What We’re Building with Starter Story

  We have some big news: HubSpot Media is acquiring Starter Story, one of the most trusted and beloved media brands in the entrepreneurship space. If you’ve spent any time in the world of bootstrapped businesses, online startups, or the indie founder community, you already know what Starter Story is. But if this is your first introduction, buckle up, because …

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Our top picks for growing businesses

If you’re managing social media marketing without a social media scheduler, I’ve got one thing to say to you: You’re making your job harder than it needs to be. A social media scheduler eliminates the chaos of logging into multiple platforms, posting in real-time, and hoping you remembered to hit publish at the right moment — freeing you to focus …

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How to win with a small budget in 2026

In a past work life, I stole search rank positions #1 and zero and even featured snippets from much larger companies, including HubSpot. That’s why I firmly believe bootstrapped small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMB) can compete with big-budget corporations. Strategies like SEO, social media, and generative engine optimization for small business make it possible.

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24 generative engine optimization statistics marketing leaders should know

I never thought I‘d see the day when “Googling” something and sifting through links would become passé. But, like many marketers over the last year, I’m seeing a massive shift in how people find brands, products, and answers online. More and more consumers are getting their answers directly from AI platforms like ChatGPT, and marketers are leveraging generative engine optimization …

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What is an attribution window in marketing? What marketers need to know

An attribution window is the defined time period when a marketing touchpoint — such as an ad click, email open, or page view — can be credited for a conversion. Window length directly affects how conversions are counted, how channels perform, and how budget decisions are made. Platforms use different defaults, and these differences often create mismatches in data across …

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A proven checklist for operations teams

Marketing tech stacks often expand fast, leading to sprawl. The result is low tool usage. Gartner estimates that only 49% of marketing technology tools are actively used by teams. A marketing operations tech stack audit brings structure back to teams with bloated software.

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How to audit your content for AI search engines

An AI engine optimization audit evaluates brand visibility, accuracy, and citations in AI-powered search engines. It highlights how a brand appears across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Bing Copilot, and identifies gaps in the facts, descriptions, and links these systems rely on. In contrast, a traditional SEO audit focuses on website rankings and technical health in classic search engines.

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What marketers need to know

Understanding answer engine optimization (AEO) vs. traditional SEO has become mission-critical for content managers and marketing leaders as search shifts toward AI-generated responses, voice results, and zero-click experiences. While page ranking on Google is still important (for now), success increasingly depends on whether a brand stays visible when an AI system summarizes an answer.

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