You might have heard people talking about something mysterious called GDPR lately, but do you know...
Some of the D22 team were lucky enough to attend HYPERGROWTH 2019 in London recently. We were amongst the first to hear about the latest trends in conversational marketing, and perhaps more importantly, the value of being human in all things digital.
Those who attended included our Inbound Strategists Dan and I, Social Marketer Louise and SEO Marketer Tiffany, and together we gained valuable insights and different perspectives to take away and apply to our everyday marketing practices.
What is Hypergrowth?
The annual event, organised by Drift, takes place over three locations each year; London, Boston and San Francisco. Founded by David Cancel and Elias Torres, Drift specialises in conversational marketing.
Their event hosted some big names. The keynote line-up included HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan, Olympic cyclist turned jockey Victoria Pendleton and Digital Marketer’s founder, Ryan Deiss, amongst a whole host of other inspirational and successful speakers.
The theme: being human
Throughout the day, it became clear the theme was ‘being human’, whether it’s in person, in your marketing strategies or life in general. Many of the speakers touched on this theme, including Charlotte Pearce, CEO and founder of Inkpact, who gave an inspiring talk about how Love equals Loyalty.
Charlotte talked about how, in an age where digital is taking over, we have lost the personal touch. However, she explained that “creating a moment of thoughtfulness can turn a warm lead into a hot prospect”.
And honestly? We couldn’t agree more.
This exact mantra is demonstrated at Inkpact by showing how, when used correctly, the personal touch behind handwritten content helped increase a business’ average basket value by 30% and repeat business by 58%.
Word of mouth and personal touch has never been so important in marketing. As Charlotte said: “People forget what you did, people will forget what you said, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.”
Marketing is fast-paced, always moving and we can get swept along for the ride. However, taking a moment to make a customer or prospect feel special is so underrated.
“We shouldn’t be selling B2B or B2C, everyone should be communicating H2H (Human to Human).” - Charlotte Pearce, HYPERGROWTH 2019
Ryan Deiss, founder of Digital Marketer and Marketing and Customer Chief Amanda Hill from Harrods both covered different topics, but had the same fundamental message; storytelling is everything.
Ryan covered how to be a 10x marketer (which we’ll cover later, along with sporks) and the importance of storytelling when it comes to marketing. He said: “Having a better product is not enough. Copywriting is everything, customers think and talk in story.” 
Starting a conversation in your marketing is everything and one of the most important aspects of conversation is storytelling.
“Never confuse the reason that people buy with the reason that people stay.” - Ryan Deiss, HYPERGROWTH 2019.
One of the key takeaways from Amanda Hill was similar: “Stories help us and always have [helped us] make sense of the world. Stories are the flame or the fire that you pass onto one another.”
If you can get people telling stories about your brand in a “more technical and advanced world”, the more human and relatable your brand will be. A key takeaway we’ve already started to implement in all our strategies!
After a pretty intense, thoughtful and inspirational morning, HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan took to the stage with Drift’s David Cancel to talk about scaling up a business and what that looks like.
While they covered some struggles that every CMO goes through in scaling up, they also talked about the importance of doing something different in marketing, in the form of “creating an experience disruption, not a technology disruption”.
Making a customer feel valued with tailored, conversational marketing and a personalised experience is how to do exactly that.
With various channels to market to, it can be difficult to get the balancing act right. But the one which is least used by brands across the world is the people that are loyal to your brand; your customers.
“The most powerful channel to market is your customers” - Brian Halligan, HYPERGROWTH 2019.
The key takeaways: Don’t be a spork and take risks
We said we’d come back to sporks! Ryan Deiss covered how to be a 10x marketer in an ever-increasing world where digital marketing is king. As an agency, we understand the need to have the knowledge, but how much can one person actually be an expert in?
The main message “don’t be a spork!” comes from marketers being guilty of trying to do everything and ‘know it all’. This is often known as a T shaped marketer, but it is an almost impossible task.
The best approach for a business is to be a T-shaped company. Employ specialists for each channel as well as all-round marketers who know enough to have a conversation on each topic. Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we do here at Digital 22! ;)
A similar message came from Victoria Pendleton’s talk and Amanda Hill of Harrods, that “you can only do what you can do” and you shouldn’t try to do any more if it means you won’t perform at your best or do the best you can. It was an important message that should be remembered - to offer the best service you need to offer the best that you can do and no more.
Don’t be a spork!
The day ended on an inspirational high with an insightful talk from National Geographic photographer, professional climber and Grammy Award-winning filmmaker, Jimmy Chin. His recent film, Free Solo, won a BAFTA for Best Documentary and an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film followed Alex Honnold, a professional climber, on the first ever rope-free ascent of El Capitan, a sheer rock face in Yosemite National Park.
Jimmy said he “wants to make films that make people feel something”, which relates to Charlotte’s message of “creating a moment of thoughtfulness”. It also re-iterates Brian’s point about the importance of “creating an experience disruption”.
People remember how they feel and their experience, which should be applied across all areas of life, not just marketing!
Jimmy also talked about a previous film, Meru, which has a very important message that is almost fundamental to marketing, whether that’s investing, trying something new or repeating; take risks.
“We are always aware of risking too much, but how do we know if we are risking too little?” - Jimmy Chin, HYPERGROWTH 2019.
Taking risks in marketing can be one of the hardest things to do, because you don’t always know if it will work. But by not trying, are you risking too much or too little? If there’s any key message you’re going to take away from this year’s hypergrowth, it’s this one.
What’s next? VIDEO!
David had a big announcement at Drift this year with the release of Drift Video, a video-marketing platform designed to make video marketing easy from the office or on the go.
Drift Video isn’t the first video-marketing platform on the market, with Vidyard, Loom and many other tools available. It’s clear to see the next preferred marketing channel is video and it’s one of the best ways to give a personalised, human feel to any B2C or B2B marketing strategies.
Here at Digital 22, we offer Inbound Video as a service, providing everything you need to make your marketing video-first. With in-house video experts, specialist equipment and editing software, your marketing has never been so versatile.
Hypergrowth was all about the human touch, personalised marketing and video-first. Find out how that fits into your marketing plans with D22 by checking out our one-stop resource page on Inbound Video.
