‘60% of search traffic has gone away’: Hubspot’s marketing playbook for a complex world
CRM maker Hubspot has used its big annual conference in the US to launch what it is describing as a new marketing playbook – one adapted to a world of cratering search and fragmented content channels.
Hubspot CEO Yamini Rangan introduces the loop at Inbound 2025 (Hubspot)
The world was a different place when Mumbrella first caught up with Hubspot content boss Jonathan Hunt in June. Now, just three months later – with search referrals down 60% across the industry– it has developed what it is calling “loop marketing”, an adaptation to a new world in which the old channels coexist with the new, blogs are not dead but severely diminished, and content marketers are compelled to use AI to plan and personalise operations.
”It very much is the Wild West,” Hunt says. “In the old era of SEO, you would create content for people, right? You would create content based on keywords that had enough monthly search volume, but not enough competition where you felt like you couldn’t win for those keywords.
“You would create content, you would publish it, and then six months later you would start to rank in the SERPs and you would get traffic as a result.”
Hunt oversees Hubspot’s sizeable content operation, creating content on topics that engage potential buyers of Hubspot’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management software). The content grabs attention that is used to drive CRM sales – but it’s also an opportunity to understand the market forces affecting customers.
Hubspot Media VP Jonathan Hunt (Mumbrella)
“About 60% of search traffic has started to go away. If you look at our demand traffic today, about 10% is coming from our blog, and the rest is from Youtube, from newsletters, from podcasts, et cetera. And a lot of that is the same for our customers.”
As search has dwindled, Hunt says his content team has seen leads coming from Youtube double year-on-year and leads from newsletters increase 90%. Hubspot now has 10 Youtube channels and five newsletters, produced by Hunt’s team (around 60 people) and a sizeable band of influencers and freelancers. Content includes My First Million (podcast/Youtube) and The Hustle (newsletter).
One of the complications of the new era is that marketers can’t afford to throw out traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but need to maintain it while taking Large Language Models (LLMs) into account.
”The funnel just doesn’t work like it used to. We literally wrote the playbook on this nearly 20 years ago, like we published an actual physical book called Inbound Marketing. Since then everything’s changed.
“How you create content and get customers to your website is completely different. So no longer is it just SEO, but it’s SEO and AEO (“AI Engine Optimisation”). So you’re writing for not just people, but also the LLMs. There’s been a deluge of content that’s being published that oftentimes it is very commodified due to AI. And so as a result, there’s more competition than ever, more saturation.”
In answer, Hubspot delivered “Loop Marketing”, launched at the company’s big Inbound conference in San Francisco this week. When Mumbrella entreats Hunt to define loop marketing in the simplest possible terms, he laughs. We begin by defining what it is not.
“ I think a strategy where you hedge exclusively around Google or over-leverage yourself exclusively around Google is probably not the right strategy. It’s something that we recognized very early on … reliance on a single channel is not a great strategy.”
“No one was really creating this kind of canonical playbook for how to do marketing well in the AI era,” he says. “We said, ok, we’re actually going to do it ourselves.”
“ It’s really about diversification beyond [the old idea of creating blog content and waiting for traffic to come in], to create content for LLMs, for Youtube, for newsletters, for podcasts, et cetera.
“It’s very much a reaction to the need to personalise content no matter what language you speak or what geography you’re in. And to do that at AI speed.”
Mumbrella ends the interview with a suggestion that the new era sounds complicated and unpleasant.
“ It doesn’t have to be a pain in the ass, especially if you have data. I’d say the advancements in data enrichment make it a lot easier … I think there’s been a lot of advancements in terms of making it a lot more seamless for people.”
