It’s Sunday, 11:17 am.

I didn’t do enough yesterday. Surprise surprise.

I’ve loads of writing to do today, and here I am writing this blog. Of course, I’m three or four blogs behind now as well. No matter how well we do, it always goes back to shit in the end.

Though, I suppose there are positives. It is the 23rd of September, and this blog won’t come out until late October, so I’m well ahead.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t be disappointed.

Which is good, because that’s the thing I’m best at being.

Anyway.

Hubspot and Me

Today’s book was written by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, co-founders of Hubspot.

Or so it says on the front of the book.

If we believe that, which we do, there is no greater endorsement possible of a book about marketing, because Hubspot runs, without a doubt, the most excellent marketing blog on the internet. They produce the greatest whitepapers, ebooks and assorted free materials available, and they have created some fantastic free tools.

They are the champions of inbound marketing, as they should be, they invented it.

I can only talk about the free stuff of course because their marketing suite is so expensive I’ve never been at a company that could feasibly afford it.

But I’m in marketing. Have been since about a year after I left University, and in that time I must have read about 1,000,000 things written by the Hubspot team, and I can tell you now if you want to improve marketing, get to Hubspot.

Inbound Marketing

Okay, first off, Inbound marketing, if you don’t know, is the pursuit of providing valuable content that persuades customers to come to you, rather than outbound marketing which is sending out emails and leaflets and such begging people to shop with you.

The idea of Inbound marketing is that, by offering value to customers for free, you get them to look at your products, and make them more likely to want to buy from you.

It works. That’s proven. And it applies to any company of any size in any industry.

These days, it’s a must.

Hubspot’s blogs and white papers are examples of Inbound marketing, and so is this blog.

You think I want to be sitting here reviewing 210 books?

Well, I kind of do, but I wouldn’t have started if not for the concepts of Inbound Marketing.

The idea is that people will come here, read my blog, and be interested enough to want to buy my books.

So far, 100% of the people who read my blog, buy my books (thanks Fay) so it’s working well.

That is Inbound Marketing.

Inbound Marketing, Attract, Engage, And Delight Customers Online

Here is a book that is a well-written entry-level text on some of the critical principles of putting Inbound Marketing into practice online, with examples from a load of different, and disparate companies.

As someone who has read so much Hubspot content before (as well as thousands of other marketing blogs, books, and ebooks) there was nothing here I hadn’t seen before.

In that respect, it was a boring read.

But, for marketing departments and small business owners, I think this would be an invaluable read. An easy access guide to why Inbound Marketing is so essential for every business, and how to get going with it.

So, if you’re one of those types, maybe give it a go.

The only downside with books like this is the same downside I had with books on writing.

These days there are so many fantastic blogs and ebooks on inbound marketing that I would question the need to spend even (checks back) 20 USD on such a text.

Except maybe that it’s easy to read in bed.

But if you do want a nice collection of inbound marketing tricks and tactics that don’t require you read lots of different blogs across lots of various sites, you can’t do much better than starting with the book launched by the founders of inbound marketing itself.

If it’s a book on Inbound Marketing you want, this is the one to get.

Next Up

Next time around we’ll be heading away from the world of boring marketing and work and blah blah blah. 

Instead, we’ll be diving into one of the most well known and beloved children’s series of all time. 

Written by R. L. Stein, it’s Goosebumps

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Mark Ayre

International worst selling author Mark Ayre has been writing since before he could pick up a pen (somehow). Recently he is taking the internet by storm with his Man vs Bookshelf Challenge where he aims to read the 210 books on his bookshelf in 210 weeks, reviewing them on his blog and Goodreads along the way. He is also publishing books on Amazon, his most recent being the family suspense novel, Poor Choices, which you can find here.

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