• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 18, 2024

HubSpot, once on Google’s list of possible acquisitions, announced updates Wednesday to its Marketing Hub and Content Hub platforms -- combining its experience in automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and video and making it easier to launch campaigns.

The products were announced at Inbound 2024, the company’s conference held today.

Nicholas Holland, vice president of product and general manager of HubSpot Marketing Hub, spoke with MediaPost specifically about a new video feature and content automation tool added to HubSpot Content Remix.

The tool -- powered by AI -- allows marketers to turn one video into an entire campaign and enables users to conduct a video interview and from that content, transcribes the audio and generates social posts, blog posts, and short-form videos to use on YouTube Short, TikTok and other platforms.

Video has become a major focus for brands mostly because AI has enabled the use of so many sophisticated features. Taking the difficult things and making them easy through automation is in HubSpot’s DNA, Holland said.

“Special skills were previously needed, like a videographer, a sound person and a social media expert,” he said. “We’ve been working on this for years.”

With the long list of product automation tools announced today, it’s easy for marketers to see why Google wanted to acquire HubSpot.

When news of the acquisition surfaced, “none of us were privy to the information,” Holland said. “We had a clear company line to keep working. We had this happen multiple times, but it can be a distraction.”

Holland said his team has worked very closely with Google to gather first-party data and use it in advertising. “We started it a couple of years ago with Google, Meta and LinkedIn, but Google has continued to focus on that problem.”

For a long time, Holland said, marketers could not attain results with first-party data that were as good or better than results from sharing cookies. Now, he said, brands can “share CRM data back with Google to get the same or superior results” through Google Enhanced Conversions. LinkedIn also has a similar product.   

The marketing landscape has changed with assistance from AI.

AI Agents -- social, content, sales, and customers -- were also released today. As an example, the agents will create 30-day calendar for a brand based on what has worked in the past, taking into consideration time of year, holidays, hours of operations and more.

The agents take into consideration the brand’s voice, and the need for clean and accurate data. Both have influenced trends in a specific media, such as social.

Holland said social networks have begun to give six times less visibility to posts that share an external link because they don’t want anyone to leave their platform. This is a trend toward posting native content on social networks with no outbound link.

Other new features generate leads and convert customers with new features in Marketing Hub that turn high-fit prospects into loyal customers.