What is HubSpot and what is it used for?
If you are interested in inbound marketing, you have probably heard of HubSpot, a leader in the digital marketing industry. In fact, their blogs, videos, and certification courses are very popular.
Knowing the brand is easy, but it’s a bit more challenging to understand what HubSpot, the software, is and what it does. So, here we’ll take a look.
First, let’s clarify that inbound marketing—as HubSpot defines it—is a methodology aimed at attracting customers by creating valuable content that solves real problems and provides tailored experiences.
HubSpot is a complete marketing suite that allows businesses to create content to share with all their customers throughout the entire sales cycle. It’s an all-in-one tool that helps you from reaching new prospects to closing sales.
This tool aims to grow businesses by creating meaningful and lasting relationships with their consumers, prospects, and customers. Hence, you need to know all about it:
Who should use HubSpot?
The answer is: those who have ever asked themselves these questions.
How to identify and capture your target audience? How to build an inbound marketing strategy to win back customers who don’t fully commit?
What to do to make your website visible to those looking for a specific product online? How to publish all the products you sell if you have other business needs that require your immediate attention?
HubSpot is the tool that provides solutions to all of the above and enhances a business’s chances of success in today’s digital market.
This is because it is a cloud-based CRM designed to help align sales and marketing teams, promote sales enablement, boost ROI, and optimize your inbound marketing strategy to generate more qualified leads.
In other words, it’s software designed to help your business market and sell more effectively.
A bit of HubSpot history
Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah are the co-founders of HubSpot. In 2004, while attending MIT’s business school, they concluded that the world needed a better way to market and sell.
They defined inbound marketing as the best way for businesses to attract visitors, leads, and customers, and in July 2006, they launched HubSpot.
From their analysis of how users were changing their consumption habits and avoiding intrusive advertising—and using the technology they had at hand—they created the philosophy and methodology of inbound marketing.
HubSpot was the software they designed precisely to implement this philosophy. The first step was to create the HubSpot blog, a channel to position themselves with quality content about what this new software was and how the inbound methodology would work.
They then expanded the software technology into a comprehensive marketing tool, but also a sales tool with the development of a CRM and other functionalities for commercial teams.
To help businesses maximize sales and grow more, HubSpot offers a wide range of resources included in its five main Hubs:
Marketing Hub
Sales Hub
Service Hub
CMS (Content Management System) Hub
Operations Hub
The sales tools, customer service software, and inbound marketing offer integration features with many popular online tools and CRMs, including Zendesk, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
This makes it easy to implement HubSpot into your own business, regardless of the software package you currently use.
How does HubSpot work?
HubSpot works by connecting to an organization’s website and, using the numerous tools from its Hubs, attracts, engages, and delights current and potential customers.
This is achieved through the use of the platform to create optimized website content, drive traffic to the website, convert that traffic into leads, and turn leads into customers, in addition to providing exceptional customer service.
HubSpot’s infrastructure uses cloud technology, so an organization’s users can access the platform from anywhere in the world simply by logging in.
The tools allow you to integrate the software into your company’s website or even build your own website on HubSpot.
Advantages of HubSpot
This all-in-one inbound marketing platform (CRM, CMS, analytics, and customer service) offers the following advantages:
Free CRM
Easy to use
Eliminates friction in the buyer journey (thus increasing leads and sales)
Allows users to create all kinds of content for a website and optimize it for SEO
Provides intelligent automation
Helps organizations unify marketing, sales, and service
Organizes and tracks customer communications
Enables organizations to build meaningful and lasting relationships with current and potential customers through valuable content and experiences
Provides useful marketing insights and analytics
Features powerful and robust sales engagement functions
Has over 500 apps that can integrate with the platform
Offers continuous training on inbound marketing and software through its academy
How does a business benefit from implementing HubSpot?
Take a look at some of the main features of its Hubs:
HubSpot Marketing Hub
Its goal is to make life easier for your marketing department. It offers seamless content creation for your blog, email, social media accounts, and website.
It also provides tracking and reporting on the metrics that matter most to you. You’ll be able to see how many people visit your site, where they go, when they leave, and how much they like your landing pages.
It includes tools for creating blogs and content; social media planning and scheduling; tracking all of this; calls to action that provide detailed tracking of click-through rates, impressions, and other KPIs.
HubSpot Sales Hub
It is designed to provide customers with a seamless experience at all touchpoints with your organization.
To achieve this, the sales hub collects specific information about each transaction and places that information in an easy-to-find location.
Each team member can access different parts of this information depending on the permissions you grant them.
The system allows them to provide a higher quality of service with each customer interaction and ultimately close more deals by speeding up the sales process.
HubSpot Service Hub
It offers a complete set of tools that make service delivery easier, smoother, and more transparent.
You’ll be able to identify the issues customers are experiencing, resolve them quickly, and maintain your customers’ satisfaction levels.
It includes tools like live chat or conversational bots; customer portal, email templates, multi-pipeline ticketing, and customer service automation.
HubSpot CMS Hub
It allows developers to add sophisticated code to websites, but it’s still easy and convenient enough for marketers of all levels to use.
Some features include drag-and-drop editor, form creation, blog, website, landing pages, design manager for custom templates and style creation, custom domains, and advanced site navigation menus.
HubSpot Operations Hub
It works to bring all your company’s data, from HubSpot and beyond, into one place. Also to improve processes and make automation, even custom automation, easy to implement.
This hub allows users to create custom dashboards and reports. Some features include internal process automation, duplicate contact management, record customization, custom field mapping, and notification management.
What is HubSpot not?
Even though we’ve done an exhaustive review of its features and functions, it’s important to be clear that HubSpot can’t solve all your sales and marketing problems.
That means you can’t expect to use the software to attract visitors and convert leads into sales as if by magic.
While it presents itself as an all-in-one solution for marketing, sales, and customer service, its best use is typically under a software integration model where your business identifies a need to fill and incorporates it into its daily routine to meet that specific need.
How is HubSpot different from other CRMs?
HubSpot stands out from other CRMs for being free, for the wide range of features it offers, and for its strong emphasis on content marketing.
Salesforce, for example, allows highly customizable lead scoring but lacks the SEO, analytics, and content management features inherent in HubSpot.
HubSpot offers an all-in-one marketing package, whereas other CRMs tend to be standalone systems that require integration with third-party applications.
Overall, HubSpot can save businesses time and money by offering a proven lead generation machine with high-quality features, in addition to its core CRM.
Will HubSpot work for your business?
The only way to know for sure if it fits your business needs is to try it. Every business is different, from goals to customers, culture, and many other aspects.
Just like exercise, you will get as much out of it as you commit to it. If you’re ready to fully embrace the concept of inbound marketing, then the answer is yes.
HubSpot’s tools are there to help you embrace and make the most of inbound marketing, not to do everything for you.
There is no miracle solution, but if you dedicate time to it, you might find that it’s the best way to generate web traffic, convert leads, and close sales.
The most important thing is to analyze your business needs and goals before making any decisions. That will help you better decide which tools and services to adopt in your organization.
