HubSpot AI Data Sources: Unpacking the Simplicity of the Marketing Strategy Setting
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:Are we united and activated, gentlemen?
Max Cohen:I'm actually
Chad Hohn:activated. I'm united.
Liz Moorhead:George, you're in a very efficient mood this morning. I gotta call that out here for a moment. I don't know if you guys have noticed that. Alright. Let's go.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Hashtag GST.
Chad Hohn:Know what I
George B. Thomas:have Get get stuff done.
Chad Hohn:I got a little short George Standard Time GST. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:There you go.
Liz Moorhead:Love that for us. George, how are you feeling going into today's conversation? I gotta know.
George B. Thomas:I'm feeling great, but I don't I don't think I need my own time zone. But I'm but I'm feeling great. I'm excited to have this conversation, and, we'll see where it goes.
Liz Moorhead:I love that. Max, how are you doing, bud? That is a look of concern, or you're locked in?
Max Cohen:I'm locked in.
Liz Moorhead:Locked in.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead:Chad, how is our printer overlord? Glowing red. Oh god.
Chad Hohn:Yep. Well, you know, it does what it wants. I gotta I think I I think I wanna hook it up, you know, like, make scenes, get another camera, you know, change angles, turns red, I think. Wow.
George B. Thomas:I don't know. Wow. Or, like, you press a button and it just it's like, like, really fast rapid. Yeah. I'm not much We'll see this.
Chad Hohn:There's some fun stuff we could do.
Liz Moorhead:For the folks listening at home, check the show notes this week. I've been taking a couple of strategic screenshots
George B. Thomas:of Chad
Liz Moorhead:in action. I don't know if printer overlord likes that. It glowed red when I said that. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
Liz Moorhead:Alright. You know what? Let's dig in, guys. We are back for another installment in our series about HubSpot AI data sources. And last week, we had an incredible discussion, sometimes debate, sometimes a little bit feisty chat about buyer personas versus ideal customer profiles.
Liz Moorhead:And I have to recommend that you go back and listen to it because Max said after we stopped recording that it was probably one of his favorite discussions we've ever had on the podcast.
George B. Thomas:And I gotta admit, I listened
Liz Moorhead:to it again, and I thought it was pretty fantastic. So if you missed out on that conversation, go back and listen to it. But, George, let's say for a moment, maybe some of our listeners are joining this series right in the middle. Can you give us a quick explain it like I'm five refresher of what HubSpot AI data sources are?
George B. Thomas:AI data sources is a place where you can go in and really just start to add context around business, your strategy, your products, your, ideal customer profiles as as HubSpot is calling them. Just like the there's a plethora of things that you could be adding to help the system, the machine, the CRM to future be probably the world's largest business agent, understand maybe what you're trying to do, how you're trying to do it. So that is. And and, again, I think it'll grow over time, but that is what AI data sources is. It's a setting, and it's gotten multiple shows being a setting.
George B. Thomas:So that might tell you something.
Liz Moorhead:Yep. So for our listeners, if you are midway through this series and you're joining us, we have an episode back in the feed a few episodes where we talk about what these are as a whole. We talked about brand voice and tone a few episodes. That was a really fun and exciting episode. Like I said, we already did buyer personas versus ICPs.
Liz Moorhead:And today, we are moving into the next section of HubSpot AI data sources called marketing strategy.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I am.
Liz Moorhead:I'm gonna be honest. Yeah. I'm gonna be honest. I'm very let's just say curious is the label I'm gonna use for where today's conversation is going to go because, it is very lightly designed. And it's either it's either
Max Cohen:We call
Liz Moorhead:it lean.
Max Cohen:It's lean.
Liz Moorhead:It's very lean. It's very lean.
George B. Thomas:Efficient.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. It doesn't take
Chad Hohn:a whole lot of time out of your day.
Liz Moorhead:It's very clean. It has, like, a four minute mile if it were a runner, like, in, like, 0% body fat, which is either exactly what it needs to be or
Max Cohen:Or it's not anything.
Liz Moorhead:Or it's Well We're gonna find out together like a family.
George B. Thomas:Listen. I mean, let's be honest. There is a saying of, like, you know, great things come in small packages or something along those lines. Like, I have I have thoughts, and I have grievances, and and I have things that I wish, but that's not what the whole podcast will be about. But it it's interesting that it's here, and it's interesting what you can select.
George B. Thomas:But let's just move on with that.
Liz Moorhead:Nice try, buddy.
Chad Hohn:Nice
Max Cohen:try. That it's here. That's a stunning review. Oh, it's interesting that it's here.
Liz Moorhead:I think
Chad Hohn:you guys Words on a page and it exists.
Liz Moorhead:Oh, it's I think you could probably tell I tried to, like, pull this together. And the inter so I do prepared outline for each one of our shows. And there are lots of screenshots, and then we get to the questions. And it's just like, what what do we think is happening?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So
Max Cohen:Yeah. Don't get me wrong. It's interesting that it's here. Sorry. I just got a little bit.
Liz Moorhead:Pull back the curtain a little bit here.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And I
Liz Moorhead:want you to take us back to that moment. When you first clicked on this setting,
George B. Thomas:I want you to tell us to do this. On it. Let me let me let me take you back before I clicked on the settings. Before I clicked on the settings, I was like, oh, this could get interesting. Alright.
George B. Thomas:Now ask your question.
Liz Moorhead:First describe exactly what you saw without editorializing, And then what was your reaction to what you saw?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So Was it the
Liz Moorhead:five stages of grief or something else?
George B. Thomas:No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But so I saw the thing, marketing strategy, and I said, oh, marketing strategy in AI data sources.
George B. Thomas:This could get interesting. And I clicked into it and I saw this drop down. And I thought to myself, okay. Lead generation makes sense. A lot of lot of companies, you know, focus on that engagement.
George B. Thomas:Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. Brand awareness.
George B. Thomas:Oh, yeah. I I definitely have helped clients with that. Trust. Well, we all probably, hopefully, should be trying to, like, build trust in our marketing because, well, I think that's what we should do. And then education.
George B. Thomas:I'm, like, big on education. So I'm immediately, like, oh, yeah. Okay. So all of these make sense. But but then I immediately too go to, like, I know how many, I know how many
Intro:humans
George B. Thomas:I've actually helped. And then when you ask them about the strategy, their strategy is lack of strategy or no strategy. So, at least this is also a place where we can pinpoint, like, what are a couple of the strategies that you should be focusing on? And because that's what you're focusing on, at least let's let the machine know that that's what you're focusing on. Now, then I got to the point where I was like, well, me personally, I'm I'm kinda focused on all of the above, to which I was like, and I can only select two.
George B. Thomas:Oh my god. And I was like, wait. Why why can I only select two of these? And then I was like, well, now you've created a dilemma in my brain. Like, are two of these more important than the others?
George B. Thomas:Anyway, I'll stop there because I have some thoughts to how this might actually need to work, but those were my initial thoughts. I was excited. I I kind of understood, okay, match the human to the machine, and then was sad because I was like, two. Okay. Why why two?
George B. Thomas:Why?
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. I had, a very similar reaction. I opened it up, and I saw it it it and it I have a very, very big monitor now. It's like a big widescreen monitor, and I had the whole browser window taken up.
George B. Thomas:Oh, I can't rock like that. I can't I can't do that.
Liz Moorhead:It was by accident. I hadn't minimized it, but it just kind of for dramatic effect, you just see this one single field.
Chad Hohn:Just lay over there.
Liz Moorhead:And then I click, and it's like marketing strategy. Would you like lead generation engagement, brand awareness, trust, or education? You could only pick two. And and and then I looked for a knowledge base article, like, oh, there's gotta be something I'm missing. And then and then when I looked, I just found a list of here's how to manage your AI data sources, and it says, marketing strategy.
Liz Moorhead:Select from marketing goals such as brand awareness, engagement, or more, and you could select up to two marketing goals. And I just kind of felt a little stumped. First of all, you're telling me, like, let's just start with trust. Let's put trust there. Let's just so are there gonna be times where trust is not a goal?
Liz Moorhead:So there's that. There are times where I feel like we're missing just a lot of stuff. I don't I'm very glad that we're all a little bit because I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this.
George B. Thomas:Well, so you're it's it's easy. You're supposed to pick two. That's what you're supposed to do with it. Yeah. You're supposed to you're supposed to And like it.
Liz Moorhead:End of episode.
George B. Thomas:End of episode. Pick two and like it. So, you know, the the the big question is what in the I don't wanna swear. What what does it do? Like, you have you have a whole big white box of a page under it.
George B. Thomas:Could you please tell me by selecting lead generation, x y z, a b c will happen in these tools? By selecting a combination of trust and education, a, b, c, and x, y, z will happen in the like, you give me a video or something on this page that helps you not have the unknown chasm of, like, great. I picked two that was very anticlimactic. I have no understanding of what I just did to my machine. I don't know how it's gonna do it in the blog tool.
George B. Thomas:I don't know how it's gonna do it in the social tool. I don't I don't know what changes I just made, and I don't know if I come in here next week and change it. Like, can I change it and go write a blog article and then come back and change it and go write another blog article? And will the two blog articles be different from a marketing strategy standpoint because I selected two things in the little box?
Max Cohen:Okay.
George B. Thomas:I gotta take a break. I gotta breathe.
Liz Moorhead:That example is giving me a panic attack because the idea that that's where you set the strategy of a blog article.
George B. Thomas:Oh my god. I don't think it is. I don't think it is, but still.
Max Cohen:Max, be
Liz Moorhead:a voice of reason. Be a voice of hope.
Max Cohen:Yeah. I mean, voice of reason is, like, they shouldn't they should be, like, a content level piece setting that you turn on. Right? So, like, if I'm writing a piece of content, there's always some kind of intention of that piece of content. Right?
Max Cohen:Also, let's just go ahead and say build trust should be optional.
George B. Thomas:What? What? It should be good. If anything at
Liz Moorhead:this point, I don't wanna be trustworthy. We're gonna turn this
Max Cohen:one off. Yeah. When should I'm sorry.
Liz Moorhead:Let's build brand awareness.
Max Cohen:I'm sorry. How's that not a freaking default setting, dude? Like, it's it's weird to be like, are you sure you wanna build trust when you write this? It's like, what are you talking about? Of course, I do.
George B. Thomas:Hey. Let me tell you what all the cool kids are doing there. They're not doing the
Max Cohen:trust stuff. They're doing. Like, I get what they're doing. Right? And then and, you know, I think this just like anything else, it's the first baby step.
Max Cohen:Right? Like, they they probably like, here here's the other thing. Right? It's probably pretty difficult for them to tell if it's working if they can't test it at a mass scale. And the only way they can really test it at a mass scale is, like, hey.
Max Cohen:Let's turn this on so it's happening for all of the content, and then we can see how, you know, how good it's actually working and what people are interested in selecting and then make it more pointed and specific and and have it at the content level. Right? Like Mhmm. You know, that that's really kinda what I can imagine. Because I mean, ultimately, you're gonna get a lot more testing on stuff when it's used on a broader scale and just saying, hey.
Max Cohen:We're gonna do it for everything versus, you know, just hoping people, like, pop it into, like, individual content pieces.
Chad Hohn:Well, let
George B. Thomas:me ask you a question.
Max Cohen:That's the only thing I could think of.
George B. Thomas:Let let me ask you a question on that.
Max Cohen:Actually, no. I don't consent to the questions.
Chad Hohn:Well, I'm gonna ask
George B. Thomas:the question anyway. Anyway. But Because how many people do you think journey over to AI data sources versus journey over to the blog tool? If I wanted massive adoption on something, I'd put it smack dab at the
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Sure. Sure. Blog or because more humans are going to create a blog than they are to AI Dab sources. So, like But but but but but but but
Max Cohen:but you also gotta remember too, like, they just released the whole, you know, Breeze thing. Now everyone's going and checking out Breeze. So maybe they are looking at it there. Right? Remember, it is still hard to get people to write effing blog posts that aren't doing it.
Max Cohen:Right? But it's really easy to go check out this shiny new AI thing where you can turn on the settings, and it'll do it all for you. Right? So maybe that's their evidence. But I agree.
Max Cohen:Like, it would make sense, like, that, you know, if if you're writing a blog post and you haven't set this yet and you're using the AI tools, it should be like, hey. Maybe go check one of these two boxes for whatever reason before, like, you, you know, have the AI write your blog post or whatever.
Chad Hohn:You know what I mean?
George B. Thomas:But I I Yeah. I hear
Liz Moorhead:it that I am setting a blog strategy inside HubSpot is insane to me. It is antithetical to so many of the things that we have talked about with HubSpot before, which is HubSpot is where you execute. You come with it with your strategy.
George B. Thomas:But remember but remember, we're not talking about humans right now. We are talking about bots right now. We are talking about assistance right now. We're talking about connecting the human strategy that we're executing to somebody the assistant.
Liz Moorhead:Hold on a second, Chad. You have just been sitting there just minding your business with a very pleased look on your face watching George, Max, and I have totally reasonable non emotional reactions to the marketing strategy tool. What is going on in that brain of yours over there?
Chad Hohn:I'm trying to figure out what game Max is playing.
Max Cohen:Farming Simulator.
Chad Hohn:Is it yeah. I could see it on your TV back there Yeah. In the reflection.
Liz Moorhead:Just like the way you do do you want emotional support when HubSpot puts
Max Cohen:a tool in front of you you don't know
Chad Hohn:how to
Liz Moorhead:cope with? Okay. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:He's like, I gotta go gotta
Max Cohen:I'm I'm out of my Straterra, so I have to, like, distract myself while I have conversations so I can actually have them.
Chad Hohn:Well, thanks for Thanks for your patience. Dropping off
Max Cohen:of the grocery, guys. It's all good. Yeah. I'm here.
Liz Moorhead:So, Chad, nice try. Yeah. Trying to get out of this.
Max Cohen:Oh, yeah.
Chad Hohn:You got it.
Liz Moorhead:To us.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, standing up for my, computer brethren, all my, you know, bots out there as we were just talking about, you know, I think, okay. Just ask for two. Well, it's like, I mean, if you throw everything in the kitchen sink at it, then it's not going to prioritize anything. And maybe the word should be prioritized to, but it's probably understanding that it obviously needs to have trust.
Chad Hohn:It's like, do you want to emphasize trust? Or do you want to just have the normal amount of trust? I assume Yeah. Standard trust or extra trust? You know, like, I mean, do you want to emphasize that?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. I always think I'm taking our trust based on what you're saying.
George B. Thomas:I almost wish you could, like, put them in numeric order.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. What you
George B. Thomas:wanted to like, here here is the rubrics in which I would like my assistant to pay attention to the don't don't bring up trust. Just trust should just be there. But the other ones, other than trust, like, this is the rubrics of importance to me at an organization of how I would want you to think about us, right, as far as that goes.
Max Cohen:Well, this is also, like, another seeking a rubrics, this is another really great place for, you know, like, that document that Liz wrote that explains everything. Like, you can write mean, I think that's probably the next level is, like, you know, what's the what's the nuanced content playbook that you can upload for me so I, like, follow it just like I do for, like, your you know, what was it, the brand or whatever the last
George B. Thomas:time was? Yeah. Yeah.
Max Cohen:Liz, what was it controlling when you did the document again?
George B. Thomas:Voice and tone.
Max Cohen:It was a brand oh, yeah. Voice and tone.
Liz Moorhead:Voice and tone.
Max Cohen:Mhmm. Yep.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. But if you could add additional context to, like, lead generation or to engagement or like, that would be dope. But here here's
Chad Hohn:the thing.
George B. Thomas:I I even wanna take a step back. I I wish that this tab wasn't marketing strategy. I I wish that this tab was strategy. Mhmm. And that I could go in here, and I would see marketing, sales, service, social.
George B. Thomas:Right? Because now, if if HubSpot releases a new agent, prospecting agent, service agent, content agent, social agent, now there's a there's a strategy area that I can go to to give more in-depth, pick two things, hopefully, in the future upload documents that that agent or the, system in a whole can look at the different strategies for the different divisions or hubs or departments. I that's Mhmm. Where where I would love to see this. I have some other ideas, but I'll show up there and and see what you guys think about that.
Liz Moorhead:I mean, I think the absence of sales is upsetting of any kind. Yep. Sales enablement is a marketing strategy.
George B. Thomas:Especially with a prospecting, agent right around the
Liz Moorhead:corner.
Max Cohen:Yeah. That'll be really yeah. That will be really interesting when they well, I mean, how much fine well, I guess, this is getting you another subject. Like, how much fine tuning do they actually give around the prospecting agent in terms of stuff like this that's more because what? It's like the the way I understand it, it's like two options.
Max Cohen:It's either, like, keying up the stuff for you to send, or it's just sending it and straight up talking it.
George B. Thomas:Well, you have to train it. Right?
Max Cohen:Yeah. You have to
Chad Hohn:train it.
Max Cohen:What are you training it on?
George B. Thomas:There's there's, like, a settings area. We should probably do a whole episode on that.
Max Cohen:Yeah. We probably should. That's a
George B. Thomas:different settings area of the prospecting agent. Yeah. But there's but the two things you're talking
Chad Hohn:about is autonomous and semi autonomous
George B. Thomas:of, like, autonomous and semi autonomous of, like, just let it do it for you or, like, like, hold its hand as it as it does the thing.
Chad Hohn:But Yeah.
George B. Thomas:The fact that it's not leading back
Max Cohen:to send it button.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Just just send it. We don't care that much about them humans. We just wanna try to sell them stuff, and we don't care about trust in humans. We just wanna sell stuff and get revenue, ROI.
Max Cohen:Yeah. No. I would I I think, like, ultimately, the the, when it, you know, gets better and they learn what they need to learn, I think the ultimate deployment of this is when you're creating a piece of content and you're building the AI, trust, one, isn't an option because that should just be implied. Right? And two, it should more so say, what's the goal of this piece of content?
Max Cohen:Oh. Have, like, a number of different outcomes. Right? And to me, that's the that would be the ideal.
Chad Hohn:But will that be on a per per article or per content?
Max Cohen:That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. Per content level.
George B. Thomas:Let's let's pull up from that. Let's pull up from that. Because, again, you guys love to talk about content. Dang gone. Not everything is about content.
George B. Thomas:Let's plug your ears.
Liz Moorhead:You are the one who just said
Chad Hohn:it to
Liz Moorhead:be sales
George B. Thomas:first. I I know. But we but here's the thing. Let's back up a second. Because, again and we talked about this with, ideal customer profiles and buyer personas and just wishing that, like, HubSpot would use some of the stuff that they already use, like, personas and ideal customer profiles together.
George B. Thomas:Like, just let us hook into the stuff we're doing. Look. Marketing strategies, they depend on business goals. Mhmm. Marketing strategies, they depend on the target audience that you're trying to go after.
George B. Thomas:Marketing strategies, they depend on where the customer is on their buyer's journey. Awareness, consideration, decision. So now where this gets dope is if HubSpot users were actually using the goals feature in HubSpot, and HubSpot AI data sources could go and look at what the goals were set to pay attention to that. If if the we could literally have target audiences. Oh, I don't know because there's a ABM and target, like, anyway, target accounts.
George B. Thomas:Like, if you had that set up, well, what if AI data sources could look at target accounts? And and, by the way, if you had a way to actually track buyers' journey, I don't know, life cycle stages for most companies who haven't customers. Anyway, if there was a way that you could then say, hey. Here's our business goals. Here's the target audience, ideal customer profiles, buyer personas, target accounts, all the three things that are already in HubSpot, And in here's where they are on their journey.
George B. Thomas:Now fluctuate. Imagine going into marketing strategy and it being, what's your strategy and awareness? What's your two strategies for a consumer? What's your two strategies for decision? Now all of a sudden being able to pick two makes a little more sense because you're picking the two for the area of the journey.
George B. Thomas:But anyway
Max Cohen:Dude, imagine honestly, dude, imagine like, we're I'm sorry. Where's the tool that's just, like, leading into inbound, which is what make made HubSpot so great? Where it's like, you can tell it your company, you can tell it your goals, you can tell it, like, a little bit about your customers, and then it literally just crafts an inbound marketing strategy for those things. Like, think about it. It could it it should be able to learn all that stuff from HubSpot Academy, which has ten, fifteen years of freaking content around how to do inbound marketing.
Max Cohen:All that shit still holds up. Right? Besides maybe, like, a little bit of a less emphasis on, you know, landing pages and capturing leads and stuff like that. Right? It it's, like, you know, that it's wild to me that they haven't been like, cool.
Max Cohen:Let's do, like, the hardest thing, which is, like, taking all this information that we know about inbound and putting together a a cogent strategy, right, but doing that through the context of, like, your business and your goals. Like, why couldn't it put together something like that?
Chad Hohn:You know what
George B. Thomas:I mean? Sure. They could.
Max Cohen:They could. But it's like but, you know, what we're doing is we're we're doing this, like, ICP stuff and getting away from the word persona because, like, they're placating to all
Chad Hohn:the folks that say
Max Cohen:inbound is dead when really when really I know. But when really, like, inbound is the same thing, people just call it, like, different stuff. And it's like Like, outbound. I don't know.
Liz Moorhead:Outbound. Okay. I wanna pull this out You
Max Cohen:know what outbound is. If you read it, it's inbound. It's all inbound. It's still all just inbound. You know what I mean?
Max Cohen:And but people just like to call it something different so they can sell something else and, you know, stand out and say, oh, inbound's dead. We defeated it with this brand new strategy. And then you look at the strategy, and it's like, that looks like a lot of the same. Right? I muted myself instead of beat it.
Max Cohen:But
George B. Thomas:You you, you you like how I know how to just, like, throw a word out there? Even, like, scrambled eggs. I just throw that out there, and then Max just
Max Cohen:does this thing. Don't you dare.
Liz Moorhead:I know. And then, George, what you do is five minutes later, like, guys, I don't wanna have a debate about this. My what what the fuck? Stop it.
Chad Hohn:How could we possibly gotten down this rabbit hole? I mean, goodness.
Liz Moorhead:How could why are you guys keep talking about content even though it was the very first example I'd led within this conversation. How dare you?
Chad Hohn:You guys sure do love
George B. Thomas:it. I
Liz Moorhead:I just wanna stick with you for a second because I would actually like us to get back to the thing that you were pointing out, which is we need to remember what the purpose of this tool is because it's easy to sit here and say marketing strategy, but all of these different things that but it's this is a very specific context of which this is being used. So can you remind us of the purpose of what this is supposed to be governing within HubSpot?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. This entire settings is the bridge from the human brain to the AI, like, Breeze Copilot agent. Like, the it's it's the context. It's the the thing that it's gonna make decisions off of how it's gonna create or act and do. Like, that's all of these settings that we're talking about, and, again, they need to get more robust over time.
George B. Thomas:At least that's how the agents in Copilot and Breeze will get better over time, because it all comes down to, like, the amount of context you can give a, you know, a a I'll I'll just keep calling it an agent or, I mean, it is a large language model. Like, let's just not let's not be stupid about what's powering these. That's where where you get to the magic, pieces, the places is it's understanding. This is just like GPT
Chad Hohn:memory, basically. It's the g GPT memory for your portal that they set up on a per tenant level. Like, each HubSpot portal is its own tenant. You give your tenants some strategies. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:Or some custom instructions. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Mix of, like, memory and custom instructions
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:In HubSpot for your business, like, anyway. But I got a question.
Chad Hohn:Did we ever, like, confirm that this marketing goals one you know, like, there's no documentation out there necessarily saying exactly what in the world that these two goals do. I mean, in the subheading under select marketing goals, it says add up to two goals for your AI generated content. That sounds, you know, I mean, I sure do love content over here, but it sounds like it's pretty content specific at the moment.
George B. Thomas:Well, but you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful. Email is content. Mhmm. Case studies is content.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Exactly. All gardeners. I'm not saying it's all right. Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Right. So, like, when when we say content, me, be careful because in HubSpot, almost anything that's written word could be considered content. Right? Mhmm. And so it could but no.
George B. Thomas:Here's by the way, this this whole series might be our subtle way of begging whoever is in charge of AI data sources and and what they're building to just get on a show with us. Just like come and and let let us ask you, you know, six or 60,000 questions about what's maybe six, maybe 10, not 60,000. But just let us ask some questions about what's really happening under the hood because I think if if the HubSpot users, the Hub Heroes, if you will, the humans knew what's happening under the hood. It would help them fill out the details better, know what to select better.
Liz Moorhead:That's the thing that kills me about this whole rollout. And, again, I understand we are in settings within settings within settings for a specific part of the platform. But AI was such a huge tentpole of everything they rolled out this year.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead:And I'm finding us having these discussions where a little clarity, a little messaging, a little bit more direction, an extra knowledge base article or two would have made a huge difference. If we spend a whole episode debating buyer personas versus ICPs because the intent of HubSpot introducing a new term was unclear and undefined. We have this tool here, which is either the canoe that we need when we when we think we need a yacht, or it is something that is the beginning of something that could be great, but it's it's not giving us enough direction to use it properly. And that's where I find myself a little stuck with some of this. Some of it feels very well developed.
Liz Moorhead:We were able to have much more substantive discussions about the brand voice and tone, and we've already seen leaps and bounds with that moving forward. But there is just sometimes a vacuum of messaging, a vacuum of direction that I am struggling with with some of these new tools that are rolling out.
Max Cohen:There is. And I'm wondering how much of it is because, like, a lot of this, like, new AI stuff in HubSpot is I'm not saying AI is in charge. Well, much of AI is definitely in charge, so I think just fundamentally. But I think they're still, like, very much in, like, a phase of experimentation because there's so many different ways they can go with it. Right?
Max Cohen:And I think this is kind of just, like, a product of let's build some stuff and see what happens, see how it gets received even though we don't necessarily have all the right answers of how to use it right now. I don't know.
George B. Thomas:Well, and I'll throw in here go ahead, Chad.
Chad Hohn:I was just gonna say that's a big part of their philosophy anyway at HubSpot to start small, iterate, grow, take because like, I mean, it it's the worst as a software developer to build something that you think people want all the way. And then they're like, this is not what I wanted at all. Like, that's so ridiculously expensive. Ridiculously. I know you deal with a little bit of like, user fatigue, user frustration when it doesn't do everything you want it to, but it's a whole lot easier to just continue to build on it.
Chad Hohn:And these are really the building blocks between some of the things like when, you know, you and George earlier were just getting inspired about like, man, what if it could help you do the really hard thing of like building your whole strategy?
Max Cohen:They're never gonna do the beginning yet. Right?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. They're not how could they possibly be? Right? Because they don't know for sure. Right?
Chad Hohn:And they don't know how people are gonna use these things, what they want, what they don't want, what they like, what they don't like. So, I mean, that's part of why we even talk about this in in, you know, these episodes. Right? Is we wanna make sure that at least I mean, if somebody's got their ear to the ground and wants to hang out with the hub heroes, you know, they can.
Max Cohen:Yeah. We'll even make you a little cartoon superhero. So
George B. Thomas:And and
Max Cohen:I that.
George B. Thomas:There's that. And and I would say this too is, like, amount that it changes right underneath their feet. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And and what I mean by that is AI is, like, vastly, vastly moving.
George B. Thomas:The amount of times that I have gone back and I'm gonna dumb this down, seriously dumb this down. But the the times that I've gone back and recreated a prompt that I've built that was tried and true to make it better or do a next thing, or I could cut a piece because now it just fundamentally like, a new feature was released or whatever. Mhmm. Like, just just in in that, the amount of iterations. So I can only imagine, like, trying to build a platform with this AI and all AI changing, all the data changing, all the other pieces of the tool changing around it.
George B. Thomas:Like, there's so much change to try to keep up with. And here we come running in of, like, it'd be great if we could do but but it would be great if we could do these things. Like, we understand. We understand. We we're saying this
Chad Hohn:out loud. Vision. Like,
George B. Thomas:yeah, we see the vision. But Right. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:Well, where you're headed, and I think you wanna advocate for our use case. Right?
Liz Moorhead:Well, here's what I will say about that. I agree. One of the things I always come back to, and we've said this multiple times throughout the series, that that this is the worst these tools will ever be. And where they are right now at the quote, unquote worst level is pretty freaking phenomenal because HubSpot could be a platform that takes eight thousand years to implement any changes, and they're going to market with some sort of full fledged Cadillac worth of tools before they'd even ask the community what it really needs. I think the only challenge I'm still having is that with some of these, that is very clear.
Liz Moorhead:Right? Like, when we look at the brand voice and tone stuff, you could see exactly what the purpose is. You know exactly what we're trying to dial into. You could understand, like, hey. This is where we're started versus this where we're going, and it's even leaps and bounds from where it started as, like, a one line thing that you could enter.
Liz Moorhead:The one thing about this, and this is where it's just like it's that knowledge management documentation specialist from many moons ago who's just kinda dry heaving a little bit is that when I open this up, I don't even know how to experiment with it because, George, you said something fascinating at the start of this episode. What is the difference between a piece of AI content, whether that's email, chat, whatever generated when it's brand awareness versus lead generation? Why is trust ever negotiable? Like, there are just a few things where it's like, I would just love a little bit more direction of, hey. Try experimenting with this or this is what it might look like to give me a little meat on the bones to get it started.
Liz Moorhead:But what I would like to hear from you, George, because
George B. Thomas:It's funny how you guys won't let go of trust, but we haven't been on a, rampage that education should just be a thing considering inbound is literally create valuable informational content as a magnet to bring pea. And, like, we're Oh,
Max Cohen:I hate the word magnet. Oh my god.
George B. Thomas:I'm just saying. It literally was a picture of
Chad Hohn:a magnet.
Liz Moorhead:George, take us there. How do you feel about education being negotiable?
George B. Thomas:No. I'm just saying I can't believe you guys haven't been, like, just trust. Trust. Trust. Trust.
George B. Thomas:Listen. Trust and education are, like, table stakes to me. But they're all But then that but that that then leads that you only have, like, three options to and you only pick two.
Liz Moorhead:So brand awareness and lead generation. And brand awareness is always such a funny thing for me as a goal. What brand awareness is always a funny thing. So you do we want them to be aware of us so they'll go to brunch with us? Like, no.
Liz Moorhead:We want them to become leads. We want them to become part of our community. Like, there's the it it appears. I love brunch. Girl loves a good brunch.
Liz Moorhead:George, as someone who has spent a lot of time experimenting over many, many years with new HubSpot tools as they come out, what are some of your do's and don'ts for people who are looking at this particular setting or any of the other settings as this tool continues to evolve?
George B. Thomas:But here's but here's the fun thing. Like, my brain is in a different place after this podcast than it was before this podcast. Because here's the thing. So if I go into my portal right now, I have lead generation, and I have engagement selected, which I'm like, yeah. That's what I wanna do.
George B. Thomas:I wanna get engagement, and I want lead generation. However, based on this conversation, what I would say is if they're nonnegotiables, then why didn't I pick trust in education? Because I can focus as a human on making sure that it's, you know, lead generation or that I'm saying it in a way that might be conversational or getting engagement. But I, without a doubt, wanna build trust, and I wanna build education. And I I feel like that's gonna also really impact the length of content and the voice and tone of content if I select in my in understanding what I know about other models in AI like Claude and GPT, like, as soon as you start to say, like, education, meaning, like, PDF, like, log article, like, you you start to get longer answers or outputs than than you typically do if you're just like, give me this thing.
George B. Thomas:So, you know, maybe, like, if you're just not sure, maybe you just pick trust in education because those are nonnegotiables. But Yeah. At least use it. And and then, again, like me, I I would I could change it over time, I guess, because right now it's lead generation engagement. But after this podcast, I might just go put trust in education because that's who we are and what we do.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. I think, you know, again, this this to me, at least at the moment, I would imagine based on, like, just software development and architecture that these are, like, prioritize these things. Right? That's how I would imagine that this is being fed into the engine. Right?
Chad Hohn:Is like, make sure that these are the most important things while all of them will probably still all occur in some fashion, right, all the time, you know. So I think whereas last week, we were like, hey, if you don't have any clue what you should put there, maybe don't put anything at all. Whereas this one is like, I think trust in education is a good default if you don't have a better option. Right?
Liz Moorhead:I would a % agree with that because you're you to George's point, those are kind of table stakes. You know? We we've talked repeatedly, throughout this entire podcast since it began about how education and trust are kind of like that. That's what we're that's we're in the business of. Right?
Liz Moorhead:Mhmm. I would be curious to see if anybody would do some testing with some of their AI tools of what happens and what how the outputs change depending on what you select. I'd be so curious
George B. Thomas:about that. Here's the here's the fun thing, and not to be that guy, but I'm gonna be that guy. I literally just tried to change it in my portal. If I try to put education in the little box, I get an error screaming at me, a red box saying I can't add education. So there's a glitch in the matrix, but that's the start
Liz Moorhead:here. What? What were you trying to change it out from?
George B. Thomas:I well, I removed my marketing goals completely.
Chad Hohn:Oh. And then I tried to too.
George B. Thomas:I I tried to put trust in education in there, and I, got an error. So I removed education, and it saved. And I added anything but education and it saved. But as soon as I try to add education, I get an error. So HubSpot, you're probably not listening to this or watching this, but there's a glitch in the matrix when it comes to, like, selecting education in the marketing strategy goal.
George B. Thomas:But this does go back to this is the worst it'll ever be. They're building it so that we can move forward. And somebody just needs to do a support ticket on, can we make education work? Because trust and education are, like, no brainers.
Liz Moorhead:I was gonna say, the thing that I find fascinating about this is that, of course, we have to to have a setting like this. Because if we think about any of the AI tools that we use for anything, you have to give it a goal. You have to give it something of, like, oh, this is what we are trying to accomplish with these people. So there there's the other side of this because I was talking with a couple of friends about this this weekend to use HubSpot. We were I was just curious.
Liz Moorhead:What do you think when you see this tool? And a couple of people said, well, if it's just so simplistic, why are you gonna bother having it? And it's like, because you have to give it a goal.
George B. Thomas:Wow. Anyway, never mind.
Liz Moorhead:George just glitched out. Talk me through what just happened on your face.
Max Cohen:His education button got switched off.
George B. Thomas:Well, no. Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:My education education goal. What do we do?
George B. Thomas:Well, I don't know what friends you are talking to, and so I don't wanna be rude because they might listen to this or watch this.
Liz Moorhead:They do not listen to this show. You're fine.
George B. Thomas:But but I'm like but I'm like, just because it's simple doesn't mean it's not powerful. Like, think about AI and prompting. Like, I can say I can say, as a professional writer or as a social media strategist or as a right. Like, those two words or that that word or whatever, it simple, massive effect on the output. Massive effect.
George B. Thomas:And so that's why I'm saying, like, even though we can only select two of these, we have no clue the potential massive impact that this makes to all of what is coming out the other side of what we're creating. And so imagine this. I want you to go sell your business, and products and services to anybody on the planet. But first but first, I'm just gonna wipe it from your memory so you don't know jack squat about it, and then go do that. You you you need the understanding.
George B. Thomas:You need the context as a human. Mhmm. It needs the understanding. It needs the contact con context as a system.
Chad Hohn:But I anyway,
George B. Thomas:I'll get to
Liz Moorhead:me is that there was such a high degree of overlap and similarity between the goals that were given. And they had a similar reaction of, like, when am I never going to have trust there?
Chad Hohn:Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:You know, there were a couple of things where it was like they were like, this is so simplistic and without direction, I'm not even sure how to use it. But I think to what we've been trying to say here is that, like, we have to give it a goal of subtype, guys. We have to give it a goal. And let's be honest. While some of us are sitting here going trusted education or where it's at, go to sub c suite leaders.
Liz Moorhead:They probably might not have the same answer. You're like, yeah. Trust is important, but I would like to generate leads, please. Please and thank you. Something measurable.
Liz Moorhead:Something less warm and fuzzy.
Max Cohen:Is I I can't remember because I haven't been on I I haven't looked at the page recently. But, like, does it does it give zero context to what it actually does?
Liz Moorhead:Does does not say anything, and there's no link to everything
Max Cohen:that you're in the article. It doesn't say the AI will keep this in mind as it's creating content across everything for you.
George B. Thomas:In in knowledge articles
Liz Moorhead:for your AI judder.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. In a in a knowledge article, it says, like, one line. Do you have that, Liz? Like, maybe it's a line
Liz Moorhead:and a half. I could read it. It's I could read it. It's select marketing goals such as brand awareness, engagement, or more. You could select up to two marketing goals.
Liz Moorhead:That's what it says. I got to explain anything. But we have to take this literally. It is a marketing strategy. It is not a sales strategy.
Liz Moorhead:So it is meant for explicitly marketing activities. So if we look at through it at that very, very binary lens, if I get really black and white about this, it is how you define your marketing. What is it you're trying to accomplish? Depending on where an organization is in their journey, they may be more emphasizing on the brand awareness piece. But the challenge I have, and this is what I think we started to talk about at the beginning, is that that shifts depending on the context.
Liz Moorhead:You know, I'm not always talking to all of my audience at the same time with the same tone of voice and the same goal, particularly since they're all ping ponging through their own buying journey. But we have covered a lot of ground today, I think. I know we're all do we feel more confused, less confused? How how are we feeling, guys?
Max Cohen:Feeling optimistic about the future.
Liz Moorhead:Max?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. You are.
Liz Moorhead:Tell us why. Yeah.
Max Cohen:It's the worst it's ever gonna be.
Chad Hohn:It's the
Max Cohen:worst it's ever gonna be. They put it out in this sort of, like, clearly this, like, testing state to spur conversations like this, right, amongst users and people going through the beta or whatever it may be. Right? And they'll fine tune it over time.
George B. Thomas:You know
Chad Hohn:what I'm surprised?
Liz Moorhead:To understand, Max. You literally said I'm optimistic. So you'll have to forgive me for eventually being, like, are
George B. Thomas:we sure? Wow. I am.
Max Cohen:I'm optimistic.
Chad Hohn:Don't freak me out.
Max Cohen:I always I always I always bet on HubSpot, baby. You're never gonna hear me not not bet on HubSpot.
Liz Moorhead:We always bet on Big Sprocket over here. But, Chad, what were you gonna say?
Chad Hohn:No. I was gonna say, you know, one of the things I noticed that I didn't notice, is, like, you know, whenever anything new comes out in HubSpot, you get, like, 800 CSAT happy medium sad faces and give us feedback about this thing. Oh. Right? I haven't seen that anywhere in the data sources tab, which I'm a little surprised about.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm. You know how, like, oh, the new advanced filters view. How did you feel about the advanced filters? I mean, I guess maybe I'm in a lot of portals, so I see it more often than, you know, people who are just in less portals. Right?
Chad Hohn:Who are just super admining their own. But still, like, I never saw I never saw any CSAT or any feedback survey function here, which I'm, again, a little surprised about. I've even gotten, you know, product managers who just, like, emailed me from one of those before and asked for more context. Right? Which is I love that about HubSpot, and I know they bet on their users.
Chad Hohn:And so I'm just a little surprised I haven't seen that.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. No pop up here, which, by the way, totally not about this episode. But I wish there was a a don't show me that ever again in all the portals that I'm in button. Oh
Chad Hohn:my god.
George B. Thomas:Yes. But I don't need startup guides. I don't need to give you my feedback on the if you want my feedback, you got my email. We can talk. Like, anyway.
George B. Thomas:But that's just me.
Max Cohen:They need a they need a button they need a button in that onboarding flow where it says, what type of HubSpot user are you? And it's, like, salesperson.
Chad Hohn:And then
Max Cohen:there's this one thing at the bottom that says, I'm George b Thomas.
George B. Thomas:No. No. No. No. No.
George B. Thomas:No.
Liz Moorhead:No. No.
George B. Thomas:GST time.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. It's like it's like, oh, yeah. We're in GST.
George B. Thomas:No. You can't get that specific. The bottom butt the bottom button could be for many people out in the ecosystem, and it just says, I'm a I'm sure you have HubSpot.
Max Cohen:Yeah. You have one for them, and then you and then you have a George b Thomas button. No.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. It's HubSpot I mean, that's it's above HubSpot god, actually.
Max Cohen:Yeah. No.
Chad Hohn:No. No. It's not.
Liz Moorhead:But, Chad,
George B. Thomas:to your point a guy.
Chad Hohn:I'll be
Liz Moorhead:on okay. First of all, we're gonna talk about that later, George. You know that. Chad, to your point, I will say this. If I cook a big Thanksgiving meal for something and there's a side dish where it's the first time I've test drive that recipe and I'm feeling a little iffy about it, guess who's not proactively asking anybody what they thought about that corn casserole?
Liz Moorhead:This girl. We're gonna focus on the turkey. We're gonna focus on the mashed potatoes. We're gonna focus on the So
Chad Hohn:you're just gonna yeah. You're gonna look at the sentiment as people are are jamming that corn casserole in their mouth and then see
Liz Moorhead:That's right. That's right. But unless you're coming up here to tell me I'm so pretty, like, let's just let's not have the conversation none of us wanna have, which is everybody's uncomfortable. I
Chad Hohn:don't know
Max Cohen:if you're really seeing
Chad Hohn:the full sun afraid of feedback, though.
Liz Moorhead:I know.
Max Cohen:The sentence, jamming that corn casserole in your mouth just really made me uncomfortable.
Chad Hohn:I'm here for you, Max. Well
Liz Moorhead:George, please, for the love of all that's
Max Cohen:holy. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:No. No. He's zooming in. George, take us home. What do you want our listeners to go home with from today's scintillating conversation?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. First of all, from the human side of marketing strategy, trust in education, our table stakes, make sure you're doing that. But when it comes to bridging that gap with HubSpot, make sure you go into AI, go into data sources, make sure you listen to the historical episodes that we've done on brand voice and tone and customer profiles and all of that good stuff. But definitely go in and at least it it'll take you a second. Select two marketing goals that you wanna give some context to the system around when it comes to the content and other elements that you'll be generating or using inside of HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:That's my 2¢. 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.
George B. Thomas:Make sure you head over to the hubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. 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 heroes 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 be someone's hero.
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