We're excited to announce that Dani Buckley will be speaking at INBOUND 2017! 

Recently, I stepped into my third year of serving on the board for the Northwest Florida Coast Chapter of Florida’s Public Relations Association (and my fifth year as a member). Prior to joining the LeadG2 team, my background was heavy in public relations and digital communications, and I’ve found that background has been invaluable as I’ve moved into inbound marketing and content management. In August, FPRA hosted its 70th Annual Conference in Orlando, and I had the opportunity to attend for my first time.

As the Content Manager for LeadG2, my opinion on how public relations and inbound marketing are related (in many ways, but obviously not identical) and go hand-in-hand was reinforced session after session at the conference. Below are four things I learned (or knowledge that was reinforced about inbound marketing at a public relations conference.

In just a little over a week, we'll be heading to Boston for HubSpot's annual INBOUND conference. We're excited about what we'll learn and the ideas that are always generated at this fantastic event! Over 300 educational sessions and highly-anticipated keynotes are on the agenda, and we can't wait. Here are a few things that our team is looking forward to.

I will admit that marketing runs deep in my veins, but this weekend something happened that made me think… “Have we as marketers crossed the line?”

This time of year, many organizations start turning their attention to 2018. Why don't they wait until January? What’s the rush? These organizations understand that setting goals isn’t enough. Growing their business and meeting revenue targets requires planning. Goals without a plan are just wishes. If you wait until January to start planning, then you’ll already be behind. Now is the time to put your sales and marketing strategy under the bright lights and give it a thorough assessment.

But what’s that assessment look like? What should you be reviewing? What questions should you be asking? Every organization is different, but here are a few topics you should cover and a few questions that will get your discussion started. 

The need for quality case studies has never been more important then it is right now. B2B companies everywhere are encountering more and more competition to earn the business and attention from their prospects and even current clients. The business they are pursuing are evaluating the products and services they're selling and making buying decisions based more and more on the research they have access to as well as the knowledge they can learn from others past successes.

Everyone fears change to some degree. There’s a psychological reason why the thought of shaking things up at work makes us nervous, and why we’re uncomfortable transitioning to new systems. Psychologist and researcher Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, explains that humans are wired to avoid change.

Fear of Change Hurts Us

But fear of change hurts us, because the world is changing. Consumers have access to new technologies. B2B buyers have choices they didn’t used to have. People are evolving and adapting their buying habits. They take advantage of voicemail and caller ID, and their eyes have become trained to focus only on what they have to. They’re listening to what their peers have to say about their business challenges (and about the companies who sell solutions to those challenges) on social media.

This September 25-28^th, the LeadG2 team will be attending HubSpot’s INBOUND 2017 conference at the Convention & Exhibition Center in Boston, MA. We’ll be joined by thousands of marketing and sales professionals who are seeking better ways to engage their markets and grow their businesses. Last year over 19,000 people from 92 countries attended over 300 educational sessions.  

The INBOUND conference is NOT a user’s conference. HubSpot is the largest sponsor, but you don’t have to be using any of HubSpot’s Growth Stack products (HubSpot Marketing, CRM and Sales Pro) to derive value from this event. It’s really designed for anyone looking for inspiration and new ideas to grow their revenue. HubSpot’s stated purposes for the INBOUND conference is “to provide the inspiration, education, and connections you need to grow and transform your business.”

At INBOUND, just about everywhere you turn you’ll bump into a learning opportunity, but there are three primary ways you’ll benefit from attending. 

Recently I was talking to a general manager of a radio station who has been following this blog for some time now. For this article, I'll refer to him as Bob. Bob reached out to me because one of his general sales managers who also reads this blog had been telling him that they need to invest in an inbound marketing strategy.

Bob had some interest but he was not convinced he really needed to do inbound marketing. To Bob, inbound marketing just seemed like a way to let salespeople off the hook and not have to do their own prospecting. (This idea could not be more wrong—but more on that in a minute). In addition to the lack of prospecting, Bob looked at inbound marketing as an expense that did not have any sort of ROI, at least in the short run. So, with all that said, Bob asked me if I could convince him that he should do inbound marketing.

After investing in inbound marketing, you’ll want to start doing lead generation and make that investment pay off. There are a lot of moving pieces to do lead generation the right way, and this post is meant to be a primer for those firms looking to pump up their game or those new to inbound marketing.