Every quarter, we bring together marketing executives to swap stories, share experiences and create some best practices. Mike, the CMO of HubSpot, spoke to the group earlier this week.

At a start-up, stopping isn’t really in the playbook. But six years in, I got a chance to think – and talk – at Corporate Ink’s recent breakfast for local tech marketing experts about what worked in our inbound marketing strategy, and what didn’t. So, 1,780 or so days into it – here’s a little bit of what stood out, what worked, and what’s worth doing more of.

Blogging We were early, and it really worked. There wasn’t much competition at the time, and we were manic about creating useful content. Today, we draw about 500,000 visits a month, and we’ve decided that content is our single-most powerful way to market; We post about a hundred articles a month. Our CEO blogged, too, and continues today. This was, and is, immensely powerful.

One way we’ve been able to make this work: Enlist everyone, and anyone, at the company who is interested in writing. Marketing is a gentle custodian of the blog, only. Anyone who has an article perform exceptionally well gets public praise, and lunch for their department, too. The power of a free lunch continues to amaze me.

Free tools Especially if they have the power to meet a real need, and give people a way of self-scoring, and scoring others.  At the start, we graded websites and press releases. Now we offer graders for marketing, Twitter and Facebook. They’re like food trucks: They remain available as long as we think there’s enough demand for them.  You can try our latest free tool at http://Marketing.Grader.com.

Being socially active When we rolled out our premiere grader, I talked about it everywhere I could, largely by providing feedback to people’s questions about marketing, and referring them, when it made sense, to the tool.  It was a powerful way to build a base. It’s not too late; there’s always demand for quality information, and useful tools, especially if they’re free, exceptionally graphical, and easy to use.

Friending sales We work hard to dissolve the boundaries every way we can, and at the same time, draw one very clear line of when a lead is sales ready.  We have a clear definition of when a lead is ready for sales, how many of those leads marketing needs to create each month, and what sales is required to do from that point forward. Culturally, everyone from teams meets weekly, because we wanted to build a culture where it’s OK to share what works, and what doesn’t. We reinforce this ‘no-secrets’ approach with a dashboard that combines all of our key metrics, which are visible to everyone on both teams. We’re one team:  We win only when both groups win.

There’s more, of course, like hiring, webinars, videos, and building brand, inside and outside the company.  That’s part of what keeps it interesting. Props to all the VPs at the Corporate Ink breakfast, whose experiences made this moment in the way-back machine such a great conversation. We’re all grappling with the same issues. It’s just the scale, and sometimes the speed, that changes.

By: Mike Volpe
Twitter:@mvolpe