Marketing is everything.
It’s the reason why at some point in time, people have thought it cool to have Tamagotchi pets and why Keeping Up With The Kardashians lasted for 20 seasons (Seriously?).
But setting aside questionable trends, you thoroughly believe in your products and services, so you definitely want to use the right tools to spread the word.
One of the most popular resources is HubSpot. Specifically, its Marketing Hub, which provides everything you need for your team to collaborate effectively as you grow your business.
But, why, exactly, is it considered to be the Holy Grail of inbound marketing for so many industry experts? Turns out, there are a lot of reasons. So go grab a sandwich and read on.
HubSpot is software that offers a wide range of products to make running your business significantly easier, including a customer relationship management (CRM) solution, content management, and marketing, sales, and customer service tools. It also integrates with most existing software you’re already using, so it’s an all-in-one solution.
It’s relatively easy to use; but it does have a steep learning curve at the beginning. But not to fear, because they also do a lot of hand holding to help you get up to speed. Between HubSpot Academy courses (which are free) and their knowledge base, you and your team will be up and running in no time.
Let’s discuss HubSpot Marketing Hub. This element of the platform sets the foundation for attracting the right audience and more website visitors into customers.
It’s also pretty brilliant in helping you retain existing customers. That all sounds good, but how does it do it?
When getting started, you first have to choose between three different tiers:
If you have a small team and/or a tight budget, the starter hub offers basic marketing capabilities for up to 1,000 contacts. This includes creating marketing emails and landing pages, ad management, and reporting dashboards so you can track your campaigns’ effectiveness.
If you need to market to additional contacts, you can purchase capabilities to do so in increments of 1,000. Pricing starts at $45 a month, with a 10 percent discount if you pay it in yearly installments. Prices increase depending on how many additional contacts you want to add to the platform.
In addition, you have access to all the free tools HubSpot offers to all users, including:
Granted, a lot of the free capabilities are limited. However, the Marketing Hub Starter can be an ideal marketing solution for small businesses, and you can always be sure to still receive HubSpot’s stellar customer support.
The Marketing Hub Professional tier lets you do everything the starter does, starting with 2,000 contacts (you can purchase the ability to market to additional ones, in increments of 5,000).
It also provides 1,000 active contact segmentation lists, ad management for five audiences, social media management, omni-channel marketing automation, team collaboration, up to 30 currencies, and customized campaign reporting.
In addition, you get access to the following tools:
Pricing starts at $800 per month, with a 10 percent discount if you commit to pay it annually upfront. Additional marketing contacts can be purchased for $224.72 per month, in increments of 5,000.
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Enterprise offers all the features of the previous two tiers.
However, some of them are extended; such as 1,500 contact segmentation lists, 50 reporting dashboards, ad management for 15 audiences, double the contact tier email limit per month than the Professional Hub (20x vs. 10x), and up to 200 currencies.
In addition, features that are exclusive to this tier include:
Pricing starts at $3,200 a month, billed at $38,400 annually. You have the option to increase contacts by 10,000 segments, for an additional $100 a month.
No matter the tier that’s most practical for your business size, all of them have many benefits in common. These include:
Users don’t need to be tech whizzes to learn how to use HubSpot’s features. In fact, once you undergo basic training, a lot of them are intuitive and simple to use.
They also make things a lot easier by allowing users to create modules that they can continue to use over and over again, just by simply choosing the formats, styles, and colors that match your brand — no coding background required.
HubSpot Academy offers hundreds of free courses from leading inbound marketing industry experts. Since not all of the courses are relevant to your job role or business goals, you can browse through topics to find the ones that are most useful to you.
And they’re not just about having someone speak into a camera while you get distracted by your surroundings. You actually have to take practical exams to measure how much of the information you understood.
It’s also a good way to get practical knowledge of what you’ve already learned in theory (which is truly the best way to actually learn anything). And once you’re done, you earn certifications that you can include in your resumé, LinkedIn account, and your company’s accolades displays.
Ok. So HubSpot offers a lot of tools outside of their Marketing Hub. And their tools can also work with a ton of your other software platforms, including:
In fact, they have a HubSpot App Marketplace, where you can search for tools you’re already using to verify whether they integrate with the platform.
By the same token you can get a lot of bang for your buck by having a lot of the marketing solutions you need, all within the same hub.
Draft marketing emails using templates. Schedule posts and monitor all your social media channels (including likes, mentions, and direct messages). Automate communications that are deployed upon specified user behavior (such as first time visitors, new subscribers, people enrolling in webinars/downloading content).
Draft, edit, and publish blogs. Anything you need for your marketing campaign is included in the hub.
Teams can’t work in silos — especially the marketing and sales departments. HubSpot makes it easy for anyone who works together to get a full view of a contact’s history with your company — previous interactions, communications, past purchases, queries, etc.
Team members can also provide feedback directly on the marketing assets, and they can tag specific team members to ensure they stay updated.
Since HubSpot offers so many features, it’s natural to have questions about how to use some of them.
And their extensive knowledge base makes it really easy for users to enter their question on the search bar and access a list of related answers; many of which walk you through processes step by step and offer images to make it as easy to follow as possible.
This feature also includes related content, such as industry articles, how-to guides, and frequently asked questions. Content is also categorized by topic, so searches can be narrowed down specifically to marketing by clicking on the Marketing Tools icon.
For any business to be successful, it’s crucial for the sales and marketing teams to be on the same page. The former needs sales qualified leads, and the latter needs to know exactly who they’re targeting with content.
Since HubSpot makes it so easy to collaborate within teams, they can both build marketing campaign strategies together. Then, they can keep all related data, campaign progress, and previous communications with leads and customers in one centralized location.
If there is one recurring theme that you’ll always see in inbound marketing blogs, that theme is centered around tailoring content to the target audience.
Your existing customers should not be receiving irrelevant content regarding how to make a purchase from you, or informational material about what it is that you do. By the same token, first-time website visitors don’t need to receive re-engagement marketing emails.
HubSpot’s segmentation feature categorizes your contacts so that you can tailor your communications based on who each contact is and what they need. It also saves their preferred style of communication, so that you can always reach them the way they want.
Since HubSpot helps your team with segmenting contacts, it makes it much easier to provide personalized content. This doesn’t just include greeting people by name, but sending them marketing materials that take their specific circumstances into context.
For example, someone who just enrolled in one of your programs may receive follow up information relating to that program; while someone who showed interest in an upcoming event may receive related information.
One of the best things about inbound marketing is that you get to offer content that’s relevant specifically to users. Unlike junk mail that goes straight to your recycling bin, website visitors actually want to read what you have to offer… as long as they realize that it pertains to their specific needs/pain points.
HubSpot’s smart content feature displays different versions of your content based on where in the buyer’s journey the reader is in (first time visitor, qualified lead, or existing customer).
Other factors that HubSpot takes into account when deciding which content to display include the visitor’s location, language, IP address, browser cookies, device type, and referral source (Google, social media, marketing email, ads, or backlinks).
When you write website content in HubSpot, you get a checklist of search engine optimization (SEO) items, such as using x number of characters for a meta description, including links to reputable sources, alt image text, URL, headings, subheadings, etc.
So you don’t have to worry about whether you’ve done all you can to increase your chance of eventually ranking high in search engine results pages (SERPs). Just go down the checklist on the margin of the content editor. Whenever you’ve met each requirement, they will appear in green, with a check mark.
Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to consuming content and analyzing data. For this reason, HubSpot lets you customize your analytics dashboards to satisfy anyone from the nerdiest analyst to your average Jane.
Also, you can create up to 300 dashboards, so that team members can focus on the metrics that are relevant to their specific job roles.
Although HubSpot’s knowledge base is pretty extensive, sometimes you just need someone to walk you through a process or answer a unique question. No matter which platform tier you purchase, you always have access to HubSpot’s Help Center. However, which channel is available to you does depend on your plan:
For free users with free marketing tools, you can get support through HubSpot’s Community. Users with Marketing Hub Starter can contact customer support via community, email, and/or chat, while the Professional and Enterprise plans also offer phone support. You can also reach support through their Twitter handle, @hubspotsupport.
Hours of operation for the call center are from 7:00AM to 8:00PM EST on weekdays. You can call outside of those days and hours, but may experience longer wait times. That said, you can request a callback so that you’re not stuck on hold with elevator music.
Doing business directly with HubSpot isn’t the only way to reap the benefits of their marketing tools. There are several service agencies who are part of the platform’s Solutions Partner Program.
When you’re seeking services such as web design and/or inbound marketing (among others), these partners can help you optimize your experience with HubSpot. Specifically, you’ll obtain support for the following:
Change often comes with a learning curve, and partner agencies are ready, willing, and able to do a lot of hand holding during the onboarding process.
This includes how-to video tutorials during live conference calls and walking you through all of the features you’ll need to make your marketing campaigns a success.
There’s no point in generating leads that aren’t really the people you’re looking for. HubSpot Solutions Partner agencies help you get the right people into your sales pipeline.
Partner agencies follow HubSpot’s flywheel framework when developing content. This way, you can ensure you’re attracting your specific target audience — and that they will continue to engage with your business until they are ready to make a purchase.
One of the best ways to ensure leads eventually turn into customers is that you make converting as easy as possible for them.
No guessing, no playing around on your site to figure things out, not being put on the back burner when reaching out to you. HubSpot Solutions Partners build frictionless lead generation paths to increase the likelihood of closing those sales.
In today’s digital world, it can be difficult to stand out from the competition in SERPs. But it’s not impossible when you follow tried and true SEO best practices.
This is where SEO services come in handy. HubSpot partner agencies know how to cut through the noise and ensure your content is more comprehensive and useful than that of your competitors.
HubSpot is practically a panacea for all of your marketing needs. And with the right HubSpot Solutions Partner, the process is a lot easier than you could imagine.