INBOUND Blog

Marketing today is about behavioral fluency and if you’re building strategies based on how people say they make decisions, you’re already behind. Behavioral science tells us that up to 95% of decisions are made subconsciously. In practice, that means your audience is often choosing without realizing why. Nancy Harhut, behavioral science and marketing expert, says that these decision defaults are automatic responses rooted in habit, emotion, and cognitive efficiency. At INBOUND 2025 she laid out 9 counterintuitive marketing tactics every marketer should have in their toolbox to identify and exploit common decision triggers. Here’s a breakdown of each tactic, plus tips for how to start applying them to your work.

Search has changed. Have you? Google is no longer just a ranking engine and if you're still optimizing for blue links and waiting for traffic to land on your site, you may already be invisible. At INBOUND 2025, Fire&Spark’s Dale Bertrand challenged marketers to adapt to how AI is changing search behavior or risk being written out of the conversation entirely.

On the Main Stage at INBOUND 2025, Neil Patel, co-founder of NP Digital, came with hard data that challenges where we're all spending our marketing time and energy. His topic: 30 Charts That Will Change the Way You Do Marketing. His message: Most companies are focused on the wrong things and missing real revenue opportunities because of it. If you’re navigating search behaviors, AI-generated content, or performance plateaus, here’s what you need to know from Patel’s session and how to act on it now.

What if the difference between good and great marketing isn't just doing more of the same? At an eye-opening INBOUND 2024 Spotlight session, HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar and Asana CMO Shannon Duffy shared invaluable insights on elevating marketing teams from merely good to truly exceptional. Their conversation revealed how emotion, instinct, and embracing change might be the missing ingredients in your marketing strategy.