Ground Up Podcast

From HubSpot to Toast to Crayon: The Evolution of the Inbound Marketing Playbook with Ellie Mirman

On this episode of Ground Up, Ellie Mirman shares details on the early days of building the inbound marketing playbook at HubSpot, how the channels and mediums have changed, and how she’s successfully employed that inbound playbook at 2 other early-stage SaaS companies.

John Bonini on October 28, 2019 (last modified on October 25, 2019) • 1 minute read

Imagine this: It’s 2008 and simply having a blog as a business is a massive competitive advantage.

Ellie Mirman remembers.

She was at HubSpot in 2008 and remembers experimenting with new distribution channels that seemed to pop up every week––Facebook when it rolled out to businesses. Twitter. LinkedIn. YouTube.

As the first marketing hire Mike Volpe made at HubSpot, Ellie helped invent the inbound marketing playbook.

She ran the first inbound marketing summit, which would later become INBOUND, in 2008. There were 300 attendees at the Cambridge Marriott.

Since then, everything has changed.

And, it’s all stayed the same.

Ellie is CMO at Crayon now, another early-stage startup.

And, she says while mediums and channels have exploded, a lot of the playbooks she first employed at HubSpot a decade ago…still work.

Just…differently.

About the author

John Bonini is Director of Marketing at Databox. He's passionate about building brands that tell great stories. Connect with him on Twitter @bonini84.

Rapid growth is hard—consistent rapid growth at scale is even more of a challenge. Here, Ryan Bonnici explains the 4 principles that helped G2 10X organic visitors.

Ground Up Podcast | Mar 17 2020

HubSpot’s VP of Marketing, Kieran Flanagan, recently shared the key learnings that helped HubSpot instill a culture of growth throughout the entire company.

Ground Up Podcast | Feb 26 2020

On this episode of Ground Up, Vimeo’s Melissa Matlins dives deep into Vimeo’s journey to become a full-service video platform and how they’re repositioning the brand to support that.

Ground Up Podcast | Dec 9 2019

From HubSpot to Toast to Crayon: The Evolution of the Inbound Marketing Playbook with Ellie Mirman

Imagine this: It’s 2008 and simply having a blog as a business is a massive competitive advantage.

The 4 Principles G2’s CMO Used to Grow Monthly Organic Visitors from 500k to 5 Million

Rapid growth is hard—consistent rapid growth at scale is even more of a challenge. Here, Ryan Bonnici explains the 4 principles that helped G2 10X organic visitors.

The 3-Step Approach HubSpot’s VP of Marketing Uses to Set Goals for Continuous Growth

HubSpot’s VP of Marketing, Kieran Flanagan, recently shared the key learnings that helped HubSpot instill a culture of growth throughout the entire company.

Vimeo’s Journey to Full-Service SaaS & One Million Paying Subscribers

On this episode of Ground Up, Vimeo’s Melissa Matlins dives deep into Vimeo’s journey to become a full-service video platform and how they’re repositioning the brand to support that.

From HubSpot to Toast to Crayon: The Evolution of the Inbound Marketing Playbook with Ellie Mirman

Imagine this: It’s 2008 and simply having a blog as a business is a massive competitive advantage.

Join 31,910 subscribers to receive latest posts.

The 4 Principles G2’s CMO Used to Grow Monthly Organic Visitors from 500k to 5 Million

Rapid growth is hard—consistent rapid growth at scale is even more of a challenge. Here, Ryan Bonnici explains the 4 principles that helped G2 10X organic visitors.

The 3-Step Approach HubSpot’s VP of Marketing Uses to Set Goals for Continuous Growth

HubSpot’s VP of Marketing, Kieran Flanagan, recently shared the key learnings that helped HubSpot instill a culture of growth throughout the entire company.

Vimeo’s Journey to Full-Service SaaS & One Million Paying Subscribers

On this episode of Ground Up, Vimeo’s Melissa Matlins dives deep into Vimeo’s journey to become a full-service video platform and how they’re repositioning the brand to support that.