Episode Transcript
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Intro (00:01):
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloedapartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace, lord lack, lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:22):
tool in your superhero toolbelt? Knowledge.
Never fear hub heroes. Get readyto don your cape and mask, move
into action, and become the hubhero your organization needs.
Tune in each week to join theleague of extraordinary inbound
heroes as we help you educate,empower, and execute. Of heroes,
(00:47):
it's time to unite and activateyour powers.
Chad Hohn (00:53):
I am.
George B. Thomas (00:53):
That was beautiful. No. That was
beautiful. That was artwork.
Chad Hohn (00:56):
It keeps me up every night, to be honest. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:00):
Lord Black haunts me. Yeah. So we're back together
again.
George B. Thomas (01:05):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:06):
I heard inbound was a freaking blast.
George B. Thomas (01:09):
It was crazy.
Liz Moorehead (01:09):
West Coast style.
George B. Thomas (01:11):
Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. San Francisco. I I'm I may
go back.
I may never go back. I don'tknow. I'm the jury's still out,
but but I will try a Waymo caragain without a doubt. Waymo.
Waymo.
Yeah.
Chad Hohn (01:26):
The Waymo. Those are kind
Liz Moorehead (01:28):
of in
Chad Hohn (01:28):
the Seattle side point I hear.
George B. Thomas (01:30):
Yeah. Self driving car. Yeah. Without a
doubt.
Liz Moorehead (01:32):
I'm not sure how I feel about that.
George B. Thomas (01:33):
You know what isn't self driving? Loop
marketing. That isn't selfdriving.
Liz Moorehead (01:38):
George, that was mine. That was my
George B. Thomas (01:40):
thing. I'm sorry.
Liz Moorehead (01:41):
That was my
George B. Thomas (01:41):
thing. My bad.
Liz Moorehead (01:42):
It's okay. No, I was going back through and
listening to all of thedifferent things that you talked
about, looking through all thedifferent product announcements.
George B. Thomas (01:50):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:51):
And yeah, loop marketing I want to have what is
likely the beginning of a numberof conversations about this
topic because I got to beperfectly honest guys, I have
questions. Now for people athome who maybe missed the
announcement or just need alittle refresher, loop marketing
is this new fancy AI poweredframework which is the next
(02:15):
revolution quote beyond thefunnel, okay. It connects to
like a thousand differentthings, right? It's like Breeze
AI agents, Data Hub, MarketingStudio for content creation,
Smart CRM, AICPQ, ABCDEFG, HIJK,LMNOP. My
George B. Thomas (02:37):
brain hurt.
Chad Hohn (02:38):
Like AI.
Liz Moorehead (02:39):
Exactly. AI. I was telling this earlier,
George. It was one of thosethings where I always get
excited when HubSpot pushes theenvelope, gets us to think about
things in bigger and differentways. Yeah.
And this one, after I gotthrough reading about all of it,
am like, I am excited. I amscared. I, there's so much
(03:00):
happening. There are so manyacronyms. There's so much AI
flying around.
And I have a lot of morefundamental questions.
George B. Thomas (03:08):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (03:10):
That's what I want to talk about.
George B. Thomas (03:11):
I think everybody has fundamental
questions. I think it's lightlydefined, maybe heavily defined
if you go to loopmarketing.com,which takes you to a HubSpot
page. But even that says likemore resources coming soon, like
sign up for more marketingresources. Listen, as we prepped
(03:34):
for the show, I went and triedto watch and listen to some of
episodes and videos that peoplewere creating. It just left me
with more questions.
And to be honest with you, it'slike, I feel like people are
confused. I've heard everythingfrom inbound is dead to loop
marketing is stupid to like,what happened to the flywheel?
(03:56):
Hashtag loop, Like, go usethere's so much out there. And
by the way, this is not bad.Loop marketing is not bad, but,
but there's fundamentaldefinitions that have to occur
for people to embrace this whereand how it should be embraced.
Liz Moorehead (04:12):
I agree. Like, the whole the concept of we're
moving beyond the funnel. I'mlike, didn't we do that in 2018
with a flywheel? Like, wait aminute. Hold on a second.
What's going on? So that's whatwe're
Chad Hohn (04:23):
getting. That's just the flywheel is just a three d
funnel.
George B. Thomas (04:26):
I mean, pretty dang much. So, here's the thing.
Here's the thing. Like, I thinkthat's where we need to start is
what is loop marketing, right?Like Yeah.
That's I wanna go. So go ahead.Down for
Liz Moorehead (04:39):
me. Yeah. Well
George B. Thomas (04:41):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Chad, do you wanna go
first? Do you want me to gofirst?
Chad Hohn (04:45):
You know, you give it a whirl. I mean, like, the
content thing is all you guys.Like, you're you know, you've
been in the marketing thing. Thefirst problem.
George B. Thomas (04:53):
There's the first problem. Oh my god. Okay.
Marketing is not a contentthing.
Chad Hohn (05:01):
Right, Content
George B. Thomas (05:02):
is part of a marketing thing. Okay, as we'll
say, as we'll talk about. Lovethat you started there. So first
of all, let me just What is LoopMarketing? Loop Marketing is not
a replacement for inbound.
Loop marketing is not areplacement for your funnel.
Loop marketing is not areplacement for the flywheel.
Let me explain, loop marketingis a system for the things that
(05:25):
you in your organization dointernally with a set of tools
and an AI partner assistant,whatever you call it, Breeze, if
you're using HubSpot. We'll talkabout maybe where that falls
apart if you're not a HubSpotuser, by the way. But it's an
internal system.
It's a way that we use asoftware and we use mindsets and
(05:48):
mentalities to do the thingsthat we're doing. If you even
think about the words express,we express ourselves, We tailor
our information and content. Weamplify our message. We evolve
based on our metrics. So what Iwant everybody to realize is
inbound and the funnel and theflywheel has always been about
(06:11):
journey and them.
This is about process and us.And we just have to come out and
say that. So that's where I'mgoing to start is, it's not a
replacement. These four things,there is a bunch that we could
be talking about in each one ofthese four things as far as
Express, Tailor, Amplify,Evolve, but we got to put it in
(06:33):
its place. It's not as big aseverybody wants to make it, but
it's huge in the place where itbelongs.
Chad Hohn (06:40):
Yeah. When I, earlier, I was kinda doing a
little bit of prep for thisepisode, and one of the places
that I went as as it be like itdo, I saw HubSpot's YouTube
channel and they had a YouTubeshort on HubSpot marketing.
Yeah. And the YouTube shortimmediately said the flywheel is
(07:01):
dead. Yeah.
However, after that, it said,well, just kidding. This is
summarized. Not actually dead,but it's it's being powered
differently is what it said.Right? It's like the so they
were kinda, like, joking,obviously, at the beginning.
Like, oh, the flywheel's dead.You need to be using loop
marketing. Well, actually, atthe end, just kidding. It's just
(07:23):
a differently powered flywheel,which jives with it what it
sounds like you're saying,George.
George B. Thomas (07:28):
Which, by the way, as soon as you say it's a
different type of thing, likeso, like, have you ever heard
the human where they're like,oh, man. I got a car just like
that, but it's purple. Bro. It'snot just like it then. It's not
mine is red.
You can't have a loop and it bea flywheel. Like, it's a loop.
(07:52):
Mhmm. It is fundamentallydifferent. Let me, let let me
dive a little bit more into kindof this real quick, just so we
get a, we get a, like a definedpiece of, of what we're talking
about.
Then you can circle, we'llcircle back around because you
did ask me like, what is what isthe loop marketing and like
(08:13):
these, these stages? And solet's just, let's just back up
for a second.
Liz Moorehead (08:18):
Like, it's like, you were reading my mind.
George B. Thomas (08:19):
That's what
Liz Moorehead (08:20):
I was going to circle the wagons Right.
George B. Thomas (08:22):
Express. So express, which by the way, I
can't say that without thinkingof the song. Express yourself.
Like, you know, do you guys knowthat song? Anyway, so express is
where you define, like, who youare, your tastes, your tone,
your point of view.
(08:42):
Is historically what we'vetalked about when working with
AI is like, this is all thecontext. This is like our brand,
our voice, our style guide. Thisis like that kind of thing.
Chad Hohn (08:53):
So you remember all those episodes we did on AI data
sources? I mean, like, this iswhat that evolved into legit.
Liz Moorehead (09:00):
Right. Right. It feels like such a fancy pants
name for, like, voice tonestyle, who you are, what I get
it.
George B. Thomas (09:07):
But but see, here's the thing is it even goes
further than that. We'll breakdown, when we talk about
Express, I broke downfundamentally in an organization
different things that we couldbe talking about or thinking
about. Holistically, it's like,again, your taste, your tone,
your point of view, and you makesure that AI and humans alike
(09:29):
know what makes your brandunique. So, the idea without
Express, without this kind offoundational piece, you don't
have clarity. Any of the otherthree things, as you've heard in
some of the videos or trainingsor if you're at Inbound,
everything else kind of fallsflat.
Okay. So you've got to know Hey,ladies and gentlemen. In life,
(09:51):
to win, you've gotta know whoyou are and what you like and
how you Wow. Beliefs, mindsets,core values. Oh, how do you
express yourself?
Human and organist okay. So thenext one is Taylor. Once you
know who you are, oh, selfawareness is a BI. Okay, so once
(10:12):
you know who you are, and onlythen can you shape your message
so it lands with the people thatyou're trying to reach. Okay,
let's reverse engineer thatpersonas, ideal client profiles,
the different industries thatyou serve.
Now you can actually tailor itand personalize it at scale. So
(10:34):
you can use data and AI to makethose touches that we've done
historically more personal andrelevant. That folks that feel
seen, they feel heard, they feelunderstood, instead of these
generic blasts. In my inboundtalk, I said something along the
lines of when's the last timeyou sent a handwritten note?
(10:56):
Now, don't mean an actualhandwritten note, but when's the
last time your message felt likeit was a handwritten note, like
a card from your grandma, right?
And so this is the thing, likeTaylor, when you think about
this, it is personalization atscale. What does XYZ service
look for accountants? What doesXYZ service look like for
(11:16):
churches? What does XYZ servicelook for? Boom.
Okay, so here's where my braingoes. This also comes down to
your data modeling, butunfortunately, there are so many
organizations when we thinkabout this tailored that they're
still in first name, last name,job title, company name. Okay.
You got to start to like, I'msitting here, I'm walking this
(11:37):
morning. I did like an hour walkthinking about this subject to
bring to the world.
And I'm like, I want to go in myCRM and I want to ask completely
different questions. I want toask questions like, do you like
dad jokes or not? Yes or no?What's your favorite color?
What's your favorite food?
What's your like, do you believein this or that? Is what's,
(12:01):
what's your like, you know,broad stuff? Like, what's your
favorite sport? Well, why do Iwant to ask questions like that?
Because now I can use AI anddata to compile this different
type of segments that could belike these purple colored emails
that talk about the PhiladelphiaEagles that also embrace these
(12:21):
dad jokes that are actuallyteaching marketing.
Now that is fricking tailored.That's personalization at scale,
but you got questions to be ableto personalize that to the
humans. Yeah. That okay. Right?
So like, you can't you can't welive in a world now where if
you're blasting out genericnoise and nonsense, you will
(12:43):
lose.
Chad Hohn (12:44):
Or even AI powered standard lookup non, you know,
because like, we're gonna turninto, hey, you know, thanks for
reaching out. You have, oh, youknow, a company of your size,
blah blah blah, because like AIcan look that up without any
extra smart questions thatyou've asked. But I think your
(13:06):
second smart question philosophyreally will always apply how you
execute it, what you can do withthose second smart questions to
power your AI, to stand outabove everybody else's AI noise.
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (13:20):
Yes. And by the way, if you're listening to
this and you're like, what isChad talking about? Second smart
questions, call me. Send upsmoke signals. Ship me to your
office.
I don't whatever we gotta do, wecan talk about what this looks
like.
Chad Hohn (13:32):
It's it's worth knowing and learning. I mean,
like, it's gonna change the waythat you think about just form
submissions even, let let alone,you know. Yeah. Anyway, just
knowing the people who arecoming to you, identifying them,
helping them, you know, being aresource to those people who to
those, you know, humans, George.
George B. Thomas (13:54):
Yes. Yes.
Chad Hohn (13:54):
As they come in. Right? It's very important to to
keep them in mind. And and whenyou're doing it, you know, for
you as a business, obviously,but for them to make their lives
better because you havesomething to offer that you can
help people with, it's still thesame thing. We're still doing
the same thing.
We're just doing it with adifferent playbook.
George B. Thomas (14:13):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. Nothing
new under the sun.
Nothing's really changed. Nowwe're putting it in four
different buckets. I'm I'mtrying to paint that picture,
like, through this episode andfuture episodes. But, Chad,
thank you, because you know I dolove humans. Yes, I do love me
some humans.
Okay. So think about this tailorthing, as I kind of end that
(14:33):
piece up. Because again, likeChad said, I want to ask
different questions. I want toask second, smart questions
because in the tailoring, whatI'm doing is, am I focused as a
marketer on conversion rate?Sure, maybe, but I like to call
it conversation rate.
And if I can inject inconversation rate a higher level
of conversations and moreconversations, then we're
(14:55):
winning. Okay? We're winning.So, the next phase that HubSpot
talks about is Amplify. And thisis where marketers have lived,
either in a very yuck, terrible,noise, nonsense way, or a very
happy, helpful, humble humanway, right?
This is where you take thattailored message that you've
(15:16):
created, because you know whoyou are, you know how you want
to show up, you know who theyare, you know their likes and
needs, and you spread thismessage. And here's the thing,
used to just be kind of throughold channels, like, I'm going to
do SEO, and I might do a littleemail, Maybe I'm going to do SEO
(15:36):
and a little bit of ads. We livein a world now, and I literally
wrote an article, I'll have toput it in the show notes, where
it's like, there's five majorareas that we should be paying
attention to, but you you've gotto think about this holistic.
Right? This holistic publishing,amplifying, broadcasting manner.
(16:00):
Like, it's it's gotta be acrosscommunities. It's like, listen,
everybody for years ago waslike, well, everything should be
on your website. Hey, websitetraffic is down like 60%. Should
it be now? Maybe.
Should it live there? Yes. Butshould there be branches into
other communities? Should you bedoing things with other
creators? Should you make surethat you're following an AI
(16:21):
search?
Where are all the places thatyour buyers hang out? We had
this cute thing when the inboundmethodology came out that we're
like, You got to find theirdigital water cooler. Yo, that
shit is important as all get outright now. Like it's, you don't
need, yeah, I'm sorry. I'msorry.
I got passionate.
Liz Moorehead (16:40):
Once again, it was not me.
George B. Thomas (16:41):
It was not you. Max Just is not
Chad Hohn (16:44):
like to point out.
George B. Thomas (16:46):
Yeah. So, so like, you know what I mean? You
gotta know where they hang outand you gotta be the guy, the
gal, the human, the human brandthat is trusted in those spaces.
Okay. So when you think ofAmplify, I want you to think
about, well, we're amplifyingbecause we already have self
awareness.
(17:07):
We're amplifying because we areempathetic and understand the
humans we're serving. Now let'sput the good juju out into the
world. So now you've amplifiedit, now we got to talk about
Evolve. I think this is where,again, some of the magic can
happen because, and why theycall it Loop Marketing, is
because this is where they'retrying to say it doesn't stop.
(17:27):
This is where the loop comes in.
Because now what you're doing isyou're going to go ahead and by
the way, we've done this foryears. Ladies and gentlemen, the
only thing of all this is testand measure. You test what you
put out to the world and youmeasure. There's a raised hand
in this platform. Oh my God.
Okay, hang on, hang on. So youtest what you do.
Chad Hohn (17:49):
Liz's brain is breaking by the way. Measure
George B. Thomas (17:52):
and you adjust, right? Because you want
to get smarter with every cycleof the thing that you're doing.
I'm purposely saying cycle ofeverything you're doing because
I don't want to drill this downto content. This Evolve is
bigger than content. It's EvolveData Cleanliness, Evolve any
marketing process that you have.
(18:14):
It's like these learnings, theyneed to compound and get you
better results over timebecause, well, okay, Liz, you
raised your hand.
Liz Moorehead (18:25):
Yes. Hi. So, I've been listening very patiently. I
have been listening to everystep of the way that you have
mapped out and I am going to aska question from a genuine place
of curiosity. I'm gonna ask thequestion and then I'm gonna
explain why I have the question.
And then I'm going to listen.
George B. Thomas (18:43):
Sure.
Liz Moorehead (18:43):
Did they solve a real problem or an imagined one
with Loop Marketing? Becausehere's where I'm getting a
little stuck. Everything thatyou've laid out feels like we
are relabeling things thatalready had stages, that already
had steps. Like typicallyspeaking, when HubSpot has
rolled out something wholly newlike this, even if I chafed,
(19:06):
Like, I had a problem with theflywheel, but I got it. They
were introducing a new way
George B. Thomas (19:10):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:11):
Of thinking about things. Yeah. And this is the
first time where it's like,express, tailor, amplify,
evolve. These terms don't feelgrounded. It feels like we're
making labels around a productthing to bring the product
together
George B. Thomas (19:29):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:30):
As opposed to introducing a new strategy, but
they're positioning it from amarketing perspective
George B. Thomas (19:37):
Well, think about as a new strategy. Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:40):
So, think about question is, problem or imagined
one?
George B. Thomas (19:43):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:44):
What did we actually solve with the
marketing here?
George B. Thomas (19:46):
So, I'm going say two, two things to this, and
I love that that's where yourbrain went. One, I had somebody
say this to me the other day.They have had people asking what
Loop Marketing is. And thisperson literally says, have you
been watching George B Thomasfor the last ten years? That's
(20:07):
Loop Marketing.
First of all, I take thecompliment. Thank you very much.
However, the second thing thatI'm going to say is that not
everybody has been in theecosystem or the ether of what
we have been doing. And Liz, noteverybody thinks like the way we
think when it comes to thethings that we have been doing
(20:27):
from a happy, helpful, humblehuman perspective. Liz, you do.
Chad, you do. I know Max does. Iknow Hapley does. I know we do
at Psychic Strategies. ButHubSpot has a massive amount of
data, and they realize noteverybody is playing that game.
Not everybody can translate theinbound marketing methodology
and the flywheel into what we'vebeen doing along the way. And I
(20:51):
say this very humbly. So, is ita problem for us? No. Is it a
problem out in the world?
Obviously. Right? So, I don'tthink they made it up, but I
think there's a subsection ofhumans that are confused or
haven't been doing it and needto go into this new way because
if you were just using the oldplaybook, it's not working
(21:14):
anymore. Guess what? We're Gostill in business because ahead,
Chad.
Go ahead.
Chad Hohn (21:20):
Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say some people would
distill attract, engage to lightto be like, oh, three simple
steps. I'm going to create alanding page, make an ad, send
out an email, you know, andthere was what it was before
that, you know, had worked inmass, and they just did enough
of it. But literally, number onething that it says on the Loop
(21:43):
Marketing homepage is marketingfunnels aren't flowing and old
tactics aren't working.
George B. Thomas (21:48):
Yeah.
Chad Hohn (21:48):
Right? Your playbook needs some love. And it's like,
you know, when you're startingto talk about that, I mean, I
guess my brain just goes to alot of people aren't natively
visionary. They don't nativelysee into how things work. Right.
I mean, some people are great atit. Some people are okay at it,
(22:10):
but like it's not a normal skillto like hear one thing and then
in your brain ideate and come upwith how something would
function out of that. Right? Andhow you would execute on it. So
I think is would you say thatthis is an attempt of HubSpot to
(22:31):
operationalize people.
I mean, to use their tool,operationalize them to do
better.
George B. Thomas (22:39):
So two things based on where you just led my
brain, Chad. One, and going backto Liz's question and combining
your two questions. One, if youthink about what I said at the
very beginning of this, ofexternal process funnels and
flywheels around the humans,internal system and process loop
(22:59):
marketing for marketers to dothe things that they need to do
in a way that they need to dothem. Boom. So that's, I think
it's, yes, they're trying to,
Chad Hohn (23:08):
well, whatever. Operationalize.
George B. Thomas (23:10):
Thanks. People into that. Now, here's here's
the other thing where my braingoes on this is but that's only
half the story. Right? That'sonly half the thing that people
should be paying attention to.
I literally wrote anotherarticle about loop marketing and
superhuman framework and howthey combine. I'll put that in
the show notes as well. You candig into that if you want to in
(23:31):
the future. But here's thething. We have to understand
that this year of all years,2025, it definitely was, Liz,
back to kind of your question,and again, bridging Chad's
question in there too, ishistorically it was this
methodology that drove a cultureto show up to do business in a
(23:54):
certain way.
This year's Loop Marketing, bythe way, let me back up before I
even go to this year. Also, itwas inbound methodology
marketing, inbound methodologysales, inbound methodology
service. Now, I want you tothink about that. This year,
loop marketing, specificity, onejust segment. Now, is next year
(24:20):
going to be sales and the yearafter that going to be service?
I don't know, but I needeverybody to realize that we
were just talking aboutmarketing. What the heck happens
to Express and, you know,Amplify and all of this in sales
and service, and nobody's eventalking about how this should be
maybe opera opera. Say it again,Chad.
Liz Moorehead (24:41):
Operational.
George B. Thomas (24:42):
Operational. I'm having a hard time with that
word. It it is
Liz Moorehead (24:46):
Maybe if you say it with the human voice That
it'll it'll sound better. No.
George B. Thomas (24:50):
No. It won't. Okay. So so here's the thing.
That word is kicking my butttoday.
Anyway, so nobody's talkingabout that. Right? Like, this
needs to be extrapolated throughthe, like, the different anyway.
Anyway. Extrapolated.
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it does.So so here's here's the thing.
Like, this year, it was a toolor felt like a tool that we need
(25:15):
to figure out how to, you know,take it and make it so people
could operate in it in a waywith all the cool tools that we
had and tools that are coming tobe able to do things faster,
better at scale, to get oversome of the hurdles that HubSpot
had felt.
They knew a large portion oftheir organizations that were
(25:37):
using their tool felt. Becausewhat happens if all of sudden
you aren't seeing success withthe tools that you're supposed
to get success with, cancel yourtool. What does HubSpot care
about? People not cancelingtheir tools. We need to get them
So to if HubSpot sees somethings that are working, we've
(25:57):
got to build a framework, asystem, or like they call it a
playbook to help people keepthings working in this, what
I'll call sort of a chaotic timeand period, at least when it
comes to marketing.
Now, for most, I go back and I'mgoing to humbly say this, one,
Chad, you used the wordvisionary. I don't feel like I'm
a visionary. I just feel likeI'm a guy who has these ways
(26:20):
that he's going to do things,and I stuck to those things, and
long term and it's human andit's core values. And so like, I
can tell you that this loopmarketing will work if you apply
it in the way that needs to beapplied. Because listen, I
didn't care and don't care thatsearch traffic is down 60%.
(26:41):
Why do you say that George?Because 60 to 70% of my business
is referrals. Well, why is thatGeorge? Because I've been doing
human based loop marketing forthe last ten years. Now that's
not visionary, that maybe I'mlucky.
I hate the word lucky, but maybethere's like anyway,
Liz Moorehead (27:01):
I'll show jump in here. I gotta jump in here. I
already put this in the chat.Chad saw it. I'm having a lot of
feelings about this, guys.
And this may be a situation, andit's part of the reason why I am
going to say before I tee it upfor the last question to you,
George, it's why I'm glad we'rehaving a more extended
conversation about this.
George B. Thomas (27:20):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (27:21):
Because I will admit, I can sometimes be a who
moved my cheese kind of girly.Like, I get that, but I am also
a big advocate for change. I'm abig advocate for moving things
forward. Yep. There is somethingabout this change that makes me
feel like HubSpot was solving aHubSpot problem and not solving
a customer problem, which iskinda antithetical to the way
(27:44):
they've always presentedthemselves.
Mhmm. And that like, because I'mhearing you describe it, like,
again, they're not introducinganything new. Now to be fair, it
may be something where I sitwith this, and maybe we needed
new language, new architectureMhmm. In order to bring all of
these pieces together because todo inbound, to do marketing, to
do holistic marketing and salestogether where they're aligned,
(28:07):
it is a much more complex piecethan it was in 2015.
George B. Thomas (28:10):
Without a doubt.
Liz Moorehead (28:11):
I'm not gonna lie about that. But I even remember,
like, when I would hear termslike attract attract, engage,
convert, delight. Yeah. All ofthe things that we used to use
and even when the funnel wasintroduced, like, I got it and
this is the first time like Iget it but it doesn't feel like
we're moving anything forward.It feels like we're solving a
(28:32):
problem for software andattrition.
Chad Hohn (28:34):
Well, that's a question too. Do you think that
we're solving for a futureproblem that people are gonna be
in if they don't get it? Andthat I think might be a little
bit more because like, if youknow, remember your journey with
AI, Liz. Right? You've talkedabout it on the podcast before.
Like, you're welcome,
George B. Thomas (28:54):
Liz. You're welcome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (28:56):
You know, like, I don't know how I feel about
these words and the things.Yeah. You know? And, like, if
people don't get on board withthe AI functions in their lives
to allow them to do more I mean,like, you know, GDP is growing
because the amount of unit workthat a single human can do with
(29:19):
an AI assistant is growingexponentially. Right?
Like, you can get so much moredone. And, like, the people who
are not doing that, you know, toimprove what they're doing are
are going to fall woefullybehind.
George B. Thomas (29:32):
See, I think No, I I wanna completely
Liz Moorehead (29:34):
agree with that.
George B. Thomas (29:35):
Hold on. Hold on, One second. One second. And
then just hold on to your,because I'll lose mine. You are
not good.
I literally am 54. I'll lose mytrain of thought. Like just hold
on, hold on to your thought.Because mine will be like, I
don't remember what I wasthinking. What am I eating for
dinner?
I don't know. Okay. What was Ithinking? Oh yeah. Chad, here's,
here's the deal.
Yes, faster, but I want todouble triple 10 x what you said
(29:57):
in the middle of Faster, better.
Chad Hohn (30:01):
Yep.
George B. Thomas (30:01):
Better.
Chad Hohn (30:02):
Faster, better.
George B. Thomas (30:03):
Creating Mhmm. Okay? Because that's the thing.
Like, when you think abouttaste, tone, point of view, when
you think of personas and idealclient profiles, again, things
that we've talked about foryears, now you can do it faster,
better. Or the way that I'd liketo say is you can do it better,
faster.
Here's the thing. I saidsomething the other day on
another podcast, I think it Ithink it needs to be said when
(30:27):
we're thinking about AI, we'rethinking about HubSpot, we're
thinking about marketing, we'rethinking about humans, is that
right now we live in a worldwhere intelligence is not the
issue. We have lived in a worldwhere intelligence was the
issue. Intelligence no longer isthe issue. We have all the
intelligence that we ever wantor ever need.
We just got to go and get it.The problem that we're having
(30:48):
right now is the wisdom in to dowhat with that intelligence.
When? Can we blast out a bunchof crap? Can we totally destroy
a data model?
Can we burn humans out?Absolutely. Mhmm. But that's not
better.
Chad Hohn (31:05):
Yeah. That's just do and when to
George B. Thomas (31:07):
do it. Yeah. Go ahead, Liz. Sorry.
Chad Hohn (31:08):
I mean Yeah. Go ahead, Liz. Sorry.
Liz Moorehead (31:12):
Yeah. But oh, excuse me. No, cut this out.
Sorry. I have so many feels I'mcoughing.
George B. Thomas (31:17):
We got it. We got it all like now anyway.
Liz Moorehead (31:20):
I'm to talk amongst yourselves. But here's
the thing. I don't necessarilydisagree with anything that
you're saying.
George B. Thomas (31:30):
Yeah, right.
Liz Moorehead (31:31):
My problem and again, maybe I just need to sit
with this a little more is was aconfusing rebrand slash not
rebrand of the inbound marketingmethodology. The answer to
everything that we're talkingabout That's where I'm
struggling a little bit. Nothingwe're talking about is really
(31:51):
new and it feels like instead oflike when I think about what we
loved about the inboundmethodology when it first came
on, even when it was iterated,even when it turned into the
flywheel, even when it turnedinto all of these other things.
It was all about solving for thecustomer journey. It was focused
on how we show up and serve ashumans and this feels very
(32:15):
uniquely like, well, we now havea big unwieldy piece of software
and we need to make it easierfor people to use, which I don't
disagree with.
That can be something very, holdon George. That can be something
very valid. That can besomething that definitely needs
to be done because I don'tdisagree with anything that you
just said.
George B. Thomas (32:32):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (32:33):
But I think to your point earlier George, part
of the reason we're even havingthis discussion is this is now
what the second or third year ina row after inbound we say, wow,
this could be really great, butthe messaging strategy is way
out of whack.
George B. Thomas (32:45):
Yeah. So, me, let me just say a couple things.
One, marketers are humans. Two,we're not Yeah. Solving the same
problem.
We're solving a differentproblem. We're solving the
problem of the marketers andwhat to do with a platform and a
process. And by the way, thefunnel was never really new. It
(33:08):
was a package people understood.The flywheel was never really
new, it was a package peopleunderstood.
Those two things and the inboundmethodology wasn't anything new,
but it was a structure thatcould be repeatable. Loop
marketing is HubSpot's 2025version of creating a
specificity around marketing toa structure that they can repeat
(33:34):
inside of a platform so they cansee success. It's a it's a
different problem. And theproblem that we're facing is is
people are calling to the sameproblem. It's not a journey
problem.
It's an implementation problem.
Chad Hohn (33:48):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (33:49):
Okay.
Chad Hohn (33:49):
When what I'll say too is, like, ever since
Marketing Studio came out and,you know, I've, like, I've never
successfully gotten my any ofthe companies I've worked with
to properly use HubSpotcampaigns until Marketing
Studio. And Marketing Studio isso simple for people to make
(34:15):
their campaigns and visualize itbecause people aren't naturally
visionary. They're not buildingthe blocks in their brain of how
the human's gonna go through thejourney from the ad to the
landing page to the CTA button,to the pop up form, to the form,
(34:36):
to the meeting, or whatever.Right? However that journey is
gonna go, the marketing studiotool operationalized people who
never got it before, and they'rerunning with it like gangbusters
at my current organization.
George B. Thomas (34:53):
Yeah. So And here's what I love. Chad, we're
gonna be doing an episode onmarketing studio. It's gonna be
one of those where we'll we'lltalk, but show where we'll show
the episodes. Now now here'swhat I gotta kinda go behind the
scenes for a second for theaudience who's listening to
this.
We had defined this before wehit the mics of, we're gonna do
(35:15):
an episode on Loop Marketing.Yeah. Guys, you see how far we
got? We defined
Chad Hohn (35:21):
We just like said the words.
George B. Thomas (35:23):
Yeah, we said the word, we said the phases.
Liz Moorehead (35:25):
And then Liz had a lot of feelings.
George B. Thomas (35:26):
Liz had feelings.
Chad Hohn (35:27):
Yeah, then feels.
George B. Thomas (35:28):
But I want to give people the understanding,
like, what I want to build here,which I think eventually ends up
being like the ultimateresource, like Sidekick
Strategy's Guide to LoopMarketing, is it because I want
I want to give a window intowhere we're going to go. Now,
the next episode we do mightactually be marketing studio,
and then we might circle backaround and then do an episode on
(35:50):
Loop Marketing, the expressstage. Because here's where my
brain goes to the level ofgranularity that we need to be
talking about as we kind of wrapthis bad boy up. When I think of
all of these stages, likeexpress, I think that there has
to be a conversation aroundhuman tasks and skills that have
to be true in the Express stage.I think there's a conversation
(36:14):
where we have to talk aboutbusiness objectives that are
there for the Express stage.
I think there's a conversationthat we have to have around
tools and technology for theexpress stage. I think there's
even a conversation arounddesign and content, the
conversation we love so mucharound the Express phase. I
(36:35):
think there's also the need totalk about data and metrics in
the Express stage. I thinkthere's even additional
considerations for the expressstage. And by the way, rinse and
repeat what I just said forevery one of the four stages.
And so I really want to haveconversations where we dig in
(36:56):
and get super granular on whatdoes this ish really mean so
that humans aren't confused.They are able to scale. It is
able to be repeatable. It is asystem and they have it at a
deeper level than what theymight be thinking of like, oh,
inbound marketing's dead.
Liz Moorehead (37:16):
Look, they've been saying blogging is dead for
years.
George B. Thomas (37:18):
We all
Liz Moorehead (37:18):
know that's not Yeah. Like, come on. Nothing's
dead. We just what do marketersdo? If we don't like it, we just
rebrand it.
Chad Hohn (37:25):
Yeah. Well, you gotta get the information out there
for the AI to consume. Like,that's also important. I mean,
there's so many differentconsiderations, you know, when
it comes to this AEO, thethings, like so there's going to
be plenty of more episodescoming about all of this really
important stuff.
George B. Thomas (37:45):
Yeah. Don't even get me started, Chad,
because you say AEO, anotherperson I get on a meeting says
GEO. When you say AEO, you mightbe saying AI engine
optimization. This other humanI'm talking to might be saying
answer engine optimization. Goodgod.
Right. Come on. Anyway.
Chad Hohn (38:03):
Right. Well Liz. All growing so fast.
George B. Thomas (38:06):
Heard these cats. Help help me wrap up here.
Liz Moorehead (38:08):
George, instead of landing the plane in the
traditional way of telling usthe one thing you want us to
walk away from.
George B. Thomas (38:15):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (38:16):
With this conversation with this. Is
you've just teed up the factthat we're gonna be having lots
of conversations around a lot ofthe new pieces that have come
out and including going deeperinto loop marketing. Right?
George B. Thomas (38:25):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (38:25):
So what is if my feelings are any indication as
well as the feelings that youshared that other people had
told you, we might have a lot ofsquirrelly folks in the
audience. Yeah. What is your onepiece of advice going into our
future episodes as we divedeeper into this?
George B. Thomas (38:41):
Yeah, take a deep breath, keep an open mind.
Yeah, absolutely not. I refuse.
Chad Hohn (38:48):
She's got all the feels that are amped up right
now.
George B. Thomas (38:51):
Yeah, no, seriously though, take a deep
breath.
Liz Moorehead (38:54):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (38:55):
Put on your growth mindset cap. Look at what
you're currently doing, andstart to map that out. Because
then what you'll be able to dois take what you've mapped out,
and what we talk about in thefuture and see what is right for
you to change or not right foryou to change, because not
everything needs to change.Nobody said loop marketing meant
(39:18):
that you curl up it in a ball,throw it in the wastebasket and
start over. Nobody said that,but if you look on the
internets, that's kind of howsome people are acting.
So take a deep breath, put yourgrowth mindset brain on, and
start mapping out what you'redoing. And we'll see you in the
(39:39):
next episode. Hub Heroes. We'vereached the end of another
episode. Will Lord Lack continueto loom over the community or
will we be able to defeat him inthe next episode of the Hub
Heroes podcast?
Make sure you tune in and findout in the next episode. Make
sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest
(40:02):
episodes and become part of theLeague of Heroes. FYI, if you're
part of the League of Heroes,you'll get the show notes right
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as well. Make sure you sharethis podcast with a friend.
Leave a review if you like whatyou're listening to and use the
hashtag hashtag hub heroespodcast on any of the socials
(40:24):
and let us know what strategyconversation you'd like to
listen into next.
Until next time, when we meetand combine our forces, remember
to be a happy, helpful, humblehuman, and of course, always be
looking for a way to besomeone's hero.
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloedapartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace, lord lack, lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:22):
tool in your superhero toolbelt? Knowledge.
Never fear hub heroes. Get readyto don your cape and mask, move
into action, and become the hubhero your organization needs.
Tune in each week to join theleague of extraordinary inbound
heroes as we help you educate,empower, and execute. Of heroes,
(00:47):
it's time to unite and activateyour powers.
Chad Hohn (00:53):
I am.
George B. Thomas (00:53):
That was beautiful. No. That was
beautiful. That was artwork.
Chad Hohn (00:56):
It keeps me up every night, to be honest. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:00):
Lord Black haunts me. Yeah. So we're back together
again.
George B. Thomas (01:05):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:06):
I heard inbound was a freaking blast.
George B. Thomas (01:09):
It was crazy.
Liz Moorehead (01:09):
West Coast style.
George B. Thomas (01:11):
Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. San Francisco. I I'm I may
go back.
I may never go back. I don'tknow. I'm the jury's still out,
but but I will try a Waymo caragain without a doubt. Waymo.
Waymo.
Yeah.
Chad Hohn (01:26):
The Waymo. Those are kind
Liz Moorehead (01:28):
of in
Chad Hohn (01:28):
the Seattle side point I hear.
George B. Thomas (01:30):
Yeah. Self driving car. Yeah. Without a
doubt.
Liz Moorehead (01:32):
I'm not sure how I feel about that.
George B. Thomas (01:33):
You know what isn't self driving? Loop
marketing. That isn't selfdriving.
Liz Moorehead (01:38):
George, that was mine. That was my
George B. Thomas (01:40):
thing. I'm sorry.
Liz Moorehead (01:41):
That was my
George B. Thomas (01:41):
thing. My bad.
Liz Moorehead (01:42):
It's okay. No, I was going back through and
listening to all of thedifferent things that you talked
about, looking through all thedifferent product announcements.
George B. Thomas (01:50):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (01:51):
And yeah, loop marketing I want to have what is
likely the beginning of a numberof conversations about this
topic because I got to beperfectly honest guys, I have
questions. Now for people athome who maybe missed the
announcement or just need alittle refresher, loop marketing
is this new fancy AI poweredframework which is the next
(02:15):
revolution quote beyond thefunnel, okay. It connects to
like a thousand differentthings, right? It's like Breeze
AI agents, Data Hub, MarketingStudio for content creation,
Smart CRM, AICPQ, ABCDEFG, HIJK,LMNOP. My
George B. Thomas (02:37):
brain hurt.
Chad Hohn (02:38):
Like AI.
Liz Moorehead (02:39):
Exactly. AI. I was telling this earlier,
George. It was one of thosethings where I always get
excited when HubSpot pushes theenvelope, gets us to think about
things in bigger and differentways. Yeah.
And this one, after I gotthrough reading about all of it,
am like, I am excited. I amscared. I, there's so much
(03:00):
happening. There are so manyacronyms. There's so much AI
flying around.
And I have a lot of morefundamental questions.
George B. Thomas (03:08):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (03:10):
That's what I want to talk about.
George B. Thomas (03:11):
I think everybody has fundamental
questions. I think it's lightlydefined, maybe heavily defined
if you go to loopmarketing.com,which takes you to a HubSpot
page. But even that says likemore resources coming soon, like
sign up for more marketingresources. Listen, as we prepped
(03:34):
for the show, I went and triedto watch and listen to some of
episodes and videos that peoplewere creating. It just left me
with more questions.
And to be honest with you, it'slike, I feel like people are
confused. I've heard everythingfrom inbound is dead to loop
marketing is stupid to like,what happened to the flywheel?
(03:56):
Hashtag loop, Like, go usethere's so much out there. And
by the way, this is not bad.Loop marketing is not bad, but,
but there's fundamentaldefinitions that have to occur
for people to embrace this whereand how it should be embraced.
Liz Moorehead (04:12):
I agree. Like, the whole the concept of we're
moving beyond the funnel. I'mlike, didn't we do that in 2018
with a flywheel? Like, wait aminute. Hold on a second.
What's going on? So that's whatwe're
Chad Hohn (04:23):
getting. That's just the flywheel is just a three d
funnel.
George B. Thomas (04:26):
I mean, pretty dang much. So, here's the thing.
Here's the thing. Like, I thinkthat's where we need to start is
what is loop marketing, right?Like Yeah.
That's I wanna go. So go ahead.Down for
Liz Moorehead (04:39):
me. Yeah. Well
George B. Thomas (04:41):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Chad, do you wanna go
first? Do you want me to gofirst?
Chad Hohn (04:45):
You know, you give it a whirl. I mean, like, the
content thing is all you guys.Like, you're you know, you've
been in the marketing thing. Thefirst problem.
George B. Thomas (04:53):
There's the first problem. Oh my god. Okay.
Marketing is not a contentthing.
Chad Hohn (05:01):
Right, Content
George B. Thomas (05:02):
is part of a marketing thing. Okay, as we'll
say, as we'll talk about. Lovethat you started there. So first
of all, let me just What is LoopMarketing? Loop Marketing is not
a replacement for inbound.
Loop marketing is not areplacement for your funnel.
Loop marketing is not areplacement for the flywheel.
Let me explain, loop marketingis a system for the things that
(05:25):
you in your organization dointernally with a set of tools
and an AI partner assistant,whatever you call it, Breeze, if
you're using HubSpot. We'll talkabout maybe where that falls
apart if you're not a HubSpotuser, by the way. But it's an
internal system.
It's a way that we use asoftware and we use mindsets and
(05:48):
mentalities to do the thingsthat we're doing. If you even
think about the words express,we express ourselves, We tailor
our information and content. Weamplify our message. We evolve
based on our metrics. So what Iwant everybody to realize is
inbound and the funnel and theflywheel has always been about
(06:11):
journey and them.
This is about process and us.And we just have to come out and
say that. So that's where I'mgoing to start is, it's not a
replacement. These four things,there is a bunch that we could
be talking about in each one ofthese four things as far as
Express, Tailor, Amplify,Evolve, but we got to put it in
(06:33):
its place. It's not as big aseverybody wants to make it, but
it's huge in the place where itbelongs.
Chad Hohn (06:40):
Yeah. When I, earlier, I was kinda doing a
little bit of prep for thisepisode, and one of the places
that I went as as it be like itdo, I saw HubSpot's YouTube
channel and they had a YouTubeshort on HubSpot marketing.
Yeah. And the YouTube shortimmediately said the flywheel is
(07:01):
dead. Yeah.
However, after that, it said,well, just kidding. This is
summarized. Not actually dead,but it's it's being powered
differently is what it said.Right? It's like the so they
were kinda, like, joking,obviously, at the beginning.
Like, oh, the flywheel's dead.You need to be using loop
marketing. Well, actually, atthe end, just kidding. It's just
(07:23):
a differently powered flywheel,which jives with it what it
sounds like you're saying,George.
George B. Thomas (07:28):
Which, by the way, as soon as you say it's a
different type of thing, likeso, like, have you ever heard
the human where they're like,oh, man. I got a car just like
that, but it's purple. Bro. It'snot just like it then. It's not
mine is red.
You can't have a loop and it bea flywheel. Like, it's a loop.
(07:52):
Mhmm. It is fundamentallydifferent. Let me, let let me
dive a little bit more into kindof this real quick, just so we
get a, we get a, like a definedpiece of, of what we're talking
about.
Then you can circle, we'llcircle back around because you
did ask me like, what is what isthe loop marketing and like
(08:13):
these, these stages? And solet's just, let's just back up
for a second.
Liz Moorehead (08:18):
Like, it's like, you were reading my mind.
George B. Thomas (08:19):
That's what
Liz Moorehead (08:20):
I was going to circle the wagons Right.
George B. Thomas (08:22):
Express. So express, which by the way, I
can't say that without thinkingof the song. Express yourself.
Like, you know, do you guys knowthat song? Anyway, so express is
where you define, like, who youare, your tastes, your tone,
your point of view.
(08:42):
Is historically what we'vetalked about when working with
AI is like, this is all thecontext. This is like our brand,
our voice, our style guide. Thisis like that kind of thing.
Chad Hohn (08:53):
So you remember all those episodes we did on AI data
sources? I mean, like, this iswhat that evolved into legit.
Liz Moorehead (09:00):
Right. Right. It feels like such a fancy pants
name for, like, voice tonestyle, who you are, what I get
it.
George B. Thomas (09:07):
But but see, here's the thing is it even goes
further than that. We'll breakdown, when we talk about
Express, I broke downfundamentally in an organization
different things that we couldbe talking about or thinking
about. Holistically, it's like,again, your taste, your tone,
your point of view, and you makesure that AI and humans alike
(09:29):
know what makes your brandunique. So, the idea without
Express, without this kind offoundational piece, you don't
have clarity. Any of the otherthree things, as you've heard in
some of the videos or trainingsor if you're at Inbound,
everything else kind of fallsflat.
Okay. So you've got to know Hey,ladies and gentlemen. In life,
(09:51):
to win, you've gotta know whoyou are and what you like and
how you Wow. Beliefs, mindsets,core values. Oh, how do you
express yourself?
Human and organist okay. So thenext one is Taylor. Once you
know who you are, oh, selfawareness is a BI. Okay, so once
(10:12):
you know who you are, and onlythen can you shape your message
so it lands with the people thatyou're trying to reach. Okay,
let's reverse engineer thatpersonas, ideal client profiles,
the different industries thatyou serve.
Now you can actually tailor itand personalize it at scale. So
(10:34):
you can use data and AI to makethose touches that we've done
historically more personal andrelevant. That folks that feel
seen, they feel heard, they feelunderstood, instead of these
generic blasts. In my inboundtalk, I said something along the
lines of when's the last timeyou sent a handwritten note?
(10:56):
Now, don't mean an actualhandwritten note, but when's the
last time your message felt likeit was a handwritten note, like
a card from your grandma, right?
And so this is the thing, likeTaylor, when you think about
this, it is personalization atscale. What does XYZ service
look for accountants? What doesXYZ service look like for
(11:16):
churches? What does XYZ servicelook for? Boom.
Okay, so here's where my braingoes. This also comes down to
your data modeling, butunfortunately, there are so many
organizations when we thinkabout this tailored that they're
still in first name, last name,job title, company name. Okay.
You got to start to like, I'msitting here, I'm walking this
(11:37):
morning. I did like an hour walkthinking about this subject to
bring to the world.
And I'm like, I want to go in myCRM and I want to ask completely
different questions. I want toask questions like, do you like
dad jokes or not? Yes or no?What's your favorite color?
What's your favorite food?
What's your like, do you believein this or that? Is what's,
(12:01):
what's your like, you know,broad stuff? Like, what's your
favorite sport? Well, why do Iwant to ask questions like that?
Because now I can use AI anddata to compile this different
type of segments that could belike these purple colored emails
that talk about the PhiladelphiaEagles that also embrace these
(12:21):
dad jokes that are actuallyteaching marketing.
Now that is fricking tailored.That's personalization at scale,
but you got questions to be ableto personalize that to the
humans. Yeah. That okay. Right?
So like, you can't you can't welive in a world now where if
you're blasting out genericnoise and nonsense, you will
(12:43):
lose.
Chad Hohn (12:44):
Or even AI powered standard lookup non, you know,
because like, we're gonna turninto, hey, you know, thanks for
reaching out. You have, oh, youknow, a company of your size,
blah blah blah, because like AIcan look that up without any
extra smart questions thatyou've asked. But I think your
(13:06):
second smart question philosophyreally will always apply how you
execute it, what you can do withthose second smart questions to
power your AI, to stand outabove everybody else's AI noise.
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (13:20):
Yes. And by the way, if you're listening to
this and you're like, what isChad talking about? Second smart
questions, call me. Send upsmoke signals. Ship me to your
office.
I don't whatever we gotta do, wecan talk about what this looks
like.
Chad Hohn (13:32):
It's it's worth knowing and learning. I mean,
like, it's gonna change the waythat you think about just form
submissions even, let let alone,you know. Yeah. Anyway, just
knowing the people who arecoming to you, identifying them,
helping them, you know, being aresource to those people who to
those, you know, humans, George.
George B. Thomas (13:54):
Yes. Yes.
Chad Hohn (13:54):
As they come in. Right? It's very important to to
keep them in mind. And and whenyou're doing it, you know, for
you as a business, obviously,but for them to make their lives
better because you havesomething to offer that you can
help people with, it's still thesame thing. We're still doing
the same thing.
We're just doing it with adifferent playbook.
George B. Thomas (14:13):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. Nothing
new under the sun.
Nothing's really changed. Nowwe're putting it in four
different buckets. I'm I'mtrying to paint that picture,
like, through this episode andfuture episodes. But, Chad,
thank you, because you know I dolove humans. Yes, I do love me
some humans.
Okay. So think about this tailorthing, as I kind of end that
(14:33):
piece up. Because again, likeChad said, I want to ask
different questions. I want toask second, smart questions
because in the tailoring, whatI'm doing is, am I focused as a
marketer on conversion rate?Sure, maybe, but I like to call
it conversation rate.
And if I can inject inconversation rate a higher level
of conversations and moreconversations, then we're
(14:55):
winning. Okay? We're winning.So, the next phase that HubSpot
talks about is Amplify. And thisis where marketers have lived,
either in a very yuck, terrible,noise, nonsense way, or a very
happy, helpful, humble humanway, right?
This is where you take thattailored message that you've
(15:16):
created, because you know whoyou are, you know how you want
to show up, you know who theyare, you know their likes and
needs, and you spread thismessage. And here's the thing,
used to just be kind of throughold channels, like, I'm going to
do SEO, and I might do a littleemail, Maybe I'm going to do SEO
(15:36):
and a little bit of ads. We livein a world now, and I literally
wrote an article, I'll have toput it in the show notes, where
it's like, there's five majorareas that we should be paying
attention to, but you you've gotto think about this holistic.
Right? This holistic publishing,amplifying, broadcasting manner.
(16:00):
Like, it's it's gotta be acrosscommunities. It's like, listen,
everybody for years ago waslike, well, everything should be
on your website. Hey, websitetraffic is down like 60%. Should
it be now? Maybe.
Should it live there? Yes. Butshould there be branches into
other communities? Should you bedoing things with other
creators? Should you make surethat you're following an AI
(16:21):
search?
Where are all the places thatyour buyers hang out? We had
this cute thing when the inboundmethodology came out that we're
like, You got to find theirdigital water cooler. Yo, that
shit is important as all get outright now. Like it's, you don't
need, yeah, I'm sorry. I'msorry.
I got passionate.
Liz Moorehead (16:40):
Once again, it was not me.
George B. Thomas (16:41):
It was not you. Max Just is not
Chad Hohn (16:44):
like to point out.
George B. Thomas (16:46):
Yeah. So, so like, you know what I mean? You
gotta know where they hang outand you gotta be the guy, the
gal, the human, the human brandthat is trusted in those spaces.
Okay. So when you think ofAmplify, I want you to think
about, well, we're amplifyingbecause we already have self
awareness.
(17:07):
We're amplifying because we areempathetic and understand the
humans we're serving. Now let'sput the good juju out into the
world. So now you've amplifiedit, now we got to talk about
Evolve. I think this is where,again, some of the magic can
happen because, and why theycall it Loop Marketing, is
because this is where they'retrying to say it doesn't stop.
(17:27):
This is where the loop comes in.
Because now what you're doing isyou're going to go ahead and by
the way, we've done this foryears. Ladies and gentlemen, the
only thing of all this is testand measure. You test what you
put out to the world and youmeasure. There's a raised hand
in this platform. Oh my God.
Okay, hang on, hang on. So youtest what you do.
Chad Hohn (17:49):
Liz's brain is breaking by the way. Measure
George B. Thomas (17:52):
and you adjust, right? Because you want
to get smarter with every cycleof the thing that you're doing.
I'm purposely saying cycle ofeverything you're doing because
I don't want to drill this downto content. This Evolve is
bigger than content. It's EvolveData Cleanliness, Evolve any
marketing process that you have.
(18:14):
It's like these learnings, theyneed to compound and get you
better results over timebecause, well, okay, Liz, you
raised your hand.
Liz Moorehead (18:25):
Yes. Hi. So, I've been listening very patiently. I
have been listening to everystep of the way that you have
mapped out and I am going to aska question from a genuine place
of curiosity. I'm gonna ask thequestion and then I'm gonna
explain why I have the question.
And then I'm going to listen.
George B. Thomas (18:43):
Sure.
Liz Moorehead (18:43):
Did they solve a real problem or an imagined one
with Loop Marketing? Becausehere's where I'm getting a
little stuck. Everything thatyou've laid out feels like we
are relabeling things thatalready had stages, that already
had steps. Like typicallyspeaking, when HubSpot has
rolled out something wholly newlike this, even if I chafed,
(19:06):
Like, I had a problem with theflywheel, but I got it. They
were introducing a new way
George B. Thomas (19:10):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:11):
Of thinking about things. Yeah. And this is the
first time where it's like,express, tailor, amplify,
evolve. These terms don't feelgrounded. It feels like we're
making labels around a productthing to bring the product
together
George B. Thomas (19:29):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:30):
As opposed to introducing a new strategy, but
they're positioning it from amarketing perspective
George B. Thomas (19:37):
Well, think about as a new strategy. Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:40):
So, think about question is, problem or imagined
one?
George B. Thomas (19:43):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (19:44):
What did we actually solve with the
marketing here?
George B. Thomas (19:46):
So, I'm going say two, two things to this, and
I love that that's where yourbrain went. One, I had somebody
say this to me the other day.They have had people asking what
Loop Marketing is. And thisperson literally says, have you
been watching George B Thomasfor the last ten years? That's
(20:07):
Loop Marketing.
First of all, I take thecompliment. Thank you very much.
However, the second thing thatI'm going to say is that not
everybody has been in theecosystem or the ether of what
we have been doing. And Liz, noteverybody thinks like the way we
think when it comes to thethings that we have been doing
(20:27):
from a happy, helpful, humblehuman perspective. Liz, you do.
Chad, you do. I know Max does. Iknow Hapley does. I know we do
at Psychic Strategies. ButHubSpot has a massive amount of
data, and they realize noteverybody is playing that game.
Not everybody can translate theinbound marketing methodology
and the flywheel into what we'vebeen doing along the way. And I
(20:51):
say this very humbly. So, is ita problem for us? No. Is it a
problem out in the world?
Obviously. Right? So, I don'tthink they made it up, but I
think there's a subsection ofhumans that are confused or
haven't been doing it and needto go into this new way because
if you were just using the oldplaybook, it's not working
(21:14):
anymore. Guess what? We're Gostill in business because ahead,
Chad.
Go ahead.
Chad Hohn (21:20):
Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say some people would
distill attract, engage to lightto be like, oh, three simple
steps. I'm going to create alanding page, make an ad, send
out an email, you know, andthere was what it was before
that, you know, had worked inmass, and they just did enough
of it. But literally, number onething that it says on the Loop
(21:43):
Marketing homepage is marketingfunnels aren't flowing and old
tactics aren't working.
George B. Thomas (21:48):
Yeah.
Chad Hohn (21:48):
Right? Your playbook needs some love. And it's like,
you know, when you're startingto talk about that, I mean, I
guess my brain just goes to alot of people aren't natively
visionary. They don't nativelysee into how things work. Right.
I mean, some people are great atit. Some people are okay at it,
(22:10):
but like it's not a normal skillto like hear one thing and then
in your brain ideate and come upwith how something would
function out of that. Right? Andhow you would execute on it. So
I think is would you say thatthis is an attempt of HubSpot to
(22:31):
operationalize people.
I mean, to use their tool,operationalize them to do
better.
George B. Thomas (22:39):
So two things based on where you just led my
brain, Chad. One, and going backto Liz's question and combining
your two questions. One, if youthink about what I said at the
very beginning of this, ofexternal process funnels and
flywheels around the humans,internal system and process loop
(22:59):
marketing for marketers to dothe things that they need to do
in a way that they need to dothem. Boom. So that's, I think
it's, yes, they're trying to,
Chad Hohn (23:08):
well, whatever. Operationalize.
George B. Thomas (23:10):
Thanks. People into that. Now, here's here's
the other thing where my braingoes on this is but that's only
half the story. Right? That'sonly half the thing that people
should be paying attention to.
I literally wrote anotherarticle about loop marketing and
superhuman framework and howthey combine. I'll put that in
the show notes as well. You candig into that if you want to in
(23:31):
the future. But here's thething. We have to understand
that this year of all years,2025, it definitely was, Liz,
back to kind of your question,and again, bridging Chad's
question in there too, ishistorically it was this
methodology that drove a cultureto show up to do business in a
(23:54):
certain way.
This year's Loop Marketing, bythe way, let me back up before I
even go to this year. Also, itwas inbound methodology
marketing, inbound methodologysales, inbound methodology
service. Now, I want you tothink about that. This year,
loop marketing, specificity, onejust segment. Now, is next year
(24:20):
going to be sales and the yearafter that going to be service?
I don't know, but I needeverybody to realize that we
were just talking aboutmarketing. What the heck happens
to Express and, you know,Amplify and all of this in sales
and service, and nobody's eventalking about how this should be
maybe opera opera. Say it again,Chad.
Liz Moorehead (24:41):
Operational.
George B. Thomas (24:42):
Operational. I'm having a hard time with that
word. It it is
Liz Moorehead (24:46):
Maybe if you say it with the human voice That
it'll it'll sound better. No.
George B. Thomas (24:50):
No. It won't. Okay. So so here's the thing.
That word is kicking my butttoday.
Anyway, so nobody's talkingabout that. Right? Like, this
needs to be extrapolated throughthe, like, the different anyway.
Anyway. Extrapolated.
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it does.So so here's here's the thing.
Like, this year, it was a toolor felt like a tool that we need
(25:15):
to figure out how to, you know,take it and make it so people
could operate in it in a waywith all the cool tools that we
had and tools that are coming tobe able to do things faster,
better at scale, to get oversome of the hurdles that HubSpot
had felt.
They knew a large portion oftheir organizations that were
(25:37):
using their tool felt. Becausewhat happens if all of sudden
you aren't seeing success withthe tools that you're supposed
to get success with, cancel yourtool. What does HubSpot care
about? People not cancelingtheir tools. We need to get them
So to if HubSpot sees somethings that are working, we've
(25:57):
got to build a framework, asystem, or like they call it a
playbook to help people keepthings working in this, what
I'll call sort of a chaotic timeand period, at least when it
comes to marketing.
Now, for most, I go back and I'mgoing to humbly say this, one,
Chad, you used the wordvisionary. I don't feel like I'm
a visionary. I just feel likeI'm a guy who has these ways
(26:20):
that he's going to do things,and I stuck to those things, and
long term and it's human andit's core values. And so like, I
can tell you that this loopmarketing will work if you apply
it in the way that needs to beapplied. Because listen, I
didn't care and don't care thatsearch traffic is down 60%.
(26:41):
Why do you say that George?Because 60 to 70% of my business
is referrals. Well, why is thatGeorge? Because I've been doing
human based loop marketing forthe last ten years. Now that's
not visionary, that maybe I'mlucky.
I hate the word lucky, but maybethere's like anyway,
Liz Moorehead (27:01):
I'll show jump in here. I gotta jump in here. I
already put this in the chat.Chad saw it. I'm having a lot of
feelings about this, guys.
And this may be a situation, andit's part of the reason why I am
going to say before I tee it upfor the last question to you,
George, it's why I'm glad we'rehaving a more extended
conversation about this.
George B. Thomas (27:20):
Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (27:21):
Because I will admit, I can sometimes be a who
moved my cheese kind of girly.Like, I get that, but I am also
a big advocate for change. I'm abig advocate for moving things
forward. Yep. There is somethingabout this change that makes me
feel like HubSpot was solving aHubSpot problem and not solving
a customer problem, which iskinda antithetical to the way
(27:44):
they've always presentedthemselves.
Mhmm. And that like, because I'mhearing you describe it, like,
again, they're not introducinganything new. Now to be fair, it
may be something where I sitwith this, and maybe we needed
new language, new architectureMhmm. In order to bring all of
these pieces together because todo inbound, to do marketing, to
do holistic marketing and salestogether where they're aligned,
(28:07):
it is a much more complex piecethan it was in 2015.
George B. Thomas (28:10):
Without a doubt.
Liz Moorehead (28:11):
I'm not gonna lie about that. But I even remember,
like, when I would hear termslike attract attract, engage,
convert, delight. Yeah. All ofthe things that we used to use
and even when the funnel wasintroduced, like, I got it and
this is the first time like Iget it but it doesn't feel like
we're moving anything forward.It feels like we're solving a
(28:32):
problem for software andattrition.
Chad Hohn (28:34):
Well, that's a question too. Do you think that
we're solving for a futureproblem that people are gonna be
in if they don't get it? Andthat I think might be a little
bit more because like, if youknow, remember your journey with
AI, Liz. Right? You've talkedabout it on the podcast before.
Like, you're welcome,
George B. Thomas (28:54):
Liz. You're welcome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (28:56):
You know, like, I don't know how I feel about
these words and the things.Yeah. You know? And, like, if
people don't get on board withthe AI functions in their lives
to allow them to do more I mean,like, you know, GDP is growing
because the amount of unit workthat a single human can do with
(29:19):
an AI assistant is growingexponentially. Right?
Like, you can get so much moredone. And, like, the people who
are not doing that, you know, toimprove what they're doing are
are going to fall woefullybehind.
George B. Thomas (29:32):
See, I think No, I I wanna completely
Liz Moorehead (29:34):
agree with that.
George B. Thomas (29:35):
Hold on. Hold on, One second. One second. And
then just hold on to your,because I'll lose mine. You are
not good.
I literally am 54. I'll lose mytrain of thought. Like just hold
on, hold on to your thought.Because mine will be like, I
don't remember what I wasthinking. What am I eating for
dinner?
I don't know. Okay. What was Ithinking? Oh yeah. Chad, here's,
here's the deal.
Yes, faster, but I want todouble triple 10 x what you said
(29:57):
in the middle of Faster, better.
Chad Hohn (30:01):
Yep.
George B. Thomas (30:01):
Better.
Chad Hohn (30:02):
Faster, better.
George B. Thomas (30:03):
Creating Mhmm. Okay? Because that's the thing.
Like, when you think abouttaste, tone, point of view, when
you think of personas and idealclient profiles, again, things
that we've talked about foryears, now you can do it faster,
better. Or the way that I'd liketo say is you can do it better,
faster.
Here's the thing. I saidsomething the other day on
another podcast, I think it Ithink it needs to be said when
(30:27):
we're thinking about AI, we'rethinking about HubSpot, we're
thinking about marketing, we'rethinking about humans, is that
right now we live in a worldwhere intelligence is not the
issue. We have lived in a worldwhere intelligence was the
issue. Intelligence no longer isthe issue. We have all the
intelligence that we ever wantor ever need.
We just got to go and get it.The problem that we're having
(30:48):
right now is the wisdom in to dowhat with that intelligence.
When? Can we blast out a bunchof crap? Can we totally destroy
a data model?
Can we burn humans out?Absolutely. Mhmm. But that's not
better.
Chad Hohn (31:05):
Yeah. That's just do and when to
George B. Thomas (31:07):
do it. Yeah. Go ahead, Liz. Sorry.
Chad Hohn (31:08):
I mean Yeah. Go ahead, Liz. Sorry.
Liz Moorehead (31:12):
Yeah. But oh, excuse me. No, cut this out.
Sorry. I have so many feels I'mcoughing.
George B. Thomas (31:17):
We got it. We got it all like now anyway.
Liz Moorehead (31:20):
I'm to talk amongst yourselves. But here's
the thing. I don't necessarilydisagree with anything that
you're saying.
George B. Thomas (31:30):
Yeah, right.
Liz Moorehead (31:31):
My problem and again, maybe I just need to sit
with this a little more is was aconfusing rebrand slash not
rebrand of the inbound marketingmethodology. The answer to
everything that we're talkingabout That's where I'm
struggling a little bit. Nothingwe're talking about is really
(31:51):
new and it feels like instead oflike when I think about what we
loved about the inboundmethodology when it first came
on, even when it was iterated,even when it turned into the
flywheel, even when it turnedinto all of these other things.
It was all about solving for thecustomer journey. It was focused
on how we show up and serve ashumans and this feels very
(32:15):
uniquely like, well, we now havea big unwieldy piece of software
and we need to make it easierfor people to use, which I don't
disagree with.
That can be something very, holdon George. That can be something
very valid. That can besomething that definitely needs
to be done because I don'tdisagree with anything that you
just said.
George B. Thomas (32:32):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (32:33):
But I think to your point earlier George, part
of the reason we're even havingthis discussion is this is now
what the second or third year ina row after inbound we say, wow,
this could be really great, butthe messaging strategy is way
out of whack.
George B. Thomas (32:45):
Yeah. So, me, let me just say a couple things.
One, marketers are humans. Two,we're not Yeah. Solving the same
problem.
We're solving a differentproblem. We're solving the
problem of the marketers andwhat to do with a platform and a
process. And by the way, thefunnel was never really new. It
(33:08):
was a package people understood.The flywheel was never really
new, it was a package peopleunderstood.
Those two things and the inboundmethodology wasn't anything new,
but it was a structure thatcould be repeatable. Loop
marketing is HubSpot's 2025version of creating a
specificity around marketing toa structure that they can repeat
(33:34):
inside of a platform so they cansee success. It's a it's a
different problem. And theproblem that we're facing is is
people are calling to the sameproblem. It's not a journey
problem.
It's an implementation problem.
Chad Hohn (33:48):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (33:49):
Okay.
Chad Hohn (33:49):
When what I'll say too is, like, ever since
Marketing Studio came out and,you know, I've, like, I've never
successfully gotten my any ofthe companies I've worked with
to properly use HubSpotcampaigns until Marketing
Studio. And Marketing Studio isso simple for people to make
(34:15):
their campaigns and visualize itbecause people aren't naturally
visionary. They're not buildingthe blocks in their brain of how
the human's gonna go through thejourney from the ad to the
landing page to the CTA button,to the pop up form, to the form,
(34:36):
to the meeting, or whatever.Right? However that journey is
gonna go, the marketing studiotool operationalized people who
never got it before, and they'rerunning with it like gangbusters
at my current organization.
George B. Thomas (34:53):
Yeah. So And here's what I love. Chad, we're
gonna be doing an episode onmarketing studio. It's gonna be
one of those where we'll we'lltalk, but show where we'll show
the episodes. Now now here'swhat I gotta kinda go behind the
scenes for a second for theaudience who's listening to
this.
We had defined this before wehit the mics of, we're gonna do
(35:15):
an episode on Loop Marketing.Yeah. Guys, you see how far we
got? We defined
Chad Hohn (35:21):
We just like said the words.
George B. Thomas (35:23):
Yeah, we said the word, we said the phases.
Liz Moorehead (35:25):
And then Liz had a lot of feelings.
George B. Thomas (35:26):
Liz had feelings.
Chad Hohn (35:27):
Yeah, then feels.
George B. Thomas (35:28):
But I want to give people the understanding,
like, what I want to build here,which I think eventually ends up
being like the ultimateresource, like Sidekick
Strategy's Guide to LoopMarketing, is it because I want
I want to give a window intowhere we're going to go. Now,
the next episode we do mightactually be marketing studio,
and then we might circle backaround and then do an episode on
(35:50):
Loop Marketing, the expressstage. Because here's where my
brain goes to the level ofgranularity that we need to be
talking about as we kind of wrapthis bad boy up. When I think of
all of these stages, likeexpress, I think that there has
to be a conversation aroundhuman tasks and skills that have
to be true in the Express stage.I think there's a conversation
(36:14):
where we have to talk aboutbusiness objectives that are
there for the Express stage.
I think there's a conversationthat we have to have around
tools and technology for theexpress stage. I think there's
even a conversation arounddesign and content, the
conversation we love so mucharound the Express phase. I
(36:35):
think there's also the need totalk about data and metrics in
the Express stage. I thinkthere's even additional
considerations for the expressstage. And by the way, rinse and
repeat what I just said forevery one of the four stages.
And so I really want to haveconversations where we dig in
(36:56):
and get super granular on whatdoes this ish really mean so
that humans aren't confused.They are able to scale. It is
able to be repeatable. It is asystem and they have it at a
deeper level than what theymight be thinking of like, oh,
inbound marketing's dead.
Liz Moorehead (37:16):
Look, they've been saying blogging is dead for
years.
George B. Thomas (37:18):
We all
Liz Moorehead (37:18):
know that's not Yeah. Like, come on. Nothing's
dead. We just what do marketersdo? If we don't like it, we just
rebrand it.
Chad Hohn (37:25):
Yeah. Well, you gotta get the information out there
for the AI to consume. Like,that's also important. I mean,
there's so many differentconsiderations, you know, when
it comes to this AEO, thethings, like so there's going to
be plenty of more episodescoming about all of this really
important stuff.
George B. Thomas (37:45):
Yeah. Don't even get me started, Chad,
because you say AEO, anotherperson I get on a meeting says
GEO. When you say AEO, you mightbe saying AI engine
optimization. This other humanI'm talking to might be saying
answer engine optimization. Goodgod.
Right. Come on. Anyway.
Chad Hohn (38:03):
Right. Well Liz. All growing so fast.
George B. Thomas (38:06):
Heard these cats. Help help me wrap up here.
Liz Moorehead (38:08):
George, instead of landing the plane in the
traditional way of telling usthe one thing you want us to
walk away from.
George B. Thomas (38:15):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (38:16):
With this conversation with this. Is
you've just teed up the factthat we're gonna be having lots
of conversations around a lot ofthe new pieces that have come
out and including going deeperinto loop marketing. Right?
George B. Thomas (38:25):
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (38:25):
So what is if my feelings are any indication as
well as the feelings that youshared that other people had
told you, we might have a lot ofsquirrelly folks in the
audience. Yeah. What is your onepiece of advice going into our
future episodes as we divedeeper into this?
George B. Thomas (38:41):
Yeah, take a deep breath, keep an open mind.
Yeah, absolutely not. I refuse.
Chad Hohn (38:48):
She's got all the feels that are amped up right
now.
George B. Thomas (38:51):
Yeah, no, seriously though, take a deep
breath.
Liz Moorehead (38:54):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (38:55):
Put on your growth mindset cap. Look at what
you're currently doing, andstart to map that out. Because
then what you'll be able to dois take what you've mapped out,
and what we talk about in thefuture and see what is right for
you to change or not right foryou to change, because not
everything needs to change.Nobody said loop marketing meant
(39:18):
that you curl up it in a ball,throw it in the wastebasket and
start over. Nobody said that,but if you look on the
internets, that's kind of howsome people are acting.
So take a deep breath, put yourgrowth mindset brain on, and
start mapping out what you'redoing. And we'll see you in the
(39:39):
next episode. Hub Heroes. We'vereached the end of another
episode. Will Lord Lack continueto loom over the community or
will we be able to defeat him inthe next episode of the Hub
Heroes podcast?
Make sure you tune in and findout in the next episode. Make
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(40:02):
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