#INBOUND2018, Boston, 4 to 7 September

First published in Pharma Industry 4/2018, November 2018. Republished in full, translated from the Swedish original.

Editor's note, 2026

This is a report from four days in Boston in September 2018, not a method article. It records what a set of speakers said on a set of days, and it should be read that way, not as advice that still holds. The note below goes through every part of it, because commenting on some sections and not others would leave the rest looking as though it had been checked and passed.

The opening account of Deepak Chopra's keynote and the closing paragraphs about what a conference gives you are impressions, and nothing in them is meant to be acted on. Trend 1, the flywheel replacing the funnel, is presented by the chief executive of the company that owns the congress, and the article passes it on as a description of how buying works; whether it is that, or a way of framing a vendor's own product, is worth settling for yourself before designing around it. Trend 2 is where the article dates itself most visibly. The pillar page and topic cluster structure is what the article recommends, and the instructions given under it are 2018 instructions: that linking is never made onwards between clusters, that a pillar article runs to 3,000 to 3,500 words, and that Google handles around 75 percent of searches. Check each of those against current guidance and current figures before building anything on them, and hold in mind that the article was written in 2018 and that generative AI arrived in 2023, so what a search result page puts in front of your audience today is worth looking at yourself before you design for the behavior described here. Trend 2 also tells the reader to set up tracking code or heat tracking software that records how visitors interact with the site, and Trend 3 describes always-on surveys, recorded user tests with eye tracking, and analytics on visitor flows; all of that is collection of personal data, the article was published months after GDPR began to apply and does not mention it once, so what you may record about a visitor or a test subject is a question for your own data protection function before you set any of it up, and the Google Analytics named in Trend 3 is the 2018 product, so check the current one against its own documentation before that section is followed.

Two further things a reader should have in front of them. The article gives no source for any of its numbers, among them the roughly 25,000 attendees from 110 countries, Google's share of searches and the word count for a pillar article; they are reported as they were heard at the congress. And the report is openly a report: two of the three trends are presented by HubSpot employees at HubSpot's own congress, and the author says plainly that he steps outside reporting the lecture in order to borrow HubSpot's own illustrations to explain topic clusters. The invitation at the end to come to #INBOUND2019, and the link to watch the keynote at www.inbound.com, are both from 2018 and have long since passed.

Every year at the start of September, tens of thousands of marketers, salespeople and business developers gather in Boston for a week filled with learning, inspiration and networking at #INBOUND. The #INBOUND congress is one of the world's fastest growing congresses, and this year it gathered around 25,000 people from 110 countries in the large Boston Convention Center. What is the latest in inbound marketing, and what do some of the world's foremost thought leaders think about the marketing and organization building of the future? Those were my main questions during the trip, and in this article I, Fredrik Holmboe, give my impressions of the congress through three clear trends.

Opening inspiration

As usual the congress was opened by a world-leading inspirational speaker, and this year Deepak Chopra took that on. Deepak opened his talk with the question of whether we knew how we had come to the congress and to the room we were now sitting in. Having had an adventurous trip to Boston, to put it mildly, I of course started thinking about my flight.

But Deepak did not quite mean our most recent trip. He meant how we as human beings, starting from the fertilization of the egg and the development in the womb, had been given the chance to sit there that day against the smallest possible odds seen from a larger perspective.

He went on with a very thought-provoking lecture* based on current research into how we as individuals are affected by the world around us, by our genetic and biological makeup, and by the conditions we create for ourselves through sleep, diet, stress, daily breaks and biological rhythm.

Deepak finished by leading all of us through a ten minute shared meditation focused on the question "Who am I", with the concentration directed at our own hearts. I can say nothing other than that it became a very powerful experience when it was shared with 25,000 other people in a large room.

Three clear trends

With six keynote lectures, seventeen spotlight lectures and more than 250 break-out lectures, there is an incredible amount of interesting material to write about. In an attempt to limit the impressions, the article focuses on the three areas that were touched on more often than others in one form or another:

1. The funnel is dead
2. Is the keyword dead?
3. Data insights is more important than ever

Trend #1: The funnel is dead

Brian Halligan, chief executive and one of the two founders of HubSpot, gave a keynote lecture that shook one of the foundations we who work with inbound marketing start from: the sales funnel and the four stages of a buying process, Attract, Convert, Close, Delight.

Through his lecture he came back several times to how our buying behavior has changed fundamentally in recent years, above all through the ability to reach information at any time. The main thesis of his lecture was how that paradigm shift affects the way we as companies should structure our processes and our organization.

Instead of the linear approach we work from today, Brian introduced "The Flywheel", a circular process that takes in the fact that a buying process rarely starts exactly where we want it to start. A wheel that spins faster and has a more powerful effect on the market by adding fuel to all three areas, Attract, Engage, Delight.

And adding a constant focus on the customer at the center.

Brian argued that one of the reasons a flywheel suits better than a funnel is that a wheel spins faster the less friction it meets. The reason for that analogy was that he raised friction for an existing or potential customer as a far greater threat to your sales figures than ever before.

"Today your product does not have to be ten times better than your competitor's. Your customer's experience has to be ten times easier than the one at your competitor," says Brian Halligan.

The Delight phase is in practice the one that has grown in importance.

A good experience through a marketing and sales process often leads to a deal, but it is through a genuinely good customer experience that you as a company have the chance to gain ambassadors for your own brand, willing to recommend their experience on to their personal networks.

But how do you reach your customers in order to be able to offer them the customer experience above? By being there, at the top of Google's result list, when the potential customer searches for information in the area where you are the expert.

Trend #2: Is the keyword dead?

For a year or so it has become increasingly clear that search engine optimization (SEO) has moved towards topic clusters compared with the focus on keywords that applied five or six years ago.

But does that mean the strategy of focusing on keywords is dead?

In a break-out lecture, SEO specialist Everett Ackerman from New Breed went through where SEO stands today and how Google's Hummingbird update, launched on 20 August 2013, has affected today's SEO work. (There are more search engines than Google, but since Google handles around 75 percent of the searches made online, SEO reasoning is often focused there (the writer's note).)

Search intent

Everett argues that in order to land right in your SEO work, it is important first to understand the reason behind the Google search that in the end gave you a visit to your website. According to Everett there are in the main three reasons for a search:

• Navigational. The searcher wants to visit a particular place, for example Facebook, and then the search is simply "facebook". In relation to your own company's website, the searcher is probably after your website or a particular subpage, for example "Careers".
• Informational. The searcher is looking for information about a particular thing, subject or field of competence. In relation to your own company this is often about your informative, often non-product-related, content that answers questions.
• Transactional. The searcher wants to act in some form, for example register for a free event, and thereby give a value to the company in return for a value to the searcher. For your own website this is about thinking through which different types of action are relevant for your visitors, and making sure that the content you publish is relevant in relation to those conversion points (the registration in the example above).

Creating content

With a considered strategy for the type of search that may be the reason for a visit to your website, Everett says the next step is to look at three fundamental pieces when creating content.

1. Tie your content to one of the three steps in Brian's flywheel above: Attract, Engage, Delight.
2. Set up some form of tracking code or heat tracking software that shows how your visitors interact with your website.
3. And, last but not least, make sure you have future fixed points in your calendar where you go through the data you have collected in order to optimize both existing content and the strategy for your future content.

Having made clear what a search intent and a strategy for creating content can look like, Everett then moved on to the initial question of the presentation, "Is the keyword dead"?

Topic clusters

As was mentioned at the beginning of this part of the article, SEO has moved towards focusing more on topic clusters than on keywords, and now it is going to get somewhat technical, which is why I take the artistic liberty of going outside merely reporting Everett's lecture and borrow a few descriptive images from HubSpot.

Today many websites look like the image below, with published content categorized into overarching categories: Marketing, Agency, Sales. There is often some form of internal linking between pages, but it is just as often completely unstructured.

Topic clustering means that you create a pillar article focused on a subject that interests the buyer you have identified, say the subject is "inbound marketing". This pillar article is often very extensive, sometimes towards 3,000 to 3,500 words or more, and covers a long list of subject areas relevant to the subject in question.

From the pillar article you then create in-depth articles, so-called cluster articles, that focus on individual parts of the subject "inbound marketing", and the internal linking that then happens is established only between cluster article and pillar article, sometimes from pillar article to cluster article and in certain cases between the cluster articles. This is to carry the traffic and Google's attention "inwards" towards the pillar article. See below:

Linking is never made onwards to other topic clusters.

With this clustering strategy you help Google to a greater degree to understand what each individual cluster is about, which in turn helps Google guide its searchers correctly. Google likes that.

Further, every cluster article that links to the pillar article gives a kind of "value boost" to the pillar article, which helps it land higher in Google's search results.

Search engine optimization in constant change

According to Everett it is high time that we marketers changed our view of search engines and of how they work, and that we update our approach to creating content and to optimization from the ground up. By understanding search intent, and creating and structuring content in a way that helps both visitors and Google understand your website, you will do better in the search engines' result lists.

And finally the answer to the question "Is the keyword dead"?

Not really, from the perspective that keywords are still relevant in every individual article that is written. An article written correctly from a keyword strategy gives Google an understanding of what the article is about.

It is instead the structure around each article that has changed dramatically, and with it the key role of keywords in search engine optimization has become smaller.

And the change carries on constantly, which makes it even more important today than ever before to review your own processes for collecting and handling data.

Trend #3: Data insights is more important than ever

In another break-out session, Rachel Leist, Director of Marketing at HubSpot, presented her view of growth marketing and of how insights from well structured and well executed tests of collected data are entirely vital for creating positive trends in the KPIs you have set.

Rachel argues that it is from tests of data, and the analysis of those tests, that you can secure positive development through the different sales-related phases online such as acquisition, activation, monetization and retention of existing customers.

Rachel describes a growth marketer as a person with:

• a universe that circles around analysis and reporting
• a total focus on the whole sales process and its different phases
• a strong need to experiment and find points of improvement

She argues that in order to succeed as a growth marketer you should be part of integrated marketing and product teams where there is a strong focus on adjusting the small details and moving trends in a positive direction.

Rachel asked the audience what type of test you can run, and then gave her view of the three main tests you can run in order to optimize visitor flows.

Surveys

Some form of survey should almost always be active on, if not the whole of your website, then a chosen part of it. It can be simple questions such as "Did you appreciate the article?" at the end of a page with a positive or negative smiley, single free-text questions that examine what the visitor dislikes or appreciates about your website and that appear down in the right-hand corner, or multiple-choice questions in larger forms that ask for more and deeper detail.

User tests

User tests can be used when you as a company want more qualitative data. A test subject sits in a room together with an observer, browses around the website and speaks freely. The test subject gives feedback on what they see, on what happens, on what is there or missing. The activity on the screen and the comments are recorded, and eye tracking technology is sometimes used to note where on the screen the test subject is looking. The observer in turn notes both objective and subjective observations. During a test of this kind it is important that the observer does not in any way, with words or with body language, give feedback on the interaction between the test subject and your website, since even small movements are easily read and color the result.

Usage statistics

The most common analysis of user data comes from the statistics tools installed on the website, for example Google Analytics. In those statistics a growth marketer looks for deviations in flow patterns, and above all in the sales flows that have been set up. Experiments such as the ones above are usually focused on precisely these hacks, or deviations, in the website's visitor flows.

Running the test

Rachel went on with her presentation by taking us through some of the questions you need to work through before you run a test. What does the MVT (Minimum Viable Test) look like in terms of resources, time, effort and execution? And what do the answers to the questions below look like:

• Reason. Why is the test being run and what is the goal?
• The hypothesis. What will happen in practical terms if I run the test?
• Structure. How do we set the test up, and which building blocks and flows are needed?
• KPIs. Which are the KPIs we want to optimize in the test?
• Next step. If the test is successful, what does that mean for the website and the organization?

And as the last question but, as people say, absolutely not the least important: whether or not the test is successful, what did we learn and how can the lesson be put into the next iteration of an update, a sales cycle or a marketing campaign?

This is where the importance of the growth marketer's place in the integrated marketing and product teams becomes especially clear.

To close I want to make a point of something Rachel mentioned on several occasions, which was that successes as well as failures give new data, and that new data gives the chance to learn. No data is ever entirely perfect, so start with what you have today and test your way forward.

"Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough." Elon Musk

Inspiration and a few closing words

The congress began with a big inspirational speaker who set the bar, and after that the inspiration kept flowing for four days in total.

After attending lectures beyond the ones I report above, such as what the neuroscience behind attention looks like (we in the pharmaceutical industry need to improve our presentations considerably!), how and why humor should be used in marketing (something I am a warm supporter of), how you create video cheaply and effectively (which is easier than you think), and what is happening in social media, and after seeing plenty of examples of both successful and unsuccessful conversion campaigns, I can wholeheartedly recommend that you travel to #INBOUND2019 if you have the chance.

A conference of that kind and with that breadth gives inspiration and in many cases practically applicable knowledge that so far benefits both my colleagues and our customers.

Development moves so fast that no data is perfect

The fine thing about the field of digital strategy and communication is that there are so many factors, so many controls, to adjust when you put it into your own organization that it is possible to discuss thoughts, concepts and in certain cases conclusions "across the borders" without sharing company-sensitive information. In order to keep learning now that development moves so extremely fast. Because no data is perfect today and probably less so tomorrow.

Does that last line of thought sound hard to swallow?

Why not test it?

And I hope we see each other at #INBOUND2019.

All the best!

Fredrik Holmboe

Senior Digital and Inbound Strategist

*You can watch Deepak Chopra's keynote presentation in full, along with lectures from a range of other superstars in their respective fields, at www.inbound.com. Warmly recommended!

Read the Swedish original at pharma-industry.se. The pillar and cluster structure described in Trend 2 is the shape the Content Engine Sprint builds towards, with the 2026 caveats in the note above.