It’s that time of year! Time for marketing, sales, and business owners to start preparing for the best marketing conference of the year, HubSpot’s Inbound.
If you’re not familiar with Inbound, it is a three-day conference offering talks and deep-dives into the latest trends affecting marketing, sales, and business growth. It boasts speakers from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives and even brings in big names like Reese Witherspoon (2023) and Ryan Reynolds (2024). And as in previous years, HubSpot Inbound 2024 will be held in Boston, Massachusetts.
Whether you’ve been before or this is your first year, it can be overwhelming to say the least (especially for our introverted friends out there – we see you!). But we’ve put together tips and tricks from our previous visit to help you make the MOST of your time there.
Preparing for Inbound 2024
Inbound is BIG and preparing for it is crucial to getting the most for the price of admission. Here’s how to start preparing for this three-day event.
Purchase Your Ticket ASAP – It seems incredibly obvious but getting your ticket early saves you a ton of money. Plus, Inbound does sellout so reserve your ticket ASAP. Reserve your ticket here
Set Your Priorities – What do you want to get out of your time at Inbound? Are you there to hear the latest trends? Learn how to improve an aspect of your marketing or sales strategy? Discover new features coming to Hubspot? Learn how to use the current features better? Outline what you want to get from the event BEFORE looking at the agenda.
Log in to your account and open the agenda. The full agenda has already been released, so go through and start “favoriting” anything that looks like it would fit the goals you set in the previous step. Don’t worry about if sessions overlap, just mark everything of interest!
Now it’s time to make tough decisions. If you’re like us, you’ll probably have WAY more sessions than one person can attend. If you have more than one person from your company going, this would be a good time to determine who will go to what. If it’s just you, then it’s time to start deciding what sessions are most important to you. While logged in, select the agenda page. Then select MY FAVORITES and SINGLE DAY VIEW.
This makes finding what sessions overlap a lot easier. You can unfavorite ones that are less important to you if there is a schedule conflict. One thing to consider is how much time you want between sessions and how quickly you can get from one session to another. Personally, we like to get in as many sessions as possible, so we don’t leave much time (we are speed walkers).
Another thing to consider is that many Main Stage talks are recorded and put on YouTube. We typically prioritize non-Main Stage sessions and watch the M.S. talks later.
Keep in mind some sessions will have limited seating. For sessions marked with a chair icon, you’ll have to register and there will be limited spots. If you are a VIP pass holder you’ll have first access to register for these exclusive sessions on August 20th. General Admission pass holders will have access on August 27th. Another consideration is that you can NOT reserve more than one seat for a scheduled time. For example, if one (reservation required) session goes from 10:00am – 11:15am and you plan to sneak out to get to a 11:00am session that is also reserved seating, the system will not allow you to reserve both.
Plan for Food Breaks, Networking, and Visiting Vendors – Inbound is more than helpful sessions, it is also an incredible place to talk to HubSpot experts, learn about other incredible marketing and sales tools, network with other businesses, and enjoy some downtime. At HubSpot Inbound 2023, they had a variety of different food options from food trucks to free morning coffee and tea.
Book Your Travel – Inbound 2024 runs from 18 – 20 September, but don’t forget that you can arrive earlier and pick up your badge, and avoid the crowds, on 17 September. The event is at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) and hotels near the location are not cheap! Consider staying a little farther out and using an Uber to get to and from if that fits your budget better. However, HubSpot does offer discounted rates for ticket holders at select hotels, so make sure to check this page out.
Your Time at Inbound
You’ve picked and reserved your sessions, you’ve booked your travel and accommodations, and its finally time for HubSpot Inbound 2024. Here are some tips and advice to get the most from your time there.
Give yourself extra time to get there each day. Traffic can suck in Boston so plan to get to the convention center with plenty of time before your first session and talk. Don’t forget to include walking time – the place is big.
Wear Comfortable Shoes – You’ll likely do a lot of walking and standing each day, so wear comfortable shoes!
Attend the Wednesday, September 18th Main Stage HubSpot Spotlight. This is always a great one to attend because you’ll hear the latest news about HubSpot and often big announcements too!
Enjoy the Freebies – At HubSpot Inbound 2023 their free morning coffee and tea stations were such a help with energy levels, but they can run out, so get your cup early. You’ll also find freebies at vendor booths and Inbound-sponsored areas. Last year they even had a station to create your own beautiful air plant ornament!
Download Slidedecks – The Inbound app will allow you to download the slidedeck from ANY presentation (even if you didn’t attend it). So this is a great chance to review what you did see and look at sessions you missed. We store all our slides in a cloud folder for our reference at any point.
Bring protein bars and a reusable bottle – Sessions, networking, and vendors take a lot out of you. I like to keep my water bottle full and a few portable snacks to keep me going until meal time.
Be Prepared to Take Notes – Through you’ll be able to download slidedecks from any session you want, you’ll also want to bring a small laptop, tablet, or notepad to jot down notes during sessions. You’ll have a lot of incredible information thrown at you; you won’t want to forget any of it!
Get to Lunch Early – If your schedule permits, take an early lunch. Food truck lines got long last year, so either go early or build time in your schedule for a longer lunch.
Use Your Badge for Easy Networking – One really cool aspect of Inbound is that they’ve made networking and sharing information super easy. Your lanyard will have a device on it that will allow you to share your information, and collect other’s information, when you tap them together. This information is then available in the app for connecting again during or after the conference.
Post Inbound
Congrats! You just spent 3 days at an awesome conference. But your work doesn’t stop there. We’ve got some tips to make sure what you learned at Inbound isn’t lost when you walk out the conference doors.
Organize Your Notes – If you didn’t organize your notes as the days went on, this is a great thing to do on the plane ride home. It’s best to do it when it’s all fresh in your memory. We simply create a word document with the title of the session and all applicable notes in an organized manner. We also will add references to the slidedeck and slide number, if applicable. This is not only great for future reference, but it’s also great to show your boss and team back at the office.
Register for Next Year – Yep, you can basically register for next year's Inbound as you walk out the door on the final day of HubSpot Inbound 2024. Registering early will save you BIG bucks on ticket prices.
Consider Speaking at Inbound 2025 – Feeling inspired by your time at the conference? Consider submitting a proposal to speak at their next event! Learn more here
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