The Future of Inbound Marketing.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about the future of Inbound Marketing.

In July of 2008, AMA Boston issued a call for entries for the "Shoestring Marketing Awards". The entry form rules were straightforward: "Tell us about your most creative marketing idea, producing the greatest results with the least amount of resources." Among the entries was an interesting young start-up called HubSpot, which had spent zero dollars developing content to promote a webinar that was widely shared on various blogs and social networking sites. The concept was simple and the results exceptional. Upon reviewing all the entries, our panel of judges unanimously selected HubSpot as the winner, but we could not have known that we had just seen the future of Inbound Marketing.

Yesterday, I was invited to attend an open house at HubSpot to see firsthand their newest innovation, "Social Inbox". This new application promises to tightly integrate social media monitoring and publishing with HubSpot’s contact database, enabling marketers to make the most of highly segmented views of the social activity of their leads, customers, and biggest evangelists. In my estimation, this innovation by HubSpot represents a breakthrough for marketers who have long been puzzled as to how they should measure the ROI from their social media activities.

Following a series of demos and an engaging Q&A with HubSpot leaders, we concluded the day at a special dinner party with the officers of the company. In attendance were members of the media, various software analysts, and tech bloggers from across the country.

On our way to the restaurant, I was thinking about how every time I have visited the HubSpot office, they were already bursting at the seams and needing a larger space. I was also thinking about how AMA Boston has featured Mike, Brian, and others as keynotes or panelists at several sell-out events, and how proud we are to have a hot tech company like HubSpot calling Boston "home". It has been truly amazing to watch HubSpot create, define, and dominate what may be the most important new category of our profession called "Inbound Marketing".

It has been a long time since HubSpot won the Shoestring Marketing Awards with the simple creation and sharing of content. What I did not realize all those years ago was that I may have been witnessing the first real-life example of Inbound Marketing, perhaps even before they had coined the phrase. It was a great opportunity to reunite with my friends at HubSpot last night. I enjoyed seeing their newest innovations and I look forward to working together with HubSpot more in the future. It is true as today's fortune says, "Getting together with old friends brings new adventures."