HubSpot AI Data Sources: Buyer Personas vs. ICPs, What's the Difference?
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by silo departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace, Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge. Never fear, hub heroes.
Intro:Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, educate, empower, and execute. Hub heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers.
Liz Moorhead:Do you
Intro:live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed apartments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace, Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge. Never fear, hub heroes.
Intro:Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers.
Liz Moorhead:Well, welcome back to another episode of Hub heroes. Max, what's on your mind, buddy?
Max Cohen:Was it just me or was the base, like, blown out of that intro for anybody else.
George B. Thomas:It it
Chad Hohn:might be That puppy was loud as the dickens. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:The good thing is the the
Liz Moorhead:I'm sorry. The dickens won't hear it. Hold on. Hold on. A second.
Liz Moorhead:Chad was as loud as what. It was as loud as what?
George B. Thomas:Davenport. Lot
Chad Hohn:louder than you can shake a stick at.
George B. Thomas:Can you shake a stick at noise? Wait.
Max Cohen:No. The noise the noise can shake a stick. Original.
Liz Moorhead:I'm just gonna slide a Werther's original slowly across the table to both of you.
Chad Hohn:If I pulled one out of my pocket, would you just, like, be dead? I wish I had
Liz Moorhead:I would be dead, but, also, can we talk about the slander against Werther's Originals? They're actually delicious.
George B. Thomas:I love Werther's, but I am the old guy of the podcast. So, anyway
Liz Moorhead:Well, happy post Thanksgiving, everybody. How y'all doing? How are you feeling? What's the haps?
George B. Thomas:Full of turkey still.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm still pretty much 76% gravy at this point.
Chad Hohn:It fills in all the crevices, doesn't it?
Max Cohen:It really does. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:So it really ties through together.
Max Cohen:It's just like, it's like, what's it called?
George B. Thomas:Spackle?
Max Cohen:No. What's the stuff that that fills food cells? No. You know what I mean? Flex Seal.
Max Cohen:It's like Flex Seal.
George B. Thomas:I was throwing all of the things that I could think of at at that,
Liz Moorhead:but Duct tape. Duct
George B. Thomas:tape. Staple. Gorilla glue.
Chad Hohn:Drywall mud.
George B. Thomas:So cheese out. So here's the funny thing. This is the first year in a lot of years, that we didn't do Thanksgiving dinner. Literally, the day before Thanksgiving, I ran out to, Firehouse Subs, not, sponsored, but call us if if you wanna be. I don't know why you would, but we actually got their, like, turkey stuffing cranberry sauce, like, sub and stored them in the refrigerator for the next day because it was just Noah and I, here chilling because everybody else was gone, for the holidays.
George B. Thomas:They went to Ohio for a dog show, so it was super quiet. And,
Liz Moorhead:Happy Yeah. Happy bachelor's giving.
George B. Thomas:Oh my gosh. Just listen. I am officially done with, fear of the walking dead and Daryl Dixon and even watched Gladiator two in the theater with Noah. Okay. Not why we're here.
George B. Thomas:It was it was an event
Liz Moorhead:mine, though. So I ended up not having turkey this year, but not intentionally. We're not gonna name names. We're not gonna say anything out loud. What I will say is that when I showed up to prep the turkey, I kept asking, is the turkey ready?
Liz Moorhead:Is the turkey ready? Like, has it been defrosted? And then I said, okay. So and so. Now it's time for me to get that turkey basted all ready to go in the oven.
Liz Moorhead:She said, great. Goes to the freezer, pulls out the tur
Chad Hohn:Oh, yeah. We have a turkey.
Liz Moorhead:We have turkey. And she and she just looked at me, and I went, is this a is this a joke? Is it a a rehaha? Right? So we had, Thanksgiving Here.
Liz Moorhead:Chick we had Thanksgiving chicken thighs, the most aggressively seasoned basted chicken thighs you could possibly imagine in your entire life. That's nice. And then after that, I mean, as we can all clearly tell, I'm ready to sing. I've I look and feel like trash. But I capitalized on that I capitalized on that opportunity to finally start many years later game of thrones.
Max Cohen:Wow.
Liz Moorhead:It's finally happened. I've been sucked in.
George B. Thomas:Oh, wow. Yeah. Next is Yellowstone then. After game of thrones, you can go to Yellowstone.
Liz Moorhead:Well, if we're seeing my pace on when I actually pick up shows that are popular, talk to me in about five years, and I'll be ready for Yellowstone.
George B. Thomas:Oh, my god. It's so good.
Liz Moorhead:But Speaking of Yellowstone Yeah. I have no segue guys.
George B. Thomas:Heck of a segue. Yes. Who's their persona and their ideal client profile? I don't know.
Liz Moorhead:Who could it be? Is it Kevin Costner? We don't know.
George B. Thomas:No. No. Probably not anymore anymore.
Liz Moorhead:So this bag of band of gravied people, we have come together today to do another installment in our series on HubSpot AI data sources. Last week, we went waiting into the deep end of my pool, brand voice and tone without our water wings. We survived. We lived to tell the tale. But this week, we're talking about the part of HubSpot's AI data sources that quite frankly, it's still somehow content related, but I'm gonna be look I'm looking forward mostly to hearing you guys nerd out today.
Liz Moorhead:But the reason why I say this is content related is that the part we're talking about actually digs into the first question. I will ask any subject matter expert in any company no matter what they do or what they are talking about when they sit down for a content interview with me. And that's not what are we talking about today. It's not why does this topic matter. It's who are we targeting?
Liz Moorhead:Who are we talking to? But here is where this conversation gets interesting. For as long as there has been an inbound, there have been buyer personas. Right? We have been beaten over the head with buyer personas.
Liz Moorhead:We have episodes upon episodes about buyer personas, both positive and negative. Whenever we've talked about who we're talking to or who we're targeting in the context of HubSpotter inbound, It has been about personas. Except when you fire up the HubSpot AI data sources settings, there is nary a persona label to be found. Instead, you are going to find something called an ICP, your ideal customer or client profile. And, George, I see you already pacing and chomping at the bit.
Liz Moorhead:Tell me why you're excited about this conversation today.
George B. Thomas:Well, I'm excited about this conversation because it to me listen. One of the things that's frustrated me for a long time is this idea of b to b versus b to c versus, like, human to human. And last time I checked, probably every human works in some type of organization. And so there's there even for, like just listen. Listen.
George B. Thomas:When we think about this, it all comes down to the word of context. And when you think about what HubSpot's building, the prospecting agent, one of the biggest context that they need is ideal client profiles. Ideal client profiles, being kind of coming, front and center, we'll call it, it it's sort of new, but not new. Meaning, if you turned on HubSpot's, like, target accounts, you would start to see things around buying role and ideal client profile. And there's stuff in HubSpot Academy that talks about this.
George B. Thomas:But for today's conversation, when we're saying data sources and ideal client profiles, and we'll probably talk about, like, the difference in best practices and things like that maybe as we go, What I want people to understand from a level of context, ideal client, profiles are the what and where. Buyer personas are the who and how. That's a great question.
Liz Moorhead:Jumping ahead in our conversation, but I love this.
George B. Thomas:I'm just I'm saying this is you asked me why I'm excited. So I'm excited because listen. Whether it's content, whether it's, social, whether it's prospecting, whether whatever interaction, whatever activity you wanna call it, the what, where, who, and how, they're important.
Liz Moorhead:Well, that is really setting the context nicely for our conversation today because we wanna talk about whether or not there is a difference between buyer personas and ICPs because I don't think a lot of people see that clearly delineated. And quite frankly, HubSpot, when it's rolled out a lot of changes, which is has been doing a ton of over the past year, some of this messaging is getting lost. Some of these critical strategic conversations aren't happening. And that deeply influences how well we do or do not use these tools. So that's exactly what we're talking about today, George, and I want you to stay on that mic because your train of thought is exactly what I want us to pick up with.
Liz Moorhead:Because we're talking about why this shift in language matters. We're talking about we talk about how do we use these mindsets to customize the ICP settings appropriately in your HubSpot AI data sources to get the most of your out of your new AI superpower. So, George, again, I wanna come back to you. We're seeing this shift in language with HubSpot, and it's very purposeful. And quite frankly, it's not the only place we're seeing them shift their language.
Liz Moorhead:Right? It's a customer platform. We've heard Allbound get dripped out. You've already started tapping into the real difference between buyer personas and ICPs, but could you simplify the complex? When you say the what and how versus the who and what?
Liz Moorhead:Like, talk to me about that. What does that mean, and why are we seeing the shift in the tool?
George B. Thomas:Well, see and if I if I pull out my crystal ball, which I actually don't have, like, part of me has really been entertaining this idea of, like, is HubSpot not even really gonna be a CRM? Like, again, you alluded to customer platform. I I said a couple weeks ago or maybe last week, are are is HubSpot building the the world's largest, assistant business assistant, because of the AI? And, again, we're having this conversation because it is data sources. It is data sources in the AI settings tab.
George B. Thomas:And so when I think about this, Liz, again, it it goes down to you know? Listen. For for ideal client profiles and and, again, if if you go into HubSpot and if you go into settings and you go into AI and you go into data sources and you click into the ideal customer profile and you start to build one, you're gonna see that it's gonna be things like revenue potential, firmographics, demographics, location, company size, age range, which, by the way, age range is interesting to me because it's literally, like, the age range, not necessarily of the company, but the humans, which hang on a second. If it's Ideal Climate profile and it's your company What was that word you said?
Liz Moorhead:What What was that word you said?
George B. Thomas:Oh, I said, I said Humans. Right. So so so why is the human ape so, like, already, if you start to think about, like, those things, like, are they starting to tie in the who with the, like, where? Right? The the ICP is already starting to get a little piece of maybe the potential buyer persona inside of it.
George B. Thomas:And and so what's what's interesting to me here is you should be able to say these are the types of places that the humans that I wanna serve, which also, if I go back to my b to b versus b to c thing, does this tool become, something different? Is and I don't like to create new terms, but is there a new term where this data source, and its ideal customer profile or ideal client profile, it's a it's a merging or mixing of persona, roles, goals, challenges, demographics, psychographics, and also a company style if needed, job titles, industry, locations, things like that. Because here's the thing, there are b two b companies using HubSpot. There are b two c companies using HubSpot. And, the context that each of them are going to need based on what's in these data sources for anything they're gonna do is gonna need a merge of both.
George B. Thomas:Any anyway, I'm not exactly sure if I answered your question, but that's where my brain goes based on the question you asked me.
Chad Hohn:Thanks for taking all the topics, George.
George B. Thomas:Oh, yeah. I'm sorry.
Liz Moorhead:No. Chad, what are your thoughts on this?
Chad Hohn:I mean, yeah. So to me, I just look at ICP the and it to me, it just seems like it's all company except for age range, you know?
Max Cohen:About interests.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Interests is right. That is that is very human. Yeah. So I mean, those two, the last few are like, they seem like an afterthought.
Chad Hohn:So like, my my thought is like, this is all stuff that Breeze AI can go find or, you know, whatever. Right? And enrich your data with with all that Clearbit goodness that's out there. And that's how it's gonna try and find thing. But Clearbit was originally, like, pretty company centric, if I'm not mistaken.
Chad Hohn:Correct. Yep. And, you know, this, like, buyer personas very much are about, like, the humans and, like, their temperaments and all that kind of stuff. It's like, I'm almost wondering if this evolves someday to have a drop down at the top that's like or or is configured differently based on your business. Right?
Chad Hohn:Where your business is like, hey, I work primarily b to c with some b to b. I work primarily b to b with no b to c. Right? Stuff like that where then a little bit of the weight of what it's really trying to, you know, use to either find or configure its, you know, content or however the AI works, I think, would be different based on those, you know, based on those different type of people that you're looking to find and looking to, communicate with. I
Liz Moorhead:Max, you've been suspiciously quiet. Hold on, George. Because Max is, like, riding up on that mic, and I need to understand what's going on in that big noggin of yours. Is it just gravy, or do we have something else going on?
Max Cohen:Can I make sure I understand this thing first before I say anything at all? Absolutely. So, you know, I I honestly didn't even know that this was in the tool. Right? And so I'm I'm I'm diving into it and kind of discovering it as we go.
Max Cohen:And I understand that this is mostly to be used in the blog tool where you can select an ICP when you're generating a blog post?
George B. Thomas:So yes.
Max Cohen:Or what else is it used for?
George B. Thomas:The prospecting agent. I would say any agent moving forward. I can see where the social agent would look at this context Mhmm. If you were doing, like, b to b social, posting. Definitely
Max Cohen:the prospecting agent. The prospecting agent, which is, you know, you know, ideally having conversations with people over email, right, about stuff that's relevant
George B. Thomas:to them. But then also the content, piece. Yes.
Max Cohen:Cool. I'm gonna say something controversial. I hate this. It it's so so, like, ICP and persona is the same thing at the end of the day. It's who you're trying to sell to, if, like, we're being totally honest.
Max Cohen:Right? And the the the stuff that really, like, pissed me off about, you know, personas back in the day is that, you know, everyone was just like, oh, yeah, you know, what's their level of education? Or what's their, you know, income level? What's their typical job title? What's their this?
Max Cohen:What's their that? And, you know, to be honest, none of that stuff in any sort of material way really helps you write content if you're not thinking critically about what have I said a lot in the past Goals and challenges. Right? If you look at the old buyer persona tool, right, that one that is just for whatever reason, for the past ten years has been hidden away in the properties Right. Of that one.
George B. Thomas:Hit you.
Max Cohen:It's that one little special property that for some reason has this little, like, app built into it. Right? Mhmm. Even that lets you write down what someone's goals and challenges are. And when I coached, you know, people through this back when I was doing Marketing Hub implementation, I said, listen, ignore literally everything in the demographic section, right, and just focus on what the goals and challenges are because ultimately when someone searches for something online, they're searching for ways to either get closer to achieving a goal or overcoming a challenge that's in the way.
Max Cohen:If you think about any good piece of content, that's the one true thing about all of them is that it helps you do one or two or both of those things. Right? And for HubSpot to build a tool in 2024, that is one of the major things is either to guide the conversations an AI bot is having with someone where they're trying to convince somebody that they should, you know, talk to us. Right? Or some sort of tool that helps you write content that people should be, you know, looking for.
Max Cohen:Right? And and it should provide them value when they consume it. This ideal customer profile thing literally asks just demographic information and then says interests and other
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. I have lots of problems with this.
Max Cohen:There is nothing about goals and challenges. This to me is a massive step backwards, and it almost kinda tells me that, like, the people building this just don't understand the physics of why buyer personas worked well. Right? Well
George B. Thomas:So so hang on a second.
Liz Moorhead:Hold on. I really wanna jump in here.
George B. Thomas:No. I I gotta jump in.
Liz Moorhead:Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Liz Moorhead:Wait.
George B. Thomas:Wait. Wait. Wait. We talked about the, wanting them to not only have ideal client profiles, but also to leverage the property that you just talked about and the juiciness of the roles, goals, and challenges. And we even talked about how I've been training personas way different than you'll ever find on HubSpot Academy based on what you just said, roles, goals, and challenges.
George B. Thomas:However, I have to rewind to this place where you're like, they're one and the same. No. They're they're not. They're not one
Max Cohen:and the same. Let's have this argument because they're the same anyway. Like sorry. I you tell me how they're exact tell me how they're dramatically different, then I'll tell you how they end up being the same exactly. Go ahead.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. So Please remember that I have a content grievance that we need to come back
George B. Thomas:to here. Yeah. ICPs define the company. Buyer personas define the individual. Like, they're they're they're they're they're two totally different things.
George B. Thomas:And, again, there's there's different again, you gotta realize, Max, this is an AI tab. This isn't an AI tab for AI tools that are the worst they'll ever be, and then they're gonna get better over time.
Max Cohen:And I hope these conversations help you out.
George B. Thomas:Of context when it's the companies Uh-huh. To the context when it's the humans. And when you can take the context of the company and also the context of the human. This is why we literally begged the powers at HubSpot to be in our last episode to, like, please put personas in this freaking section two, or a section next to ideal customer bios buyer personas because now you have double the context on the conversations and the information and the education that you want to provide. There's different inputs.
George B. Thomas:So there's gonna be different outputs based on both of these. And and it should be built in a way that they work together. But if we say, oh, they're one and the same, then we'll never get to the point where we actually have a system where they're working together for the different inputs and outputs in the different context that creates the holistic conversation that we're trying to have.
Max Cohen:But at the end of the day, this is information about people you're selling to. You don't sell the companies. You sell the people at companies. Right? And, also, companies don't have interests.
George B. Thomas:Yes.
Max Cohen:They they you know what I mean? The companies don't have job titles.
George B. Thomas:Interest gets you over I know. What I'm saying saying gonna talk
Max Cohen:I agree with you.
Chad Hohn:I agree with you.
George B. Thomas:Hold on. If I sell event happily, I'm gonna sell event happily different to a health care solution than I am to a marketing agency, than I am to a freaking restaurant. Different types of industries. I'm gonna talk to somebody who's 65 different than 25. I'm gonna talk to somebody who makes a million dollars that different than makes 50,000,000 because I know I can sell more benefits and features and add it.
George B. Thomas:What like, both of these are huge for what we're gonna do with an AI system moving forward.
Max Cohen:I agree. But what about people who don't sell the company? So they're just never gonna use the ICP.
George B. Thomas:That's why we're begging for the buyer persona to be in there.
Max Cohen:Alright. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Right. But the other thing, though, like, Joel, just take a look at the, hold on, if we take a look at the ICPs that we've built, they're humans. It's a HubSpot operations leader. It's a CMO. Like, we're talking about individual people.
Liz Moorhead:And this is where, like, I have to I I feel like there are parts of me that agree with you, George, but then there are parts of me that seriously agree with Max. And we've seen this time and again in terms of anything they have tried to build to help either smooth out the issues with content creation or make it more human or do all these things. Like, the after I ask who is asking a question about a piece of content, I say, why are they asking this question in this moment? How do they feel about it?
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead:And there's there is I don't know if there's, like, a missing piece of this tool that could end up on a wish list that allows us to really emotionally dial these things in. But that to me is where I'm like, I this is where is it a communication issue where we have another situation where HubSpot did not message this change properly, so we're sitting here arguing about why is this here, but buyer personas isn't here. Like, it is a wild thing to me that ICPs are suddenly showing up here. Buyer personas have been positioned as the anchor, the inbound physics nexus point around which everything generates. And now we have this.
Liz Moorhead:And is it a human? Is it an organization? It it could go either way. Like, that's where it gets a little bit confusing for me of how I'm supposed to be using these or how I'm supposed to be contextualizing them.
Max Cohen:There there's a piece of me that feels like they're trying to get away from the stigma of, like, classic inbound. Right? In that, like, they're trying to not use the word buyer persona very, very hard because for whatever reason, there is this just I don't know. I I see a lot of people talking about how, like, oh, buyer personas are a thing of the past that is all about your, you know, whatever, and then they show you something that's, like, literally just a buyer persona. Right?
Max Cohen:You know, like, I I Like, what I really, really wish is that they took buyer personas and they turned it into, like, a real app that did everything that it actually, like, needed to, right, and put a heavy emphasis on goals and challenges. Sure. You can put some information about, like, you know, the company stuff, and maybe that would talk to, like, the company fit tool or something like that with, like, the new lead scoring stuff. But to me, this just like, this ideal customer profile thing, like, it just breeds a lot of confusion on, like, what is this versus what is the persona tool, and how do they play together, and, like, all that stuff. I don't know.
Max Cohen:It just seems like they're they're trying to use more industry slang and industry, you know, jargon and get away from, like, what made inbound and, you know, the HubSpot of old special. Right? And to me, buyer personas, again, is just, like, is one of those things that, like, no matter who you are, you have one. Right? But it almost feels like through what we're building in the tool, we're kind of like not emphasizing the importance of that anymore.
Max Cohen:And I think it's like kind of goofy.
Chad Hohn:And I think you're both right in a way or like everybody here has a part of the what they're saying that's right. Like when it really comes down to it, if you're b two b, you're selling to a human working at a company. Right? And each different person in each different roles has different goals and challenges. Right?
Chad Hohn:And so if you can build out both the company object target, which I think you're very much right, Max, in they're trying to get away a little bit from some of the jargon surrounding inbound because they want Breeze Intelligence to be able to go find you some businesses. Right? And Yeah. You know, like, without, like, while still trying to make it as helpful and inbound y and content creation y as possible, And like, have the parts of HubSpot that were good. I hope they don't forsake what made HubSpot unique and what brought HubSpot to where it is.
Chad Hohn:Right. And I don't know if they will, but like, at the end of the day, like, well, now I can give this AI brain, you know, brain wallet here inside of my HubSpot, the types of businesses that I really find that I sell well. And then I can also give it the types of people that work at those businesses that are most likely to be an advocate and sell well. And if we can merge those tools together for b two b, I think that that's a big benefit at the end of the day. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:Right?
Max Cohen:And, like, George, to go back to, like, what you were saying is, like, oh, I'm gonna sell something differently to a $50,000,000 company than I would to, like, a, I don't know, like, a million dollar a year company. I I agree with that. But to me, that's not buyer personas paired with ICPs. That's just different buyer personas because the goals and challenges of someone with a marketing manager job at a $50,000,000 company is gonna be vastly different than the goals and challenges of someone at a million dollar company.
Liz Moorhead:I love that. Would that differentiate me to that?
Max Cohen:Rhyme. They might rhyme, but the goals and challenges are gonna be much more unique. Like, they're managing bigger teams and doing other stuff.
George B. Thomas:But you wouldn't base a buyer persona on the amount that the organization
Max Cohen:is. So marketing
George B. Thomas:Mary is where marketing Mary is at.
Max Cohen:I don't think that's true.
Liz Moorhead:I don't think
Max Cohen:that's true. I don't think
Liz Moorhead:that's true. I wouldn't I don't think that's true at all. Like, an SMB marketing Mary marketing manager Mary is wildly different than an enterprise marketing manager Mary because they're usually in a much more complex organization with a lot more bureaucracy and red tape and a lot less autonomy, and they're wearing fewer hats. They're usually reporting to a director, who's reporting to a VP, who's reporting to an SVP, who's reporting to a C suite.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead:Like, that is that is an insane organization with a wildly different decision making thing. And they're also probably a marketing manager, Mary, inside that enterprise is probably with the nested within a specific product group. But here's also where it gets interesting as well is that and this is where, like, even for me goals and challenges, and this is me being the needy content nerd. I could have two VP of sales at the two same size companies. If one is doing well, they're gonna have a different emotional response to a topic or a piece of content that I'm gonna create versus one who is scrambling at the end of the year or the end of the quarter and is worried heads are gonna roll.
Liz Moorhead:And so this is where I've this is where I don't know if the HubSpot gods are listening. I would love the ability, whether it's just at a piece of content level to say, this is how they feel about this specific topic. Because sometimes, George, to your point, the persona, the ICP doesn't change. But what I am hearing overall is we have another case of bad change management when it comes to rolling out big stuff in the platform. To be fair, we are niching down into a setting inside of a setting inside of a subheading setting.
Liz Moorhead:So, like, I get it. This is not to knock them. But if we're going to have language changes, we have no idea. We're guessing as to why they put ICP versus buyer persona. We are guessing, and I don't love being in that position about something that has been such a tentpole of the inbound methodology.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Well, I mean, I know I get it's a setting well, I was gonna say I get it. It's a setting within a setting. But, like, if you really think about, you know, what this is meant to do. Right?
Max Cohen:Like, it's it's it's really meant to, like I mean or I guess what the the potential here is. Right? I think this has the potential to really help people with, like, the hard stuff outside of just crafting a blog post. Right? Just think about it for a second.
Max Cohen:If you had, like, a fully fleshed out, you know, buyer persona in here where it's, like, here's, you know, yeah, sure. This is this person's job role. Here's the industry they work in. Because all that stuff does have an effect on what that person's goals and challenges are, just like company size does and things like that. Right?
Max Cohen:Like, think about how this could help you, like, put together those more complex things that has to do with, like, SEO and content creation inside of HubSpot, such as topic clusters and the SEO tool. And, like, you know, imagine if I could, like, say, here's clearly all the different goals and challenges they have. Here's the extra context you need about, like, the type of industry or the type of company they work in, the roles that they generally have. And then imagine if it could just, like, automatically generate one of those, you know, those those content spider webs, the the the topic clusters for you. Right?
Max Cohen:And go, cool. Here's your road map of content you need to go create. Now let's go create those individual pieces. And since we have the broader context now of what that whole sort of, like, pillar strategy or content strategy is gonna be because we have that context from the buyer persona, all of that can then be informed to the individual posts that it's helping you write and structure and things like that. Right?
Max Cohen:That would be sick, and it has the potential to do this. Right? And maybe this is the first baby step. That's great. But, like, the first baby step could have at least included goals and challenges, even if it's just a text field.
Max Cohen:Right? Like, it feels a big step back from personas, which had that. Right? But then personas had no connectivity into any of these, like, content creation tools that were
Liz Moorhead:It's asking to create content with less context, which I find weird with a new label with that wasn't given as context. But, George, I wanna come back to you here for a moment because we can sit here and debate all day long about what was the intention behind this, why are we seeing this versus that, all of the Mhmm. The feelings we clearly have about this topic. But, George, when you think about the the users who are listening to this podcast
Max Cohen:Wait. The users? The users or the who? George hit us.
Liz Moorhead:George.
Max Cohen:Is it the users? List.
George B. Thomas:I'm I'm sorry. I I didn't hear the rest of the question.
Max Cohen:Is it the users, or is it the The Oh,
Chad Hohn:the
Max Cohen:Oh, there it is. Sorry. Go ahead.
Liz Moorhead:There wasn't the rest of the question because we were waiting for you to do that.
George B. Thomas:Gotcha.
Max Cohen:Slow down. Thought that was a slow bounce layup I gave you.
Liz Moorhead:When we think about the humans who are supposed to be using this, how can they think about the purpose of this tool now? How can they think about what it is that they are building? Take us through that purpose and those mindsets that you want people to see here because we're we're not gonna be able to answer all these questions about intent. We have a tool in front of us that we need to start using now.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And I'll go into what Max was saying. Like, the amount of humans that don't even know this exists, like, Max was like, I didn't even know this existed. Hence why we're talking about it on the podcast. And that we need people to go in and at least start putting information in there and paying attention to it because as it grows over time, my hopes is that it does all the things that we're talking about, and it adds all the things that we need.
George B. Thomas:Because at the end of the day, we have to remember that this is as much automatic understanding, automated context as humanly possible is what we wanna give the mesh the machine because that's what HubSpot is building. They are building an AI machine right underneath everything that we knew and loved. And the fact that Max is even going to, like, hey. Wouldn't it be great if there was a day where I could put this, this, and this and select this and this? And it would know.
George B. Thomas:And then all of a sudden, my topic spider would come out, and then I could be, like, write all these blog articles. And then I could hit remix, and we could do per remix all of these articles. And, like, it's a little like, HubSpot seven step, process to decimate your content creation process. But it would be because somebody listened to this podcast, realized there was ideal customer profile, and all of the other things that we talked about, in previous episodes, and we'll talk about future episodes, to fill in the gaps to give because, by the way, you can also give it additional context in the way that you're, like, crafting the individual prompts based on a section or a paragraph using Breeze Copilot. So, like, this is the, how do we get the best foundational contextual information so that we can get 70 to 80% there and humanize it and hone it on the other side before hitting the publish button?
Max Cohen:Like Yeah.
George B. Thomas:So just know it's there and start filling it out and actually think about this stuff.
Max Cohen:Yeah. And I'd say, like yeah. I mean, there's probably people just finding out about this now like me, but, like, George, how many people, like, still don't like, when you start working with them, don't even know, like, personas exist? Yeah. Like, a ton.
Max Cohen:I probably say most of them. A ton.
George B. Thomas:A ton. Yeah. Like, here's the thing. Literally, I I and, again, I'm not shilling. But the amount of super admins that take the super admin training that when I talk about personas and show them the persona workshop video that we have are like, oh my god.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And these are super admins.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Mhmm. Yeah.
Max Cohen:And it's it's crazy because it's like it it's it's by far one of the easiest and simplest ways to say, hey, is my content resonating with a certain audience or not? Right? Because, like, you can literally have these people, like, self self identify. Right? But, you know, I I and and it was going back to your question on, like, how could people use this today.
Max Cohen:I mean, if this is informing how your blog content is getting written, I mean, I can only hope and pray that it's taking that interests and other fields, like, into consideration. And so I'd say if you wanna try to use this today and experiment with it, you know, go write up a whole bunch of goals and challenges in two different sections and drop it into that other field and just, like, you know, hope and pray that it's actually gonna use that and take that into consideration. Right?
Liz Moorhead:I mean,
George B. Thomas:to be fair, though remember, this is part of the puzzle because last week, we talked about brand voice and how much that has changed and how there's all sorts of Mhmm. Context as far as some of those pieces as well. So, like Mhmm. And and, Liz, I'll let you go. The one thing I did wanna say, and I'm curious.
George B. Thomas:And if you work at Hub Spot, you can email me or call me. I swear I won't release it on the Internet. But if if this confusion of this conversation we're having today is because you decided to call it ideal by the way, it used to be if you go look on the Internet, it's ideal client profiles and buyer personas. So HubSpot if you're the human that called it ideal customer profile because you thought it would align with the customer platform, that's where my curiosity is getting the best of me. Like, is that why we named it that?
George B. Thomas:And and it should have had been two things instead of one thing. Anyway, I'll shut up, Liz.
Liz Moorhead:No. I think the big thing for me and it because ahead of this episode and quite frankly, the last one, I talked to some friends of mine who have been in my niche specialty role in different organizations and also agencies. And I asked a simple question, will you ever generate a blog post from scratch within the HubSpot tool? And they said, I don't even know how that would work because none of us have processes where content creation begins inside the tool. It begins with conversations.
Liz Moorhead:It begins with an interview. It begins with something else. So this is where it gets really fascinating where I sometimes see a friction between what the platform is enabling people to do versus what is actually the best practice when it comes to whether it's content creation or any strategic any sort of strategy asset building. You know, it is this like, the idea that somebody can, in a vacuum, by themselves, go into HubSpot and generate a blog post where they pull in brand voice and they pull in this person and they have a topic, the SME is never gonna be the person doing that. They're too busy that it's gonna be a content person.
Liz Moorhead:Hopefully, they have some background on what great storytelling looks like. Hopefully, they know how to weave it in so it's actually human and and and empowering and educational and all of these things that we want them to be, particularly at a time where we've talked about this. We're entering an uncanny value of content where buyers are gonna feel something is wrong with your content, and they're not only gonna dislike it, they're going to not trust it. They're going to get the ick. That is what is happening.
Liz Moorhead:And so that this is not a a way for me to open up another content debate, but it is this weird thing where I'm seeing things enabled where it's like, is this actually the process or best practice we want to be supporting?
George B. Thomas:And and what I wanna be careful of is for it not to always turn into a content because, by the way, everybody knows I love me some content. But it it can't always turn into a content conversation. Like, this, for sure, needs to this one in particular, for sure, needs to lean into the fact of, like, and some of you have access to it, some of you don't. It's beta. But when when the prospecting agent is rolled out at a larger scale, this is really, really important.
George B. Thomas:And you have
Liz Moorhead:to out of that,
George B. Thomas:George. Different.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. Yeah. Because so I think this is a really good don't. I think it is really easy for us to get obsessed about the content piece of it. Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead:And a big don't is not to put blinders on and think that's its only purpose. So can you talk to us a little bit about that idea? Like, let's take it let's take a step back out. Right? Of course, I'm always gonna be in the content end of the pool.
Liz Moorhead:George, look at me. We know how broken I am.
George B. Thomas:Listen. I no. Anyway, I listen. I turn on target accounts. I, as a human, then either have to manually put in the target accounts that I already know that I'm supposed to be going after, but it maybe I'm trying to find other target accounts.
George B. Thomas:And so, like like, that's human time spent searching for these. If I have ideal client profiles or ideal customer profiles, and now AI is trained to go through all the companies and find ones that would align with these and then allow me to put a button push a button on an AI generated list of, like, target accounts that I wanna target, it just saved me a metric butt ton of time. If now when I go to enroll a sequence and it's using templates and it's actually creating the templates based on, the ideal customer or ideal client profile, now it knows that it's talking to, an owner, a CEO, a COO, like c suite versus a mid level manager or an employee because, again, you can even age. Like, depending on how you build these ideal customer profiles and how many of them you build and how much more of personas, roles, goals, challenges could be applied to this. By the way, if you work on this tool, make Max happy after other or before other.
George B. Thomas:Just put roles, goals, and challenges. He'd probably be quiet about the whole thing, and he'd be like, this is the best tool ever.
Max Cohen:But That would be paced. Yeah. Just to
George B. Thomas:hear. The thing. Here's the thing. Like, now so think of like that. Where is it taking away manual tasks?
George B. Thomas:Where is it then able to create micro content, emails, things like that Mhmm. To where, where and especially when you go to this, like, semiautonomous or completely autonomous, the context to be able to, like this is why we're not talking about it this week. This is why ICPs attached with, the actual products in the data sources is so freaking important because when you start to prospect, if you know the who, ideal customer profile, and the what, the products, and you have the context to actually get the job done or at least augment the job that a human is trying
Chad Hohn:to do. Which just sends them into a meeting with a lot of really important information without them having to go dig through notes and have the right properties on the left hand sidebar, but also on the company. And I know, like, things are better now with, like, cross object association tables for admins to configure stuff like that. But it's still not, like, that amazing to read a bunch of properties in the middle tab on a company or on a contact. You know, like, it's it when also activities are really important and going through that activity timeline of what most recently occurred in that company or with that human.
Chad Hohn:So, yeah, I mean, like, being able to really have that context, I think this goes into the meeting prep tool as well. This all, I think, will feed into the meeting prep AI. You'll be able to have some really, I think, great frequently used prompts that you'll be able to save. Another thing that'd be amazing that I'd love to see someday is the ability to utilize snippets inside of Copilot. Right?
Chad Hohn:So be able to pump pump pump a snippet in of a good prompt that, you know, you don't right. And so you could just build things in with snippets and, you know, make it really easy for your team, I think that's just like a no brainer right there.
George B. Thomas:Yo. Yo. I'm just gonna throw this out. Snippets as a prompt holder
Chad Hohn:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Would be Exactly. Super dope functionality. But but I but I the the point I'm trying to paint because by the way, you're you're almost alluding to the end of the story, Chad. It's like, imagine a world where I set these things up in data sources, in AI data sources, because I know that HubSpot's now building the world's largest business agent that happens to just hold information in his brain called a CRM. Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:But I and I now know that it can take me through a thing of where it helps me select all my target accounts. It helps me prospect all the target accounts. I'm getting ready to write an email or go into a meeting, and I go to the contact or I go to the company and I say with with Copilot, summarize this human. Summarize this human. Summarize this company.
George B. Thomas:What what some now all of a sudden, in an instant, it's helped me save time along the way, and it helps me save time before I get on that call or write that email because it's I can extract the context that I need based on the context that I gave it for the foundational
Chad Hohn:pieces. Yeah. But you know what it kinda does, at least so far still, is just isn't really very useful for b to c. Like, it just isn't as helpful for, like, the at least the industry that I'm building HubSpots for, like, homeowners who own a house that has a damaged roof. Right?
Chad Hohn:Or, you know, is looking for a replacement or whatever. Right? So just like home services, like, that's a huge, huge, huge segment of the market with just homegrown. I couldn't find anything. So I hired some developers and built a custom thing that worked for me.
Chad Hohn:And now I'm trying to make it work for other people, garbage CRMs, you know, that are that are not enterprise that will never take these businesses beyond the size of, you know, a few million without a lot of pain and manual effort to integrate it into their other systems. Right? So it's like, I would love to see a little bit more love for the b two c because, man, the home services market wants stuff built on top of stuff like HubSpot that's like, to the nth degree configurable. Right?
Max Cohen:Wait. So you're saying ICP is not relevant to that?
Chad Hohn:I mean, ICP is, but it's like, I just feel like that there's so many company properties and Clearbit True. Enriches all this company level stuff that it's like, if I was a, you know, one of those people, I'd be like, yeah. Like, most all of this except for, like, age and interest is not relevant to the people that I'm looking for because I'm not looking for businesses.
George B. Thomas:So, basically, what I hear you saying is we need a clear bit, but for Human data. Yeah. Which gets freaky real quick. Yeah. Exactly.
George B. Thomas:Although you're almost creating your, like, first party data with HubSpot and some type of process that where you can get that information, but, like, in enriching it automatically gets well, that just to me, it gets scary and dangerous.
Chad Hohn:But Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It does.
Chad Hohn:I mean, like, there's a lot of privacy stuff there. But I think if HubSpot has the tools to allow you to build things to survey people. Right? And, like, hey, are you in the market for whatever? And, like, people freely give up their information all the time.
Chad Hohn:Unfortunately, like, people aren't that privacy minded. And, so they're, like, put stuff into Facebook all the time. I mean, you ever seen those posts that's, like, asking about, oh, your first car and, like, all this stuff, you know, and people just answer all these questions, which are basically just, like, do FA security questions to get into bank accounts. You know? People are crazy.
Chad Hohn:But, anyway Humans will
Liz Moorhead:George, humans will human. So, George, are there any other common mistakes you could foresee folks making that are critical to avoid when we're looking at this part of the AI data source of settings?
George B. Thomas:I mean, there's two big ones. One, the biggest one is, not knowing it's there and not using it. Like, again
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:There's no harm, no foul to put the information in there. But that leads me to my second thing is don't just put random ish in there.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Be because with any AI system, like, if we if we're using Claude, if we're using GPT, we're paying attention to the input that we're giving it because we know it will dramatically affect the output that we get. Make sure that you're actually doing some research, some understanding, some reading. This is not a copy and paste simple copy paste. You're done. Now, can you use AI to help you with this if you have data and information to anyway, different conversation, different
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Training, whatever. But, like, pay attention to what you're putting in there as far as the ideal, customer profiles. And until HubSpot does merge, fix, add, whatever they're gonna do with buyer personas, make sure you find a place in your system that you're bringing that information in along for the ride as you're creating the content. That's that's all I'll say. Or creating the processes or educating your internal team on how you're gonna use the platform based on this input.
Liz Moorhead:Chad, you've dropped a question in in our chat, and I'm kinda like, but, Chad, my guy, you should say the quiet part out loud. You should ask that whole last question.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was thinking, George, like, as you're talking, could it cause more harm than help in the future anyway, if you put the wrong stuff in there? Like, if you're just gonna, you know, put some mission there, did you just ignore it if you don't have at least ten minutes to put something coherent in there? You know?
George B. Thomas:That's a that's actually a great question. I would rather have nothing in there than ish in there. And that pains me to say that because it's the root of a bigger problem. If you're in business for any length of time and you haven't figured out who you're selling to, who you're creating content
George B. Thomas:for,
George B. Thomas:there's a larger strategy problem that you call some I don't even care if it's me. Call somebody because dang gone.
Liz Moorhead:So I know this could open up a whole other can of worms, but I'm very curious, George. When you built yours, did you build your ICPs as being, like, a mirror of your buyer personas? Like, did you start by saying, how do I translate my buyer personas into ICPs, or did you start from scratch? What was that process? Because I could imagine if I'm sitting here listening to this, we've had a debate about the fact that they're different but related and codependent.
Liz Moorhead:But am I just supposed to sit down and, like, make up whole new ones that look different from my buyer personas, or should there be some reflection there?
George B. Thomas:I think there's definitely reflection. And it's it's like understanding as an organization what are the problems you solve. Here are the problems I solve.
Max Cohen:I was saying it's more than and then what you solve for. It's the other things that people are looking for that you do solve something for. Right? So it's I think that I mean, and you could agree with this. Right?
Max Cohen:Back when people were really just getting familiar with the idea of inbound, all they wanted to do was write about the problem that their product solved. Right? But the people who really got it said, well, sure. Our product solves for a specific thing. Right?
Max Cohen:But what we're trying to do with inbound is attract people who will have that problem, and we have to know that there is more than just that one problem that they're searching for. So one way to get in front of those people is to write content about stuff that we know that they're interested in looking up and goals that they're trying to solve for, even if our product doesn't directly solve for that themselves. You get the right kind of eyeballs on our site when those people are looking for stuff that isn't necessarily just the thing we solve for. Right? The classic example that I love to use is, like, when you look at HubSpot back before it had any sort of integration with Instagram, we still created content for marketers because we're trying to sell to marketers.
Max Cohen:We would create content about how to market yourself on Instagram, even though our tool did nothing, right, to to to help you do anything on Instagram. Right? So, you know, there's more than just talking about what your product solves for. Right? It's talking about other stuff that your buyer persona is interested in even if your product doesn't have a hand in directly solving it.
Max Cohen:Right? But I think you would agree with that. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Yes. And I'm not talking about creating content right now.
Max Cohen:Oh, I thought
George B. Thomas:you were. Talking about how do I create my ideal customer profiles inside the data sources. So if I was to go in the line of you're thinking, yeah, Max, I would teach them about they ask, you answer. And if I wanted to go the next level, I'd teach them about drafting off of other content. That's not what I'm talking about.
George B. Thomas:I'm talking about I need to take zero to something with ideal customer profiles. I'm gonna start with what are the problems I help solve? What are the products that I actually have to solve those problems? And what are the types of organizations that have those problems? And then I can say, okay.
George B. Thomas:Let's look at the data that I have or let's look at grab some data from somewhere and help me understand the organizations that have these problems that are in need of these products. What do they look like? Who's the buyer? And by the way, AI is great at giving you a lot of this information that which then you can hone. And I'll give you a little secret sauce.
George B. Thomas:One of the things, Liz, when I started to focus on the problems and the products and, like, the organizations and what they might look like is I literally started to see these patterns. I said, this is freaking dope. And I took a screenshot of the HubSpot Ideal customer profile, and I said, based on our research so far, give me the relevant information to fill in these fields for these seven types of people or five types of people that or organizations before Max loses his freaking mind and it blows out, like, both sides of his ears. Organizations and humans so that I can fill in this information. And, again, it was based on the input that I gave it.
George B. Thomas:It was based on the questions that I gave it. It was based on knowing the platform that I was putting it in for and why I was putting it in for it. And so I worked hand in hand with another assistant to create a firm foundation for this HubSpot assistance, content creation, prospecting agent, because I know how important context is to all the future conversations we're gonna have on all the tools that we're using. It's the biggest place that I think people are gonna just flub it up. It's not under not being curious enough to be creative enough to give the context to take him to the future.
Liz Moorhead:And, George, if folks only remember one thing from this episode, what should it be and why?
Max Cohen:Goals and goals are really important.
George B. Thomas:Hey. That's not it. That's not it. Whatever that was.
Liz Moorhead:Wow.
George B. Thomas:I gotta boil this down to one thing?
Liz Moorhead:One thing.
George B. Thomas:If if you I'll say I'll say this. If you're sitting here listening to this and you go into that ideal customer profile section and it's empty, and you because I think you landed into something very interesting, Chad. It's like, I don't I don't have that, and I don't know how
George B. Thomas:to get there. Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Then that's your next step. The one thing I would say is figure out how to understand the organizations, the humans, the hurdles, the problems, the the products enough in a way that you can at least start to build a foundation of these. Because, again, we're gonna move on to another thing where we're talking about products, and how do you put that in there and why. And so just focus on getting the strategy down and getting this filled out, these filled out.
Liz Moorhead:I love it. Wow, guys. We didn't have any opinions about this topic whatsoever. Can you guys try harder next time?
Max Cohen:Yeah. Can we
Chad Hohn:go to the therapy session, please?
George B. Thomas:Okay, Hub Heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes.
George B. Thomas:FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub euros podcast on any of the socials, and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and, of course, always be looking for a way to
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