Well, HubSpot's INBOUND 2013 conference is over and done with.  The Cleriti team went, saw, and conquered. We learned how LinkedIn recommends you use their network for content marketing, learned how the HubSpot CMO sets his marketing goals, heard inspiring stories from the folks at charity: water, made lots and lots of new inbound marketing friends, and so much more.

But most importantly, we learned about the key to turning your marketing activities into real digital ROI. It's not by talking about your product more.  Nor is it by joining every new social network.  No, you'll realize maximum digital ROI by thinking about humans.  

Instinctively, we all know this.  We all close pop-ups without even reading what they have to offer, we don't click banner ads, we DVR our shows so we don't have to watch commercials, we barely register the billboards we drive by, and our junk mail goes from our mailbox into the trash can.  We know these things.  And yet as marketers, we've been doing the same old things so long that we have trouble breaking the cycle.

That's what the inbound marketing revolution is going to do - change the way we approach marketing, and change the way our prospects feel about the marketing we do.  

Our goal at Cleriti is to help our clients (who happen to be humans) improve their marketing. We create meaningful content that addresses the "pain points" that our clients' prospects (also humans!) have, help them really connect via social media, and turn website visitors into actionable leads that are truly interested in solutions our clients can offer them.

And we have HubSpot's advanced technology backing us up in the process, making it possible for us to create marketing that people love.  At INBOUND, they unveiled a few new tools that address the "human" element in marketing even further, and we're excited to put them to use.

CONTENT OPTIMIZATION SYSTEM

The problem with websites today is that they don't recognize their visitors as humans. Whether you have a relationship with the company whose webpage you're visiting or not, the website treats you the same.  HubSpot's new Content Optimization System will change that. The COS allows marketers to optimize their websites for people, not anonymous page views. It's the first integrated website, blog and landing page system to recognize the unique needs of visitors and optimize content for each person looking at it.

Brian Halligan, HubSpot co-founder, explains, “The foundation of inbound marketing is the recognition that the way people work, live, shop, and buy has fundamentally changed. Now, in addition to having more information at their fingertips and being more in control than ever, buyers access your company’s website from multiple devices and via multiple channels. Perhaps most important, as their experience with your company grows, the needs of your website visitors, leads, and customers change. Yet the vast majority of marketing treats everyone the same no matter where they are in the lifecycle or how many times they’ve been to your site. Today, we’re giving marketers the tools they need to personalize and transform the experience of their customers. Context truly does change everything, and this is a critical step for personalization that goes far beyond adding a name to an email.”

SOCIAL INBOX

Do you find yourself getting overwhelmed these days with the sheer amount of information and updates you have to sort through on your company's social media channels to find the stuff that really matters? Can you tell the difference between someone who's a lead and someone who's new to your company when they mention or communicate with you on a social media channel like Twitter?  Social Inbox is about to make your life easier.  HubSpot says, "Our vision is for social media to take its rightful place in the company structure, integrated with all the other channels of interaction, and bringing the humans -- not the usernames -- to the center of the interactions."

SIGNALS

The information available to salespeople on prospects that are shopping your products and services via the internet has steadily gotten better over the years.  We've gone from virtually nothing, to being able to know that a prospect has opened our emails and which links they clicked. We've got the "who", "where", and "why" down.  But we're missing the "when". HubSpot is solving this problem with Signals, bringing even more prospect context to a salesperson and enabling them to interact in a more timely, meaningful, human way.

Signals integrates with Gmail, Salesforce, Outlook, and LinkedIn to deliver real-time lead revisit notifications, email open notifications, and even updates prospects make on their social networks.  

Sound useful?  You can get a free trial by heading to getsignals.com and adding the Chrome Extension.

Digital ROI? It's within your reach.  You don't have to cross your fingers and hope your marketing works anymore.  You just have to think a little more human.