We’ve just come back from HubSpot’s INBOUND conference in San Francisco – 4 full days of big ideas, product launches, and a lot of conversations about where marketing and sales are heading in the AI era.
For us at Pixeld, these were the standout changes worth paying attention to if you’re running a marketing team or a growing business.
Discover Loop – HubSpot’s New Growth Playbook
One of the headline announcements this year was Loop, a new framework that rethinks how businesses grow in the age of AI.
The foundations of inbound marketing (being customer-centric, helpful, and easy to find) still matter, but the way people discover and buy has shifted. Instead of a straight line from awareness to purchase, marketing is now a continuous cycle, where every action feeds the next.
At its heart, Loop is about combining human creativity with AI efficiency. Marketers still bring the ideas, storytelling, and strategy, but AI makes it faster and easier to personalise, distribute, and optimise.
The four principles of Loop are:
- Express: Be clear about who you are and what you stand for so your brand is easy to connect with.
- Tailor: Share content that feels personal and useful, not generic. The closer it matches your audience’s needs, the stronger the impact.
- Amplify: Diversify your channels by spreading your message everywhere your audience lives, and remix your content for each channel.
- Evolve: Keep testing and improving quickly. Use AI to help you adapt and optimise in real time.
Or as HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan put it:
“Marketing has fundamentally changed, and the old playbook just isn’t working anymore. That’s why we built the Loop. It’s built for the AI era, with humans and AI working in partnership to drive growth.”
For marketers, this means less reliance on one-off campaigns and more focus on building systems that keep your brand relevant and visible over time.
AEO – The New SEO
One stat from INBOUND really stood out: around 60% of Google searches now end in zero clicks. That means most people are getting the answers they need without ever visiting a website. Sometimes it’s through Google’s AI Overview, other times it’s inside tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.
As Nathan, our Managing Director, put it after the conference:
“Once upon a time, ranking meant drawing traffic to your site. Today, it’s about being present in AI overviews and optimising for AI engines. That visibility is already proving to be a meaningful driver of revenue.”
This shift is why HubSpot is putting so much focus on AI Engine Optimisation (AEO). The idea is simple: rather than chasing clicks, you’re making sure your content is the one AI tools choose as the answer.
How to start with AEO
Here are the practical steps we took from INBOUND:
- Be clear and direct – Write content that gives complete answers to real customer questions. Half-answers won’t cut it.
- Structure information – Use FAQs, headings, and lists so AI tools can easily read and reuse your content.
- Optimise by channel – Repurpose your content for LinkedIn, Google, newsletters, and AI-driven platforms.
- Review regularly – Check how your business is showing up in AI tools and refine it to stay visible.
HubSpot even released a free AEO Grader, which checks how your brand appears across AI engines and gives recommendations for improvement.
What this means for marketers and business owners
For marketers, traffic numbers will matter less. What now matters is being recognised as a trusted source in AI answers.
For business owners, the focus shifts to conversions and revenue, not just page views.
“Marketing and sales aren’t drifting closer together. They’re overlapping. Perhaps uncomfortably so for anyone who still thinks of them as separate disciplines.” Nathan George – Managing Director at Pixeld
AEO reframes the goal. Instead of asking “how do we drive traffic?”, the better question becomes “how do we become the answer?”
Smarter Sales with AI Agents
On the sales side, HubSpot unveiled AI agents designed to make day-to-day tasks a lot easier.
- Prospecting Agent – Instead of spending hours researching contacts and building outreach sequences, you can now enrol people directly from your CRM and let the agent do the heavy lifting. It pulls in recent engagement, crafts tailored outreach, and even adjusts timing based on how prospects respond. You can start in review mode if you want more control, or set it to run automatically once you’re comfortable.
- Meeting Prep Agent – No more digging around for notes before a call. This agent gathers CRM records, recent activity, and even suggests talking points, so you walk into meetings fully prepared.
- Follow-up Support – Once the meeting’s over, the agent helps handle the follow-up too, drafting personalised messages and next steps so nothing slips through the cracks.
As Nathan shared after one of the sessions:
“What I liked most is how HubSpot now pulls together everything you need before a meeting. It saves time on research so salespeople can focus on the conversations that actually matter.”
The takeaway: AI can handle the admin, but the human connection is still what closes deals.
Why Data Still Matters
AI was the star of the show this year, but the message was clear: your data is the foundation.
Or in Yamini Rangan’s words:
“Great growth starts with great data – it’s the foundation people and AI need to drive results.”
If your CRM is messy or incomplete, even the smartest AI tools won’t deliver. Businesses that invest in clean, connected data will see the most benefit.
Our Takeaway
AI isn’t here to replace marketers or sales teams. It’s here to remove the friction.
Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot’s co-founder, summed it up beautifully: “The better AI gets, the more it allows us to be human… Being human is not a bug, it’s our best feature.” That’s the real takeaway. AI can drive efficiency and scale, but the businesses that thrive will be the ones that use it to support creativity, connection, and smarter growth, not replace them.
See What’s New in Action
We’ll be unpacking more of these updates in our next free HubSpot Masterclass on Thursday, 25 September at 1pm, focused on the latest Sales Hub updates from INBOUND.
We’d love for you to join us and see how these tools can work in practice.
