Inbound marketing is the present and the future. It’s ever-evolving, it’s effective and it’s...
The marketing world is packed full of loads of different inbound software all promising to help your business. Sure, they might be great but there’s a reason HubSpot is the king (or queen) of inbound marketing. Outdated tactics don’t work anymore and you need a breath of fresh air with buyers now in control.
So, here’s why you should use HubSpot for your inbound strategies.
Oh, and I’m not just bigging HubSpot up just because we’ve won some awards either or because we’re an Elite Partner Agency. We love it as it works so well but we don’t recommend it if you don’t have the time, energy or finances to invest in the tool or an agency.
If you do, then HubSpot will be perfect for your needs.
1. It’s a comprehensive CRM platform that offers everything you need
This is the dream for marketers. With HubSpot, you’ll no longer have to juggle between different platforms to market to potential and existing customers. You can create and optimise your content, nurture leads, monitor contacts as they become customers and see how your marketing progresses.
What’s better than being able to do all of this and more in one tool? You’ve got the marketing side sorted, your sales can use it to get deep insights on prospects and then use the Service Hub to grow customer satisfaction. Then, use the CMS Hub to focus on improving your website.
Perfect.
2. The HubSpot CRM is flexible, empowering and cohesive
HubSpot is designed to help your company run better so you can grow better. As it's carefully crafted in-house and not cobbled together through acquisitions, it brings together some unique benefits to you.
- Flexible: You can customise HubSpot to meet your business needs without adding unnecessary complexity. Purchase hubs together or individually and you can even use handy features like custom objects to use what works for you.
- Empowering: HubSpot combines powerful features in an easy-to-use software you and your team will love. The UX is super clean, it's simple to follow and the rich insights you'll find will help tweak your business strategy for the better.
- Cohesive: All the hubs, tools and integrations connect seamlessly in HubSpot, providing a more cohesive experience you can't get anywhere else. The level of alignment helps to create more personalise and remarkable experiences to help your business grow.
3. You benefit from CRM-powered marketing
HubSpot has recently started to put a huge focus on how the CRM powers marketing and ads. We're all in the same boat - it isn't easy getting noticed by users who are already flooded with content. That's why HubSpot has fine-tuned the Marketing Hub to make it easier to deliver CRM-powered marketing.
There are plenty of new features (including custom objects mentioned above so yes, it's that useful), while also making paid efforts more effective. Now, HubSpot helps optimise ads that actually convert so users not only click but also buy from you.
To do this, the HubSpot ads optimisation events feature sends a signal to Google whenever a contact's stage changes to better inform the algorithm. If that wasn't enough, it also makes sure your budget doesn't go to waste.
4. It’s the best software for an inbound strategy
Inbound marketing really came to light and started to dominate marketing thanks to Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. Their knowledge and expertise about all things inbound has resulted in a marketing platform that caters to every stage of a successful inbound plan and the buyer’s journey.
The tracking and analytics available from HubSpot can’t be beaten. It means you can create content and tailor it precisely to where each user is in their own persona’ buyer’s journey. It’s no longer a guessing game.
5. You can integrate HubSpot with other platforms
There might be cases where your business needs other platforms, such as WordPress or Magento. I don’t blame you for thinking that you have to choose one or the other and can’t use HubSpot.
HubSpot can be integrated with WordPress, Magento and plenty of other platforms. So if you need to nurture your leads in HubSpot while managing your website’s maintenance in another, you can do just that.
6. HubSpot is really easy to use
HubSpot has gone to great lengths to fine-tune its usability. It now features a simple layout which makes it even easier to navigate to all of the different powerful tools on offer. The changes in the design has actually led to an increase in conversion rates and it’s really effective to navigate through HubSpot.
Fun fact: HubSpot’s research into UX and UI was to test a drunken user while watching and listening carefully.
7. Get the best inbound education
Need to get a little more clued up on content, SEO, emails and everything in between? HubSpot has you covered. HubSpot Academy offers extensive online training through courses, projects, certifications and software training.
Image Credit: HubSpot
It doesn’t matter if you’re an inbound newbie or an expert ahead of the game. HubSpot continues to release new courses to help you improve.
8. Get your sales and marketing on the same page
It might seem impossible based on the current way of working, but sales and marketing alignment is a genuine possibility thanks to HubSpot’s CRM. It offers a wide range of sales tools and allows for closed-loop reporting from new lead to customer or evangelist.
Trust me, your sales team will love this.
9. You don’t need to sacrifice your favourite apps
With HubSpot, you don’t need to compromise on some go-to apps you enjoy using. HubSpot has loads of integration partners that work closely together to offer you a seamless experience. Slack, Shopify, Vidyard, Databox...the list goes on.
Just pay a visit to the marketplace and you’ll be blown away with what’s on offer.
10. Share knowledge with communities...
You’re not just limited to the HubSpot Academy for when you want to learn more about all things inbound marketing. Around the globe, there are over 150 HubSpot User Groups (or HUG for short) that take place. These communities are perfect if you want to learn about inbound marketing best practices and network with other HubSpot users.
We actually run the Manchester HUG. You can find out more about the talks that were delivered here. Or just click the button below if you fancy tagging along to the next one.
11. ...or go big and fly to INBOUND
If you’ve experienced HUGs and love what you heard or saw, then INBOUND is the next step up. HubSpot runs an annual conference in Boston which features engaging seminars, brilliant keynotes and plenty of workshops hosted by world-renowned experts in their fields.
It’s not just about attending the event. It’s the fact that HubSpot goes bigger and better every year and releases new features for you to take advantage of. You’ll always be stay ahead of those that don’t have this knowledge by using the platform to its full potential.
12. Identify prospects easier
HubSpot can identify and track IP addresses from companies who are visiting your website. Their activity can be monitored by your team until it’s time to approach them. It’s good to have this recorded history of pages and content they’ve been looking at, as it’ll help you understand what they’re looking for and give your sales team more information about any leads.
13. HubSpot monitors the entire buyer’s journey
In HubSpot, you can actually see what stage of the buyer’s journey your contacts are in. That means you can see when they first become a lead, what pages they’ve looked at and when they’ve become a customer. This is a handy feature as it lets you find out when somebody becomes a marketing qualified lead (MQL).
Being able to see the life cycles of leads helps you assess where they are in the buyer’s journey and when it’s time for your sales team to pounce approach them.
14. Automatically updated information for your sales team
Whenever HubSpot receives new information about a lead, it’s clever enough to automatically update the records. Let’s say a contact downloads a form and gives their name and email address - that information is added to the contact profile. Then if they download another guide a few weeks later but leave more information like their number and job title, the profile automatically updates again.
This is a lifesaver for your sales team as they’ll have this information at their disposal within HubSpot.
15. Easily get your hands on detailed reports with comprehensive dashboards
In the HubSpot Reports tool, you can view all the standard reports in your account or even create custom ones. This is ideal as you can analyse records and activities through custom dashboards for your team based on any metric. Sales, marketing, customer service - HubSpot lets you do it all.
Having a centralised home for all your data is great. You can build deeply customisable reports in seconds, send reports directly to the relevant people on a recurring basis and view data in a nice, easy-to-understand way. You’ll finally have a clear way of measuring your ROI.
16. Hone your email skills
HubSpot’s email offering helps you gain deep insights into your prospects. You’ll also get the right information to the right people at the right time by automating your emails. You can send these emails to your contacts when your leads are most interactive with their inbox. This is a massive contribution toward your email open rates.
Want to turn it up a notch?
Make the most of email tracking to eliminate the guesswork. You can receive notifications when prospects and leads open your emails and this is all automatically updated within HubSpot. This is really helpful as you get to see when and how recipients interact with your emails, then use that information to improve your future marketing efforts.
17. Easily create new email templates to save time
This is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Email templates are pre-made emails you can send without having to type the same content time and time again. Don’t worry, you won’t lose the personalisation aspect either as you can customise these emails to your contacts.
Image Credit: HubSpot
You can save so much time and hassle by using these templates.
18. Create and share meeting links
There’s a really helpful Meetings tool that’s worth checking out. After you connect your calendar and preferences to it, you can share links with contacts to help book time. As all the links sync with your calendar, you’ll always have up-to-date appointments.
It’s reported that professionals burn up nearly five hours per week scheduling meetings. HubSpot has made it easy to skip back and forth as you schedule meetings right from your email, CRM or website.
19. An extensive built-in calendar to make life easier
If you have regular trouble with content management and organisation, then the calendar is a lifesaver. When it comes to marketing you need to be weeks or even months ahead to stay ahead of your competition.
HubSpot’s calendar gives you a clear view of what’s been scheduled for the days, weeks or months ahead. You’ll be able to see when social posts, emails, blogs, landing pages and more have been published and scheduled.
No more wasting time or running the risk of sending out duplicate content.
20. Take advantage of a smooth social media integration
Sure, you can use independent scheduling software for social media like Hootsuite and Buffer. If that’s working for you, then perfect. Although, it’s pretty nice to have things all in one place.
In HubSpot, you can integrate your social media accounts and schedule social posts straight from your CRM. Or whenever you finish a blog post, go ahead and post social messages right away to shout about your sick new content. This is really useful as you’ll save so much time compared to logging in and out of different accounts.
21. No more boring CTAs
HubSpot allows you to design your calls-to-action (CTAs) so you can stand out from the crowd. You can let your conversion rates reach new levels to attract leads and convert existing ones into customers - all while promoting your business. So, let those creative juices flow and create highly-customised, appealing CTAs. Oh, and you also have the ability to A/B test your CTAs too so you can get the best results.
Once you’ve created them, sit back and observe their performances. Monitor metrics like views, clicks, locations and more to see what has and hasn’t worked.
22. Thorough marketing automation
HubSpot gives you the ability to automate your emails after customers take specific actions, like downloading content, making a purchase or signing up for emails. Email automation nurtures your contacts over time. This automation system continues working behind the scenes and engages with your potential customers so you can focus on other tasks.
You have the ability to carefully plan what content contacts receive depending on how they interact with your earlier communications. This is thanks to what HubSpot calls workflows…
23. Email workflow creation
Inbound success does rely on nurturing your leads into customers with email workflows. Email automation, workflows, drip campaigns - call them what you want but they all do the same thing. These emails are sent automatically after a contact takes a specific action.
HubSpot lets you create workflows from scratch and customise them to react to a contact’s actions. Each stage of the workflow can be customised. You can decide how long the delay will be until your contact receives the next automated email and create decision branches.
Image Credit: HubSpot
Easy.
24. Become a pro with Conversations
It can be pretty annoying when potential customers and visitors get away before you can even talk to them. HubSpot lets you connect with them in real-time to ensure you convert new leads and close more deals through Conversation (well, chatbots basically).
The live chat software lets you connect instantly with your website visitors when and how they want. You won’t need to do all the work either. Make it easier by personalising chatbots and never lose a lead.
25. A handy ticketing system
If you want to give your customers extra support and offer more than a chatbot solution, then you can take your customer service experience up a level with HubSpot’s ticketing system. You can head over to the HubSpot ticket dashboard and organise all your customer enquiries in one place.
Image Credit: HubSpot
You can create tickets from your dashboard, monitor the status of tickets, response time and much more. This is really useful as your marketing, sales and service teams will have more accurate pictures of your customers’ needs and challenges in real-time.
Just a side note, this is part of HubSpot’s Service Hub, so you might not have all of the available functionality unless you’re using this package.
26. List and segmentation possibilities
Although you have your buyer personas, always keep in mind that each contact is different. For example, some will be more responsive to your email marketing tactics than others. That’s where HubSpot’s segmentation possibilities help as you can break down your contacts to make your marketing a whole lot more effective.
Whether it’s gender or location, the contact’s industry or responsiveness, there are so many ways you can segment your contact list. It’s a more sophisticated way of marketing as it saves you wasting time on contacts that aren’t interested in certain emails.
Overall, it’s going to reduce the risk the chances of them unsubscribing.
27. Keep your buyer personas in one place
I’ve already mentioned a few times that one thing everyone loves about HubSpot is having everything in one place. Buyer personas are no different. Your semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers can be found easily in your CRM.
In your dashboard, scroll down to see all of your top personas, view them individually and manage their properties to however you need.
28. Take personalisation up a level
Personalised content does 178% better than non-personalised content. I know, that’s a 🤯🤯🤯 statistic but hear me out.
It’s a relationship-driven market out there and customers want a human, helpful experience with your business. With HubSpot, smart content and personalisation are built into the roots so you can show the most relevant messages to visitors.
Landing pages, websites pages, emails - you can personalise content the way your customers want to engage with. It’s really easy to hit the personalisation token in HubSpot and pull through each contact’s properties. Just try it out with your prospects, leads and customers and see how the metrics improve.
Conversion rates will increase and you’ll create long-term relationships with your customers as you’re building trust with them.
29. Save valuable time with automation
With HubSpot, wave goodbye to repetitive tasks such as email, social media and other time-consuming actions. Just hit autopilot and make tasks easier with marketing automation from HubSpot. It’ll save you valuable time and money as you nurture leads through the buyer’s journey.
By automating tasks, you can provide your customers with the content they need at the exact time they want it. Implement HubSpot’s marketing automation and your business will become more efficient and you can reach your goals faster.
30. Make SEO your best friend in HubSpot
HubSpot’s integrated SEO tools will let you optimise content easier than ever, so it’ll never be a nightmare like it was in the past. HubSpot makes building authority easy for topics that matter, helping your content sit on the throne at the top of search engine results and outrank your competition.
Whenever you create a blog, landing page or website page, HubSpot will give you timely, on-page SEO advice that actually helps. You can also plan your content strategy and build search engine authority by creating clusters of content around your core topics with integrated content tools.
Then take it up a level by tracking the performance of your content and continue optimising content where relevant to stay ahead of the game.
31. Make swift website edits
Your company relies on your website. Things might change really fast so it should be easy making edits to your website without roping in your developers all the time. With the HubSpot CMS, you can click a few buttons (make sure you have relevant access) and tinker with the edits.
Whether it’s landing pages, blog posts or website pages, you can jump in and quickly make the edits you need in seconds.
32. Easy file management
HubSpot’s file management opportunities are great. Once you upload images, documents or anything else, HubSpot keeps them safely stored. They’re easily accessible as well so if you’re creating a new blog post, you can find the files you need.
Then if you need to update any files later, you can quickly replace the file and every page featuring it will update automatically.
33. Excellent and unbeatable support
HubSpot offers incredible support whenever you need it. It’s not like other software where you have to rely on blogs or wait a while before you get any help. HubSpot has a quick support system that’s fast to answer your queries and help you out with solutions.
There’s also an extensive and powerful knowledge base that you should check out first. It’s regularly updated so you can get answers or use it to help your customers and delight them.
34. Regular beta features
One of the best things about HubSpot is that it always works to improve its services. This is primarily done through the release of beta features, but the caveat is that the beta offerings are usually reserved for Diamond and Platinum partners.
Many of these changes are time-saving features, allowing you to work (or work with an agency) faster so you can achieve more.
35. Ace lead scoring in HubSpot
So you need to figure out who’s interested in your products and services and who’s really that arsed about becoming a customer. That’s where HubSpot’s lead scoring will help.
Based on the information your leads have given you, you can assign values using lead scoring to determine how each lead has engaged with your websites.
This will also help prioritise each lead for your sales and marketing teams. The best part is you can use it in loads of different areas. Assign higher scores to leads that click-through on your CTAs and emails, download your offers or they’re even within a certain geographical location.
It’s definitely worth checking out and utilising.
36. Never miss a deal again
Your sales team needs to see the most important information right away and HubSpot provides them with clarity through deal boards. The software lets your sales team use contact properties such as lifecycle stage and lead status so they can help qualify leads and prospects.
Once your sales team has an SQL, they can head to the deals board and create a deal to indicate and track revenue opportunities. You can also associate deals with contacts and companies right from your HubSpot accounts and view the context and relevant records in one place.
Image Credit: HubSpot Community
When you have qualified a sales lead, head to HubSpot deals where you can create a deal to indicate and track the revenue opportunity. Sounds good right?
It only gets better.
You can then associate your deals with contacts and companies from your HubSpot account while viewing all the context and relevant records in one place.
Oh yeah, you can customise your deal properties as well. This will let you track the information you need to align with your business’ processes.
37. A handy HubSpot app to use on the go
Keep a close eye on your sales and the performance of your team with the HubSpot app. If you’re out during lunch, stuck on the train or on holiday, just take a quick peek to see your daily reports. Here’s what Rikki, our Founder and Director at Digital 22, has to say about the app:
“I actually love being able to see how we’re doing from home or lunch by looking at the app, rather than needing to be at a desktop to view our traffic, leads and sales.”
Image Credit: HubSpot
The app gives you exactly what you need to know when you need to know it in just a few taps.
38. A ridiculous amount of tools at your disposal
Marketing sales and service. HubSpot offers plenty of tools which are all really powerful when used together in the four different hubs. Here’s a quick rundown of what they can help you achieve.
- Marketing Hub: Lead generation, marketing and analytics are perfect to help grow traffic, convert visitors and run inbound marketing campaigns at scale.
- Sales Hub: Email tracking, email automation and meeting scheduling allow you to gain deeper insights into prospects and automate those tedious tasks everybody hates.
- Service Hub: Tickets, knowledge base and customer feedback help your business connect with customers, exceed their expectations and turn them into promoters to drive growth.
- CMS Hub: The CMS Hub is perfect for the everyone - marketers, developers and IT teams. With features like the drag-and-drop editor, attribution reporting and themes, you can easily create and manage website pages personalised for different visitors.
39. You don't need to juggle between software
The marketing, sales, service and CMS hubs are all fantastic for their relevant purposes. However, what's even better is that when you purchase one of these hubs, you still get access to the CRM platform. This means:
- Marketers can keep data at the center of everything they do as Marketing Hub is built into the CRM platform
- Sales teams can remove friction and achieve alignment as Sales Hub is part of the CRM platform
- Service teams can prove ROI and show the value of their work as Service Hub is included in the CRM platform
- Marketers can use data to grow a businesses through the website as, you guessed it, the CMS Hub is also a part of the CRM platform.
40. Only pay for the contacts you market to
With HubSpot, you only need to pay for the contacts that count. Bounces, unsubscribers, partners, one-off tickets, there are many reasons why you’d keep contacts you won’t market to in your CRM and it’s a bit unfair to pay for them if you aren’t marketing to them.
Marketing Hub customers with marketing contacts will only now need to pay for the contacts they choose to market to using ads or emails. The rest? You can store up to one million contacts for free.
41. Powerful ABM tools
HubSpot has made it fast and easy to set up your ABM strategy with plenty of cool new features they continue to add to. For example, AI-powered recommendations, default properties and workflow templates are all features you can use right inside of the HubSpot CRM.
That's not to mention handy ABM features like:
- Account-level targeting
- Account overview
- ABM dashboard
- Company scoring
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- And more.
42. The improvements are constant
HubSpot doesn't roll out one release per year before focusing on the next. They understand how quickly the landscape shifts and how they can continue to either improve existing features or release new ones to help.
That's why each month, HubSpot shares its complete list of product updates for us all to learn more about and implement so you can always use the latest tools.
43. Custom objects for added flexibility
HubSpot originally had four types of standard objects: contacts, companies, deals and tickets. So most capabilities that were a little out-of-the-box like workflows, tickets and reporting were limited to those objects.
That wasn’t really a problem a while ago as smaller companies didn’t have a lot of data and most of the time, the data they did have fit into those types of standard objects.
Now, the custom objects feature lets you configure your HubSpot portal to align with your business operations for even more flexibility.
So, if you can’t stick your data in categories like contacts, companies or deals, then you’re going to love custom objects, especially since you can organise the information you need to do your job right inside your CRM.
44. Cater to your international audiences
Are you a company that does business in multiple languages and need to give advice in more than just English? Previously in HubSpot, you could only create knowledge base articles in one language but now, HubSpot is upping that to 25 different languages through the multi-language feature.
It includes a language switches and 'hreflang alternate' tags for multi-language content, so search engines can easily recognise all of your language variants.Plus, HubSpot has loosened restrictions for your multi-language blog too so you can more templates, comment settings and more.
45. Bring the power of the CRM to your mobile apps
A feature many sales teams will love is the HubSpot Keyboard which is now available on mobile. It's not your ordinary keyboard either. You can use it on apps such as LinkedIn, Slack and WhatsApp which allows you to insert information from your HubSpot CRM, such as snippets, meeting links, quotes and documents.
Image Credit: HubSpot
It brings time-saving tools so your sales team can always communicate with the context they need.
46. You'll find a team perfect for you
Going all-in on HubSpot alone can seem quite daunting. HubSpot understands that and it's why one of the most long-standing features available today is the Solutions Directory. You can read through the reviews, find out who specialises in which industry and which company can help you achieve your goals.
It's always being updated as needs continue to change. It's well worth checking out if you already know you'd want support on this exciting journey.
47. Improving the live chat experience so customers don't slip through the cracks
Managers in your business can quickly view and manage agent permissions, status and availability for live chat across the team using the new team management view.
Image Credit: HubSpot
The reason HubSpot tweaked this is because previously, only individual users could control their specific availability and if a user forgot to set the right status, it ruined the live chat experience for customers. Now you can set admins and super admins who'll have the visibility to control the team's status so no customer slips through.
48. Easily import blogs from any CMS
Have content on another CMS and want to import the blogs into HubSpot? The Smart Copy tool will save you a lot of time re-writing or fixing weird formatting issues. It relies on scraping the external blog and identifies elements necessary for an import, such as title, author and more.
If this was stopping you from making the switch, don't let it get you down. The blog import options mean it's now easier than ever to get started blogging on HubSpot.
49. Up your email game with video
In the drag-and-drop email editor, there was never an easy way to add video. Now, you can use this module to add videos to emails to engage your audience in an entirely different way by customising the format for a tailored, brand experience.
It's perfect if you want to improve your email offering and move away from endless copy that might not engage.
50. The complete CRM platform - even for newbies
HubSpot isn't just for those that are well-versed in inbound marketing or are further ahead in their journey. They understand attempting to navigate the confusing CRM landscape can be quite a challenge, but they have the features necessary to help set even the newest of adopters on the right path.
Here's a quick glimpse at what the HubSpot CRM platform can do you for you, even if you're just starting out.
- Contact management that streamline data entry
- Deal stages through easy dragging and dropping
- Daily dashboard to view progress, pipelines and tasks
- Task management to streamline your team's daily workflows
- Content repository so sales team can find the collateral they need
- Automated data capture which automatically logs calls and emails
- Reporting which makes it easy to export and distribute trends
- Mobile capabilities so your team can log on wherever they are
- Marketing automation integration so you don't lose information or opportunities
And the list can go on. Wherever you are on your journey, HubSpot offers something suited to your unique needs.
You’re probably itching to utilise HubSpot now but hold your horses. Although the 50 reasons I’ve provided above have probably convinced you to go all-in on HubSpot, you might need a little more guidance to either find out more about HubSpot or find what's right for you.
Are you wondering what getting the most from HubSpot costs?
So many companies we speak to have invested in HubSpot but are not getting the most from the platform.
On top of this, the tool is always changing and improving, and means that it's hard to stay on top of all its amazing features and how to make the most of them.
That's where a Solutions Partner comes in.
See what working with a HubSpot Partner could cost in this Price Guide:
Talk to us for more insight
Whether you know exactly what you want and need to check a few details or you need advice on the approach to take, you don't need to go at it alone.
Whatever stage you're at, you can get in touch with us for extra insight on what HubSpot can offer you - with no strings attached and no obligation.
If you fancy having a chat about all things HubSpot with our Solutions Team, hit the button below for a personal consultation.