Hubspot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0
Case 3: HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0
HubSpot is a dynamic and promising startup that has recently reached its 1,000 customer milestone. The company, led by founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, offers an intuitive and easy-to-use marketing software that acts as a tool for customers to spearhead their ‘inbound marketing’ campaigns. The company is an evangelist of ‘inbound marketing’ where companies try to pull prospective customers toward a business and its products through the use of Web 2.0 tools such as social media and search engine optimization. With this, HubSpot argues that the rules of marketing have changed and that traditional marketing plays, or ‘outbound marketing’ where companies traditionally bombards its target market with messages through traditional means like TV or cold-calling to generate interest, is currently broken.
Did the “rules of marketing” changed?
As mentioned earlier, HubSpot argues that the rules of marketing have changed; however, in my opinion, I think “evolved” would be a better term. To that extent, then yes, I agree that the marketing playbook has evolved. With the emergence and ever-growing presence of the Internet or Web 2.0, there is strong competition between different channels of media for the attention of consumers and as a platform to get information, and by the looks of it, Web 2.0 is winning - according to a 2010 Forrester Research, “the average US online consumer spends as much time online as he or she does watching TV offline” (1).
HubSpot has taken notice of this trend and huge market opportunity, and offered a suite of marketing software to initiate and measure ‘inbound marketing’ strategies for customers. From this trend, I think inbound marketing is indeed the answer to the evolution in the rules of marketing. As more and more consumers use the Internet to get information, inbound marketing offers an extremely effective and cost-effective way to attract potential customers and generate
HubSpot is a dynamic and promising startup that has recently reached its 1,000 customer milestone. The company, led by founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, offers an intuitive and easy-to-use marketing software that acts as a tool for customers to spearhead their ‘inbound marketing’ campaigns. The company is an evangelist of ‘inbound marketing’ where companies try to pull prospective customers toward a business and its products through the use of Web 2.0 tools such as social media and search engine optimization. With this, HubSpot argues that the rules of marketing have changed and that traditional marketing plays, or ‘outbound marketing’ where companies traditionally bombards its target market with messages through traditional means like TV or cold-calling to generate interest, is currently broken.
Did the “rules of marketing” changed?
As mentioned earlier, HubSpot argues that the rules of marketing have changed; however, in my opinion, I think “evolved” would be a better term. To that extent, then yes, I agree that the marketing playbook has evolved. With the emergence and ever-growing presence of the Internet or Web 2.0, there is strong competition between different channels of media for the attention of consumers and as a platform to get information, and by the looks of it, Web 2.0 is winning - according to a 2010 Forrester Research, “the average US online consumer spends as much time online as he or she does watching TV offline” (1).
HubSpot has taken notice of this trend and huge market opportunity, and offered a suite of marketing software to initiate and measure ‘inbound marketing’ strategies for customers. From this trend, I think inbound marketing is indeed the answer to the evolution in the rules of marketing. As more and more consumers use the Internet to get information, inbound marketing offers an extremely effective and cost-effective way to attract potential customers and generate