New AI Tools: HubSpot Updates That Will Transform Your Business [Endless Customers Podcast S.1 Ep. 31]

AI is absolutely blowing up, but here's the thing. Tools like HubSpot are now infusing AI technology directly in their portals. So if you're already living and breathing in HubSpot, AI is just naturally part of the package. You can actually leverage AI functionality

directly for content generation, directly for content translation or content remixing, all within the same app.

That is amazing. I think we need to dive into it.

Let's get into it.

All right.

Welcome back to Endless Customers. My name is Alex Winter and today I'm joined by Jess Palmieri, our director of HubSpot training.

Jess, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Alex.

How's it been? It's been good. It's been really good. It's finally warming up here in Connecticut. I know. It was over 70 degrees this morning.

I was like ready for summertime.

Yes. And things are heating up over on the HubSpot side

so I'm really excited to be talking to you today. Yes well played they are heating up we got a lot to talk about there's a lot of new updates yes you were telling me earlier we didn't want we're like let's record this before we get too into the weeds so let's get right into it and start talking about what HubSpot has rolled out in the past month and what you're what you're most excited about what's really changed from the last time we spoke to today. Exactly

I mean Alex it has been wild and crazy over in HubSpotland because in April, they released what they called their Spring Spotlight, which was over 100 different product updates across their entire tool. All different hubs got some love, but one of the hubs that was most impactful, most exciting was this new product called Content Hub. Have you heard of it?

I've heard of it only because at Impact Live, you talked a little bit about it. So I did get a little bit of a preview, but for everyone out there that hasn't heard about it, what is Content Hub?

So when you think of Content Hub, it's sort of their reinvention of what used to be called CMS Hub. So CMS stands for Content Management System. It's sort of a old school term for where do you host your content, your website content on the internet. So in the past, it was sort of the redhead stepchild of the HubSpot tools.

It was something that was tried and true and a really great place for marketers that wanted to have everything all in one system, their marketing, sales, service, and of course, their website hosted on HubSpot. But it hadn't really had a reinvention in a very long time.

So with the Spring Spotlight, they brought forth this new product called Content Hub, which really focuses on the best elements that CMS Hub had to offer with all of the different website hosting tools, but it also infuses all of that great functionality with new AI tools that makes creating content that much easier, that much smarter, and really provides the end user, the marketer, with some really great functionality that just isn't available anywhere else in the marketplace.

Yeah, that's amazing.

And AI is such a hot topic right now. It is. For people to be able to integrate these new tools to make their jobs easier, faster, all those things is really important.

I mean, AI is here to stay. Let's just get that out of the way right now.

For sure.

That AI isn't going anywhere. But as someone who in the past has been like, another thing to learn, another tool to dive into, another, you know, process to incorporate into my day to day activities, I myself have been a little bit intimidated about, you know, how do I make time for this? But the way that I found AI to really streamline a lot of my

processes is when AI has been infused into the tools that I'm already using on a day-to-day basis. So for a lot of our listeners and a lot of people viewing this on YouTube or whatever channel they're currently interacting with this content on, you can see that on a day-to-day basis you have certain tools that you're logging into to really get your jobs done. And for me, as a HubSpot trainer, that tool for me is HubSpot. I log into HubSpot so many times per day.

You live in there.

I do, I live in HubSpot on a day-to-day basis. So when you put the AI functionality directly into that tool and you make it really easy for me to just trip over different tools and functionality that allows me to do my job better, it becomes so much easier for me to imagine a world

where I'm using AI on a day-to-day basis to streamline content creation, to make sure that that newly generated content is getting out there to the right channels, to the right audiences, and then bring all of that juicy, juicy data back into one system so I can see what's working, what's not working, and what I want to double down on.

It's cool, just twofold from what I'm hearing you say, because it sounds like the Content Hub itself didn't have a major overhaul. It's still the Content Hub, but it had all these new tools infused into it. And then it's also allowing you to experiment

with these AI tools that's opening up these rest of your, like, it's not a fear-based thing with AI where you're like, oh my God, what is this? You're starting to experiment. And it's giving you like a soft entry into like learning how to use these tools

and leverage them to your advantage.

I like that terminology of a soft entry point. Because for so many folks, the concept of, you know, learning a new way of doing work or a new way of doing things entirely can just be really intimidating. And it's really just a mental game that you have to play with of, hey, I know AI is here

to stay, but I don't even know where to start. But when you see a tool like HubSpot really seriously invest in AI functionality and really seriously take a look at the jobs to be done on the day-to-day basis of any marketer and say, how do I get this within the, you know, the content scope or frame of a, you know, tweet versus a LinkedIn post? How do I make sure that the content requirements are being hit across

every social media channel? How do I make sure that that content is maybe in an audio format for people that like to learn a little bit differently versus one that's in a written format that can be more long form? All of these are choices that we have to make. And when in the olden days, when we had to actually write those blog posts and generate that audio content to go along with it or generate that podcast, that was a lot of time that we had to pick and choose which projects were worth our investment, were worth that

precious, precious time and energy. But with all of these AI tools at our fingertips, we can create one amazing blog post that started with AI functionality to help us ideate on those initial topics, create that blog outline that can really hit that keyword juice and make sure that we are going after the right keywords that

can help our website rank for those key topics. Then once we create that blog outline, can we use AI to generate that first draft to help us really come up with that first pass that will help us as humans then edit and refine and get to the point where it really does represent our brands well and it's something that we're really proud

to publish out there in the world. Yeah, that's something that, sorry to jump in,

but that's something that for me has helped me out huge. In the creative process when you're writing a blog or you're starting with a blank page, it can be really difficult and intimidating to take that first step. It does.

So using some of these tools, maybe you won't copy and paste it directly out of these AI tools, but it can at least give you that nudge so that you start to get the juices flowing, the creativity starts to go on. It's helped me out huge in the things that I do from day to day.

Exactly, and that's the feedback that I hear constantly from content managers, from HubSpot administrators, from folks that are living and breathing in this space. You know, AI is going to take your job, but that creates this existential fear or crisis that you need to then kind of emotionally grapple with while trying to publish those blog articles or write that content or get those social posts out. And it's really hard to do both things at the same time.

So when you're looking at these tools in HubSpot, one of the things that I love the most is that it's really leaning into AI used for content ideation and then remixing things that you already have in place and saying how do we modify that for a different format or a different channel. So it's not taking the human out of the creation process, which I personally love because I do think

humans need to be the ones making the final decisions, making those final edits, making sure that that's right and ready for print, but we also need to lean into some of these AI efficiencies because if not, we're just gonna get left behind and no one wants that.

Totally, and efficiency is a good word because I feel like it helps you do some of these tedious tasks faster. So like if you have your blog and then you need to convert it to an audio form for different platforms and for different accessibility

issues or whatever the case is, it takes time. And it can be tedious, it's not hard work, but it's just time consuming work. So if you can start to automate some of those things and help you get to where you need to go a little bit faster, it's better for everybody.

And I also think the human piece is important too. And that's something we need to reiterate because I was afraid of AI as well. It's gonna take my job, I'm not gonna be able to do the things that I love to do, and it actually is the complete opposite.

And it's just part of the journey. It's like that fear is the entry point. And then once you get over that hurdle, you start to realize all these cool things that you can do with it and how it can really enhance your day to day.

So I wanna get into, I wanna pick your brain a little bit. We're talking about Content Hub. What are some of these tools specifically? Do you have a couple that you can share with us that you're really excited about or are your top tools?

Oh yeah. So let's start with everything with HubSpot. There are different tiers. So with every tier you get access to different tools. But even at the starter level, I'm actually really impressed with how much AI infused efficiencies are available at that starter price point.

So if we're looking at starter, you get the AI blog functionality, which is exactly what I was talking about before with you throw in a blog topic, it generates suggested blog titles, then from there you can look at, you know, blog structure or blog outline that really helps you to see is this a blog article that I can really, you know, whip together really quickly and come up with that first draft that then a human can go in and edit and

modify and really make their own and make it ready for publishing on the HubSpot platform. So that's the first step of this AI blog generation assistant that really helps you really amplify your efforts to make sure that you're not wasting away with a writer's blog, trying to think, what is the perfect blog title that I just can't seem to think of?

Why not let the AI robots do some of that work for you? So just throw together a couple of loose notes about what you're looking to generate. Then ideate off of that using your AI assistant to say, okay, I kind of like this blog topic or this blog title. Let me remix that a couple of times, see if we can generate a couple of different versions.

Okay, I like this one, but I want to take elements of this first generated title and add it to the second generated title. There's no rules in the process that says the AI bot is the end-all, be-all. You have to infuse those human elements so that when you're working with this new AI functionality it's learning your preferences, it's learning what your brand voice sounds like so that you can slowly iterate on that approach and get to the right blog topic,

the right blog title that sounds like it came from you, from your company, from

your brand. Couldn't agree more and I love that it's at even just like the basic like the entry level or the first tier of HubSpot they're still introducing these tools because clearly HubSpot is focusing on this. They think it's important and you should be learning this stuff no matter what level you're at, what budget you're at. It's here to stay and it just reinforces that.

I mean every single conversation that I've had with HubSpot product managers, every single conversation that we had way back at Inbound just reiterated the fact that HubSpot is really leaning into AI. They see it as a really big market differentiator. HubSpot's leadership, HubSpot's product managers, everyone that I've talked to, you know, on a day-to-day basis, all the way back at Inbound, you know, in those

initial discussions, really has stressed that AI is a core functionality that they're going to infuse into every single one of their products, every single one of their processes. They're really seeing AI as a huge market differentiator for them. So I would not be surprised if this is just a trend that's here to stay in terms of how they're going to develop their products moving forward. They want to make sure that those of us that are living and breathing in HubSpot every

day see that there's always an AI assistant ready and willing to help us at any moment.

Who doesn't want that? Exactly. I would love to have a 24-7 assistant. Thank you.

Yes, please.

Yes, exactly.

So... What other tools have you got that you're excited about?

Again, at the starter level, so you have that AI blog functionality generator. Then you have content assistant that can take any piece of content, you highlight it within the tool, you click those magical, I think they're like three little diamonds now that basically adds that magical AI twist that says, hey, I like this piece of content, but can you make it friendlier, can you add this tone, rewrite this for me. So that's always available within different elements of the tool at that starter level.

And then you have the AI image generator. Have you played around with any AI functionality to generate images?

I have with GBT, so I've used Dolly and I've used a couple other tools like that, but I haven't in HubSpot CMS.

So they're building that out within the tool natively. So imagine that you are a small house painter or you have a client that focuses on house painting interior and exterior. You could go out on site and take some B-roll footage or B-roll shooting to say, hey, I want to show pictures of folks actually painting houses or actually painting my kitchen. Or I can go into my AI image generator and say, hey, can

you generate some of these photos for my next blog post? And that can be a huge time saver for folks that are trying to add some visual elements to those smaller businesses that need to show what this process is going to look like. Why not play around with some AI image generation to see if

you can save on some Shutterstock costs or some Photoshop costs? Make sure that you're using every tool at your fingertips to make this process as smooth and easy as possible And like I said all of that available at the starter level super easy to get. It's amazing starter level

So no excuses you can do this right out the gate. Exactly. Yeah, and the AI image generators are a lot of fun Because I'm a creative person. I'm a video professional at my course So to be able to play with imagery is really cool But you also had mentioned like a lot of people use Shutterstock or different stock photography websites, this allows you to create images that are specific to you, that are unique to you, that some other company isn't going to accidentally use the same thing from iStock or whatever.

Exactly. It just makes you that much more unique and gives you a chance to really have a unique voice for your brand.

And you can have fun with it.

Yeah, and it's fun.

Exactly. It's cool. I love it. I see a huge potential for it. So those are the three things that I'm really excited about at the starter level. Now Alex, are you ready for pro?

I don't know. That's a lot to digest right there and that's just starter level.

Oh, Alex, we are about to blow your freaking minds then because there's a lot more available at the pro level. So first up, we have Brand Voice. So Alex, Brand Voice basically says, can I train HubSpot to talk like me and to represent like the friendliness or the tone of my brand? And yes, you absolutely can.

You can feed in historical content, say, hey, this is what the impact blog has traditionally sounded like. We try to be thoughtful, insightful. We try to use this type of tone and friendliness when we're speaking to our end readers. So we can actually train our AI assistant or AI content generator to say, this is what impact sounds like when you're generating that content, when you're generating those blog posts or those social posts.

Make sure that you sound like impact. So you do it once, you set it and forget it. You can slowly train it a little bit more every single time, but that really helps HubSpot to learn your tone and to always be generating content that's more and more on brand each and every time that you use

it. Yeah, and that's really cool, but also the experiments that I've been doing with this, it really does learn. And the more that you feed it and the more that you talk to it, not like a Google search console, but like a human being, it's unbelievable what it kicks back and how fast it learns it. And it's almost kind of scary how accurate it can really sound like your own brand and

your own voice as long as you prompt it correctly and you take the time to play with it.

And the thing about it is, what HubSpot has done so well is it's taken the prompting elements out of it. You just are given this wizard that says, hey, feed me a piece of historical content. Perfect. You copy and paste it in. Then, okay, you can even modify that to say, choose a couple of these describers from a drop-down.

So if you're not someone who's like the best at AI prompting, HubSpot's taken all of that prompting wizardry out of it and made it really user-friendly for even the folks that are a little more AI hesitant to say, okay, how do I actually use this thing? All of that guesswork has been taken out of the mix. It's really just saying, hey, give me this. Okay, choose these tone elements from this drop-down.

Okay, give me a brand mission that I can really strive for so that we have these more aspirational elements to include.

Yeah, it sounds more intuitive than GPT only because like GPT as much as I love, you have to, you really have to train like your own custom GPTs and build them out. And it takes time and it works and it's great, but like if you don't know how to do that or you don't have the time to do that, it sounds like this HubSpot tool can pretty quickly get you up to speed and get you where you need to be.

Well, GPT is really a utility play. GPT can be so many different things for so many different audiences.

That's true.

HubSpot has really taken the best elements of those AI chatbots and saying, okay, let's just train the model already to say, hey, we're talking about brand tone and voice here. Anything that we put into these particular, you know, prompt boxes, we're already going to give it those instructions. We're trying to get the tone of our written content down, so all those instructions are already baked in.

All you have to do is feed in the content. So it really is helping those folks again who have been AI HubSpot in the past to say, this is so darn easy at this point, there's no excuse not to try it out.

Yeah, I'm excited. I want to try it out. I need to get into the CRM. You're going to have to show me some of this after we wrap.

I know. The next thing that I'm really excited that's available at the pro level. Okay, Alex, do you speak French?

Oui, je parle français un petit peu.

I have no idea what you just said, but with a power of HubSpot, all of my blog content, all of my written content can be easily translated into multiple languages and multiple ways of writing content all across the world. So if you're trying to scale across different markets, across different industries, you have the power of AI to make sure that you can take that customer service article and translate it into Spanish if you need to speak to different audiences.

If you're working in Canada suddenly and you know you need to be able to translate things from English to French, you now have the power to do so. So that's really one technology and tool that's like, duh, it's a no-brainer. I'm not going to go out and learn French.

And clearly, you know how to use French. But maybe it's not for all of us to suddenly.

But I don't know how to speak Spanish. So if I have Spanish-speaking customers, that's a great way to bridge those gaps.

Yes, I mean some of the functionality, especially in Service Hub now allows you to do some of those translations on the fly which is super, super exciting. Very cool. We're really talking about Content Hub today but like that really allows you to leverage again the power of the internet to make sure that you're speaking to folks in their native language and really getting that brand message across.

Now again, I will caution you, it probably needs some editing so maybe I do need to rely a little bit on my Spanish-speaking friends or my French-speaking friends to make sure that the translation is pretty true and accurate and still represents that brand voice. It's giving you a starting point that you've never had access to before and for again for those linguistically challenged folks like me it's certainly something to check out

and something that I'm personally really excited about. That's fascinating and I think it's gonna open up a lot of doors for people and again talk about saving time. Sure you still need to fact-check it and make sure that it's accurate, but from what I've seen, it is pretty accurate. I know. And the translations are pretty good.

And I remember not so long ago where you'd have to hire a service, someone would have to translate, it would take a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of effort.

So this is a game changer. Great step in the right direction. Yeah, definitely. Now, let's take a look at other different elements. We're going to talk about content remix. So I've used this word a little bit before now. Have you ever remixed songs before?

Yeah, we need like a DJ.

Exactly, exactly. So from a DJ perspective, what does it mean to remix?

Remix is taking an original song and then mixing it into some sort of new sound or new beat, you know, sampling it or something to that effect.

And that's exactly what HubSpot allows you to do with content now. If you feed in a source blog article and say, hey, this was our top performing blog from 2024. Okay, let's create ad campaigns or social media posts or other blog content based off this original source piece. Suddenly, one piece of content becomes five pieces of content

that you can distribute out to multiple channels.

That sounds awesome.

Exactly, within like a couple of seconds. We're talking about so much time saved. Like I remember when I was a social media intern, the amount of time that I would spend writing the same darn messages over and over and saying, okay, how can I

make this work for the, you know, Twitter character count? And how can I make this work as a great Facebook post message or a great LinkedIn post message? It takes so much time to take the same piece of information and remix it for different audiences for different formats. All of that time is now being saved within the click of a button.

That's amazing.

Yeah. So content remix is something that I'm really excited to play with personally. I think that it's going to be a real game changer, especially for small businesses that doesn't have that access to time or energy or effort. They need these time-saving strategies to make their teams more efficient. And something like ContentRemix, yes, it can be, you know, upgrade to go from start to pro, but these are the types of tools that make those, you know, monetary decisions

more of a no-brainer because you can take the hard work that you're already doing to produce new content and remix it into multiple formats to really save that time and energy.

Absolutely. I think for startups and for smaller businesses too that maybe would love to scale and have a videographer and a social person on their team, but currently they maybe only have one marketer or one content manager, these tools give the content manager the ability to do multiple things and not be like working overtime trying to get things done. It gives the power back to this one person.

And I think that leverage is huge. It allows companies to scale faster and to do what they do better.

And so for so long, we've looked at the content manager role as the written content manager. For years, we saw it was their job to publish and produce three articles per week. But with these types of efficiencies and savings, is it possible that that content manager

could be written content, video content, audio content, all these different content formats, and really give them the ability to be creative and really work in this creative space to free up so much of their time so that they can really knock it out of the park for your brand without losing that quality, without losing that publishing schedule, to make sure that you hit those metrics and those marks, but really use the power of AI, using the power of HubSpot to your advantage to really make sure that you're meeting those publishing schedules.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a game changer, I think, for small businesses, really for any business, but especially for startups and small business that are maybe a little budget conscious and need to stay lean and mean as they scale. It's a great way to get things done.

I mean, small, medium, large, every single business these days is budget conscious. So it's not just a matter of, you know, this is the small mom and pop shop that needs to grow. Every single business is taking a critical look at every single position in their department. And it's gotta be part of the discussion of which job functions can be done,

or at least assisted by these types of tools through AI. And that's what this HubSpot platform is really allowing us to do, and see that one person can do more with the tools and technology that's available today.

Way more, and it's so cool to see that, yeah.

Okay, so this is an audio format, right Alex?

This is a podcast, that's what we're on, yeah.

Exactly, so let's talk about HubSpot Podcasting because that's brand new functionality that I am so darn excited for.

We are too because we want to start leveraging this tool.

I know.

We need to. I know. We absolutely need to. So with Content Hub, now you have access to actually publish podcast content. You can either use it for hosting your original content like stuff that we're recording today. You can actually have it generate your content.

So if you have a script, the HubSpot podcasting software can actually generate that audio version for your podcasting platforms. You can host, you can syndicate other platforms. It really is a game changer to make HubSpot that central command for all your content, not just written content, not just visual content, but also audio content as well.

That's epic. I think I'm most excited about that just selfishly because of the podcast and we're always looking for new ways to promote it and to help get it in front of more of our best people and to help share the experiences that we have.

Exactly. And one of the things that you've seen kind of become more readily available for those different styles of learners out there is you've seen blog posts now have the ability to play in audio format so that if you are, I love to listen to things while I'm cooking in the kitchen. So if I'm trying to whip up dinner, I love being able to listen to a podcast and learn things while I cook.

Well, now if I'm cooking in the kitchen, I can go back and say, hey, rather than reading an Impact blog post, I want to hear the audio format of that same blog post. So with Content Hub, you can actually automatically generate a companion audio file to go with every single blog post. So that whether you're ready to read it or listen to it, all of it's available to you in the same tool.

That is amazing. And it's just giving you more tools to give people access however they want to consume your content, whether it's audio, whether it's reading it, it's meeting people where they are.

Exactly. So I will say there are some more advanced functionality at the enterprise level. So Content Enterprise has things like multi-site functionalities. You can host multiple websites in the same platform. You can also do content approvals or different permissioning for content. So some of that might be available for larger organizations if that makes sense.

But really the bang for your buck is going to be at that professional level where you can get things like content remix, access to podcasts, access to everything we talked about in the starter level. That is where the sweet spot lives in my personal opinion. So unless you're a really large organization that needs to host multiple websites or have advanced permissioning about who gets to publish what, definitely check out those Content Hub Pro tools because I think they're a real game changer.

I agree. I'm definitely going to check them out after we wrap the show today. I'm excited, especially this podcast one.

Exactly.

So what would you say is the best way to get started for people that are hearing this and haven't really started experimenting with these AI tools yet that are in HubSpot? What would you say to them?

So here's the catch. Some of this functionality is available today to legacy customers that are on CMS Hub Pro or Marketing Hub Pro. But the truth is that this is a separate product. It's brand new.

So if you've never touched HubSpot before, this is your path to easily access it. You just purchase it right on HubSpot's website or talk to one of us to basically guide you to the right package of HubSpot that's best for your business needs. If you're an existing customer, it might not all be available right there out of the box. So, you might have to reach out to your customer success manager to say, hey, all of these AI tools seem like they'd be a really great fit for my business.

You can talk to them directly to say, how do I get this included in my next contract negotiation, next upgrade, to make sure that you have access to all of this great AI functionality that's really going to be a game changer for your content creation.

Absolutely. Okay, Jess, so in addition to the Content Hub, what's something that you are seeing or your clients are seeing that they're excited about?

In addition to all of the great functionality we just discussed with Content Hub, HubSpot really did throw a lot of new product updates into last month's spotlight. So there's a little bit of love to go around every single element and hub within your HubSpot portal, but one of the features that came out that I know that my clients were really excited to see was a tighter integration with LinkedIn. So that means that if you're sending out LinkedIn messages, those can automatically be logged

in HubSpot now. If you are, I know.

Nice.

Oh, that's epic. Yeah. If you're trying to stay on top of when a key point of contact changes companies or changes their email address or changes any information on LinkedIn, all of that data can now be synced within your CRM. So there's really cool functionality at play there.

It does require a certain level of HubSpot and a certain level of sales navigator access, so definitely make sure that you have the right products for each tool. But that integration and that level of data passing back and forth between both tools has been long, long awaited by my clients. So I am very excited to check that out.

I'm excited too. That's two things now that we've got to take a look at. We live on LinkedIn here at Impact as a company, so that's huge. And then the podcast piece, we're definitely going to be chatting. And I'm sure there's a lot of questions that people have out there. So for follow-ups, if people want to talk to you, want to pick your brain, if they have

any further questions, how can they get in touch with you so that they can do exactly that?

I mean, you know that I'm always on LinkedIn. You can always reach out to me there. If you need to talk about just what Impact really recommends, how we can help navigate the HubSpot buying process or any HubSpot challenges, hit me up on the HubSpot services page. I really helped the marketing team design this HubSpot mastery program that really allows

you to really leverage every single element of HubSpot that you're paying for. And now, with all these new products and new tools in place, there's a lot more to love and there's a lot more to leverage. So we really have to make sure that you're taking advantage of every single tool in your toolbox to grow your business.

I love that. Jess, thank you for being on the show. I always learn so much when you're here.

Yeah, absolutely. Really appreciate your time.

Yeah. Thanks, Alex. Awesome. Well, for everybody listening and for watching, this is Endless Customers.

We'll see you on the next episode. We'll see you on the next episode.

Bye!