76% of communications professionals agree that ‘digital communications is the future of communications.'

How many of them actually live by this now is not a lot as you'll see below. 

I recently came across a research report on communicating in an integrated world and want to show you some of the most interesting findings from my point of view. 

Before I get into some of the stats, I want to make a quick comment. Digital and social media as well as proving their ROI continue to remain this widely challenging area for communications professionals which is beyond me. It's been over a decade since this movement started and you'd think that 10+ years should be enough to change mindsets and work procedures. 

Change management is not easy, I know. But not adapting quickly puts your company at too big of a risk. Sticking with the status quo might allow you to continue growing at the same rate but I'd urge you to think about your cost of inaction and see how that growth rate would be affected if you didn't change quickly enough. 

Let's look into the data now. 

 Nowadays, millions of organisations around the world do inbound. 

At HubSpot, we began the inbound movement about 13 years ago when we noticed a major shift in the market where customers were beginning to change how they were consuming information and making purchase decisions. 

The inbound movement began with inbound marketing which enabled companies to adjust to this new reality and attract customers to their products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, SEO and other types of owned media. This approach allowed businesses to generate a ton of leads and pass them onto sales to close them as customers. It worked really well and it still does but it's not enough.

Just as 13 years ago, we're now seeing another shift in the market that centres around customers as your biggest driver of revenue growth. 

With that, the definition of inbound and the inbound methodology had to adapt too to help businesses grow better in the 21st century. 

Let me welcome you to the era of Inbound 3.0 and help you understand how you can be a true inbound business. 

"People can’t just be told change is coming and be expected to spring into action. They have to work through it."

I quite agree with this quote. It comes from Beth Comstock's book Imagine It Forward that I just finished reading.

Beth Comstock was the Vice Chair of General Electric and throughout her decades-long career she has gathered a ton of experience in marketing, innovation and change for business growth. 

The book is classified as a business and leadership book, however, for me it was more of a memoir or the GE story through Beth's eyes and experiences from the last couple of decades in a chronological order, detailing meetings, corporate issues and decision-making challenges. 

As impressive and at times difficult Beth's journey has been, I found it hard to identify the practical tips and a clear plan of action to make change happen while reading the book. Maybe that wasn't its purpose but rather to tell a personal autobiography. 

Nonetheless, there were some nice nuggets and important learnings that I noted on my kindle. I want to share these with you today. I've structured them based on some of the key topics I picked up: innovation, change and leadership. 

Innovation

Bots, live chat, Facebook Messenger for business... All this conversational marketing stuff is overwhelming, isn't it?  

What's conversational marketing you ask? 

At HubSpot, we define conversational marketing as a new dimension of inbound marketing that allows you to use modern technology like live chat, messenger and bots to connect with your prospects and customers in a human, non-disruptive, speedy way that enables you to exceed their expectations. 

And why do you need to jump on any of this? 

Simple. How people communicate and want to get information about your business is evolving. Consumers are more demanding than ever before. They expect you to be always on, always there, always knowing who they are and how to help them. 

Prospects and customers nowadays want to chat with you at their convenience and get immediate answers to their questions. And because you probably can't afford to hire a 24/7 workforce that's glued to a laptop all the time, you'll need to rely on technology such as bots. 

At HubSpot, one of our key principles is SFTC which stands for Solve For The Customer. 

Why do we believe in this?

Because we know that if you focus on your customers, your business will grow better in a much more remarkable and sustainable way.

But truly walking the talk is difficult. 

Not just satisfying but delighting customers is only possible when you have a company culture that puts the customer first through action. 

And you can't just have a department trying to push for this. A customer-first mentality needs to sit on top of the entire flywheel so that you can truly grow better. 

Such a mentality recognises that the customer experience doesn't start when a customer purchases and doesn't end when they stop buying or cancel. The customer experience starts with the customer's very first contact with you and never really ends.