“The subscription software business model is really a great business model,” said HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar. “You’ve got predictable revenue, you’ve got great gross margins — the biggest challenge is just distribution of the product. How do you get it out there, how do you make people aware of it?” The traditional marketing model of heavy advertising plus some blog posts won’t work anymore, he said. “We’re going to have to be where people are at all times.” That’s the rationale for some of the moves HubSpot has made this year, like acquiring the media brand The Hustle, with its hugely popular newsletter, in February, and launching the HubSpot Podcast Network in May. Bodnar was keen to explain that these initiatives form part of a broader strategy to invest in solid content across a range of channels. The benefit to HubSpot? “If you think of a traditional media organization, they’ve got a business side running ad sales and all the operations around that. We do the same thing, but we’re our only customer. We still have ad operations, but there’s one advertiser and that’s us.” HubSpot user and host of the Ops Cast podcast (not on the HubSpot network) Mike Rizzo told us: “I think HubSpot creating a media arm to continue building original content is a natural evolution of their inbound marketing methodology,” commented Rizzo. “They literally wrote the book on creating valuable content to drive brand awareness.” Read more here. |