That was Inbound Boston 2019

Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot and initiator of the Inbound Conference, in conversation with Christoph Oggenfuss.

The fourth day marks the end of the Inbound Conference 2019, with final talks being held and information being gathered. At this point, I would like to emphasize how remarkable it is that this mega-conference is supported by a medium-sized software company. Judging by the quality of the conference and in particular the relevance of the topics and speakers, you can simply say: thank Hubspot!

The conference program is already thinned out today, so I'm taking the opportunity to interview an exciting personality: the CEO of Hubspot, Brian Halligan (photo).

As CEO of Hubspot, a digital marketing software company, Brian Halligan is responsible for a company that, 15 years after it was founded, generates half a billion in global sales and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

MK: Brian, in your keynote speech on Wednesday, you talked about experience disruption as a new phenomenon. Another buzzword or is there more to it?

Brian Halligan: There's undoubtedly more to it than that; I see it in my own habits every day. I don't drive my own car to work, I use the Lyft service. As a passionate guitar player and music lover, I've said goodbye to iTunes and appreciate Spotify, and I no longer buy my razor blades in the store - they're delivered to me on demand by Dollar Shave Club.

This makes it clear that our purchasing and lifestyle habits have changed fundamentally, and I think we are only at the beginning. The new market rules have less to do with the product and more to do with the overall experience and the ease of access and transaction.

What next development step are you aiming for with Hubspot?

Over the past 15 years, we have developed modern and powerful CRM software for marketing, sales and service and successfully implemented it for customers. Our ambition is for this to become a genuine digital marketing platform that increasingly takes on the character of an ecosystem.

By this I mean that our business partners can dock on, that there is the possibility for customers to connect the apps that are relevant to them - in other words, an open network solution with a well thought-out architecture.

What comes after inbound marketing?

The Internet has created completely new solutions for marketing and opened up opportunities to realize new things with low entry barriers and manageable costs.

Uber and Airbnb have demonstrated this impressively and shown the power of inbound marketing. I am convinced that in future, competition will be less about the product and more about the service and the associated convenience. Or to put it another way: if I improve the service for the customer, I will achieve more in terms of competition than if I make the product even better. Differentiation is moving into a new field.

If Hubspot were a car brand, which brand would it be?

It's hard to say - I think Tesla in five years. In five years, because by then the prices will - or must - be at a moderate level, and because Tesla will only promise as much as it can deliver! 

Thank you Brian for this interview and your commitment to this conference.

If I try to sum up the four days of Inbound 2019 at the end of my report, it sounds like this:

• With all the fascination for the available technology - the focus belongs to the customer and the employees
• Marketing professionals must become so-called "friction spotters" - removing any obstacles from the customer's path
• AI must not only be understood tactically with concrete applications, but must also follow a strategic marketing logic
• Every AI application must also meet ethical requirements