If you've spent any time online looking into marketing tools, you've probably seen HubSpot come up in search results and blogs. They bill themselves as an all-in-one marketing tool, but what is HubSpot exactly? And is it worth the money?
Today we're going to break down what HubSpot is, what tools it provides and how it can grow your business.
Full disclosure: BizzyWeb is a HubSpot Platinum Solutions Partner; however this is not a sponsored post and we are not being compensated in any way, nor is the information in this blog meant to represent HubSpot in any official capacity. This is just our experience using these tools, with some information taken from HubSpot's website at the time of writing.
With that obligatory disclaimer out of the way, let's get into the breakdown!
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is a suite of software tools for marketing, contact management, sales and web design. The HubSpot platform itself is a hub (har har) of five main software. It all begins with the free customer relationship management system (CRM), and from there customers can choose any or all of the software they desire:
- Marketing Hub
- Sales Hub
- Service Hub
- CMS Hub
- Operations Hub
What makes HubSpot unique is that all of these software are housed within the same platform, which means you can use them to seamlessly speak to each other without needing other tools. For example, a client in your CRM can be sent a marketing email right from within the same tool, without needing to export and import an email list.
HubSpot Software
Marketing Hub
What it is:
Marketing software to help you grow traffic, convert more visitors, and run complete inbound marketing campaigns at scale.
Translation: It's a software through which you run your marketing - whether it be individual posts, inbound marketing campaigns or online advertising.
What it includes:
- Email marketing and reporting (automated and scheduled emails)
- Social media posting, monitoring and reporting
- Forms
- Landing pages
- Conversion reporting and analysis
- Online advertising through Facebook, Instagram, Google and/or LinkedIn
- Marketing automation
- Blogging
(Note: Marketing Hub is available at different levels, with varying access to to the tools mentioned above)
How it can help grow your business:
Because the Marketing Hub provides various tools all in one spot, it makes it significantly easier to manage marketing efforts and create campaigns. Instead of needing to manually log into each of your social media accounts, email marketing tool and blog, you can create, schedule and post content directly within HubSpot. This can help increase your margins both in time spent and potentially in overall cost as well (depending on what marketing tools you currently use).
Additionally, you can create inbound marketing campaigns, which are targeted, customer-oriented marketing efforts that are more likely to lead to conversions and sales.
Sales Hub
What it is:
Sales CRM software to help you get deeper insights into prospects, automate the tasks you hate, and close more deals faster.
Translation: A customer relationship management (CRM) software where you can track, manage and analyze your sales process - for example, phone calls to leads, emails to existing clients and sales team internal communication.
What it includes:
- Contract, deal and task management
- Email templates, tracking and scheduling
- In-app calling for cal tracking
- Meeting scheduling tool
- Quote tool
- Live chat
- Sales automation and sequences
- Custom reporting
- Custom lead scoring
(Note: Sales Hub is available at different levels, with varying access to to the tools mentioned above)
How it can help grow your business:
The Sales Hub takes you out of spreadsheet purgatory and into a full organized contact management system that allows you to track a sales lead at every stage of their journey. This allows your company to be set up for future growth by insuring that everyone on your sales team has access to all the information they need.
If you pair Marketing Hub with Sales Hub, you can also track your marketing efforts to direct dollar amounts in sales.
→Read Now: Why Does a Business Need a CRM System?
Service Hub
What it is:
Customer service software to help you connect with customers, exceed expectations, and turn them into promoters who grow your business.
Translation: It's a customer retention software to organize, track and automate customer service communications (both externally and internally).
What it includes:
- Full ticketing (and ticket creation bots)
- Email and chat to ticket
- Live chat
- Email templates and team email
- Knowledge base
- Customer feedback surveys
- Team management and user roles
(Note: Service Hub is available at different levels, with varying access to to the tools mentioned above)
How it can help grow your business:
Business growth isn't just about attracting new customers: it's also important to retain the customers you have and turn them into brand ambassadors by providing excellent service. A happy customer will spread the word about your business - but so will a dissatisfied customer. Service Hub allows you to create, manage and track tickets for all customer service or troubleshooting concerns. The automation and chatbot tools make it easy to answer frequent questions, while the knowledge base tool allows you to create and host a wider depth of support articles for your audience.
CMS Hub
What it is:
Content management software that’s flexible for marketers, powerful for developers, and gives customers a personalized, secure experience.
What it includes:
- Website builder and editor (with a drag-and-drop editor)
- SEO Recommendations
- Website themes
- An integrated CRM (customer relationship management software)
- Contact attribution reporting
How it can help grow your business:
A website is the core of all your marketing (or...hub...if you will...) which means it's important to ensure that your website looks good on all devices, is easy for you to update and also is primed to convert visitors into leads. The biggest benefit of building your website on HubSpot is that when it's paired with any of the other hubs it can create seamless reporting. For example, you could track a sale from their very first interaction on your website to gain insight as to what pages your leads look at before contacting you.
→Read Now: 8 Reasons Why You Should Build Your Website in HubSpot
Operations Hub
What it is:
Operations software that syncs your apps, cleans customer data, and automates processes — so all your systems and teams work better together.
Translation: Operations Hub is a more robust customer relationship management software (CRM) that allows you to sync other apps, software and tools to HubSpot.
What it includes:
How it can help grow your business:
Similar to the standard CRM, the Operations Hub allows your business to grow by cleaning up daily processes and organizing everything into one place. This hub takes the process further by allowing you to sync your other apps, software and tools to migrate over data and automate your processes. Ultimately, this means less time all of your teams spend hunting down information and a more organized tracking area for your project managers and team leads.
→Read Now: 9 Critical Things To Do When Business is Slow
Final Thoughts
HubSpot is a robust suite of software, but all have the common purpose of simplifying, distilling and analyzing data. For businesses that are ready to invest in their marketing and want to see some serious growth, choosing at least the Marketing Hub will allow you to cultivate leads on a larger scale than using separate systems.
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BizzyWeb is a Minneapolis-based digital marketing and web design agency that helps companies get the high-quality leads they need to grow and thrive. Our tactics include inbound marketing, SEO, advertising, web design, content creation and sales automation. We are an accredited HubSpot Platinum Partner and we offer full-service HubSpot onboarding, enablement and strategy for new and current users.
