HubSpot has long been seen as the leader of the marketing automation platforms, but is it right for your business - and, more importantly, your budget?
We’ve been a HubSpot Partner Agency since 2014, but we know that it’s not a platform that works for all businesses, and we also know that over the years HubSpot has expanded its offering substantially, to ensure it offers support that is helpful - and, affordable - for businesses at varying levels of their inbound marketing journey.
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is a provider of a marketing, sales and service platform that can be built with particular functionalities and cost-levels depending on what you want to achieve from it.
In its essence, it offers the ability to automate marketing, sales and service tasks, including, but not limited to (and dependent on platform choice):
- Blogging
- Live chat
- Email marketing
- Social media
- Reporting and analytics
- Sales funnel
- Re-engagement
It remains the best marketing automation platform on the market and in recent years has overhauled and diversified its offering to ensure there are price points for everyone, including an introductory, free package for those who just want to ‘see what it’s about’.
Why use HubSpot?
It works to implement and review automated marketing, sales and service activities at every stage of the buyer’s journey, so you can use the powerful platform to nurture your customers at whatever stage they are.
Depending on the package you opt for from HubSpot you can achieve the following goals with its marketing, sales and service solutions:
Marketing - Generate qualified leads
- Generate content, capture leads, and nurture them until they’re qualified and sales-ready.
Sales - Turn leads into customers
- Engage potential buyers, demonstrate the value of your offering and close deals.
Service - Convert customers into promoters
- Resolve customer issues to ensure success that generates positive word of mouth.
If you want to try a cross-section of HubSpot’s marketing, sales and service capabilities then you could opt for the HubSpot Growth Platform, which makes for a fantastic all-round approach to implementing HubSpot.
Although this does require a ‘significant’ investment, it is, in our opinion, a great return-on-investment for businesses that have the knowledge and resource (external agency or in-house) to make the most of the powerful tools within the HubSpot Growth Platform.
HubSpot’s Free Marketing Tools & HubSpot’s Free CRM
Try HubSpot for £0 with their fantastic package of free marketing tools alongside its intuitive CRM.
The unrivalled capabilities of HubSpot’s free CRM offering are not to be overlooked:
- Guarantee from HubSpot that free access to the HubSpot CRM will be free forever
- Store 1 million contact and company records
- Register unlimited users for your team to use the CRM effectively
Specific features and tools within the HubSpot CRM include:
- Contact management
- Contact website activity
- Companies
- Deals
- Tasks & activities
- Company insights
- Gmail and Outlook integration
- HubSpot Connect integrations
- Custom support form fields
- Prospects
- Ticketing
- Forms
- Ad management
- Conversations inbox
- Reporting dashboards
- Email tracking & notifications
- Email templates
- Canned snippets
- Documents
- Calling
- Meeting scheduling
- Messenger integration
Don’t forget that’s just the CRM side of HubSpot’s free offering - you can also sign up for free marketing tools to sit alongside your CRM, in the shape of:
- Forms
- Email marketing
- Ad management
- List segmentation
- Conversations inbox
- Team email
- Live chat
- Conversational bots
- Mobile optimisation
- User roles
- Reporting dashboards
- Messenger integration
NOTE: Be aware that if you use HubSpot CRM with the Marketing Hub, the contacts you add to the CRM end up in both places, which could affect your Marketing Hub subscription’s contact tier pricing.
The Growth Platform
A bundle of HubSpot’s most popular tools across its marketing, sales and service software that can really support a growing business like yours - and at a number of price points, might be the best way for your business to implement HubSpot’s capabilities.
Fully-integrated and discounted at 25% off compared to the standalone prices, the HubSpot Growth Platform is offered at various price points and functionality, starting with the Starter Suite at just £95pcm including CRM, Marketing Hub Starter, Sales Hub Starter and Service Hub Starter.
What else?
There is a host of other packages and tools that HubSpot offers, for varying price levels. We recommend anyone keen to investigate further into the world of HubSpot reaches out to us - we’ve been there, got the t-shirt and happy to explain all there is to know!
