Embed Yourself In Your Business Community
Introduction
I’m just wrapping up after a really hectic Day Two here at INBOUND in Boston.
I just wanted to empty some of the things out of my head of what I’ve actually learned and done today.
I think the biggest solid takeaway for today is just embedding yourself into this community and learning about all the additional things that small businesses can do to market themselves.
I think when you look at the landscape of small businesses, you’re probably stuck there in your business at the moment and you’re probably thinking about how do I get everything done?
Here’s the good news, you’ve gotta break this down into small pieces and just get something done into some type of organised plan.
That bad news is you ain’t ever, ever, ever going to be able to get it all done.
That is the situation for the technology and the speed that it’s moving forward.
I’ve just sat in this session about artificial intelligence and how software is writing subject lines or blog articles.
Some of that’s not fully mapped out and developed yet, but it’s certainly on the roadmap and there are some tools in there that can do automated artificial intelligence based on your audience.
The age-old question of what comes after email?
The New Email
Yesterday, the guys at HubSpot were talking, emails not going away, emails not going to die.
- The next thing is the messengers.
- The next thing is the chatbots.
- The next thing is instant messaging, and if you look at how we communicate, what’s in his hands?
Facebook messenger’s open all the time.
Chatbots, WhatsApp, things like that, that’s really where it’s at.
The amount of technology that you’re going to need to be able to meet your customer’s where they are, they aren’t bothered that you’re out Monday to Friday nine while five.
They want to talk to you when they want to talk to you, and there’s a session today that Dharmesh Shah, the founder of HubSpot, actually did.
He said, make yourself available as a business through live chat, through automated messenger bots and things like that.
Ultimately, that’s really where it’s going to be at, so I just wanted to have a bit of a ramble on it, talk about some things, and really get you thinking about how you’re serving your customers.
- Is it easy for your customers to work with you?
- Is it easy for your customers to buy off of you?
- Is it easy for your customers to communicate with you?
Artificial intelligence and chatbots, if you don’t already have those on your radar, get those on your radar, for sure, and that’s going to help you go from there.
Inbound Day Two
So, this is Day Two.
It’s been a bit of a crazy one as they say.
We had a 14 to 15 hour day.
A session yesterday, learning all about the new features in HubSpot and I’ll be doing some more bits and bobs about that stuff for the existing client base and audience base, and how we can overlay that over things like Infusionsoft or Money Social, really get you some strong analytics.
This is the big thing that I’ve taken out of it, and the closed-loop reporting where we could start to tie up sales and marketing together to really find out what’s working and what’s not.
So, we could track how much you’re spending on marketing and how much you’re not to really get that going.
But the key takeaway is, go and find out about chatbots.
Search chatbots, search automated bots.
There’s a great site called GrowthBot.com that Dharmesh Shah, the founder of HubSpot, started, so I’d recommend that you go and check that out.
Of course, if there are any questions you’ve got about the latest trends in tech and digital marketing, leave me a message below.
I’d be more than happy to get that answered for you, distribute it throughout the team, get some specialists on it, let’s see if we could help you and get going.
Keynote Speaker: Michelle Obama
So, thanks for joining us.
I really appreciate it guys, and we’re gonna do a few more of these while we’re out here.
We’re out here for the rest of the week, and a little bit of excitement for tomorrow, keynote speaker, 9:00 a.m., is Michelle Obama.
So we’re going to be up nice and early to get here, get a prime seat.
The security here is already tight.
We’ve got metal detectors on the doors and everything.
So, no doubt, that’s going to be a fairly strict event in the morning.
But, looking forward to seeing Michelle Obama, see what her life story is and what pearls of wisdom she can share.
