AI, changing buyer behavior, unexpected website roasts, and a few marketing lessons we’re taking home. Three days in Boston and approximately a million things to think about on the flight home. We attended HubSpot (INBOUND) UNBOUND 2026, to hear what’s next for marketing and connect with other people navigating the same industry changes we are.
This year’s theme centered around pushing forward, adapting, and building even when conditions aren’t perfect. With Main Stage speakers like Tom Brady, Cynthia Erivo, Mel Robbins, and Suni Williams, there was plenty of motivation to go around.
But between the big name speakers and conversations about AI taking over everything (kidding… kind of), we walked away with some practical ideas we’re already thinking about implementing at ThrivePOP.
First, we need to talk about the website roasting
One of our favorite parts of UNBOUND wasn’t actually a main stage session.
Brittanie hosted a series of Brain Dates where she invited fellow attendees to have their websites roasted. Essentially, an opportunity to get honest feedback on what’s working, what’s confusing, and what could be improved.
She wasn’t expecting a huge turnout, but apparently, people LOVE a good website roast.
The interest was a pleasant surprise and gave us an idea worth bringing home. If people are this eager for actionable feedback on their websites, maybe we should be offering more opportunities for it. So, keep an eye out. Website roasts might be entering the ThrivePOP chat.
Meanwhile, while Brittanie was busy reviewing websites, Karly was off seeing Cynthia Erivo on the main stage. Both are very important business activities, obviously. Now, onto the marketing stuff.
Write for humans, not the bots.
We spent a good amount of time talking about AI search at UNBOUND, but one piece of advice stuck with us: It’s better to be quotable than to write solely for an algorithm.
As more people use ChatGPT and other AI platforms to research brands, the content getting referenced tends to have something useful to offer. One slide we saved broke down the content formats appearing most frequently in AI-generated answers. According to the research presented, best of lists accounted for 32% of citations, followed by how-to guides at 14% and original research at 12%. Another interesting stat shared during the event suggested that content featuring a recent date or time period in its title has a 50%+ higher likelihood of appearing in LLM results.
What does that mean for your content strategy?
Start thinking about what your audience is actually searching for and how you can give them a direct, useful answer. Maybe that’s a comparison guide, a collection of industry statistics, or a blog answering a question your sales team hears every week. You don’t need to awkwardly stuff keywords into every other sentence or completely change your brand voice to please AI.
Write something worth referencing, make it easy to understand, and remember there’s still a person looking for that answer.
The marketing funnel isn’t what it used to be.
Another conversation that caught our attention was how much the traditional buying journey has changed. We’re used to thinking about marketing as a progression from attention to awareness to conversion. But today, people have a lot more ways to investigate a brand before making a decision. They can read reviews, ask AI for recommendations, compare competitors, look through your social media, and form an opinion about your business without ever contacting you. One of our favorite visuals from UNBOUND reframed the funnel as:
Trust → Reputation → Conversion.
Because before people buy, they’re asking: Can I trust this? Who is behind this? Why should I care?
It made us think about how much work a brand’s online presence is doing before someone ever reaches out. Your website, messaging, content, and reputation should be helping answer those questions along the way. Getting discovered is important, but what happens after someone finds you deserves just as much attention.
Give people something before asking for something.
This one made us reconsider a few things on our own website. Say you’re promoting a downloadable guide. Your landing page has a headline, a short description, and a form asking for someone’s contact information. But have you actually given them enough information to WANT the download?
One takeaway from UNBOUND was to offer a little more value upfront. Show a preview. Share one of the tips. Give visitors a better idea of what they’ll learn before asking them to hand over their email address. This connects to a much larger conversation about self service buying.
One statistic shared during the event suggested that 40% of B2B buyers would be willing to make purchases of up to $500K without speaking to sales. People want to research on their own, and businesses need to make that easier.
For us, it raised an interesting question: What could we create that helps a CEO or CMO understand their marketing needs and feel more confident about hiring an agency before booking a call? An interactive tool? A helpful assessment? More transparent resources?
We’re still exploring the possibilities, but it’s definitely something we’re bringing back to the drawing board.
Don’t make an interested lead wait.
Speaking of people reaching out, we also heard some eye-opening conversations around lead response time. The general takeaway? The window between someone expressing interest and your team responding matters. A lot.
If someone requests a quote or fills out your contact form, they’re already thinking about your business. Waiting until the following afternoon to respond isn’t exactly making their experience any better. It’s a good reminder to look at what happens AFTER your marketing generates a lead. Are the right people being notified? Is there an automated response? Does someone know who’s responsible for following up?
Sometimes improving your marketing results isn’t about generating more leads. It’s about making better use of the interest you’re already getting.
HubSpot has some new tricks up its sleeve.
We obviously couldn’t leave UNBOUND without a list of HubSpot updates we wanted to try. One of the more interesting developments was the continued expansion of Breeze, HubSpot’s AI assistant, including its integration with Claude.
The ability to ask questions about your pipeline, customers, and campaigns using actual CRM context opens up some pretty useful possibilities. Imagine asking which campaigns influenced the most pipeline last quarter or which active accounts are showing early signs of disengagement without manually digging through multiple reports.
We’re also keeping an eye on Breeze Tasks, conversational editing for AEO focused content, and HubSpot’s client portal beta, which offers the ability to create up to five portals in the version we explored. Plenty of new things for us to test. Our HubSpot to-do list definitely didn’t get any shorter.
Simple is looking pretty good right now.
One last takeaway that came up in several different ways was the importance of clarity.
And unfortunately for those of us who love a beautifully designed email, that includes using more live text. With AI generated email summaries becoming increasingly common, important information needs to be accessible beyond the text embedded in a graphic. One tip we picked up was that bullet points can be particularly helpful for AI summaries. Does that mean every email needs to look like a plain text memo? Absolutely not. But it does mean we should be thinking about how people (and the tools they’re using) consume what we create.
The same applies to websites, landing pages, and pretty much everything else we’re putting into the world. Make the information easy to find. Say what you mean. Don’t overcomplicate something that could be simple.
And while we’re at it, stop waiting for every little detail to be perfect before launching something. Put it out there, see how people use it, and improve it as you go.
What we’re taking home from UNBOUND
Beyond the new HubSpot features and a few unexpected lessons from roasting strangers’ websites, UNBOUND gave us a lot to think about.
People want more control over how they research and buy. AI is changing how information gets discovered. And brands have more opportunities than ever to make the buying experience genuinely helpful. For us, the next step is figuring out how to put these ideas into practice, both for ThrivePOP and the brands we work with.
Starting with a few website roasts, perhaps? Book your session now.
