The 6 Fix: Our Favorite INBOUND16 Sessions

Every year the entire marketing department at Adhere Creative attends INBOUND and we’re the biggest pack of nerds you’ll ever meet. This time we attended the conference with one specific goal in mind: discover the best sessions 2016 had to offer. Specifically, we wanted to find presentations that made us think critically, connect with the speaker, laugh uncontrollably, and maybe shed a tear. Bonus points if a session did all four. It was tough but after spending a total of 3,780 minutes in breakout sessions we narrowed down the list. Get HubSpot excited ya’ll because here are our top 6 presentations:

1. The Tim Urban Spotlight

As the author of the widely popular blog Wait But Why, Tim Urban knows a thing or two about how “not to be shitty on the internet.” From everyday conversation starters to in-depth scientific topics, he covers them all --- marriage, cryogenics, astrophysics, millennials -- you name it. He writes about it all. And despite his use of fourth-grade level stick figure drawings, he’s amassed a huge audience. I am talking big. Almost half a million subscribers to be exact including brilliant folks like Elon Musk.

How you ask this possibly could be?

How you ask? By writing every blog for the  so-called “curious baby.” Sufficed to say, black and white content isn’t going to cut it for today’s audience overloaded with information. To stand out and appeal to the curious baby readers of the world, content needs to have heart and be extremely thorough. However, that is not to say it has to be boring. On the contrary, content for the curious baby also needs to be fun, entertaining, and the opposite of a boring “adult thing.”

In his spotlight session, Tim discussed the parameters on which you should grade your blog and the methods for writing amazingly good content to generate a truly loyal readership. Check out the live recording here.

2. 10 Human Behavior Hacks That Will Change the Way You Email

Since almost every marketer engages in email campaigns, emailing tips have a tendency to become repetitive. I can’t tell you how many emails I've opened containing blogs I’ve read over the past few years with the same “hacks,” almost word for word. Either everyone’s copying each other’s content or we need to start diving a little deeper into the topic. Nancy Harhut offers the deep dive we have all been looking for.

Make your readers actually read

Her presentation begins by explaining a very basic social science notion: as a way to conserve mental energy, humans have developed automotive reflective behaviors in order to make decisions quickly. For example, we automatically say, “bless you” after someone sneezes without thinking. But this concept isn’t exclusive to science. These decision defaults bleed over into our everyday lives and to a certain extent help us to choose what we read, who we trust, and when we buy.

As marketers, we can apply this knowledge to our email efforts and encourage the reader to take our desired action. From words that work like magic in subjects lines, to how to instantly look better than your competition, and the one thing that increases email responses, all the juicy details can be found in Nancy’s breakout session.

3. Missing Ingredient in Women’s Leadership

I know what you’re thinking, this session was probably packed full of touchy feely people wearing girl power t-shirts. You couldn’t be more wrong. Contrary to the mental image you’re conjuring in your mind, Alexa Vernon approached the topic of female leadership using practical and strategic methods backed by tons of scientific data.

	Company inner culture	Tips for creating a company culture that empowers and encourages women currently in leadership and the women aspiring to leadership roles.
	Touch with real world	7 real world competencies every professional woman should develop. Three lines look better than two.
	Gender biases in the workplace	Strategies for disrupting the existing gender biases in the workplace. More text goes here. Lore imprum Donec ut egestas elit.

Whether you’re a woman on the hunt for leadership training or a man who works with women (so basically everyone), this is a must-watch session. This was also one of the only talks at INBOUND that received bonus points for making our team think, connect, laugh, and cry. Here’s what you’ll get by checking it out:

4. How Marketers Can Keep Up With Google in 2017 and Beyond

This presentation was scheduled for the very last session on the last day of INBOUND. As you could imagine, with crazy travel schedules and burnt out attendees, that’s an extremely difficult time slot to fill but this session was PACKED. Which presenter could be so engaging and so worth a standing-room-only crowd? Why, the Wizard of Moz himself of course -- Mr. Rand Fishkin.

If you’re an SEO nerd like us, you’re going to love this one. Google is always changing. I feel like the moment I’ve fully researched and understood the most recent SEO change there’s another one added to the list. In the past two years, there has been a massive amount of algorithm shakeups and it’s impacting the way consumers search.

If you want to see it for yourself, here’s a look at the data:

• Only 1.19% of Google searches in the U.S. results in a paid ad click.
• 49% of searches that resulted in a click go to things that Google owns like YouTube and Maps.
• 40% of all searches result in non-clicks at all. These non-click searches are usually looking for answers that can be found in the Google answer boxes like weather reports, sports scores, and term definitions.
• Almost 2/3 of all traffic on Google goes to the top 10,000 websites.   

Given these numbers, founder and former CEO of Moz, Rand Fishkin, discusses the 5 things marketers must stop doing in the years to come to remain successful. This is a no-fluff presentation with practical ideas backed by successful Moz experiments.

5. Everything You Thought You Knew About Blog CRO is Wrong

Pam Vaughan’s presentation can be summed up in one slide, “the road to mediocrity is paved with best practices.” Spoken like a woman who knows what she’s talking about, am I right? As an optimization-marketing manager at HubSpot, she’s seen her fair share of blog CRO successes and failures. The important thing to note is what works for her may not work for you. However, applying her 9 lessons learned will definitely work in your favor.I won’t give away all of her nuggets of knowledge but...

a few that blew my mind included:

• Blog redesigns won’t solve your problem… Or at least not every time. Ugly blogs can outperform pretty blogs if the right conversion path is presented.
• A small number of posts will generate the majority of your leads. In fact, 81% of all posts published on the HubSpot marketing blog generated zero monthly leads.
• Historical optimization works. 76% of HubSpot’s blog views come from old posts. Update them once a year and you’ll have a gold mine.

6. Price the Client Not the Job

Want to get away from RFPs and in doing so increase business revenue? Spoiler alert, the answers are hiding in this session. Writer of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, Blaire Enns, reveals his secret to doing just that by controlling lead perceptions, positioning your business to offer more value, and calculating the real cost of service. Sounds pretty straightforward enough but this session actually blew our minds!

For firms selling ideas or advice, asking for a higher price can be challenging especially when these two types of services are difficult to monetize. Following Blaire’s strategy removes the complexity from the situation and allows an agency the ability to price based on the individual project or client. And even though this session was originally created for agencies, the material discussed in the presentation could be adapted to fit companies that offer any type of customized service.

If you missed a session at the conference or didn’t find one of your favorites on our list check out HubSpot’s content library for more INBOUND goodness. HubSpot is still in the process of uploading presentation slides and live recordings, so if you can’t find what you’re looking for check back in a few days. If that doesn’t work try making a sacrifice to the marketing Gods (or contacting the INBOUND support line.)