Episode 200: How HubSpot, Marketing, Sales and Service has changed in the last 4 years

Welcome to HubShots Episode 200: How HubSpot, Marketing, Sales and Service has changed in the last 4 years

This episode, our 200th, we reflect on how much has changed in the last 4 years, including HubSpot’s focus and positioning, as well as the larger sales and marketing ecosystem.

Listen to the episode here: https://soundcloud.com/hubshots/200-how-hubspot-marketing-sales-and-service-has-changed-in-the-last-4-years

Welcome to HubShots - APAC's number 1 HubSpot focussed podcast - where we discuss HubSpot tips & tricks, new features, and strategies for growing your marketing results.

HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers and sales professionals who use HubSpot, hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN Systems.

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Recorded: Thursday 23 April 2020 | Published: Friday 01 May 2020

Shot 1: Growth Thought of the Week

Our 200th Episode

This is our 200th Episode! Time flies when you are having fun.

Our first episode was recorded on 06 October 2015 just after we had returned from Inbound 2015.

This episode we’re going to look back on some of the key milestones that HubSpot has released over the last 4 years, plus how marketing has and hasn’t changed during that time. (Just think about the move to mobile as an example of behaviour change.)

As Bill Gates has been quoted as saying: Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.

Let’s see what HubSpot has achieved in 4 years - we’ll bet you underestimate what has changed. And imagine what they are going to achieve in the next 4 years!

Kylie encouragingly told me that:

“All the goods shows crack 200 episodes!  You’re in good company with:

• The Big Bang Theory 279
• Friends 236
• The Office US 201

Shoutout to the people who inspired and encouraged us

Our producer Chris Mottram and his company Podcastily who has been with us right from the start

Mads Nielsen, Varun Bhandarkar, Ryan Bonnici, Nick Dzienny, Brent Claremont, Lucy Seed, Bertie Campo.

Justin Theng, Adam Downer, Charles McKay, Moby Siddique, Dann Weatherhead, Chris Higgins

George B Thomas and the HubCast

Luke Summerfield, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah

Tara, Roselen, Edward, Marie and Kylie

HubSpot is a Platform Company

When Craig was at Inbound 2014 HubSpot announced their CRM product, and Craig remembers the hush that fell over the crowd when Brian Halligan announced in the keynote that ‘HubSpot is now a CRM company’.

Prior to that HubSpot had positioned themselves as a marketing software company.

In 2017 HubSpot announced their Conversations features.

In 2018 HubSpot announced their Service Hub product.

And over the past few years they have been ramping up their integration capabilities.

Cue to today and HubSpot is positioning themselves as a platform company.

It’s going to be fascinating to see how they evolve over the next four years, as they expand into other areas.

Their latest CMS Hub product positioning, and extended feature set has been a long time coming, but in some ways feels like they are just getting started on the web application side of things.

Shot 2: HubSpot Marketing Feature of the Week

More on HubSpot CMS Hub

HubSpot’s post on how existing customers can start taking advantage of the new CMS Hub is a useful overview.

Each episode we’ll mention a key feature we like and use. Last episode we chatted about HubSpot Smart Content.

This episode we’re going to cover one way HubSpot CMS Hub is moving into the Enterprise space.

HubSpot Serverless Functions

HubSpot Serverless functions are a way to write Javascript functions in HubSpot to interact with both HubSpot objects (eg HubDb table or contact object) as well as other systems (eg writing out to an external platform.

Simple example - you can’t write to HubDb from HubL or via a Workflow. Instead you would use serverless functions and write via the HubDb API.

From Simple Limited to Simple Sophisticated

Compare this to where HubSpot COS was 4 years ago. A simple website builder that had limited functionality when compared to WordPress or other CMSs. Today HubSpot CMS Hub is sophisticated and extensible, yet still very simple to use.

HubSpot is now positioning CMS Hub for developers, IT Managers as well as marketers.

Shot 3: HubSpot Sales Feature of the Week

The HubSpot sales tool has grown from nothing (the CRM was announced at Inbound 2014) into a massive platform.

Yes...small steps from the Chrome plugin for Gmail called Sidekick to the introduction of CRM in 2014.  What small steps that make a massive difference!

HubSpot Conversations

Conversations has grown to incorporate Facebook and Chat tools.

HubSpot Sales Enterprise

Now with Quotes, payment options, customised layouts of fields, deal workflows, playbooks.

Sales team reporting and the management of workflow for sales from tasks to calls, quotes & products.

Shot 4: HubSpot Extra of the Week

HubSpot Connectivity

HubSpot’s focus on connectivity has been clear in the last few years, including their revamped App Marketplace announcement and acquisition of Piesync last year.

Other Acquisitions

Motion AI and Kemvi that were added in 2017

How could we forget the very early bots, GrowthBot made by Dharmesh!  I remember it delivering cartoons every Friday for our enjoyment along with the ability to query some parts of HubSpot.

HubSpot also invested in Terminus, the ABM tool, in 2017.

Shot 5: HubSpot Skills of the Week

HubSpot Academy has changed massively over the past 4 years.

When we first started doing our certifications there were around 10  courses. Now there are hundreds of courses and within those courses there’s at least 16 certifications and 29 awards.

The really big thing is they range from marketing, sales & service including courses taught by people outside of HubSpot.

Shot 6: Marketing Tip of the Week

Look how much advertising management has changed over the years. In this post from Conversion XL, Amanda Evans outlines how AI has totally changed the way advertising campaigns are structured - from many highly granular campaigns a few years ago, to few broad campaigns now - in order to let ML and AI work out what converts the best.

Shot 7: Insight of the Week

Marketing is:

• The right message
• To the right people
• In the right place
• In the right format
• At the right time

The first two parts are more strategic, the last 3 are more tactical.

Shot 8: HubShots Throwback of the Week

In episode 001 of HubShots we spoke about Growth Driven Design. It was a key initiative of Luke Summerfield at the time (and still is). Luke, as many will know, has been busy lately with the release of HubSpot CMS Hub. Wonderful to see how far the CMS has come in the last 4+ years.

Shot 9: Resource of the Week

Google Algorithm Changes

Look at how much Google has changed its algorithms over the last 4 years in this timeline of Google Algorithm changes from Moz. Plus how different the search results listings look. And the move to mobile first.

Shot 10: Quote of the Week

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

• Bill Gates

Please rate and leave us some feedback as this helps us improve and reach more marketers.

Full Transcript of HubShots Episode 200

- Hi everyone, welcome to our 200th episode of HubShots. In this episode, we talk about HubSpot marketing, sales and service, and how it has changed in the last four years. You're listening to to Asia-Pacific's number one HubSpot-focused podcast where we discuss HubSpot's tips, tricks, and strategies for growing your sales, marketing, and service results. My name is Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found, and with me is Craig Bailey from XEN Systems. Happy anniversary, Craig.

- Wow, 200 episodes, who thought we'd make it?

- And who thought we'd be separated like this, Craig? I know. Time flies when you're having fun. And you know, when we were looking back, preparing for the show, it's our first episode we recorded was in October 2015. You and I, we'd just returned from Inbound 2015 and you had said, "Let's do a podcast", this was all your idea, and I'm forever thankful for how you prompted me to do that and pushed me to do it, and it's been a lot of fun. And so I think this episode, we're gonna look back on some of the milestones that HubSpot has released over the last four years, 'cause so much has changed. Also, we'll look at marketing, what has and hasn't changed. It's interesting what has and what hasn't in the time. So yeah, a lot of fun ahead in this episode.

- That's right. This will slightly different to our usual, but I guess one thing we should tell people, we actually had a pretty amazing guest lined up but because of the predicament we're in at this minute, we will still be having that guest on the show, just in probably another 10 or 15 episodes time. So be on the lookout for that. And, Craig, as Bill Gates has been quoted saying, most people overestimate what they can do in one year, and underestimate what they can do in 10 years.

- That's right, well, let's bring that 10 years down to four years, and let's see what HubSpot has achieved in four years, and I'll bet you most of our listeners will underestimate what they've achieved, or they'll think, oh it's taken much longer, and so with that in mind also, what are they going to achieve in the next four years. It's just gonna be amazing. And, by the way, when I told the XEN team, I was saying, "Oh you know, we're preparing "for episode 200 this week", and Kylie, she said, "All the good shows crack 200 episodes", and she might have, it's very good company with the Big Bang Theory, they made it to 279.

- I love that show!

- Friends, they made it to 236.

- Yes.

- And The Office in the US made it to 201. Now not that we're a TV show of course, but we'll just take the credit, and thank you Kylie for pointing that out and encouraging us like that. And you know, we should do a few shoutouts, there's been tons of people that have really encouraged and helped us out along the way, haven't there?

- There has, and so let's start with one of the first people we probably had interaction with at HubSpot, and that's Mads Nielsen, and Varun.

- There's a bunch of HubSpot people that have really supported us right from the start.

- That's right.

- And Ryan Bonnici, I think he's over at G2. Nick Dzienny, of course, still looking after us.

- Nifty Nick.

- Nifty Nick.

- And Brent, Brent has taken off in HubSpot world and gone to Boston. So Brent, well done on you. And then we got Lucy, Lucy Seed.

- Yeah, and also Bertie Campo.

- That's right.

- I thinks she's with Shopify these days, but--

- That's right.

- Yeah, she was great supporter. you know, I wanted to mention Chris Mottram, our producer.

- Yes.

- He's been with us right from the start.

- He has.

- You found him. Yeah.

- And Chris started his journey with us, because I tested a few people to edit this podcast, and he was the one that got what we were about, showed interest, and has been a real supporter of us. So thank you Chris so much for supporting us over these last few years, and you know, I just hope that there is another four years of continuing to do this.

- Yes, thank you Chris. And Chris is a bit of a superstar these days, he's working with a lot of the really big names in the podcasting world, and he still sticks with us. So we appreciate that, Chris. And for anyone else that's looking for an excellent producer, Chris Mottram, highly recommended from us.

- Correct. Now we've also met lots of great people by doing this podcast, haven't we Craig? And so we just to name a few of those people. Firstly, Justin Theng.

- Go the extra Justin, thanks for your support.

- And Adam Downer.

- We actually met up with him in Boston one time, wasn't it?

- We did.

- Adam and Louisa, thanks for being supporters. Charles McKay, of course, down in Melbourne.

- Hey Charles. And then Moby. Moby, thanks for contacting us and now being one of our friends. And same with you, Dan, we met you at Inbound and that was great. And Chris Higgins.

- Chris over in the UK, Electric, thanks Chris for your support as well.

- And George B. Thomas from the HubCast. Now, we've met each other a few times and so it's great to see that he's still rocking on.

- And the HubCast really. So George, when he was cohost on the HubCast, they were kind of an inspiration for us, we used to take a lot of our lead from George. So thanks for being such a great influence on us. And then from HubSpot as well--

- We've got Luke Summerfield and, we'll go more into Luke a little bit later. But also thank you to Brian Halligan, who was our special guest on episode 100, and to Dharmesh Shah. So I think without Brian and Dharmesh, A, we wouldn't be here, and B, we would not be using such a great product like it is today.

- That's right, and I want to thank my team, Tara, Roselen, Edward, Marie and Kylie, because they do a lot of the work behind the scenes, especially Marie these days, getting it all live and getting it out there on social. We just have a chat and record. We do the easy part, Ian. They do all the hard work behind the scenes.

- So thank you to both our teams. We have appreciated you guys doing the journey with us. And thank you Craig.

- Thank you Ian.

- Now, listeners, we would usually have a Growth Thought of the Week, and we're gonna call it the What Has Happened to HubSpot Thought of the Week, and how it's grown. So when Craig, you went to Inbound first in 2014, and that's when essentially HubSpot was a marketing SaaS company, so they had a marketing product.

- Yeah, that's right. I went for three years, I think 2014, 2015, and I can't remember it was before or after 2016, buy I remember in 2014, in the keynote, this is when the keynotes, where Brian and Dharmesh did the keynotes and it was product-focused, way back, and they were a lot smaller then. But I remember Brian giving a keynote and talking about the new CRM, the sales features, and then he said, and he revealed it really well, and he said, "And I can tell you, HubSpot is now "a CRM company", and there was like this hush that fell over the audience, they all broke into applause and cheering. And it was quite a change, 'cause I'd just seen it as a marketing company, marketing software company, and there was like sales, well they're getting into that, guess that could be useful. How little I knew at that time. But that was 2014. I mean that's more than four years ago, six years ago, but it's really shown how effectively HubSpot has pivoted, or not pivoted actually, expanded, and there's been some other announcements that have come from then onwards, hasn't there?

- That's right. So that was a really pivotal point, and I think that stemmed out of HubSpot realizing, getting marketing right, but then having nowhere where people would consistently put their leads, and how to process up following them up, and I think there was a staggering statistic at the time, it was like 70-80% of businesses did not use a CRM to manage their data. So that's where I think that stemmed from. So what happened in 2017, Craig?

- Well then they had their Conversations feature came out, and then the year after they released Service Hub, and then over the last few years they've been ramping up the integration capabilities, we're gonna be chatting about that a little bit later, and then if you cue to today, HubSpot has changed from being a marketing software company to a platform company, and I think it's been fascinating just to see that evolution. They've expanded into other areas, and we've included an image of their obligatory flywheel so that you can see it. And then of course, now we have the CMS Hub, which is a positioning change, but also some additional features, which is really extended. So you've got this whole marketing suite, sales suite, service suite, underpinned by a very strong and sophisticated web application suite as well. So it's exciting time, and with that, it's like well what's next? I'm really looking forward to the next four years.

- And Craig, what is the HubSpot Marketing Feature of the Week?

- All right, so moving on, I thought it was useful to let's reflect back on where CMS Hub has come from, because it's been actually around for a long time, if you think of, it was called the COS, or the--

- C-O-S yes.

- Content Optimization System or whatever they called it when I first started. And they've got a post on how useful the new CS Hub is, CMS Hub, and we chatted about smart content last week, but I actually wanted to chat this week about some of their enterprise features to highlight just how far it's come. So I'm actually gonna talk about serverless functions, which if you're a marketer, you can probably go to sleep when you hear this, but if you're a developer, you're like, oh wow, this is exciting news. And really what's happened, to cut to the chase, HubSpot moved from oh this is a marketing tool with landing pages and a few website abilities, to not only for marketers, but it's also for developers and IT managers. So they're really broadening who their user is for these tools, and when you look at serverless functions, which I'll just give you an example what that is in case you don't know what it is. Actually, I'll give you an example. If you think of the HubDB table, you've set up a little table in HubSpot, I think most people are aware of HubDB now, you can use HubL to pull data out of a HubDB table, but you can't actually use it push data back in. You manually go in and update the table, or you can import from the spreadsheet. So that's where functions come in, and what serverless functions are, they're JavaScript functions, you can write them and put them in HubSpot and then you can interact with all your APIs, and not only the HubSpot APIs, like the HubDB API, but even a contact API, or external systems, third party systems that you might want to integrate with as well. So this is all sitting within the server in functions, so it's not like you have to actually configure this from the front end. But this is a whole suite. It's almost an infrastructure piece there underlying it. And why am I mentioning this? Well it's not really of interest to marketers who would be our main audience, but it demonstrates just the sophistication that HubSpot has grown into. And if you compare that back to four or five years ago, when it was just the guys whipping up a landing page in kind of a clunky way, I have to say, it's improved a lot lately with drag and drop and templates and now themes as well. But what a change that is to come from, I'm gonna call it from simple limited to simple sophisticated.

- I think you've summed it up really well, Craig. We're only at the start of this journey with CMS Hub, and just like all the other products, like sales, service, you will see this evolve and you'll see things get better, better integration, better access, and just so much of good usability there. So I think something to look out for in the years ahead. All right, now we're gonna talk about our HubSpot Sales Feature of the Week, Craig, and when we started there were no sales tools.

- That's right. And do you remember Sidekick?

- I did, I was one of those first users of Sidekick, and I remember talking to somebody in Boston, I think, actually sold me Sidekick. I signed up for it and then, had a conversation with somebody, but I was like, wow that was a long time ago.

- It was and it wasn't, because 2014, it does seem like a long time ago, but if you compare that to how it's grown and now it's HubSpot Sales Enterprise, I mean think about what are some of your favorite features in HubSpot Sales Enterprise or Sales Pro these days, Ian?

- Look I love the fact that there's automation. So the lead rotation, I love that feature, and the lead balancing. Love the ability to do quotes, get signatures, use products, it's just, I think that's just even changed how we give people estimates in our business or quotes, because it is easier to do now. You can have that all set up, you can quickly send it, you can track it, you can do stuff. Another feature I love is Documents, Templates and Snippets. They are really good to save time, and I think as the sales tools have grown up they have become really good ways to help people save time and get great results.

- I think that's right. I'd add to that, you can get payments straight from quotes these days. Payment integration, deal work closed that you mentioned automation, playbooks, customizing layouts. It's like this is a sophisticated tool, and it's just happening so fast, and so, I know we're kind of going on, we're really drinking the Kool-Aid this week aren't we, Ian, but it is just amazing to see how much it has improved over the years.

- So thank you to everyone who has helped build these products. It has made the lives, our lives, and the lives of our customers, so much better for it. So thank you. Now Craig, what's the HubSpot Extra of the Week?

- Well let's hark back to what we were chatting about earlier in HubSpot is a platform, and connectivity and integration. Hasn't that changed remarkably over the last couple of years.

- Massive.

- And so we're not just talking about, oh well you can integrate with Zapier, but if you look at their revamped app marketplace, acquisition of PieSync, and in fact there's been a whole bunch of acquisitions, haven't there?

- That's right. So one of the ones that kind of excited me in 2017 was the acquisition of Motion AI and Kemvi, and so that was to do with artificial intelligence and they bought those businesses back in 2017, and lest we can forget, the very early days of bots, and we had GrowthBot, and it's still actually in my Slack, GrowthBot, and I think that was made by Dharmesh, that was his little project. And I remember it delivering, it would ask me if I wanted the cartoon of the week, and I'd say, "Of course", and every Friday I'd get a little chuckle to myself as we saw the latest cartoons sort of in marketing and sales. And also one thing it did was, it had the ability to query some parts of HubSpot, so you could ask it questions and it would tell you, give you the answers.

- You know what? I remember the little anecdote related to Dharmesh, because when we'd come back from that Inbound, I think we were both at that Inbound and they announced chatbot, or GrowthBot, and we did a show after, we should find it, I can't remember, but I remember it on the show saying, "I just don't get this chatbot thing, "I don't think it's gonna take off, what am I missing?", and Dharmesh very generously came on and left us a comment, and explained how chatbots were gonna grow and all of that, and look, it's been proved right, and the whole conversations piece, you know, they were early on, and so that's what we look to these people for. And of course now, people would look back and go, "Oh well of course", that's just a part of everyday website, but back then, you gotta remember, this is just a few short years ago, it was new, or they were terrible, they had a terrible experience, and now it's just part of the web fabric that we use every day.

- And what else do we have, Craig? We had HubSpot invest in Terminus, and this is an ABM tool, so Account-Based Marketing Tool back in 2017 as well.

- Yeah, I don't know really how that's gone, actually, I think that integration kind of died off, but the point of mentioning it is, they were investing in ABM tools back then, and still there's a lot of corporates that are only just waking up to the whole ABM approach these days,

- That's right.

- And so, and of course, we've talked about this probably 10 episodes ago about HubSpot rolling out their ABM functionality throughout their hubs. So yep, early on as well. So yeah, quite interesting just to see how focused they've been on in pulling in these technologies. AI, ABM, GrowthBots and making them part of what just started as a marketing software company.

- Oh and I think we should add, Craig, when we started there was no ads integrations, and now that is such a key aspect of our conversations and our daily usage of the tool, is the ads integrations.

- In an inboundy way, Ian.

- That's right, Craig. In an inboundy way. And just think, how much of Facebook advertising we do, Google Ad advertising, LinkedIn, and just getting that data in and being able to show people what or where have originated from and all the interaction. That is phenomenal, and I think, never forget how good it is until you go somewhere else and you realize you don't have that. All right, Craig, so now this is a really, so we're gonna call this the HubSpot Skills of the Week, and we are going to talk about HubSpot Academy, how that has changed over the last four years. Now, when we started doing certifications there were around 10 courses, I think in the Academy. Now there are actually hundreds of courses, and there are at least 16 certifications and what they call 29 awards that you can have. And it has grown, it's morphed. They've got more people that are contributing, even industry leaders doing some of that training, which we get access to. So it is one of those hidden gems within the platform that people have access to. I know when I talk to people, they say, "Oh, how do I know all of the stuff?" You know what? Where did we learn all of our stuff, Craig? It was in HubSpot Academy, and I actually tell a lot of people, "You can know as much as I do. "Just do the HubSpot Academy training, "get certified, use the tool, and you will be "streets ahead of anybody else". So I think there are some really big things, and you know, like we've seen the way it's been organized, and even the way people have changed the way they learn. So they've got lessons in there so you can really see how they're trying to make it more adaptable to how people are learning today. So I was, for example, today, I had a call with a customer, and I said, "Really you should be "using the ABM features", and they said, "Oh we've got to get our head around this", and I said, "Oh look, here's the training", I just searched up on the Academy, and I said, "Look, here it is, it's 19 minutes of videos, "how to get started with ABM", and I just said, "Look, do that, get everybody on your team to do that "and then take the next step". But just such a wealth and richness of resource within the platform.

- I totally agree. And you know when they talk about the hubs? Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, Service Hub, and now CMS Hub. Sure there's those four hubs, but there's almost like a learning hub which is a key, well, what's the word, pillar, it's kind of a foundational element, and it really is a differentiator I think in the market. And not only that, the way it's kept up to date is what amazes me. I don't know who is looking after it or how they manage it, but whenever there's a new feature, and you go into the Academy or the Knowledge Base, it's always up to date. You never find out of date stuff. I just don't know how they do it. It's incredible.

- I agree. So, I mean I do thank you, and I'll tell you how good it is, is that when my wife started working with us, one of the things I did was get her to do the training, and she is a chartered accountant, right. So can you imagine chartered accountant trying to do HubSpot training? It didn't go very well. But you know what? She learnt a few things, and what is really interesting, as she's re-entered the workforce now and she's doing other training, she keeps coming back and telling me how good HubSpot training was, because she has not experienced anything like it anywhere else. So, there you go.

- Yeah, and look, if you told me it was an expensive access to the HubSpot Academy, was a high-priced ticketed venture, I'd be like, yeah well that's worth it. It's free, that's what I can't believe.

- And you know what? One thing we did forget, and I just though about this which is not in our show notes, is HubSpot Support. You know what? I cannot speak more highly of HubSpot Support and how it's gone from strength to strength over the years, as they've opened more offices, as the teams have grown. You know what? Honestly, from people who are looking at HubSpot to you and me who use it almost on a daily basis to get answers back, I wanna say thank you to those guys, thank you to the people that lead those teams, thank you to those who help us every day and help customers every day achieve what they need to achieve. You do it and you are always doing it really well, so thank you. All right, Craig, onto our Marketing Tip of the Week.

- All right, we're actually gonna move away from HubSpot a bit and broader into the marketing in general, just again, to kinda see how marketing has changed, and your whole ecosystem. I'll just stop at this point and say, and by the way listeners, this is where we're gonna stop talking about how awesome HubSpot is. I know you're probably thinking, what are these guys getting paid, but I would just say, the reason we keep doing this show is because every week it seems like we find something that we're excited about and it keeps us motivated. So that's why we've got to show 200 and time has flown by. But, yeah, our Marketing Tip of the Week, this was an excellent post from Conversion Excel, Amanda Evans looked at how AI has totally changed the way advertising campaigns are structured. Now, I don't know if we'll go into too much detail about the article itself, but the summary is, we've gone from a very structured, specific way of ordering and organizing advertising campaigns, to now it's almost like just chuck everything in one account, and it's not this bad, but, group it all together and let AI work it out, and in some ways, you set the outcome that you want for the campaign, and AI and machine learning works out how to best implement it over the course of a couple of weeks. I thought this was an excellent insight into just how significantly marketing has changed. We're gonna look later at the Google algorithm history, but you would have noticed the same I'm sure, Ian, just in terms of the whole way that we approach advertising campaigns for clients now.

- Absolutely Craig, and I think if I am thinking back and we probably saw a massive change two years ago with this. I always laugh because my wife keeps telling me, she goes, "Why do you have to keep learning and doing things?" I felt like I was restarting all over again two years ago when it came to paid advertising from Google and Facebook. So you know what? I think this is the line in the sand, so to speak, and how things have changed, and how they continue to change. It's still evolving, so yeah.

- It is, and the other thing, I guess, the most obvious thing I've mentioned that listeners would of course be thinking about, is the switch to mobile. So if you think of what we were advertising four years ago, it was probably desktop, probably wasn't app-based, it was probably static images with a bit of text, where it's now very mobile-focused, it's video, it's interactive, and it's targeted by the actual platforms themselves. In some ways we don't know who's actually been targeted, the platforms do it for us.

- Now Craig, we're going to have our Insight of the Week, and this is something that you've been talking to with your customers, and you've actually demonstrated really well. So listeners, if you get a chance, and Craig, make sure we share this on the socials, about what is marketing, Craig?

- Yeah, so I'm just gonna, I thought this was appropriate to do at episode 200 'cause I'm sure we probably did this at episode one, and I don't know where I first learnt this, maybe it was HubSpot training, maybe it was, I don't know, but it's not new. But it's simply when we explain to clients what marketing is, if they're not really familiar with the term, we say "Marketing is the right message "to the right people in the right place "in the right format at the right time". So I'm sure many of the listeners have heard this before, it's a pretty common way of, well it's a Marketing 101, and we've got a little diagram that we share, because really, and if you think about the first two, the right message to the right people, that's often very strategic, that's where the strategy piece comes in, and then when you think about the right place, in the right format, and the right time, that's often a lot more tactical. I mean the right place, it's the channels it's gonna be in. The right format might be oh is it video or a story, or text or an image. And the right time is around scheduling, whether it's emails or whatever. And so I think it's a good reminder, and if you just chat with people, when you're talking about marketing or starting up a new campaign or thinking about a new product or what you're going to market with, if you just put it in that framework, it makes things a lot more easy to follow and gets you out of the traps, 'cause people will quite often go, "Oh, should we be doing it on Instagram?" and they're like, well hang on, that's maybe the right place part of the equation. Let's make sure we've got the other, the right message and the right people worked out first. So just a reminder for people, how about we do this in episode 400 as well? Remind them again. Often we try to over-complicate or we get too bogged down in the details. This is the high-level view.

- All right, Craig, onto our HubSpot Throwback, or should I have said HubShots Throwback of the Week?

- I switched it out on us, yep.

- I know, I saw that. And in this, we're gonna talk about episode 001 of HubShots, and in this episode we spoke about growth-driven design. And it was actually a key initiative of Luke Summerfield, and we mentioned Luke at the start of this show, and this is why, because we spoke about this in episode 001, and Luke is still there and he actually hit us up this week, didn't he, Craig?

- He did. I was looking back at episode one, and you know, there was a comment from Luke Summerfield.

- Correct.

- So right from our very first episode, he as there giving us encouragement in the comment, and yeah, four years, well, more than four and a half years later, he's now kind of leading the whole HubSpot CMS go to market piece, and hasn't it grown significantly, and as you said, yeah, he was pinging us on LinkedIn and again giving us some kind words, which are very nice, thank you, Luke. In fact I was in a little Zoom call with Luke this morning, the product team, talking about HubSpot CMS, and it's still going strong. So yeah, from episode one to even today as we record there's Luke Summerfield being a great supporter, and thank you for that.

- Yes, thank you Luke, and we're looking forward to more goodness from HubSpot CMS. Right Craig, now here's something really significant that's changed, and this is our Resource of the Week, and this is the Google algorithm changes, and wow, in the last four and a half years, how we've experienced change on search from the results we get to where we are and even if I think about people ask me about SEO, I'm like, man that landscape has changed a lot, hasn't it?

- Sure has, and I thought this was a nice way to finish out the show, because Google of course has been around for so long, and look, if you want any other indicator of how significantly marketing has changed, just look at how much Google has prompted us to innovate. And here at least, we just see the last couple of years of the Google algorithm changes, how they've changed, but it's not only the algorithm, it's the layout, it's the mobile first approach lately, so I think that's a good bookend to the show in terms of how things have changed.

- And Craig, we can't finish without a Quote of the Week, can we? And this quote for episode 200 is from Bill Gates, and it says, "Most people overestimate what they can do "in one year, and underestimate what they can do "in 10 years." Listeners, thank you for listening to us and joining us on this journey from episode 001 to now 200. We just want to say thank you. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and as we do the next 200, there'll be many more things coming and we will be just like HubSpot, becoming a platform. I'm sure we'll be changing things and bringing new things to you. And we've started doing video in this period, so have a look on YouTube, and you will see some of the videos of us going through this episode. Well Craig, any last words?

- I just want to thank you, Ian, for your constant smiling face and wise words, and keeping me motivated with this podcast. Couldn't have done it without you. Really appreciated all your help over the years. I'm looking forward to many more.

- Thank you Craig, same goes for you. It's been, and listeners, I think we've spoken about this before. We have, from being, I guess, strangers at the start, to now being I think, in my circle, you're one of the people I talk to almost on a daily basis, about work, life, and all things HubSpot. So, so I just thank you and you know, thank you for being the person that you are, and being a good sounding board, a steady friend, and an all round good guy. I think that's the bottom line at the end of the day, isn't it?

- Thanks Ian.

- All right listeners, we hope you have a great week, and we look forward to doing many more episodes with you. Please share this episode, leave a comment, connect with us on LinkedIn, we'd love to hear from you. And if you need help, like we've said before, please feel free to reach out to us, and we will help you wherever we can. Well Craig, until next time.

- Catch you later, Ian.

- Thank you for listening to this episode of HubShots. For show notes, resources, HubSpot news, including practical strategies you can implement, visit us at hubshots.com.