HubSpot AI Data Sources: Unpacking the Simplicity of the Marketing Strategy Setting

If you’ve spent any time poking around HubSpot’s AI Data Sources, you might’ve noticed the Marketing Strategy setting quietly sitting there. It’s a simple dropdown asking you to select two marketing goals, like lead generation or thought leadership, and at first glance, it doesn’t feel particularly groundbreaking. But as we started digging into it, this seemingly small feature turned out to raise some pretty big questions—and spark an even bigger debate.

This setting is designed to influence how HubSpot’s AI approaches the content it generates for your brand. Depending on which goals you choose, the tone, direction, and even the focus of your AI-driven content changes dramatically. It’s a smart idea on paper, giving users more control over their AI outputs, but the more we talked about it, the more we found ourselves asking, “What’s the real purpose of this tool?” Is it genuinely helping marketers make better decisions, or is it oversimplifying a much more complex reality?

🚀 HubSpot AI Data Sources Series:

• How to Get Started with HubSpot AI Data Sources
• HubSpot AI Data Sources: Brand Voice + Tone
• HubSpot AI Data Sources: Buyer Personas vs. Ideal Customer Profiles

We debated everything from how this tool fits into HubSpot’s broader rollout strategy to its potential use cases for marketers with different goals. What happens if you choose trust over education, or engagement over lead generation? And why do we even have to make these choices in the first place? Shouldn’t some goals—like trust—always be baked into the foundation of everything we do?

What started as a simple exploration of how to use this setting turned into a much larger conversation about strategy, AI, and the trade-offs we make as marketers. Is this setting a tool for clarity, or is it asking us to fit our strategies into a box that doesn’t reflect the realities of our work? This episode dives into all of that—and we don’t hold back.

Keywords

HubSpot, AI data sources, marketing strategy, inbound marketing, buyer personas, ideal customer profiles, trust, business goals, content strategy, marketing tools, Inbound Marketing, AI Tools, Marketing Goals, Trust, Education, HubSpot, Content Strategy, User Feedback, Iterative Development, Marketing Strategy

What We Cover

• What Is the Marketing Strategy Setting? We break down what this setting actually does in HubSpot’s AI Data Sources. From selecting two marketing goals to how those choices influence the AI’s content outputs, we dig into the mechanics of this tool.

• The Strategic Trade-Offs Marketers Are Asked to Make: Marketing goals are rarely as simple as choosing two from a list. We explore what it means to prioritize one objective over another and whether some goals—like trust—should even be optional.

• How This Setting Impacts Content Creation: The choices you make in the Marketing Strategy setting directly shape the tone, style, and focus of your AI-generated content. We discuss how this could transform your workflows and whether it challenges traditional content planning methods.

• Who Benefits Most from This Tool? Is this setting better suited for smaller teams looking for clarity, or does it also provide value for more complex, multi-layered marketing strategies? We debate the use cases and who will get the most out of this feature.

• The Bigger Picture of HubSpot AI’s Rollout Strategy: Beyond just this tool, we talk about how the Marketing Strategy setting fits into HubSpot’s broader push toward AI-driven marketing. What does this tell us about the direction HubSpot is heading?

• Where the Marketing Strategy Setting Could Go Next: We wrap up by imagining the future of this tool. Could it be expanded to include more nuanced choices? Could it integrate better with other AI settings? We share our wishlist for what comes next.

And so much more ... 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Liz Moorehead: Are we united and activated, gentlemen?

[00:00:02] Max Cohen: i'm so activated

[00:00:03] Chad Hohn: I'm united

[00:00:07] Liz Moorehead: George, you're in a very efficient mood this morning. I got to call that out here for a moment. I don't know if you guys have noticed that. All right, let's go.

[00:00:13] George B. Thomas: Yeah. Hashtag GSD, get, get stuff done.

[00:00:17] Liz Moorehead: Are

[00:00:18] Chad Hohn: that was george standard time gst

[00:00:23] Liz Moorehead: love that for us. George, how are you feeling going into today's conversation? I got to know.

[00:00:30] George B. Thomas: I'm feeling great, but I don't, I don't think I need my own time zone, but I'm, but I'm feeling great. I'm excited to have this conversation and, um, We'll see where it goes.

[00:00:40] Liz Moorehead: I love that. Max, how you doing, bud? That is a look of concern or you're locked in.

[00:00:45] Max Cohen: i'm locked in

[00:00:47] Liz Moorehead: Locked in. Chad, how is our printer overlord? Glowing red. Oh

[00:00:52] Chad Hohn: Yeah, well, you know, it does what it wants. I gotta I think I think I want to hook it up You know, like make scenes get another camera You know change angles turns red type thing. I don't know.

[00:01:05] George B. Thomas: like you press a button and it just it's like Like really fast rapid

[00:01:10] Chad Hohn: I don't know. We'll see. There's some fun stuff we could do. How about

[00:01:20] Liz Moorehead: in action. I don't know if printer overlord likes that. It glowed red when I said that. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. All right. You know what? Let's dig in guys. We are back for another installment in our series about HubSpot AI data sources.

[00:01:33] And last week we had an incredible discussion, sometimes debate, sometimes a little bit feisty chat about buyer personas versus ideal customer profiles. And I have to recommend that you go back and listen to it because Max said after we stopped recording that it was probably one of his favorite discussions we've ever had on the podcast.

[00:01:54] And I got to admit, I listened to it again, and I thought it was pretty fantastic. So if you missed out on that conversation, go back and listen to it. But George, let's say for a moment, maybe some of our listeners are joining this series right in the middle. Can you give us a quick explain it like I'm five refresher of what HubSpot AI data sources are?

[00:02:14] George B. Thomas: ai data sources is a place where you can go in and really just start to add context around business your strategy your products your Ideal customer profiles as HubSpot is calling them. Just like the, there's a plethora of things that you could be adding to help the system, the machine, the CRM to future be probably the world's largest business agent.

[00:02:41] Uh, understand maybe what you're trying to do, how you're trying to do it. Um, so that is, that is what we're doing. And again, I think it'll grow over time, but that is what AI Data Sources is. It's a setting, and it's gotten multiple shows being a setting, so that might tell you

[00:02:56] Liz Moorehead: Yep. Yep. So for our listeners, if you are midway through this series and you're joining us, we have an episode back in the feed, a few episodes where we talk about what these are as a whole, we talked about brand voice and tone. A few episodes. That was a really fun and exciting episode. Like I said, we already did buyer personas versus ICPs.

[00:03:18] And today we are moving into the next section of HubSpot AI data sources called HubSpot AI. Marketing strategy.

[00:03:26] George B. Thomas: Yeah, I have,

[00:03:28] Liz Moorehead: I'm going to be honest. Yeah, I'm going to be honest. Um, I'm very, let's just say curious is the label I'm going to use

[00:03:37] Max Cohen: Yeah,

[00:03:37] Liz Moorehead: today's conversation is going to go because, um, it is very lightly designed and it's either, it's either

[00:03:48] Max Cohen: we call it lean it's lean It's

[00:03:51] Liz Moorehead: It's very lean. Um, yeah,

[00:03:55] Chad Hohn: Doesn't take a whole lot of time out of your day.

[00:03:58] Liz Moorehead: It's very lean. It has like a four minute mile, if it were a runner, like, like zero percent body fat, um, which is either exactly what it needs to be, or

[00:04:11] Max Cohen: or it's not anything.

[00:04:13] Liz Moorehead: or

[00:04:13] George B. Thomas: Well,

[00:04:14] Liz Moorehead: we're going to find out together like a family.

[00:04:17] George B. Thomas: listen, I mean, let's be honest, there is a saying of, like, you know, great things come in small packages or something along those lines, like, I have, I have thoughts and I have grievances and, and I have things that I wish, but that's not what the whole podcast will be about. But it, it's interesting that it's here and it's interesting what you can select, but let's just move on with that.

[00:04:43] Liz Moorehead: Nice try, buddy. Nice try.

[00:04:45] Max Cohen: that it's here That's stunning review. Oh,

[00:04:51] Liz Moorehead: think you guys could,

[00:04:52] Max Cohen: that it's here

[00:04:55] Liz Moorehead: I think you guys,

[00:04:56] Chad Hohn: words on a page and it exists.

[00:04:59] Max Cohen: Oh, it's

[00:04:59] Liz Moorehead: probably tell I tried to like pull this together and the intro So I did prepared outline for each one of our shows and there are lots of screenshots And then we get to the questions and it's just like what? What do we think is happening?

[00:05:14] Max Cohen: Hmm

[00:05:16] Liz Moorehead: So

[00:05:17] Max Cohen: Don't get me wrong. It's interesting that it's here. Sorry. Just I love that

[00:05:22] Liz Moorehead: pull back the curtain a little bit here? And I want you to take us back to that moment When you first clicked on this setting, I want you to tell us two things.

[00:05:32] George B. Thomas: it. Let me, let me, let me take you back before I clicked on the settings. Okay. Bye. Before I clicked on the settings, I was like, Oh, this could get interesting. All right. Now ask your question.

[00:05:42] Liz Moorehead: So first describe exactly what you saw without editorializing. And then what was your reaction to what you saw?

[00:05:51] George B. Thomas: Yeah. So,

[00:05:52] Liz Moorehead: the five stages of grief or something

[00:05:55] George B. Thomas: no, so I saw the thing marketing strategy and I said, Ooh, marketing strategy in AI data sources. This could get interesting. And I clicked into it and I saw this dropdown. And I thought to myself, okay, lead generation makes sense. A lot of, a lot of companies, uh, you know, focused on that engagement.

[00:06:16] Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. Brand awareness. Oh yeah. I D I definitely have helped clients with that trust, but we all probably, hopefully should be trying to like build trust in our marketing because, well,

[00:06:28] Max Cohen: you'd think

[00:06:29] George B. Thomas: what we should do. And then education, I'm like big on education. So I'm, I'm immediately like, Oh yeah.

[00:06:34] Okay. So all of these make sense. But, but then I immediately to go to like. I know how many, uh, I know how many humans I've actually helped. And then when you ask, ask them about the strategy, their strategy is lack of strategy or no strategy. So at least this is also a place where we can pinpoint, like, what are, you know, a couple of the strategies that you should be focusing on and because that's what you're focusing on, at least let's let the machine know.

[00:07:02] That that's what you're focusing on now, um, then I got to the point where I was like, well, um, me personally, uh, I'm, I'm kind of focused on all of the above to which I was like, and I can only select two. Oh my God. And I was like, wait, why, why can I only select two of these? And then I was like, well, now you've created a dilemma in my brain.

[00:07:24] Like, are two of these more important than the others? Um, anyway, I'll stop there because I have some thoughts to how this might actually need to work, but those were my initial thoughts. I was excited. I, I kind of understood, okay, match the human to the machine and then was sad because I was like, two.

[00:07:47] Okay, why, why two?

[00:07:50] Chad Hohn: Why?

[00:07:50] Liz Moorehead: I had, um, a very similar reaction. I opened it up. And I saw it, and I have a very, very big monitor now. It's like a big widescreen monitor and I had the whole browser window taken up. So when I,

[00:08:07] George B. Thomas: I can't, I can't

[00:08:08] Liz Moorehead: it, it was by accident. I hadn't minimized it, but it just kind of for dramatic effect. You just see this 1 single field.

[00:08:19] Chad Hohn: It's way over there.

[00:08:20] Liz Moorehead: And then I click and it's like marketing strategy. Would you like lead generation, engagement, brand awareness, trust, or education you could only pick two. And, and then I looked for a knowledge based article like, Oh, there's gotta be something I'm missing. And then, and then when I looked, I just found a list of here's how to manage your AI data sources.

[00:08:41] And it says marketing strategy. Select from marketing goals, such as brand awareness, engagement, or more. And you could select up to two marketing goals. And I just kind of felt a little stumped. First of all, you're telling me like, let's just start with trust. Let's put trust there. Let's just throw. So are there going to be times where trust is not a goal?

[00:09:02] So there's that. Um, there are times where I feel like we're missing just a lot of stuff. I don't, I'm very glad that we're all a little bit confused because I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this.

[00:09:14] George B. Thomas: so you're, it's, it's easy. You're supposed to pick two. That's what you're supposed to do with it. You're supposed to, you're supposed

[00:09:21] Liz Moorehead: end of, end of episode, end of

[00:09:23] George B. Thomas: pick, pick two and like it. Now the, the, the, the big question is what in the, I don't want to swear. What, what does it do? Like you have, you have a whole big white Box of a page under it.

[00:09:43] Could you please tell me by selecting lead generation, X, Y, Z, A, B, C will happen in these tools by selecting a combination of trust and education. A, B, C and X, Y, Z will happen in the like, you give me a video or something on this page that helps me not have the unknown chasm of like, great. I picked two that was very anticlimactic.

[00:10:15] I have no understanding of what I just did to my machine. I

[00:10:21] Max Cohen: throw a video.

[00:10:22] George B. Thomas: going to do it in the blog tool. I don't know how it's going to do it in the social tool. I don't, I don't know what changes I just made. And I don't know if I come in here next week and change it. Like, can I change it and go write a blog article?

[00:10:38] And then come back and change it and go write another blog article? And will the two blog articles be different from a marketing strategy standpoint? Because I selected two things! In the little box. Okay, I gotta take a break. I gotta breathe.

[00:10:55] Liz Moorehead: example is giving me a panic attack because the idea that that's where you set the strategy of a blog article.

[00:11:03] George B. Thomas: Oh my god, I don't think it is. I don't think it is, but still.

[00:11:06] Max Cohen: I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, voice your reason. It's like this should it. This should be like a content level piece setting that you turn on, right? So like if I'm writing a piece of content, there's always some kind of intention of that piece of content, right? Also, let's just go ahead and say build trust should be optional.

[00:11:25] Like,

[00:11:27] George B. Thomas: It should

[00:11:28] Liz Moorehead: That's what I'm saying. Like,

[00:11:29] Max Cohen: if anything,

[00:11:30] Liz Moorehead: point, I don't want to be trustworthy. We're going to turn this

[00:11:32] Max Cohen: yeah, when should, I'm sorry.

[00:11:34] Liz Moorehead: build brand awareness.

[00:11:35] Max Cohen: I'm sorry. How's that not a fricking default setting, dude? Like it's, it's weird to be like, are you sure you want to build trust when you write this? It's like, what are you talking about? Of course I do. Um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I get what they're doing.

[00:11:49] Like I get what they're doing. Right. And, and, you know, I think this just like anything else, it's the first baby step, right? Like the. They probably like, here's the other thing, right? It's probably pretty difficult for them to tell if it's working if they can't test it at a mass scale. And the only way they can really test it at a mass scale is like, Hey, let's turn this on.

[00:12:09] So it's happening for all of the content. And then we can see how, you know, uh, how good it's actually working and what people are interested in selecting and then make it more. Pointed in specific and and have it at the content level, right? Like, you know, that's really kind of what I can imagine because I mean, ultimately, you're gonna get a lot more testing on this stuff when it's used on a broader scale and just saying, Hey, we're gonna do it for everything versus, you know, just hoping people like pop it into like individual content pieces,

[00:12:36] George B. Thomas: let me ask you a

[00:12:37] Max Cohen: that's the only thing I could think

[00:12:38] George B. Thomas: let me ask you a question on

[00:12:40] Max Cohen: Actually, no, I don't consent to the questions

[00:12:42] George B. Thomas: I'm going to ask the question anyway, because how many people do you think journey over to AI data sources versus journey over to the blog tool? If I wanted massive adoption on something, I'd put it smack dab at

[00:12:57] Max Cohen: Yeah, true

[00:12:58] George B. Thomas: blog because more humans are going to create a blog than they are to AI data sources.

[00:13:04] So

[00:13:04] Max Cohen: but but but but but but you also got to remember too Like they just released the whole you know breeze thing now everyone's going and checking out breeze So maybe they are looking at it there, right? Remember it is still hard to get people to write F and blog posts that aren't doing it.

[00:13:18] Right. But it's really easy to go check out this shiny new AI thing where you can turn on the settings and it'll do it all for you. Right. So maybe that's their evidence, but I agree. Like it would make sense. Like that. You know, if, if you're writing a blog post and you haven't set this yet, and you're using the AI tools that you'd be like, Hey, maybe go check one of these two boxes for whatever reason, before like you, you know, have a, I write your blog posts or whatever, you know what I mean?

[00:13:43] But I, I

[00:13:44] Liz Moorehead: idea that I am setting a blog strategy inside HubSpot is insane to me. It is antithetical to so many of the things that we have talked about with HubSpot before, which is HubSpot is where you execute. You come with it, with your strategy.

[00:14:00] George B. Thomas: remember, but remember, we're not talking about humans right now. We are talking about bots right now. We are talking about assistants right now. We're talking about connecting the human, human strategy that we're executing to somebody, or the assistant 

[00:14:17] Liz Moorehead: Hold on a second, Chad, you have just been sitting there just minding your business with a very pleased look on your face watching George Max and I have totally reasonable non emotional reactions to the marketing strategy tool. What is going on in that brain of yours over there?

[00:14:33] Chad Hohn: I'm trying to figure out what game Max is playing.

[00:14:36] Max Cohen: Farming simulator.

[00:14:37] Chad Hohn: Is it yeah, I can see it on your TV back there in the reflection

[00:14:41] Liz Moorehead: this like the way you do deal with emotional support when HubSpot puts a tool in front of you, you don't know how to cope with? Okay, got it.

[00:14:47] Chad Hohn: he's like I gotta go we gotta go

[00:14:49] Max Cohen: also, um, I'm on a Maestro Terra so I have to like distract myself while I have conversations so I can actually have them

[00:14:56] Chad Hohn: um, cool, well Thanks for

[00:14:59] Max Cohen: I'm just dropping off some grocery guys. It's all good. Yeah. I'm here.

[00:15:03] Liz Moorehead: So Chad, nice try, trying to get out of

[00:15:06] Chad Hohn: okay got

[00:15:07] Liz Moorehead: us.

[00:15:08] Chad Hohn: Yeah, well, I mean, uh, you know, standing up for my, uh, computer brethren, all my, you know, bots out there, as we were just talking about, you know, I think, okay, ask for two. What's like, I mean, if you throw everything in the kitchen sink at it, then it's not going to prioritize anything.

[00:15:27] I think maybe the word should be prioritized too, but it's probably understanding that it obviously needs to have trust. It's like, do you want to emphasize trust, or do you want to just have the normal amount of trust? I assume, yeah, standard trust or extra trust, you know,

[00:15:47] Max Cohen: Do you really want

[00:15:47] Chad Hohn: want to emphasize that?

[00:15:49] Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm

[00:15:51] Liz Moorehead: our trust?

[00:15:52] Chad Hohn: Yeah, exactly.

[00:15:53] George B. Thomas: I almost wish you could like, Put them in numeric order.

[00:15:58] Chad Hohn: Yeah. Mm

[00:15:59] George B. Thomas: to, like, here, here is the rubrics in which I would like my assistant to pay attention to this, it don't, don't bring up trust, just trust should just be there. But the other ones, other than trust, like, uh, this is the rubrics of importance to me at an organization of how I would want you to think about us, right?

[00:16:18] As far as that goes.

[00:16:20] Max Cohen: well, this is also like another speaking of rubrics. This is another really great place for you know Like that document that was wrote that explains everything like you can write You know, I mean, I think that's probably the next level is like, you know, what's the what's the nuanced content playbook that you can?

[00:16:35] Upload for me so I like follow it just like I do for like your you know What was it the brand or whatever last time what liz what was it controlling when you did the document again? It was a brand voice. Oh, yeah voice and tone. Yeah

[00:16:49] George B. Thomas: Yeah, but if you could add additional context to like, lead generation or to engagement or like, that would be dope. But here's the thing, I, I even want to take a step back. Um, I, I wish that this tab wasn't marketing strategy. I, I wish that this tab was strategy. Um, and that I could go in here and I would see marketing, sales, service, social, Right?

[00:17:16] Because now, um, if, if HubSpot releases a new agent, prospecting agent, service agent, content agent, uh, social agent, now there's a, there's a strategy area that I can go to, to give more in depth, pick two things, hopefully in the future upload documents, that, that agent or the, uh, system in a whole can look at the different strategies.

[00:17:43] For the different divisions or hubs or departments, I

[00:17:49] Max Cohen: Mm hmm.

[00:17:50] George B. Thomas: where I would love to see this. I have some other ideas, but I'll show up there and see what you guys think about that,

[00:17:55] Liz Moorehead: I mean, the absence of sales is upsetting of any kind. Sales enablement is a marketing strategy

[00:18:02] George B. Thomas: especially with a prospecting agent. Right around the corner.

[00:18:06] Max Cohen: yeah, that'll be really, yeah, that will be really interesting when they, well, I mean, how much fine, well, I guess this is getting to another subject, but like how much fine tuning do they actually give around the prospecting agent in terms of stuff like this? That's more because what it's like the way I understand it's like two options.

[00:18:21] It's either like keying up the stuff for you to send, or it's just sending it and straight up

[00:18:26] George B. Thomas: Well, you have to train it

[00:18:28] Max Cohen: You have to train it. What do you train it on?

[00:18:31] George B. Thomas: there's like a settings there. We should probably do a whole episode

[00:18:33] Max Cohen: Yeah, we probably should. That's a

[00:18:35] George B. Thomas: settings area of the prospecting agent. Right. Um, but there's, but the two things you're talking about is autonomous and semi autonomous of like, just let it do it for you or like, like, hold its hand as it, as it does the thing, but the fact

[00:18:47] Max Cohen: just, the just f ing send it button.

[00:18:49] George B. Thomas: yeah, just, just send it.

[00:18:50] We don't care that much about them humans. We just want to try to sell them stuff and we don't care about trust and humans. We just want to sell stuff and get revenue ROI. Yeah.

[00:18:59] Max Cohen: No, I would, I think like, ultimately the, the, uh, when it, you know, gets better and they learn what they need to learn, I think the ultimate deployment of this is is. When you're creating a piece of content and you're building the AI, um, trust one, isn't an option because that should just be implied.

[00:19:17] Right. And two, it should more so say, what's the goal of this piece of content and have like a number of different outcomes. Right. And to me, that's the, that would be the ideal.

[00:19:28] Chad Hohn: but wouldn't that be on a per per article or per content

[00:19:31] Max Cohen: talking about. That's what I'm talking about. Per content

[00:19:33] George B. Thomas: let's, let's pull up from that. Let's pull up from that. Because again, you guys love to talk about content. Thank God. Not everything is about content list. Plug

[00:19:41] Liz Moorehead: You were the one who used that as the example first.

[00:19:44] George B. Thomas: I know, but, but here's the thing. Let's back up a second because again, and we talked about this with, uh, ideal customer profiles and buyer personas, and just wishing that like HubSpot would use some of the stuff that they already use, like personas and ideal customer profiles together.

[00:20:02] Um, like, just let us hook into the stuff we're doing.

[00:20:06] Chad Hohn: hmm. Mm

[00:20:06] George B. Thomas: strategies, um, they depend on business goals. Marketing strategies, they depend on the target audience that you're trying to go after. Marketing strategies, they depend on where the customer is on their buyer's journey. Awareness consideration decision.

[00:20:25] So now where this gets dope is if HubSpot users were actually using the goals feature in HubSpot

[00:20:32] Chad Hohn: Mm hmm

[00:20:33] George B. Thomas: HubSpot AI data sources could go and look at what the goals were set to pay attention to that. If, if the, we could literally have target audiences. Oh, I don't know, because there's a A BM and target like anyway, target accounts, like if you had that set up, well, what if AI data sources could look at target accounts?

[00:20:52] And, and by the way, if you had a way to actually track buyers' journey, I don't know, lifecycle stages for most companies who haven't customized anyway, if there was a way that you could then say, Hey, here's our business goals. Here's the target audience, ideal customer profiles, buyer personas, target accounts, all the three things that are already in HubSpot and in here's where they are on their journey. Now, fluctuate. Imagine going into marketing strategy and it being what's your strategy and awareness? What's your two strategies for

[00:21:22] Max Cohen: hell yeah,

[00:21:23] George B. Thomas: your two strategies for decision? Now, all of a sudden being able to pick two makes a little more sense because you're picking the two for the area of the journey. Anyway, I'll be quiet.

[00:21:36] Max Cohen: Like, I'm sorry, where's the tool that's just like leading into inbound, which is what make made HubSpot so great, where it's like, you can tell it your company, you can tell it your goals, you can tell it like a little bit about your customers. And then it literally just crafts an inbound marketing strategy for those things.

[00:21:54] Like, think about it, it can, it should be able to learn all that stuff from HubSpot Academy, which has 10, 15 years of frigging content around how to do inbound marketing. All that shit still holds up. Right. Besides maybe like a little bit of a less emphasis on, you know, landing pages and capturing leads and stuff like that.

[00:22:12] Right. It's like, you know, that it is wild to me that they haven't been like, cool, let's do like the hardest thing, which is like taking all this information that we know about inbound and putting together a, a cogent strategy. Right. But doing that through the context of like your business and your goals, like.

[00:22:30] Why couldn't it put together something like that? You know what I mean? I don't know. It could, but it's like, but you know, what we're doing is we're, we're doing this like ICP stuff and getting away from the word persona because like there are placating to all the folks that say inbounds dead when really, when really, I know, but when really like.

[00:22:48] Inbound is the same thing people just call it like different stuff and it's like

[00:22:53] George B. Thomas: Like, all bound!

[00:22:54] Max Cohen: know. Yeah.

[00:22:55] Liz Moorehead: Okay. I want to pull us out

[00:22:56] Max Cohen: know what all about is if you read it, it's inbound. It's all inbound It's still all just inbound. You know what I mean? But people just like to call it something different so they can sell something else and You know, stand out and say, Oh, inbounds dead.

[00:23:08] And we defeated it with this brand new strategy. And then you look at the strategy and it's like, that looks like a lot of the same right. I muted myself instead of beefed it. But

[00:23:17] George B. Thomas: you, uh, You like how I know how to just, like, throw a word out there? Even, like, scrambled eggs. I just throw that out there, and then Max just

[00:23:26] Max Cohen: don't, don't you

[00:23:27] Liz Moorehead: I know. And then George, what you do is five minutes later, like, guys, I don't wanna have a debate about this. My, wait, what? Stop it

[00:23:36] Chad Hohn: we have possibly gotten down this rabbit hole? I mean, goodness!

[00:23:40] Liz Moorehead: Why do you guys keep talking about content? Even though it was the very first example I led within this conversation? How dare you.

[00:23:48] Chad Hohn: You guys sure do

[00:23:49] Liz Moorehead: George, I. I just want to stick with you for a second because I would actually like us to get back to the thing that you were pointing out, which is we need to remember what the purpose of this tool is because it's easy to sit here and say marketing strategy, but all of these different things, but it's, this is a very specific context in which this is being used.

[00:24:09] So can you remind us of the purpose of what this is supposed to be governing within HubSpot?

[00:24:14] George B. Thomas: Yeah, this entire settings is the bridge from the human brain to the AI like breeze co pilot agent, like the, it's, it's the context. It's the, the thing that it's going to make decisions off of how it's going to create or act and do like that's all of these settings that we're talking about. And again, they need to get more robust over time, at least that's how the agents in Co Pilot and Breeze will get better over time.

[00:24:46] Um, because it all comes down to, like, the amount of context you can give a know, uh, I'll just keep calling it an agent, or, uh, I mean, it is a large language model, like, let's just not, let's not be stupid about what's powering these. That's where, where you get to the magic, uh, pieces, the places, is, it's understanding.

[00:25:09] Chad Hohn: This is just like GPT memory, basically. It's the GPT memory for your portal that they set up on a per tenant level. Like, each HubSpot portal is its own tenant. You can give your tenant some strategies. Yeah, or some custom instructions.

[00:25:24] George B. Thomas: a mix of like memory and custom instructions. In HubSpot. For your business. Like, anyway.

[00:25:30] Chad Hohn: I got a question. Did we ever like confirm that this marketing goals one? You know like there's no documentation out there necessarily saying exactly what in the world That these two goals do I mean in the subheading under select marketing goals It says add up to two goals for your ai generated content so it sounds You know, I mean, I sure do love content over here, but it sounds like it's pretty content specific at the moment

[00:25:57] George B. Thomas: Well, but you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful. Uh, email is content.

[00:26:01] Chad Hohn: Mm hmm.

[00:26:02] George B. Thomas: Case studies is content.

[00:26:04] Chad Hohn: Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying it's all right. Mm hmm.

[00:26:08] George B. Thomas: So like, when, when we say content, me, be careful, because in HubSpot, almost anything that's a written word could be considered content. Right? And so it could, but no, here's, by the way, this, this whole series. Might be our subtle way of begging whoever is in charge of AI data sources and, and what they're building to just get on a show with us. Just like come and, and let, let us ask you, you know, six or 60, 000 questions about what's maybe six, maybe 10. Okay. Not 60, 000, but just let us ask some questions about what's really happening under the hood because I think if, if the HubSpot users, uh, the hub heroes, if you will, the humans knew what's happening under the hood, it would help them fill out the details better. Know what to select better.

[00:27:05] Chad Hohn: hmm. Mm

[00:27:06] Liz Moorehead: That's the thing that kills me about this whole rollout. And again, I understand we are. It's settings within settings within settings for a specific part of the platform, but I was such a huge tentpole of everything. They rolled out this year and I'm finding us having these discussions where. A little clarity, a little messaging, a little bit more direction, an extra knowledge base article or two would have made a huge difference.

[00:27:36] We spent a whole episode debating buyer personas versus ICPs because the intent of Hubsot introducing a new term was unclear and undefined. We have this tool here, which is either the canoe that we need when we, when we think we need a yacht, Or it is something that is the beginning of something that could be great, but it's.

[00:27:59] It's not giving us enough direction to use it properly. And that's where I find myself a little stuck with some of this. Some of it feels very well developed. We were able to have much more substantive discussions about the brand voice and tone. And we've already seen leaps and bounds with that moving forward.

[00:28:16] But there is just sometimes a vacuum of messaging, a vacuum of direction that I am struggling with, with some of these news tools that are rolling out.

[00:28:25] Max Cohen: There is um, and i'm wondering how much of it is because like a lot of this like new ai stuff and hub spot is I'm not saying AI is uncharted. Well, much of AI is definitely uncharted. So I think just fundamentally, but, I think there's still like very much in like a phase of experimentation.

[00:28:44] Cause there's so many different ways they can go with it. Right. Um, and I think this is kind of just like a product of let's build some stuff and see what happens, see how it gets received, even though we don't necessarily have all the right answers of how to use it right now. I don't know.

[00:28:59] George B. Thomas: Well,

[00:29:00] Chad Hohn: That's, that's a

[00:29:01] George B. Thomas: here. Oh, go ahead, Chad.

[00:29:03] Chad Hohn: I was just gonna say, that's a big part of their philosophy anyway, at HubSpot is start small, iterate, grow, take, cause like, I mean, it, it's the worst as a software developer to build something that you think people want all the way. And then they're like, this is not what I wanted at all.

[00:29:23] Like, that's so ridiculously expensive. Ridiculously, I know you deal with a little bit of like User fatigue user frustration when it doesn't do everything you want it to but it's a whole lot easier to just continue to build on it. And these are really the building blocks between some of the things like when you know, you and George earlier were just getting inspired about like, man, What if it could help you do the really hard thing of like building

[00:29:53] Max Cohen: Yeah, they're never going

[00:29:54] Chad Hohn: are the building blocks. Yeah, they're not. How could they possibly be right? Cause they don't know for sure. Right. And they don't know how people are going to use these things, what they want, what they don't want, what they like, what they don't like. I mean, that's part of why we even talk about this in, in, you know, these episodes, right.

[00:30:10] As we want to make sure that at least, I mean, if somebody's got their ear to the ground and wants to hang out with the hub heroes, you know, uh, they can.

[00:30:18] Max Cohen: Yeah. We'll even make you a little cartoon superhero. So

[00:30:21] George B. Thomas: And,

[00:30:22] Max Cohen: here's that

[00:30:23] George B. Thomas: there's that and I would say this too is like. amount that it changes right underneath their feet.

[00:30:31] Liz Moorehead: Oh, yeah.

[00:30:32] George B. Thomas: what I mean by that is is like. Fastly, fastly moving the amount of times that I have. Gone back, and I'm going to dumb this down, seriously dumb this down, but the, the times that I've gone back and recreated a prompt that I've built that was tried and true to make it better or do a next thing, or I could cut a piece because now it just fundamentally like a new feature was released or whatever, like just, just in, in that the amount of iterations.

[00:31:05] So I can only imagine like. Trying to build a platform with this AI and all AI changing all the data changing all the other pieces of the tool changing around it like there's so much change to try to keep up with. And here we come running and I'm like, it'd be great if we could do, but it wouldn't be great if it could do these things like we understand we understand we were saying

[00:31:31] Chad Hohn: I think we see the vision, right? Yeah. Right.

[00:31:35] George B. Thomas: yeah,

[00:31:35] Liz Moorehead: Well,

[00:31:36] Chad Hohn: you're headed, and I think we want to advocate for our use case, right?

[00:31:39] Liz Moorehead: Well, here's what I will say about that. I agree. 1 of the things I always come back to and we've said this multiple times throughout the series that this is the worst these tools will ever be and where they are right now at the quote unquote worst level is. Pretty freaking phenomenal because Hubscot could be a platform that takes 8, 000 years to implement any changes and they're going to market with some sort of full fledged Cadillac worth of tools before they'd even ask the community what it really needs.

[00:32:05] I think the only challenge I'm still having is that with some of these, that is very clear, right? Like when we look at the brand voice and tone stuff. You could see exactly what the purpose is, you know, exactly what we're trying to dial into. You could understand like, Hey, this is where we're started versus this is where we're going.

[00:32:21] And it's even leaps and bounds from where it started as like a one line thing that you could enter. The one thing about this, and this is where it's just like, it's that knowledge management. Documentation specialist for many moons ago, who's just kind of dry heaving a little bit is that when I open this up, I don't even know how to experiment with it.

[00:32:42] Because George, you said something fascinating at the start of this episode. What is the difference between a piece of AI content, whether it's email chat, whatever generated when it's brand awareness versus lead generation. Why is trust ever negotiable? Like there are just a few things where it's like, I would just love a little bit more direction of, Hey, try experimenting with this, or this is what it might look like to give me a little meat on the bones to get it started.

[00:33:09] But what I would like to hear from you, George, because.

[00:33:12] George B. Thomas: It's funny how you guys won't let go of trust, but we haven't been on a, uh, rampage that education should just be a thing considering inbound is literally create valuable informational content as a magnet to bring people. And like, we're,

[00:33:32] Max Cohen: I hate the word magnet. Oh my God. Sorry.

[00:33:35] George B. Thomas: it

[00:33:35] Max Cohen: No, I

[00:33:35] George B. Thomas: picture of

[00:33:36] Liz Moorehead: Well, George, take us there. How do you feel about education being negotiable?

[00:33:41] George B. Thomas: I'm just saying I can't believe you guys haven't been like, Just trust, trust, trust, trust. Listen, trust and education are like table stakes to me. But but then that but that that Lynn leads that you only have like three options and you can only pick two. So

[00:33:59] Liz Moorehead: are brand awareness and lead generation. And brand awareness is always such a

[00:34:03] George B. Thomas: and engagement.

[00:34:04] Liz Moorehead: as a goal. Brand awareness is always a funny thing. So you, do we want them to be aware of us so they'll go to brunch with us? Like, no, we want them to become leads. We want them to become part of our community.

[00:34:15] Like there's, it's

[00:34:16] Max Cohen: I mean, brunch would be nice.

[00:34:18] Liz Moorehead: I love brunch. The girl loves a good brunch, but George, as someone who has spent a lot of time experimenting over many, many years with new HubSpot tools as they come out, what are some of your do's and don'ts for people who are looking at this particular setting or any of the other settings as this tool continues to evolve?

[00:34:39] George B. Thomas: Um, but here's, here, but here's the fun thing. Like, my brain Is in a different place after this podcast than it was before this podcast, because here's the thing. Um, So, if I go into my portal right now, I have lead generation, and I have engagement selected. Which I'm like, yeah, that's what I want to do. I want to get engagement and I want lead generation. However, based on this conversation, what I would say is if they're non negotiables, then why didn't I pick trust in education? Because I can focus as a human on making sure that it's, you know, lead generation or that I'm saying it in a way that might be conversational or getting engagement. But I, without a doubt, want to build trust. And I want to build education and I, I feel like that's going to also really impact the length of content and the voice and tone of content.

[00:35:38] If I select in my, in understanding what I know about other models in AI, like Claude and GPT, like, As soon as you start to say like education, meaning like PDF, like blog article, like you, you start to get longer answers or outputs than you typically do if you're just like, give me this thing. So, you know, maybe like if you're just not sure, maybe you just pick trust in education, because those are non negotiable. At least use it. And then again, like me, I've, I've, I could change it over time, I guess. Cause right now it's lead generation engagement, but after this podcast, I might just go put trust in education because that's who we are and what we do.

[00:36:22] Chad Hohn: Yeah. I think, you know, again, this, this to me, at least at the moment, I would. Imagine based on like just software development and architecture that these are like prioritize these things, right? That's how I would imagine that this is being fed into the engine, right? Is like make sure that these are the most important things while all of them will probably still all occur in some fashion, right?

[00:36:47] All the time. You know, so I think, whereas last week, we were like, hey, if you don't have any clue what you should put there, maybe don't put anything at all, whereas this one is like, I think trust in education is a good default if you don't have a better option, right?

[00:37:06] Liz Moorehead: I would 100 percent agree with that because you to George's point, those are kind of table stakes. You know, we've talked repeatedly throughout this entire podcast since it began about how education and trust are kind of like that. That's what we're that's we're in the business of. Right. I would be curious to see if anybody would do some testing with some of their AI tools of what happens and what, how the outputs change, depending on what you select.

[00:37:38] I'd be so curious about

[00:37:39] George B. Thomas: here's the, here's the fun thing and not to be that guy, but I'm going to be that guy. I literally just tried to change it

[00:37:46] Liz Moorehead: yes. my portal. Um, if I try to put education in the little box, I get an error screaming at me. A red box saying I can't add education. So there's a glitch in the matrix, but that's neither

[00:38:00] Wait, what? What were you trying to change it out from?

[00:38:03] George B. Thomas: I, I removed my marketing goals completely.

[00:38:06] Chad Hohn: Ooh, yeah, mine's erroring too.

[00:38:08] George B. Thomas: I tried to put trust in education in there and I, I got an error. So I removed education and it saved and I added anything, but education and save. But as soon as I try to add education, I get an error. So HubSpot. Uh, you're probably not listening to this or watching this, but there's a glitch in the matrix when it comes to, like, selecting education in the marketing strategy goal.

[00:38:30] But this does go back to, this is the worst that it'll ever be. Uh, they're building it so that we can move forward. Um, and somebody just needs to do a support ticket on the, can we make education work? Because trust and education are like, no brainers.

[00:38:45] Liz Moorehead: I was going to say the thing that I find fascinating about this is that of course we have to have a setting like this because if we think about any of the AI tools that we use for anything, you have to give it a goal. You have to give it something of like, Oh, this is what we are trying to accomplish with this.

[00:39:00] These people, so there's the other side of this because I was talking with a couple of friends about this this weekend to use HubSpot. We were, I was just curious, what do you think when you see this tool? And a couple of people said, well, if it's just so simplistic, why even bother having it? And it's like, because you have to give it a goal.

[00:39:18] George B. Thomas: wow. Anyway, nevermind.

[00:39:20] Liz Moorehead: George just glitched out. Talk me through what just happened on your face,

[00:39:24] Max Cohen: His education button got switched

[00:39:26] George B. Thomas: Well, no, it's, yeah, yeah, my

[00:39:29] Liz Moorehead: Georgia without an education goal. What do we do?

[00:39:32] George B. Thomas: well, I don't know what friends you are talking to. And so I don't want to be rude because they might listen to this or watch this.

[00:39:39] Liz Moorehead: They do not listen to this show. You're

[00:39:41] George B. Thomas: but but I'm like, but I'm like, just because it's simple doesn't mean it's not powerful. Like, think about AI and prompting. Like, I can say I can say as a professional writer, Or as a social media strategist, or as a, right, like, uh, those two words or that, that word or whatever, it's simple, massive effect on the output, massive effect. And so that's why I'm saying, like, even though we can only select two of these, we have no clue the potential massive impact that this makes to all of what is coming out the other side of what we're creating.

[00:40:23] and so imagine this. Um, I want you to go sell your business, uh, and products and services to anybody on the planet. But first, but first, I'm just gonna wipe it from your memory so you don't know jack squat about it. And then go do that. You, you, you need the understanding, you need the context as a human. It needs the understanding, it needs the contact, con, context as a system.

[00:40:50] Liz Moorehead: Well, the

[00:40:50] George B. Thomas: Anyway, okay,

[00:40:51] Liz Moorehead: is that there was such a high degree of overlap and similarity between the goals that were given. And they had a similar reaction of like, when am I never going to have trust there? You know, there were a couple of things where it was like, they were like, this is so simplistic and without direction, I'm not even sure how to use it.

[00:41:09] But I think to what we've been trying to say here is that like, we have to give it a goal of subtype. Guys. We have to give it a goal. And let's be honest, while some of us are sitting here going trusted education or where it's at, go to some C suite leaders. They probably might not have the same answer.

[00:41:24] You're like, yeah, trust is important, but I would like to generate leads, please.

[00:41:27] Please and thank you. Something measurable, something less warm and fuzzy.

[00:41:32] Max Cohen: Is I I can't remember cause I haven't been on I I haven't looked at the page recently but like does it does it give zero context to what it actually does?

[00:41:40] Liz Moorehead: Does, does that say anything and there's no link

[00:41:43] Max Cohen: So it doesn't say it doesn't say the AI will keep this in mind as it's creating content across everything for you.

[00:41:51] George B. Thomas: In,

[00:41:51] Liz Moorehead: No, add up to two goals for your AI.

[00:41:53] George B. Thomas: Yeah. In a,

[00:41:54] Liz Moorehead: It says,

[00:41:55] George B. Thomas: it says like one line. Do you have that, Liz? Like maybe it's a line

[00:41:59] Liz Moorehead: yeah, I can read it. It's, I can read it. It's select marketing goals, such as brand awareness, engagement, or more. You could select up to two marketing goals. That's what it says. But the thing is we have to take. But we have to take this literally. It is a marketing strategy. It is not a sales strategy. So it is meant for explicitly marketing activities.

[00:42:17] So if we look it through it at that very, very binary lens, if I get really black and white about this, it is how you define your marketing. What is it you're trying to accomplish? Depending on where an organization is in their journey, they may be more emphasizing on the brand awareness piece, but the challenge I have, and this is what I think we started to talk about at the beginning is that that shifts depending on the context. You know, I'm not always talking to all of my audience at the same time with the same tone of voice and the same goal, particularly since they're all ping ponging through their own buying journey, but we have. Cupboard. A lot of ground today. I think I know we're all do we feel more confused, less confused?

[00:43:01] Uh, how are we feeling guys?

[00:43:03] Max Cohen: I'm feeling optimistic about the future.

[00:43:06] Liz Moorehead: Max,

[00:43:07] Max Cohen: I am.

[00:43:08] George B. Thomas: Yeah.

[00:43:09] Liz Moorehead: are tell us

[00:43:10] Max Cohen: Yeah, it's the worst it's ever gonna be

[00:43:12] Liz Moorehead: There we go.

[00:43:14] Max Cohen: they put it out in this sort of like a clearly this like testing state to Spur conversations like this right amongst users and people going through the beta or whatever it may be right and They'll fine tune it over time and they'll learn from it

[00:43:30] Liz Moorehead: to understand Max, you literally said I'm optimistic. So you'll have to forgive me for initially

[00:43:36] George B. Thomas: oh wow.

[00:43:39] Max Cohen: I am, I'm optimistic.

[00:43:41] Chad Hohn: I'm optimistic

[00:43:42] Max Cohen: I always, I always bet on HubSpot, baby, you're never gonna hear me not not bet on HubSpot.

[00:43:46] Chad Hohn: Hmm.

[00:43:47] Liz Moorehead: We always bet on big sprocket over here, but Chad, what were you going to say? Oh

[00:43:51] Chad Hohn: I was gonna say, you know, one of the things I noticed that I didn't notice, is like, you know, whenever anything new comes out in HubSpot, you get like 800 CSAT happy, medium, sad faces and give us feedback about this thing, right? I haven't seen that anywhere in the data sources tab, which I'm a little surprised about.

[00:44:13] You know how like, Oh, the new advanced filters view. How did you feel about the advanced filters? I mean, I guess maybe I'm in a lot of portals, so I see it more often than, you know, people who are just in less portals, right. Who are just super admitting their own. But still, like I never saw, I never saw any CSAT or any feedback survey function here, which I'm again, a little surprised about.

[00:44:36] I've even gotten, you know, product managers who just like emailed me From one of those before and asked for more context, right? Which is I love that about HubSpot and I know they bet on their users and so I'm just a little surprised I haven't seen that

[00:44:51] George B. Thomas: yeah. No popup here. Which by the way, totally not about this episode, but I wish there was a. Uh, don't show me that ever again in all the portals that I'm in button

[00:45:01] Liz Moorehead: my God. Yes.

[00:45:02] George B. Thomas: but, uh, I don't need startup guides. I don't need to give you my feedback on the, if you want my feedback, you got my email.

[00:45:10] We can talk like, uh, anyway, but that's just

[00:45:13] Max Cohen: They need a, they need a button. They need a button in that onboarding flow where it says, what type of HubSpot user are you? And it's like,

[00:45:19] Chad Hohn: This is a partner,

[00:45:20] Max Cohen: then there's just one thing at the bottom that says, I am George B.

[00:45:24] George B. Thomas: no, no, no, no, no, no,

[00:45:26] Liz Moorehead: GST time,

[00:45:28] George B. Thomas: You can't get that specific. No, you can't get that specific. The bottom butt, the bottom button could be for many people out in the ecosystem. And it just says, I'm a

[00:45:37] Max Cohen: Oh, sure. You have, yeah. You have one for them and then you, and then you have a George B. Thomas

[00:45:42] George B. Thomas: No,

[00:45:43] Chad Hohn: it's HubSpot. I mean, that's, it's above HubSpot God, actually.

[00:45:46] Max Cohen: Yes, yes.

[00:45:48] George B. Thomas: no, no, no. It's not. I,

[00:45:50] Liz Moorehead: Chad, to your point, I'll be, I'll be on. Okay. First of all, we're gonna talk about that later. George, you know that, uh, Chad, to your point, I will say this. If I cook a big Thanksgiving meal for something, and there's a side dish where it's the first time I've test driving that recipe and I'm feeling a little iffy about it.

[00:46:06] Guess who's not proactively asking anybody what they thought about that corn casserole. This girl, we're going to focus on the turkey. We're going to focus on the mashed potatoes. We're going to focus

[00:46:15] Chad Hohn: So you're just gonna, yeah, you're gonna look at the sentiment as people are jamming that corn casserole in their mouth and then see.

[00:46:23] Liz Moorehead: That's right. But unless you're coming up here to tell me I'm so pretty, like, let's just, let's not have the conversation none of us want to have, which is everybody's uncomfortable.

[00:46:32] Chad Hohn: I've never really seen

[00:46:33] Max Cohen: full

[00:46:34] Chad Hohn: be afraid of feedback, though.

[00:46:36] Liz Moorehead: I know

[00:46:37] Max Cohen: The sentence, uh, jamming that corn casserole in your mouth just really made me uncomfortable.

[00:46:44] Chad Hohn: I'm here for you, Max.

[00:46:47] Liz Moorehead: George, please, for the love of all that is holy. No, no. He's zooming in. George, take us home. What do you want our listeners to go home with from today's scintillating conversation?

[00:46:58] George B. Thomas: Yeah, first of all, from the human side of marketing strategy, trust in education are table stakes. Make sure you're doing that. But when it comes to bridging that gap with HubSpot, make sure you go into AI, go into data sources, make sure you listen to the historical episodes that we've done on brand voice and tone and customer profiles and all of that good stuff.

[00:47:20] But definitely go in and at least it'll take you a second. Select two marketing goals that you want to give some context to the system around when it comes to the content and other elements that you'll be generating or using inside of HubSpot. That's my two cents.