This is the future I learned of at Inbound 2016, the Hubspot internet marketing conference in Boston last week. Hubspot is a marketing automation software system we have used for the last three years.

I listened to stories of hardened industrial sales guys wanting to abandon email marketing because it was a waste. It brought a sly smile to the marketing guy that then told him how their recent 12 million dollar account started from a LinkedIn post. He had the proof. And the young lady telling the story of how what used to be a year long courtship for a $200,000 software purchase was reduced to two months because the new client had already read all about the capabilities of the company and didn’t need to have a honeymoon.

All of my clients want to come up on the first page of Google. That is the question I wanted answered. What I learned is that now Siri understands language better than humans do. 20% of all searches are by voice , now. And Google knows who you are, where you are and predicts what you want. If you want to be on the first page fo Google you’re going to have to predict what your customers want. And how they ask for it.

(To be continued)