions. But some of it's coming from, oh well, now I'm just sending way more email and so people are engaging with my email less. (03:07) So my email referral traffic's less, you know, it's like all of these kind of cascading factors that are just like compounding on top of each other, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. I think you see the disruption in search and so you turn to other channels, you amp up your investment in those other channels, but everyone else is doing the same thing. (03:27) So now you are getting less return from those channels too. And to your point, it's just having this kind of precipitating or a compounding effect. So what's happening is that you have changes to search traffic. You have changes because of those changes search traffic, searches to paid and affiliate marketing and a lot of the traditional online advertising that people are doing. (03:54) Then you have an over reliance for both marketers and salespeople to send more and more email. And because they're sending more and more email, the engagement rates on those emails are getting worse and worse. And this is basically like a mini marketing armageddon, right? And the average marketer that I'm talking to is like, what the heck do I do about this? and Asia. (04:17) One of the the things that I want to set up for marketers is that it used to be in the core inbound marketing era where you had a ton of control of getting more visits to your website and it was really hard to change the conversion rate of those visits, the percent of people who came to your website that actually became customers. (04:37) In this new post a AI era, I would posit to you that that's flipped. It's harder to get visits, but it's easier to convert the those visits. Do you agree? And if you do agree, kind of how have you seen that come true? Yeah, I think that that's exactly right, Kip. And it's what we've seen at HubSpot. There are fewer people coming to the website, but a those people are higher intent. They're more qualified. (04:59) They're more educated. And because of what we're able to accomplish with AI, we can personalize and tailor their experience on our site to a degree that has never been possible before. We have been able to do some really, really cool stuff with conversion rate optimization and tailored content. If those are the problem statements, but we're seeing some glints of opportunity. (05:25) Hey, there's this new AEO search thing, there's this ability to use AI to really do really amazing personalization. Then what I would posit to everybody watching the show today is that there is a path forward. There is a new hope for marketers who want to transform and want to evolve. (05:47) And you know at HubSpot we pioneered this notion of inbound marketing almost 20 years ago now. And that inbound marketing was this very kind of linear process that involved really creating content, attracting people through search and then using even even richer content to convert those people into leads for your business. (06:06) At its most basic level that's what it was about. Now, I would pause it to you that it's very important to still do those things, but it's no longer sufficient. It's no longer enough to do just the classic inbound marketing. And that the internet and the world we live in is far more dynamic. It's not this linear path. (06:27) It's very ciruitous and there's lots and ins and outs and loops and circles of how people behave online. And so, Asia, what we want to do today is kind of set people up for a new way to think about growing through their marketing. And we think this new way, which we're going to talk to you about, is has has a few core benefits. (06:46) And I'd love it if you could break down like if you're adopting the model that we're showing or any new marketing model, what are the core benefits that the average marketer, marketing leader should out be out there looking to get? And before I do that, Kip, I think you said something really important, which is there are these glints of hope. (07:06) We talked about this on the last episode I was on, but we both feel that this is the most exciting and opportunityfilled era of marketing that we have had in a long time. And that is because change breeds opportunity. So if you heard Armageddon and you're like, WTF is happening, just know that this is where it gets good. (07:29) Like this is the this is the montage in the movie where interesting cool stuff starts happening. So Asia, I I will I will say though, you and I have already been through the trough of despair. Like we've been through the dark place and we're out the other side to optimism. I understand if people are watching this are still down in the dark place and haven't haven't fully gotten out with us yet. (07:48) Yeah, we are speaking to you from the other side. We have clasped hands and made it through the trough of sorrow and and rest assured there is a green meadow. uh beckoning from the other side. Um so so yeah, so let's talk about some of those things. I mean faster go to market, I don't think that's a surprise to anyone listening to this. (08:06) It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone listening to this. If you're not using AI to accelerate how quickly you bring assets, campaigns, ideas uh live that is where you should be starting new marketing methodology or not. Um to the point that we are just making conversion rates we are seeing huge huge improvements here uh improvements in conversion rate right and we've been investing in a lot of these programs our email our our web page content for decades literally since we had a website so to see that level of conversion rate improvements at this (08:46) stage of the game is it's absolutely bananas. Um we are also seeing obviously as we are getting content to market faster and and bringing campaigns to market faster that yes that is reducing costs. In addition as we diversify through channels we are able to bring those costs down because obviously if you're super reliant on one or two channels you're going to be spending in less efficient territory. (09:15) the more you diversify, the less uh or the the more you'll be able to reduce spend across those channels. Look, we just released our new Loop marketing playbook with a prompt library, and it's everything you need to market in this AI world. Inside, you'll find over 100 AI prompts that walk you through each stage of our loop marketing method. (09:37) These prompts will help you spot growth opportunities hiding in plain sight. Get it right now. Scan the code or grab it at the link in the description. Now, let's get back to the show. And then last, this is this kind of like abstract idea, but this idea of continuous optimization that the more you do, the smarter the system becomes. I think that this is an area where AI really shines. (10:02) Um, and it it's very much something that we've been able to see like those conversion rates, those actually compound because the more we do experimentation, the better all of our systems become. Um, so that was like a speedun through some of the main benefits, but Kib, what are you most excited about? First of all, I think you're really right to call out that we are entering a period of extreme optimism for marketing. (10:27) It just doesn't feel like it yet. Um, one of the things I've learned in life is you don't get to the the good fun optimism side of things without some pain first. And we're in that pain period for sure. But here here's what I'm excited about. Great marketing has always and will always be can I do I have a compelling story that I can share and tell through a method or channel that's not super crowded and saturated and can I do that over and over and over again to get better and better at it to compound how good the results I get are. (11:04) And what's great with loop marketing, which is the new playbook that we are rolling out today, is it makes it easier than ever before to do those things, right? And it helps you take advantage and compound faster. Like I remember Asia when inbound marketing started, one of the things we tell people is like, hey, you got to trust us. (11:26) You got to do this for like six months and then you'll start getting a lot of great results. Now in in the loop marketing era, you can do things and get results in minutes, hours, days, not weeks and months, right? And that is a massive point of optimism for me. That is such a good call out. Yeah, that used to be a real hurdle. (11:47) You'd have to say trust me for six months. That's a really long time to trust someone. Exactly. Uh so there's not there's less of like going out on a limb and trust and more it's it's more about can I get clarity of what I'm doing. The re one of the reasons Asia we wanted to roll out loop marketing today and we we we're doing that at HubSpot's inbound event that is happening today in San Francisco. (12:13) we recording this a few days beforehand is that it is a transformational opportunity and that every marketer I talk to Asia is the same thing my CEO wants me to do AI marketing I don't know what stuff to do and what tools to do it with and we want to solve that problem and we want to help the world solve that problem so we can all be in a better place and so Asia Um, I've got up here on the screen for everybody watching on YouTube our loop and this is like our very simple playbook framework for how you actually (12:53) do marketing in this post AAI world. You you can go to loopmarketing.com and get a very detailed version. Asia and I are also going to record an incredibly tactical version of the loop at live at inbound that we'll be publishing on the channel next week that's going to go into each of these stages in real detail. (13:15) But today we wanted to define the problem and really give you kind of the baseline framework so that you can start to think about it, start to absorb it. So Asia, maybe you can walk through the core stages of the loop with everybody and and give somebody and and give folks that are watching kind of a practical example of what they would do at each one of these stages of the framework. (13:37) Yeah, that sounds great. So if you could if you're watching this, you'll see that there are four phases of the loop. Express, tailor, amplify, and evolve. I've spent a lot of time thinking about which phase is my favorite and it might be express. That's a hot take. I know. I know. I want to hear yours, Kip, but uh Express is where you bring your brand identity and voice and taste to life. (14:06) Now, we talk a lot about how taste is the great differentiator in the age of AI because that's what makes your brand feel authentic and resonant. And so this is where you really express that taste before you start to add AI to the picture and start to really amplify and optimize. And so a tactical thing that you might do in this phase is put together a style guide for your brand. (14:36) Or, you know, if I'm thinking about Kieran's personal brand, I know he's built a chat GPT project that is very trained on how he talks, what he believes, and that helps him develop LinkedIn content and substack content of the wazoo. Uh, so that's that's an example from Express. Anything you'd add there, Kit? I think what's magic about Express to me is it's not just it's not just your brand, it's also the flip side of it. (15:05) It's like your customers and what they want to hear. And you know, at HubSpot, we have our chat GPT and uh Claude connectors. You can just connect your HubSpot and ask it a bunch of questions about like, hey, I've got this idea. What would my customers think about it? How would I need to word it, frame it, design it for it to resonate with them? And the fact that you could do that without like a big expensive focus group and you could do that in minutes is literally transformational to where we were like just even like two years ago. (15:37) Yeah, that's such a good call out. I just used our uh connector yesterday, the the chatbt connector, and wow, is it so good. Uh, okay. That brings us to Taylor, which I think builds on what you were just talking about, Kip, and the we're going to keep coming back to I think this idea of compounding like every phase is building on the subsequent phases. (16:04) Um, and so in the tailor phase, you are really personalizing that content and those assets for your audience. And with the power of AI, you can make this content feel one to one at scale. So when we're talking about those bonkers conversion rate increases, that's coming from using AI powered personalization to make an email feel like it could have been written for no one but Kit Bodner, CMO at HubSpot, lover of Napa Wine Country. (16:38) Exactly. But that's the but that's the magic of the world we live in. The thing I always telling people about kind of personalization and tailoring it like what we can do now makes the old email personalizations token seem archaic first of all and second of all it's AI is bad at a lot of things. One of the things it's great at is being good at taking educated guesses at problems that don't require a super super precise answer. (17:14) Right? One of the best things that fits that bill is like email or text communication. It's like, hey, I have this thing that I want this person to know about and I just want it to be kind of packaged in a way that they're going to like more so than these other hundred people. And AI, it turns out, is just really remarkable at doing that. (17:32) Yeah. And and writing those lines that are kind of cheesy that take a little nugget of information about someone and make it feel kind of special and funny. Um, a great a great AI use case. So yeah, I would just say on on tailor Asia, we have seen like we said earlier 100% 200% three 400% email engagement, landing page conversion rates, like just really great results with using AI to tailor uh we actually just created rolled out a really amazing email personalization product in HubSpot to do a lot of this tailoring stuff. It's it's (18:09) going to be awesome. Okay, and wait, can I just say something on that? Yeah. One of the questions that we've been getting is, well, how do you know the loop works? And we know the loop works because we've been practicing it internally at HubSpot. So, after seeing these great results, we obviously have been sharing those learnings with our product team and that has led to the development of this dynamic AI email tool. (18:35) And that is, I think, the loop in motion. Totally. We've been grinding on this for a while. It's been t this has been a couple of years in the making and really deep sprint the last six months to like really codify and package everything together in a way that can be really easily understood and applied to any business. Yeah. That being said, Asia, you asked a few minutes ago what my favorite stage is. (18:59) I'm an Amplify guy. I love getting a message out. I love nothing more than getting a message out. And Amplify is all about taking your really quickly and well-created and then personalized content and getting it out to the world. Obviously, the biggest disruption in Amplify is what we talked about early on in the show, the complete change of search and the rise of artificial intelligence engine optimization. (19:28) But there's a whole host influencers, events, uh, social, Reddit, Quora. There's a whole transformation of channels and distribution that is happening in Amplify that is super exciting for marketers. Oh my god, so exciting. I also I could have pegged you as an Amplify guy. Uh, I think that uh the the silver lining of this fragmentation that we started the episode discussing is that there are so many more places for your brand to play. (19:56) And uh I think one idea that everyone can try is asking our chat pt or claude connector, hey, where are some places that my buyers are likely hanging out that I'm not already invested in? Are there some really niche Discord servers that you can be on that no other brand is on? Are there subreddits where you can have a voice where no other brands are having a voice? Like there are so many new ways and places to get your brand message out that didn't really exist in the past. (20:28) My my hot take Asia is that ampl the amplify stage where are where the real ones are. If you're a real marketer, you're creative and you really have that marketing brain. It's amplify is the hardest, but it's really the people who do it well are going to be 10x more successful than everybody else. It's super super interesting. (20:48) I think you just complimented yourself. Did I? Well, no. I said I liked it. I didn't say I was I didn't say I was good at it. I I'm saying I'm trying to get good at the thing that I think is the most important. But I'll take a comment below if you're an amplified person, too. Kip thinks you're a real one. You're a real one like me. (21:06) I'm just trying to be be a real one eventually. Hopefully, one day we'll get there. We're going to get there. And that brings us to evolve. Yeah. Evolve is all about taking your learnings and feeding them back into the system. So making sure that at every stage with every tactics you are not uh you're not taking those static learnings and not doing anything with them. (21:32) You are making sure that every part of your system gets smarter. Yeah. I mean if if you think about it Asia you and I for many years been doing marketing for a long time. We how many like campaign retrospectives, campaign like readouts, you know, I ran this six week campaign and now I'm doing like a month later I'm giving everybody this summary of it, right? That's what we're saying is gone. Like that's the old way. (22:00) When we say evolve, what we mean is like AI enables us to get insights in near real time from the data using natural language to basically like again chat GT integration, our breeze assistant, there's tons of different ways to do it, but to query, ask questions in real time so that one, I can make improvements as my campaign is live so I can get better compounding results in the moment and so that I can as soon as it's done get all those insights instantly instead of taking, you know, days, weeks, months to (22:33) really collect and get all the information. And that allows you to start a new loop, go to the next thing, go to the next asset, the next campaign, much faster with better insights, so that you're going to compound and get even better uh better results the next time you go to express a new campaign or idea. Yeah. (22:55) If if you're having a retro two weeks, let alone two months after something has concluded, you're not you're done now. You're done in the new world. It's just not going to work. We got we things move at AI speed now. And that's that's much faster than the old world. Things move at AI speed. Things move in loops, not lines. I think that is completely true. (23:16) This is our framework. We spent a lot of time working on it. We're really excited to share it with you. Like I said, we're going to be back next week with a deep deep dive into tactical plays for each of these. If you want a preview of some of what we're going to cover, as well as some prompts you can go use, go check out looparketing.com. (23:36) We've got a really awesome page set up that breaks down how to do this. But hopefully the context we provided you on today's show will be helpful in kind of learning and getting started here. Uh, and drop your questions, drop your comments in the the in the YouTube comments below. We'd love to hear what you think. (23:55) Uh, what are you confused about? What are you excited to get going? We'd love to hear from you. Asia, anything else that you want the viewers to take away from the loop before we before we jump. I think that this is the playbook that takes us into the next era. And I think we're both pretty freaking excited about it. (24:14) Yeah, I think this is how really good marketing, especially digital marketing, is going to get done over the next decade. And we couldn't be more excited. And if you are watching this, you are on the very front end of the opportunity. And if you simply just take action and build and do marketing in this new way, you are going to be far more successful than most other marketers out there. (24:35) And that's what you should take away. There's a massive opportunity. We're going to be back with tons of Loop Marketing content and guides and shows over the next few months. But thank you, Asia, for stepping in and joining me today. And thanks everybody. We'll see you real soon on Marketing Against the Grain. This data is wrong every freaking time. (24:55) Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa. I can see the client's whole history. calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago I totally missed. HubSpot grow better.