HubShots Episode 314: HubSpot Loop Marketing Explained

Welcome to HubShots Episode 314: HubSpot Loop Marketing Explained    

AKA Everything old is new again

This edition we dive into:

• INBOUND 2025 Reflections
• HubSpot’s Loop Marketing Playbook
• What is it? And why?
• Inbound Marketing versus the Funnel versus the Flywheel versus the Loop
• The good parts - what to embrace
• The bad parts - what to ignore
• How to practically implement it in your business 
• The new Design Framework for Loop Marketing

How to consume HubShots:

• You can watch this episode on the HubShots YouTube channel
• We’re also available on Spotify or Soundcloud or Apple podcasts if that’s easier for you
• Full show notes for all episodes are available on our website

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Recommended Resources:

• Have you downloaded the latest version of the HubShots Framework yet? (It’s your 5-Stage plan for getting the most out of HubSpot).
• Have you signed up for our HubShots Daily Tip (a quick HubSpot tip or reminder in your inbox everyday)?
• Have you joined our HubShots Community (concentrated courses covering real world HubSpot scenarios)?
• Have you downloaded the NEW Loop Marketing Design Framework?

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube:

Recorded: Friday 26 September 2025 | Published: Friday 03 October 2025

🌱 Shot 1: Growth Thought of the Week

INBOUND25 Reflections

• Marketing is broken? Or is it? It has definitely changed.
• Loop marketing high-level sessions 
  • Comments from attendees: No practical examples of how to implement stuff
• AEO - you still need content!  But you need to think more about conversion now as the awareness stage is being handled more by LLMs
• Lots of people talk about AI, but they were struggling to use it on a daily basis to make their lives better.
• A session that stood out was from Zack Kass 
  • His book: The Next Renaissance is coming out in January - it will be a good read

✨ Shot 2: Quick Shots of the Week

Here’s a few quick items of interest to mention:

QuickShot Episodes

We’ve started sharing some of our QuickShot conversations (brief 5 minute chats Ian and I have) on our podcast (similar to how we’ve been posting them as shorts on our YouTube channel) - let us know what you think. 

🚀 Shot 3: Loop Marketing Introduction

What is it?

INBOUND Marketing Methodology versus The Funnel versus Loop Marketing

Cynical take:

• New concept, perhaps just for the sake of having a new concept to go to market with
• The Loop: could be anything, but they chose the infinity loop symbol 
• Helps overcome the baggage of the Inbound methodology 
• Allows adding AI to everything

Why?

Disruption of typical marketing processes, due to AI overviews impacting search traffic.

Marketing has changed. Or has it? 

It is constantly changing - new channels, new formats, new business models, new competition.

💰 Shot 4: Loop Marketing Stages

In HubSpot’s words:

1. Express

Purpose: Define your brand identity, taste, tone, and point of view before implementing AI

2. Tailor

Purpose: Use AI to make messaging personal, contextual, and relevant at scale

3. Amplify 

Purpose: Diversify content across channels to meet buyers where they are

4. Evolve

Purpose: Iterate quickly and effectively with AI-powered optimisation

This can sound a bit vague and high level.

In our Words

Here’s the stages in our words:

Source: XEN Loop Marketing Overview slide deck 

Stage 1: Express

• Define the problem you uniquely solve
• And who you solve it for

Stage 2: Tailor

• Personalise your marketing assets as much as possible
• Aim for the Amazon experience

Stage 3: Amplify

• Get your message out there
• Across appropriate channels

Stage 4: Evolve

• Test and measure
• Feed back insights to each of the earlier stages

Personalisation and AI

AI has the potential to help with personalisation eg in marketing emails, adding a section that captures pain points or opportunities specific to a contact.

But how do you implement this (eg an AI call for every email?) and how do you check/confirm it before it goes out?

Currently, setting up smart properties on contacts might be a good first step.

👨‍🔧 Shot 5: Loop Marketing in Practice

The Loop Marketing Design Framework

Let’s consider how these high level stages might be broken down and practically implemented - using a focus on Design as an example.

You can watch a walkthrough of this here:

And access the Google doc from here (which we’ll be updating regularly, especially as AI tools roll out from beta into production.

📚 Shot 6: Loop Marketing Tools and Features  

HubSpot has some additional guidance, especially around the AI tools:

1. Express

Purpose: Define your brand identity, taste, tone, and point of view before implementing AI

HubSpot Tools:

• Breeze Assistant - Analyse and optimise for your most valuable customers
• Audience Insights with Breeze Assistant - Summarise best-fit customers directly from CRM data, including goals, pain points, and deal history
• Brand Identity Tool - Create and maintain brand style guides that reinforce your brand voice
• HubSpot Connectors for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini - Integrate these AI tools with your HubSpot data
• Marketing Studio - From campaign idea into a full cross-channel strategy
• Smart CRM - Unified customer data foundation for brand understanding

Metrics to Focus on:

• Content velocity and creation costs
• Brand consistency across channels
• Customer persona accuracy

2. Tailor

Purpose: Use AI to make messaging personal, contextual, and relevant at scale

Key HubSpot Tools:

• Segments (Lists) - Build audiences based on intent signals and behavioural data
• Personalisation  - Tailor landing pages to specific audience needs
• AI-Powered Email  - Create personalised email campaigns at scale
• Smart CRM and Data Hub - Leverage unified customer data, including:

• CRM records
• Call transcripts
• Website behaviour patterns
• Email engagement history
• Integrations like SMS

• Marketing workflows/ automation 
• Smart properties for Contact and Company segmentation

Metrics to Focus on:

• Click-through rates across channels
• Email engagement rates
• Conversion rates by segment
• Effectiveness of personalisation - landing pages, emails etc

3. Amplify 

Purpose: Diversify content across channels to meet buyers where they are

Key HubSpot Tools:

• AI Engine Optimisation (AEO) Strategy Tool  - Maximise visibility in Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Customer Agent - Deploy the agent on high-intent pages to answer questions instantly
• Marketing Studio/Content Remix - Transform existing content into multiple formats for different channels
• Social Tools - Distribute content across social platforms
• Ad Management Tool - Get data and run paid campaigns across multiple channels
• Content  - Create and optimise content for discovery
• SEO/Optimise Tool - Optimise content for both traditional search and AI-powered answers

Metrics to Focus on:

• Channel performance and ROI
• Content reach and engagement across platforms
• AI visibility and mention rates - may need to use another tool to get this data
• Lead generation by channel

4. Evolve

Purpose: Iterate quickly and effectively with AI-powered optimisation

Key HubSpot Tools:

• Email Engagement Optimisation - Predict email engagement before sending
• Analytics and Reporting Dashboard - Real-time performance tracking
• A/B Testing Tools - Run rapid experiments across campaigns
• Attribution Reporting - Track customer journey across all touchpoints
• Revenue Attribution - Connect marketing activities to revenue outcomes
• Predictive Analytics (where available) - Forecast performance and behaviour
• Workflow Analytics - Optimise automation performance
• Campaign Performance Analytics - Measure and refine strategy based on live data

Metrics to Focus on:

• Test and measure experiment results
• Real-time campaign performance
• Predictive engagement scores
• Continuous improvement metrics
• Optimise for ROI

💡Shot 7: AI Agent of the Week

Deal Lost Agent

Feed back the insights from deals that have been lost to improve/update sales collateral and marketing messaging, and content.

See also our Deal Lost Agent overview in the HubShots Community

🏪 Shot 8: How to Get Started

The Benefit of Embracing Loop Marketing

There’s definite benefits of embracing Loop Marketing in your company:

• Get your team all on the same page
• Framework benefit: Consistency 
• Using a playbook that has been built for the platform you are using (ie HubSpot)

Analogy: Choose your Martial Arts style and stick to it. Don’t waste your time debating which martial art approach is the best, instead pick one you like the look of and master it!

🔥 Shot 9: Loop Marketing Gotchas

The usual AI caveats apply

AI isn’t perfect - as we all know, and still struggles with making things up, and making mistakes.

Also: dirty data gives back garbage insights - often: important things get missed

This is the big trap - not so much that it gets it wrong (since you can check for that), but that it completely leaves things out (how do you check for that?)

Important: sanity check the ‘insights’ you get back

Still Disjointed

Although we can see how things are coming together, there’s still a lot of separateness between tools where they don’t talk to each other (eg you end up copying and pasting things between different Agents)

Example: ICP and Prospecting agent 

🎓 Shot 10: Training of the Week

HubSpot Updates that Matter Course 

You can access the full course content in our Skool Community (join the waitlist here). 

In the course we cover a bunch of the Loop Marketing AI related tools and features.

💪 Shot 11: Have You Signed Up for the HubShots Daily Tip?

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Would a quick HubSpot related tip in your inbox every day be useful? If so, sign up here.

🏋️ Shot 12: Have You Downloaded The HubShots Framework?

HubShots Framework Poster

Download a copy of the HubShots Framework A3 PDF poster (recently updated with colour coding and more). 

🧲 Shot 13: Follow Us on the Socials

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Connect with Ian Jacob on LinkedIn and Craig Bailey on LinkedIn plus check out his personal YouTube channel.

HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers and sales professionals who use HubSpot, hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN and XEN Create. 

HubShots is produced by Christopher Mottram from Podcastily.

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