by Tom Bradley

An investment guy at a digital marketing conference. Kind of weird, eh? Even weirder that I’d do it on holidays with my 19 year-old entrepreneur nephew. It didn’t feel quite like Vince Vaughn in ‘The Internship’, but it was close.

Nonetheless, for 3 days MacKenzie and I took in all INBOUND 2016 had to offer. We filled our heads with information about digital marketing, and Boston wasn’t bad either.

Below is an abbreviated version of my notes. They come from a baby boomer who is semi-tech literate, so take them for what they’re worth.

Americans love celebrity – Mac and I had no trouble getting front row seats at any session, but for the interviews with Alec Baldwin, Anna Kendrick, Trevor Noah and Ali Wong, there wasn’t a seat to be had.

Selfies, selfies, selfies – I didn’t need to attend Inbound to find out that everyone is into selfies, but hanging with 15,000 25-40 year-olds reinforced that we luvvvvvvvvvvvv to take pictures of ourselves.

People live in their social media ... and the advertising business is doing everything it can to take advantage of this sociological shift.

Which means ... my generation has to keep up. We don’t have to be at the leading edge, but we can’t fall too far behind. Personally, I’m going to add a messaging app to my repertoire and make a renewed commitment to either Facebook or Twitter (I’m on both, but don’t do anything).

Facebook, Facebook, Facebook – In a half dozen sessions that I attended, the presenters implored us to advertise on Facebook, and specifically Facebook Live. The returns on the ads are significantly better than other platforms, including Google. My investment instincts perked up when they called Facebook ads “undervalued”.

Google has most of the answers – Actually, it’s about one-third of the answers. Today, Google provides the answer to search queries about 1/3 of the time (i.e. the temperature and forecast for your city without having to go to the Environment Canada website or the Weather Channel). And while Google ads used to amount to a few ads at the top of the page, it’s now common for them to make up the whole first page.

The cold call is dead – The co-founders of HubSpot, the sponsor of the conference, have a huge axe to grind, but they say the cold call is dead. People don’t want to be phoned anymore.

Email advertising and promotion still works if ... the firm personalizes it and doesn’t send 1,000 at a time.

Existing customers are a much bigger influence on purchase decisions than they were 10 years ago. There were a number of research studies referenced throughout the conference, each showing how important referrals from existing customers are. For sure, we feel this at Steadyhand. Thank you to all our volunteer referrers.

Referrals begat referrals – And speaking of that, a session on generating more referrals suggested that when a customer is referred, he/she is 2.5x more likely to refer someone. But I learned that only ‘engaged’ clients refer. That is, they understand your value proposition and feel good about you.

It’s all about the apps, baby – A decade ago it was imperative that smart phone manufacturers get the browser right (Blackberry didn’t), but it turns out that we overwhelmingly use apps instead (Blackberry didn’t get that right either).

And now, message apps are taking over – Mac and I heard from numerous presenters that Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Allo are the new home pages and search tools (of note, LinkedIn was hardly mentioned at the conference).

But the biggest thing for the next 10 years will be chatbots – Think Siri on your iPhone or Alexa from Amazon. Dharmesh Shah, one of the founders of HubSpot (the sponsor of the conference), suggested that chatbots will soon be our interface to everything. They’ll become our home screen and our search engine. (Siri’s got some work to do. I still find her frustrating.)

Boomers are particular – I heard a few times that us boomers like consistency, nostalgia, showing status and feeling like we’re counter culture. We have more free time now, so we still read and are patient consumers.

Millennials want it all – On the other hand, the 20 to 35 year-olds want a customer specialist, not a salesperson. Consistency isn’t such a big deal, but heritage is important, as is making a difference (making the world better).

We’re all DIYers now – We’re used to self-serve now, so we expect it in everything we do.

Attending INBOUND was a technological wake-up call for me and a great uncle/nephew bonding experience, but it will also shape how we think about promoting Steadyhand. I’d welcome your suggestions and comments. And selfies are good too.