HUBSPOT CEO! Yamini Rangan 😲 AI Content MUST KNOWS! And how search is changing!| Ep. 443

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast from marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This, Not That, and this is a special one. We got one of the people on this planet who said, who can you have on the show? You pick anybody? This is who I'd pick. It's true. Don't tell my wife, because I should pick her first, but no. I want Yamini. Who's Yamini? Who's Yamini Rangan? She is the CEO of HubSpot. you know her. And if you don't know HubSpot, that's epically weird, but I'll give you the quick rundown.

0:39Okay. HubSpot is the global CRM powerhouse, helping millions of people over a quarter of a million customers in 135 countries. It's not just listed as like the best place to work and all this stuff. And, and Yamini has not only helped this thing grow like massively leading the charge, but I'm not just saying this because Yamini is here. It has to have the best corporate culture on the planet, the best community vibes. I don't know of another brand where people feel so connected to this thing. And I love all things HubSpot. So Yamini, thank you for being here. I think we can end the show right there.

1:16That was perfect. But thank you, Jay, for having me. And we've been huge fans. You add so much to our community. Our community of marketeers learn from you so much. So it is an absolute delight to be on the show with you. Wow. That's amazing. I'm going to clip that and use that. I'm going to get a tattoo of that. All right. So before we get into all this work stuff, I wanted to bring something up because you and I have gone through a similar life moment recently. We both dropped off our sons at college. And I don't know about you, but this has been like total. I wasn't fully prepared. How are you handling it?

1:53Are you doing well? How are all things going? Oh my God, I know. That's your first child as well, right? It's all new to me. And I didn't grow up in this country. So the whole process from college visit to application to like drop off and dorms, what do you need in a dorm? I like over ordered everything. And, you know, when we went into the dorm, it was like three people and they were like, take everything back because there's no room for anything. So this whole process has been like new and I've been discovering this whole process. But look, it's like it's exciting and emotional at the same time.

2:36There was this moment where we literally like, you know, said bye and to my to my son when we dropped him off. and he is never emotional, but he looked like he had a half a tear. And then my dam broke. And I was like, I literally could not even stop it. And I think all the way from drop off to when we were driving to the airport as absolute basket case, my husband was a basket case and we both were like, it was just an emotional moment. And then you turn around, you're like, okay, now two weeks later, there is inbound so let's go so i think like it's really hard to kind of you know pause for life moments like that while you're doing you know things and you know we still pass his room and we're like oh my god you know he's he's not there and you know but it's also exciting to launch an adult and hopefully a good human being and see you know him like take off and thrive in a new environment, make new friends and, you know, figure out his passion.

3:46So yeah, it's a, it's all in one. It's, it's, it's more than I expected to be. And I actually apologize. My daughter is a senior in high school right now. And so I apologized to her the other day. Cause I realized like when we eat dinner now, we ask her like double the amount of annoying questions and she's like carrying the load for him not being there. I know. I have a junior in high school and he's like he he sat us down and he said you guys this is enough like you are all over me and you see how i'm not coming out of my room it's because you're all over me just back off and we were like okay right i know it's not it's like you don't even realize oh wait a minute um well it's amazing i'm so happy that's going well because this is a big deal speaking of another big deal Yes.

4:31So at this year's inbound, so inbound is the massive conference that HubSpot puts on, and it just happened recently. And this year's inbound, what was the talk of everything was this idea of the funnel that marketers use, that salespeople use, that business owners use to drive their business. The funnel is no longer the thing. And now we're migrating to the loop. Okay. So what's going on here? Is the funnel dead? What's happening? Well, I think the funnel is still the funnel, but the point we were trying to make is the shape of the funnel and what you do to progress the different stages within the funnel is changing really, really dramatically.

5:16And Jay, I mean, you've followed all of this, but even for us who live and breathe, you every single day, if you just pause and kind of like reflect on how much change we have seen in the last like 18 months, it's pretty dramatic. And think about this at the top of the funnel, you know, we typically call this as awareness. And the awareness, you know, was always built on, get your brand name out and get people to come and visit your website. And now it's absolutely not that. It is be where your customers are. And your customers are listening to podcasts like your podcast, Jay. They're on social, on Insta, on LinkedIn, on YouTube, and they are reading email newsletters.

6:03So I think where awareness is has completely changed and it's actually dispersed to where the customers are. And then if you look at the consideration phase, what we're seeing is that it's a lot fewer clicks coming into your website. It used to be that marketers were obsessed about the volume of traffic that's coming to the website. And that has dramatically changed with AI overviews. AI overviews are now giving answers. And so this is like a stat that I saw last week, which is eight out of 10 Google searches end up with no click. I mean, that is massive. That is like absolutely massive where eight out of 10 clicks are not ending in search, which means, you know, if you just have the content and you're waiting and optimizing for website traffic, it's just not going to work.

6:54So the middle of the funnel in terms of consideration where people come to your website, that has actually compressed quite a bit. And then the bottom of the funnel, which used to be the hardest thing, which is conversion. How do you take someone who is looking at your brand, your product, your solution, and convert them into the customer, well, you can now use AI. And you can actually have very hyper-personalized conversations to drive much better conversion. So if you step back, marketing has changed dramatically. And we think that there is a need for a completely new playbook, which is what we launched at Inbound, the conference we had about a month ago.

7:38So, okay. So I'm listening. I'm out there and I'm a marketing manager, a small business owner, whatever I am. And I'm like, okay, I got to change around my idea of the funnel. But here I am trying to figure out, do I have the right content piece? I made this PDF. I made this report. I want to use this thing and get a boatload of leads. Is on a very basic level, does our content need to change? Or is it just how we are distributing our content? Like, what do we have to do if we're living and breeding this every day? Yeah, I think that's such a really important and specific question. If you are in marketing, the first thing is the type of content that you are building does need to change and where you distribute that content needs to change.

8:22So those are the two things. And let's talk about the type of the content. Now, we all optimize the heck out of SEO, which is search engine optimization. and the average number of words in a Google search is five. So people would say, you know, what's the best marketing podcast? And then, you know, you would still show up in the top five blue links and maybe someone clicks on that blue link, they get to kind of like your website and then they begin to understand the kind of content that you generate. Well, that is not enough. Now people are asking really specific questions and the average number of words in an LLM question is 23.

9:10So they're not saying give me the, you know, the best marketing podcast. It's like I am trying to learn about very specific areas of marketing, like content marketing. And I want to use AI better. What should I do and who should I listen to? And that's a very, very different kind of approach. And so what I tell content marketeers is that content is more important than ever. But specific content with better citations, with better quotations, with better, more focused case studies and that can answer people's questions are going to be more important. And so content is changing pretty dramatically, but it's how you use that content.

9:56That's one. The second part is where the content shows up. We've already talked about it. If you are sitting here waiting for someone to show up in your website, you're going to be waiting for a while because it's not the way pattern anymore. And that's because way back when internet got formed, it was pretty easy because the thing that happened with internet is it made information searchable. So people searched. And so people searched and landed on your website. Now, information is ubiquitous everywhere in different platforms. And no one's going to come to your website to search about your product.

10:35They're going to ask their friends on Reddit or maybe G2. They're going to go and look at something on Insta or TikTok and get influenced by that. They're going to listen to podcasts. And so where your content is needs to be where your customers are. And so if you are a content marketer, get specific about your content, drive much more personalization with that content and get the content everywhere before your customers get to your website. I think it's a really important message because even as we approach end of year here and people have these like dashboards, like how are we doing? And we look at our web traffic, you know, year over year, oh, it's down for them to understand.

11:16It's not down because you've done something or bad at what you do anymore. It's down because the world has changed. But now has our jobs gotten harder as, you know, business people, marketers, salespeople, especially on the marketing side about, well, I'm not big on YouTube or we don't have a presence on Reddit or we barely post on our company page on LinkedIn is the new thing heading into 2026. Listen, it's not about your website traffic. You actually need to have a presence there. It's not like you're checking a box in the past where, oh yeah, we're there. Is this now a must do for your business?

11:49Absolutely. I would say marketing just got fun. The last five years, if you actually talk to marketeers, almost everything that you do was just incremental. You got like 0.05 % improvement in conversion. You got some small incremental gain. I think now it's a completely new playbook. And if I were a marketeer, I'd be like, okay, let's reinvent almost everything because the faster you move, the bigger the gains and advantage you will get for your company. So I do think that it is a pretty fun moment for marketeers. You do have to reinvent You cannot wait for someone to get to your page or wait there.

12:36There's something interesting, Jay, about the channels that are beginning to work now. We've talked about it. It is like podcasts. Why do people listen to your podcast? You're a personality that people - I don't know. I know. I know. In general, it is because people trust sources like you. You have higher credibility and people want high credibility sources. This is why, you know, podcasts, YouTube channels, even email newsletters work because they are people and personality driven. It used to be just content driven. Now content needs to also be people and personality driven. And so if you are looking for next year's marketing plan and you're building strategy, you should be thinking about diversification, but you should be thinking about who within your company has high credibility, has high authority, can represent to customers and ideal customer profiles the right kind of messages, and you have to start building that.

13:45I think that's so valuable for people to hear from you because I fully believe that humanity is the algorithm, right? And that's who we trust. We trust people. And it's this idea of especially leaders of organizations. It could be a tiny business, big business, doesn't matter, that you need to have a personality, a human, and humans showing that they're real. like at Inbound, for example, you had Brian Halligan, one of the co-founders of HubSpot, sitting there doing the Hot Wings Challenge, the Hot Wings Challenge, right? Wasn't that crazy? It was unbelievable. I was like, I couldn't even watch it.

14:19I watched like the Hot Wings, like the whole thing. I watched maybe the first three or four. And then I was like, oh my God, this is going to hurt. I'm done. But you know what blew my mind about is, Brian didn't need to do that. You know, he doesn't need to be there doing that. but it just shows certainly that HubSpot gets it, but that businesses in general understand you have to add elements of humanity. That's what we're connecting to. That's what we trust. I mean, to your point, and it's amazing that you said that you want to do the Hot Wings Challenge next year. I can't believe you stepped it up.

14:52You're making it up now. I was trying to see, oh yeah. I'm Indian. I take supplies, but not that much. Nope, that's not me. I get it. Well, you know, speaking of humanity, let's talk about AI for a second. Because if nothing else, HubSpot is like pushing everybody into the world of AI in the best possible way. And the thing that frustrates me about AI is when everyone talks about AI, it comes from a negative place. Oh, it's going to do this to your job or it's doing this to whatever. But there's so much positive about AI. So what is the positive outlook for business owners, for salespeople, for marketing people about where it's all going with AI?

15:31Because you have a really good perspective on it. Look, I do think that there is so much hype and there is so much anxiety about AI. But, you know, I don't start with the tool or what the new technology is. It is what can it help us as humans do better? And we do have a very strong point that AI is not going to replace humans. It's going to augment us to do much better in everything that we do. And if you look at the foundational principle of Loop, which is the playbook that we launched, we said, look, when people start with AI, it's complete spam. It's just garbage. Like, you know, all of us start, you know, saying, hey, write this email for me or, you know, write this whole talk track for me.

16:19It's just going to feel very not personalized and complete spam. So you have to start with a human point of view. That's where we come in. taste, clarity, judgment, strategy. That's what we bring. And we have to start with that point of view. And I write a lot, but I never start with AI. I start with what is my point of view that I want to share and how can I use AI? That's the first starting point. Once you do that, of course, AI can take it to scale. Once you have a clear point of view for your company, your brand, even for you and who you stand for. Of course, AI can take it, scale it, personalize it based on the intent data, and then it can help you amplify that message.

17:06But you have to be the starting point. And so my perspective in go-to-market is start thinking about new ways of solving old problems. In marketing, we could never get to one-to-one segmentation and personalization because it was too hard. That's why we created segments of thousands, hundred thousand people within one segment that you don't need that anymore. AI can actually do one to one relevant messages at scale. And then in sales, think about the problems that you now are able to solve. I started my career in sales and every year I'd get a set of accounts and I'd be able to cover maybe 30 percent at best.

17:5030 % of the accounts, I knew what was happening, what was changing, what was their top initiative. But the rest of the accounts, 70 % of the accounts, I never had the time. AI can help you do that. So I look at AI not as, oh my God, there's hype, we need to go after it. But think about the job that you're doing and think about where AI can help. And look, our clear point of view is that it starts with human strategy, creativity point of view. And then you can bring in AI to help with the scale, speed, and execution. Well, I know that you don't use AI to write your post because I've never seen an M - in your post.

18:32This whole M - thing is so funny because I'm like illiterate. I don't even know how to use an M -. So now that we're like, you're not really supposed to use it because it's like what AI gives you back. I'm so happy because I don't know how to use it anyway. I do use AI for writing, but I clearly have instructions for my AI, which is, you know, don't give me MDash. Sometimes I'm like, I've already told you not to give me an MDash. And it'll be like, okay, sorry, let me rewrite this for you. I don't get it. Like, what is going on with the MDash? It's so funny to me. Yes. All right. So you're doing all the stuff, AI, you're doing all the stuff with HubSpot.

19:07But in your free time, do you like have like hobbies? Do you play pickleball or tennis or know an instrument? Like, what are you doing when you're doing other stuff? So, okay, you will appreciate this. So for the longest time, people will be like, what are your hobbies? And it would drive me crazy because I have none. I mean, I, you know, I'm super dedicated mom. I have two boys, 18 and 16. And mostly when they were young, I just kept them alive and safe. and healthy and I was like running around making sure they're not like getting into some dangerous zone and you know and then I focused on work and look I do think that um I used to feel really bad because I'd be like people come in and say I played this round of golf here or I went to this thing and I'm like really good at playing music and I'm like where do you have the time I I kind of said very early on, I'm going to be a really present mom.

20:06And I'm going to be really good at anything that I do at work. And back then it was not an ambition to get to, you know, the C-suite. It was like, I want to be the best at whatever I do. And I kind of like more so just focused on those two things, which meant that I didn't have a time. I didn't have time to kind of build incredible hobbies. And at some point in my life, I will, it means that I do have other interests, you know, I love gardening, but sometimes I kill plants. You know, I love, you know, yoga and meditation, but I'm still practicing my shoulder stand. So I'm, you know, I'm kind of like novice to intermediate level in many things that help keep my life grounded.

20:52But I just had time for our work and my kids and being a decent human being and a good friend. And that's, you know, that's life. Well, I'm with you on your percent. And I'm also a plant killer. I got to work on that. During COVID, you know, you couldn't go anywhere. So we got like all these plants. We're going to like grow our own vegetables and stuff. And I think I started like the fourth sequel to Jurassic Park because like two weeks, we're like, I don't even want to go and deal. It's gross. I told it was gross. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've killed plenty. I do have a little vegetable patch and that's my passion.

21:29And I'm like always going there. And like, you know, there was a last batch of like tomatoes in the last couple of weeks. And, you know, I was like happy for it. But then there were also things that I'd killed, you know, and decide. So we'll do another episode about planting tips and it would probably no one will listen because like they don't know what they're talking about. No one will listen. No one will listen. They should not listen to me. No, no, no. Me neither. But everyone should follow Yamini on LinkedIn. We're going to put on the show notes. And if there's a human being on this planet that doesn't know HubSpot, I'm not just saying this.

22:02It's the most incredible company. And they also put out the most incredible content. The HubSpot Media Network is bananas. I love it all. So Yamini, you're wonderful. Thanks for everything that you do for this amazing community that you're leading. And it's just an honor to have had you on the show. Thank you so much, Jay. You are an incredible creator. I follow you. So if someone is not following Jay on LinkedIn, please do that as well. Oh, so kind. All right. I'll see you soon. Thanks again. Thank you. You did it. You made it to the end. But wait, the party is not over. Listen, I want to keep hanging out.

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