This article was reviewed and updated September 2021.
It's Worth Your Time to Understand the Benefits and Features of HubSpot. We Promise.
Throughout life, we have to make some pretty important decisions, such as choosing a college major, deciding on a career path, and saying yes or no to a potentially life-changing job opportunity.
If you're a business owner or you work in marketing, an important decision you may have to make is "Which marketing platform should we use?" Which is probably why you are reading this blog article.
At TANK New Media we love HubSpot, inbound marketing, growth-driven design, and coffee. In fact, we love them so much that we eat, sleep, and breathe them (probably the reason for our coffee obsession).
Now it's your turn to fall in love with them, too. But it all starts with HubSpot.
But why use HubSpot? Here's an overview of the benefits and features of the platform.
What is HubSpot?
As the inbound approach to marketing and sales has become an increasingly popular and effective method for business growth, it's no surprise that there's an abundance of tools that are available to marketers. Deciding on which tools to use, figuring out if they can work together, and implementing them can be a struggle.
This is when you start to fall in love with HubSpot, because it's all your tools in one platform.
If this is your first interaction with it, you may be asking "What is HubSpot?" Well, in short, HubSpot is an inbound marketing & sales software that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers.
The platform is designed as a one-stop-shop to help you execute inbound marketing from beginning to end, replacing all of those other various marketing tools (think Google Spreadsheets, SalesForce, HootSuite, etc.)
Let's dive in and find out what makes this robust platform highly attractive.
HubSpot Marketing Software — Everything You Need in One Place for an Effective Marketing Campaign
The marketing software of HubSpot's platform can take most, if not all, of the various marketing tools you're already using and unite them or replace them. HubSpot's marketing platform is for creating and promoting buyer-driven content using the following features.
Blogging
HubSpot's fully integrated blogging platform equips you or your content creators with a powerful tool to generate traffic to your website. Engaging content is a must for inbound marketing. HubSpot makes it easy to write, format, and edit blog content with their on-page editor that allows you to start a post from scratch or use one of their pre-made blog templates.
HubSpot makes your SEO optimization "easy like Sunday morning." While creating your blog content, you can get as-you-type keyword suggestions and SEO advice in order to outrank your competitors for your keywords that matter.
Now it's time to promote, promote, promote!
Get your blog in front of the right people at the right time with HubSpot's calendar tool. Plan your editorial calendar and schedule your posts to publish at the best times. Even connect your social media accounts to automatically share the new content. Your subscribers can receive your blogs automatically as they are published with customizable subscriber emails.
After all that hard work you'll want to see how your blog post performed. HubSpot's built-in analytics tool will identify which posts are generating traffic, leads, and customers so you know what content drives results.
Landing Pages
If you could do one thing to dramatically improve your marketing ROI, it would be to use landing pages on your website.
How can you do that on HubSpot? HubSpot provides a built-in-library of mobile-optimized templates, or you can build a landing page from the ground up with their user-friendly editor. Want to preview what your page will look like on mobile, an iPad and desktop before publishing? HubSpot's got you covered! The beauty of this feature is you don't need a designer or IT person to launch a professional looking landing page.
You can display personalized content, calls-to-action (CTA), and forms for each and every visitor to improve the performance of your landing pages. Dynamically show different content based on a visitor’s location, source, device, buying stage, or any other contact detail stored in your CRM.
Once your landing page is live, you can analyze its performance and perform A/B tests on every element in order drive the most conversions. Just like the blog feature, you can also get customized keyword suggestions while writing. The opportunities are endless!
Again, "Why Go HubSpot?" you ask. Well, there's no need for designers or an IT person to create a professional email design. With HubSpot's drag-and-drop feature you can maneuver your way to reusable, branded email templates, or choose from their extensive library.
You can tailor your emails to each subscriber to generate a higher open rate with name personalization. HubSpot can tap into your subscriber's lifecycle stage, list membership' and other information stored in the CRM to serve up the most relevant subject lines, links, and CTA.
The best part? You can schedule your email campaign then sit back and relax knowing your emails will show up in each inbox at the most optimal time, regardless of time zones. Voilà!
Marketing Automation
Lead your leads (see what we did there?) through their own path to close more deals with marketing automation. With marketing automation, you can use each lead's behavior to tailor emails, content, offers, and outreach at scale.
Automate your email campaigns so you can move prospects further down the funnel and generate more qualified leads. You can choose from dozens of triggers, conditions, and actions to send the right emails to the right leads at the right time.
Guess what? Automation isn't just for email. You can automate a variety of tasks and trigger internal notifications to your team when a contact makes a noteworthy action so they know with whom to follow up. Now that's fancy!
Lead Management
How much time have you or your sales team wasted combining data from disconnected tools and databases? With HubSpot's lead management you can access every detail about a lead in a single profile.
It also provides you with a chronological timeline of every touchpoint between a contact and your company — such as emails, page visits, social media interactions, and downloads — so you never miss a beat!
The best part is that HubSpot's inbound marketing platform and HubSpot's free CRM work together seamlessly. Note this — If you're using Salesforce as your CRM, there's a Salesforce and HubSpot integration available. Talk about database power!
Website
Have we mentioned HubSpot makes things easy? Just like the landing pages, and emails, you can also build entire websites from scratch with ease with a simple drag-and-drop builder. Content can be personalized for every type of visitor, and those SEO recommendations to get your website to the top of Googles search.
With HubSpot:
- Your site is mobile optimized from the start.
- Your pages will automatically adjust to any device your visitor may have.
- You can see what your site will look like on any device.
Is their website tracking you ask? Why of course! With HubSpot's integrated analytics you can measure just about anything you need on your website!
Analytics
You want data? HubSpot supports your results-driven thirst! Measure your whole marketing funnel from acquisition to close.
No one wants to waste time with leads that aren't qualified. This software can measure the quantity and quality of traffic you are getting to your website. Analyze how your pages are performing and which traffic sources bring the most visits, contacts, and customers over time. Once you know which sources are driving the highest value — feed the winners!
The analytics tool provides you with detailed reports for every one of your marketing assets including websites, landing pages, emails, blog posts, social media accounts, and so on. You'll have all the data you need to take over the world! Muahaha!
SEO
Why was the SEO expert so frustrated on his way to work? Too much traffic...go figure! With HubSpot SEO, you won't experience frustration, but you will have plenty of traffic (the good kind!). You'll never miss a ranking opportunity. HubSpot will identify the right keywords and topics to target in your content so you can gain visibility from keywords that matter.
You can even see how your competitors are ranking for the keywords you are targeting in a single dashboard. Utilize this data to modify your SEO strategy.
Social Media Publishing & Monitoring
In case we haven't mentioned, HubSpot keeps things easy. That's why you can publish to social networks in the same place that you build campaigns.
Share content — blog posts, landing pages, and more — directly to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ quickly and easily. Plus you can connect your social accounts to your company's blog for seamless automatic publishing. Don't want to post something right away? Schedule content to get in front of your followers at the right moment.
HubSpot's social media monitoring allows you to connect with people who matter. Social interactions are linked to real people in your database which enables you to prioritize conversations with people interested in engagement. And never miss an opportunity to engage, nurture leads, or delight customers with trigger email alerts when a prospect mentions you, a specific keyword, or hashtag.
Dive deeper and create custom keyword monitoring streams for team members to surface the interactions they care about.
HubSpot makes the struggle of reporting social media ROI a thing of the past. All of your marketing is integrated with your CRM so you can see the number of visits, leads, and customers your social media is generating for your company.
Calls-to-Action
Once your readers ingest your content, what do you want them to do?
- Visit your website?
- Schedule a sales meeting?
- Download a content offer?
That's where CTA's come in handy!
HubSpot's CTA builder creates professional CTA buttons or pop-ups in a few easy steps. Insert them into web pages, landing pages, blog posts, etc. to turn every piece of content into a conversion machine.
People like personalization, so attract them with personalized CTA's by using any detail in your contacts database. HubSpot can even tailor CTAs to anonymous visitors based on their location, device, referral source, or preferred language. Therefore everyone gets a customized experience!
Test your CTAs with A/B testing to create data-driven decisions and say goodbye to the guesswork.
Ads
Sadly, ad clicks don't equal instant money in your company's bank account. HubSpot's ads add-on reaches beyond traditional ad metrics to report on actual leads and ROI generated by every single Facebook and AdWords ad. This way you can know exactly how your paid ads are performing.
Your HubSpot list can be utilized to form a bond with a Facebook Ads audience. This eliminates manual uploads and enables automatic targeting of prospects.
You don't have to manage your AdWords and Facebook ads on their separate platforms. All of your ad creation can be completed and managed inside HubSpot. Leads generated with those ads will instantly go into your HubSpot CRM.
Salesforce Integration
We all strive for harmony, especially when it comes to our marketing and sales databases. With HubSpot you can do exactly just that. HubSpot syncs with Salesforce with an easy phone-based setup process. Plus, you get a team of engineers and support staff to maintain and improve your integration.
You will never have to export a list from Salesforce to kick off a campaign or personalize a marketing email. If your sales team closes a lead, Salesforce will send the data right into HubSpot.
Are you done asking "Why Go HubSpot?" yet? We're still going strong with reasons to use HubSpot. Let's look at the sales software features.
HubSpot Sales Software — Time-Saving Sales Tools to Help You Sell More and Work Less
HubSpot Sales Pro helps you connect with the right people at the right time with the right message.
Also, HubSpot Sales Pro gives you everything you need to increase productivity, shorten deal cycles, and make the sales process more human-friendly without adding to your workload.
These following features will have your sales team cranking out leads and closing deals.
Sales Automation
Similar to the Marketing Software's automation, HubSpot's Sales Software takes all of those manual and time-consuming tasks that your sales reps do on a daily basis and automates them. Rotate leads, create deals and tasks, and more.
Pipeline Management
You want to focus on the right deals, right? HubSpot's Pipeline Management features help you do just that. The CRM will swiftly create new deals when adding them from a contact or company record by populating most of the deals automatically with the most up-to-date information. So, less time on data entry and more time for prospecting!
The pipeline management is also customizable to you so you can create your ideal process. Use the sales dashboard to check your progress toward sales quotas so you are always in the know.
Email Scheduling
You won't even have to leave your Gmail account to schedule an email. Simply click the schedule icon on your Gmail composition window and choose a time. How efficient!
Emails are all about timing. Get your emails to the top of your recipient's inbox at the best time. You can choose from several pre-selected times based on data, or select your own.
While emails are scheduled, you can still go in and edit them before they are sent out. No more anxiety of constantly checking your email!
Email Sequences
By automating your follow-up, you instantly have more time put back into your day! Send a series of timed emails to your prospect so you never lose touch. Choose from a list of messages, and enroll a contact right from your inbox.
Just because your automating emails, doesn't mean you have to be impersonal. Use personalization tokens to tailor the emails in your sequence with contact and company details from HubSpot CRM or Salesforce. Then add a human touch to your email with specific details.
HubSpot will supply you with data so you know what sequences are working the best for you so you can optimize your email for the best results.
Email Tracking
Eliminate the guesswork with email tracking! Get a notification the second a lead opens an email and clicks a link inside. These notifications will aid you in sending a perfectly timed follow up.
The tracking history includes an activity stream that automatically logs each leads history inside HubSpot Sales.
Email Templates
In sales, you are always sending repetitive emails. With HubSpot's email templates you can turn your most effective and repetitive emails into templates that are accessed right in your email inbox when composing an email. HubSpot has a library of built-in templates, or you can make your own. Imagine the hours you will save!
Real-time metrics show you which templates are performing and which ones need some TLC. Your open rates tell you which subject lines your leads and customers can’t help but click.
Document Tracking
HubSpot has a one-stop-shop for all of your sales documentation. You have the ability to build and share one document or an entire library of your sales content for your entire team to access.
When a lead opens a document, you will be instantly notified so you can follow up in a timely and relevant way. Optimize your documents and personalize your pitch by seeing who views each document and which pages they spend time on.
Calling
HubSpot's calling and call tracking feature will prioritize and create a queue for your daily sales calls using engagement and property dating from the CRM so you can spend less time dialing and more time selling!
A really nifty feature of this tool is the fact you don't ever have to leave your browser or pick up a phone to place a call. With one click you are connected to a prospect through Voice Over IP on your desk phone. Your calls will always come from your personal number with the option to record each call so nothing gets missed!
Say goodbye to grunt work! All calls are automatically logged to HubSpot CRM or Salesforce.
Live Chat
With HubSpot's Sales Pro live chat tool, you can connect directly with prospects in real time when they’re actively engaging with your website — which is the perfect time as they are interested and active in the buying process.
With the live chat tool, conversations can be routed to the right sales person to build better relationships and close more deals. Leads and conversations are seamlessly synced into HubSpot so sales rep, can continue to nurture those relationships as well as schedule follow-up tasks.
Again, no need for an IT person to get this up and running! All you have to do is grab the code snippet and embed it on any page on your website you want live chat to appear! Just like that, everything is connected. Your live chat window's look and feel is also customizable.
Meeting Scheduling
The back-and-forth meeting scheduling is a thing of the past with HubSpot's meeting widgets. The power now lies in the hands of your prospects, and they like it! Meeting widgets sync with your calendar so prospects can see your real-time availability. These widgets and schedulers can be placed on your website and in emails.
Send group meeting links to allow prospects to book time with more than one person in your organization. If you don't have a set sales rep, there is a round robin meeting link for your prospect to book a meeting with the rep that best fits their schedule.
When meetings are booked, HubSpot instantly creates a record in the CRM.
Custom Reports & Report Templates
Imagine ALL of your data in one place. Now that's a happy thought! Report on any metric from HubSpot Marketing, any record from HubSpot CRM, and any data from integrated apps and customize it towards your needs.
HubSpot offers a library of reporting templates or build your own and choose between pie charts, bar, chars, donut charts, and area charts (oh my!). Then your data is there in real time.
Sharing metrics with your team is crucial. With custom reporting you can create an unlimited number of dashboards so everyone can hone in on the data that matters to them.
Why We Love HubSpot — and Why You Should Join HubSpot With Us.
Here are a few interesting facts about HubSpot:
- They lead the world in the approach and execution of Inbound Marketing.
- Their wholistic approach to business growth includes marrying marketing, sales, and enablement to produce a powerful concept called Growth Stack.
- They have over 34,000 partner agencies in more than 90 countries using their award-winning software and support.
- Their software is effective and powerful. There's no denying it!
But, like everything else in life, HubSpot has some shortcomings. That's why they've decided to fill those gaps by partnering with other experts. For this reason, HubSpot has worked with other leaders to develop integrations with numerous applications — including Eventbrite, SurveyMonkey, GoToWebinar, Databox, Wistia, PandaDocs — to support marketing effort, lead generation, and overall productivity. Impressive, right?
When you become a HubSpot customer, you not only get a powerful marketing machine, but also a robust support system, you'll never feel alone. If you need help, here are a few ways you can get personalized HubSpot Support.
- Talk strategy with other HubSpot customers and HubSpot partners on the HubSpot customer forum.
- Ask a question via Twitter (@HubSpotSupport).
- Call their support engineers at 1-888-HUBSPOT ext. 3. They're standing by to help.
- Take an academy class.
- Read up! Their marketing blog and sales blog are full of valuable information.
HubSpot's inbound marketing and sales software is the most impactful platform we have ever used.
What about you? Do you have questions about HubSpot? Not sure about inbound marketing? Ready to learn more about how HubSpot could solve your businesses pain points? Maybe you want to talk to someone to determine if HubSpot would be a good fit for your business?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, connect with our team. We want to answer your questions and help you determine if and how HubSpot can help your company grow and reach its goals!
