#Inbound16 Highlights from Day 3 and 4
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#Inbound16 Highlights from Day 3 and 4

17th November 2016

It’s been almost one week since Inbound 2016 ended, and if you missed it this year, I have some great news: a lot of the content is now available online! I wrote about my highlights from the first two days, and here’s what I recommend checking out from days 3 and 4.

The 3rd and 4th days of Inbound were the most intense ones. They brought together amazing entertainment and useful content for marketing and sales professionals. To give you an idea, here are just a few names featured on the agenda of the last two days: Tim Urban (the creator of one of Elon Musk’s favourite blogs, waitbutwhy.com), Rand Fishkin (Moz), Oli Garner (Unbounce), Will Critchlow (Distilled), Andre Alpar (Performics Germany), and so many others.

I have to admit, it was pretty difficult to figure out the best schedule, simply because there were so many interesting speakers and topics happening at the same time. I guess that’s partially one of the reasons why the Inbound team decided to make the content available online.

>> Check out the video recordings from Inbound 2016

Here are some highlights from my favourite talks.

1. Free Marketing Software (HubSpot)

One of the biggest announcements at Inbound came from HubSpot. They revealed the freemium version of their marketing software. If you have a small business and want to track your visitors and leads using the Inbound methodology, you’ll find this very useful. Two other complementary products are available for free as well: HubSpot Sales and CRM.

To learn more about this package, including hands-on advice on how to use it, watch VP of Product Christopher O’Donnell as he reveals and explores what’s new in HubSpot.

2. How To Keep Up With Google in 2017 (Moz)

Rand Fishkin is definitely a must-follow for anyone interested in SEO. Not only was his presentation easy to understand for newbies, but it also contained interesting insights for participants with advanced SEO experience and solid technical knowledge.

If you don’t have time to listen to his entire talk, you can scroll through his slides.

3. Launching an International Marketing Strategy (Trello)

While this presentation isn’t featured in the content library, I was fortunate enough to listen in and thought it would benefit a lot of marketers planning to expand their business internationally.

If you’re not using Trello already, you should know it’s a widely spread project management tool. They have a freemium version that makes it easy for them to attract a very wide range of users from all over the world.

When they decided to expand their reach internationally, the first thing they looked at was their current user base. After undertaking thorough market research, they came down to four countries they initially wanted to focus on: Japan, Germany, Spain, and Brazil. Another aspect worth knowing is that their marketing team consists of only 4 people.

Key takeaways when launching an international campaign:

  • First and foremost, mine for knowledge before tapping into a new market; use market research and experts to understand the local culture.
  • Content and design need to be localised based on what’s valuable and important to a specific country.
  • Your local network is very important: business partners, investors, marketing agency etc.
  • Create and sustain local communities using social media.

Today more than 75% of Trello’s website traffic comes from non-US countries, and  more than 45% of revenues comes from non-US countries.

4. How to not be shitty on the Internet (Tim Urban)

I like to save the best for last.

Tim Urban is an incredible blogger (read his work on waitbutwhy.com), and not just because Elon Musk says so. But also because he achieved something incredible: he proved that truly valuable, long form content can be appealing to the masses.

For so long, the most “successful” articles on the internet were the ones with a click-bait title, and short, mild-to-awful content. Tim’s writing style is exactly the opposite: complicated topics (such as AI and Musk’s plan to take people to Mars) delivered in a long form, yet entertaining format. And it works amazingly well! Waitbutwhy.com has about 1 million readers every month and 450 000 email subscribers.

Tim Urban at Inbound16
Tim Urban at Inbound16

His talk at Inbound focused a lot on his process of writing and why he believes that is so successful.

  • First of all he chose a very specific target audience: someone like himself. Someone who loves to read about everything that’s new out there, who’s interested in a variety of domains, and, most importantly, someone who absolutely hates misleading titles and *shitty* content.
  • He chooses his topics based on what’s “hot”. Take, A.I. for example. He only writes the text after prolonged research and he always tries to give it a spin. No one likes to read about the obvious, right?
  • He values the power of visuals. If you read his blog, you know he draws stick figures and uses simplistic designs to express complicated stories.

That’s about it. Hope you enjoyed my highlights and found the links useful. If you also attended Inbound this year, you’re welcome to share your experience and learnings in the comments below.

Cheers to an incredible event!

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I’m a SaaS marketer always happy to read & talk about all things inbound, SEO, storytelling, design, and literature. Currently based in Dublin, Ireland. Working @HubSpot.
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