HubSpot: The All-In-One CRM

Usability is HubSpot’s number one strength, so adoption and understanding of HubSpot amongst your team are easy. Getting used to HubSpot is simple not only because of the user experience but also because of the high-quality training materials provided.

The courses they offer are extensive, and they go beyond how to use HubSpot as a platform. The materials are a deep dive into comprehensive topics surrounding digital marketing. Another great perk is that many of those are available on their blog for free.

Beyond ease of use, HubSpot has a great "pay as your grow" model. You can start with the CRM for free, and are able to tack on "hubs" as you grow and expand to tailor your needs and have a tight integration across those products.

HubSpot is truly an all in one platform, so there are multiple ways it can fit with your business needs. There is a traditional website and marketing hub that gives you access to blog functions, landing pages, as well as email automation and workflows. 

HubSpot has also launched a new CMS hub, an enhancement to the website and marketing hub. Their sales hub is also an excellent tool. It boasts a CRM and a deal pipeline, along with other various features for your sales team. 

The service hub is great for customer service and ticketing. A benefit here is that they are all running through the same database, so as you follow your customers, you can follow them through the different hubs and create a full customer history accessible in one CMS.

Firstly, closed-loop marketing is understanding how someone in the customer journey goes from an unidentified visitor to a lead to a customer. Knowing where a customer came from and the path they followed is beneficial to know which channels are most effective and what’s working best in your marketing strategy. 

HubSpot has built-in tools to make visualizing this process simple, especially when integrating apps like Facebook and LinkedIn. When you have the steps set up in HubSpot, it is simple to watch a Facebook lead progress through a series of marketing campaigns and turn into a customer. You can then easily optimize and replicate this journey.

HubSpot has the potential to be the all-in-one for your business; however, there are limitations to every hub that it offers. Where the wealth of data and the potential comes from is through its vast suite of integrations. We have found that HubSpot is extremely user friendly and very well integrated between its sales, marketing, and service hub. 

There are other standard tools within the industry that HubSpot integrates well with, the best example being Google Analytics. Using HubSpot without Google Analytics and Google Search Console is throwing away data. Google's free tools can increase the knowledge of your audience in a way that Hubspot never could on its own. 

Many ad platforms integrate with Hubspot, which offers a lot of accessibility in running marketing campaigns. The bottom line is that HubSpot thrives in an integrated system, rather than as a standalone platform.

You can set up campaign funnels and visual reports that show you what your conversions are like at every level. You can also track a particular campaign and see what your conversion and drop-off percentages are.

Along with providing good options for tracking, HubSpot allows you the opportunity to assign properties and attributes to contacts and customers to analyze how they are moving along in the buyer journey. From a sales perspective, it shows you where customers are falling off the sales cycle, which is valuable information.