The Marketing Performance Blueprint: Strategies and Technologies to Build and Measure Business Success

Foreword

When Brian Halligan and I started HubSpot in June 2006, we wanted to transform how organizations acquired customers. The Internet had altered how people accessed information, connected, shopped, and shared. As a result, marketing as we knew it was broken.

Traditional, outbound marketing methods, such as trade shows, advertising, and telemarketing, were becoming less and less effective. Consumers were choosing when and where to interact with brands, turning to search engines and social networks for resources, products, and services.

HubSpot became our chance to revolutionize the marketing industry and give businesses the tools needed to better reach and engage buyers online and on their terms.

It was around this time that I met Paul at the inaugural INBOUND conference in Boston. He was one of HubSpot's earliest adopters, and in 2008, his marketing agency, PR 20/20, became our first Agency Partner, helping to pioneer a program that now includes more than 1,500 agencies worldwide.

Paul and his team have worked with dozens of clients to build and execute performance-driven inbound marketing campaigns. We share a common belief that businesses need to outthink, rather than outspend, their competition. Playing by everybody else's rules is a surefire way to lose, whereas innovation—and thinking differently—is rewarded.

Consumers are more informed, in touch, and in charge than ever before. Outdated marketing methods interrupt and annoy, causing customers to move further away ...