HubSpot isn’t a good match for all businesses. As the Director of a HubSpot Partner Agency, you probably think that’s a bit of a weird thing for me to say.
But it is true: HubSpot shouldn’t be seen as a silver bullet and certainly isn’t right for everyone.
If you’re considering HubSpot as an investment for your business, you’ll have a good idea of whether or not you should invest in the inbound marketing platform by the end of this blog.
Let’s start by outlining when HubSpot won’t work for you…
- You’re expecting or need instant results (they can be achieved, but there’s no promise).
- You don’t have the time to learn to use the system properly OR the budget to outsource your HubSpot portal’s management
- You can’t dedicate time or money to the strategy which will inform your use of HubSpot (we do have a great free starting point for strategy, though).
- You don’t have the skill-set or budget to create high-quality content every month
If you’re looking to invest in HubSpot because it sounds like a good idea or because a competitor has, but haven’t yet figured out exactly what you want from the system, take a step back, do your research, consult with an agency and move forward knowing your decision has been made strategically rather than on a whim. That way, you’re under no illusions of what HubSpot can or can’t help you achieve.
What HubSpot Can Do
That said, HubSpot is a seriously, seriously powerful tool when used correctly. With the right strategy behind it, the system will help you to find new leads, nurture existing ones and build better relationships with your current customers.
If that doesn’t sound of interest to you then you must be mental!
Of course, if money is extremely tight, you could invest in multiple systems to achieve something similar. You could, for example, use CampaignMonitor to send out email campaigns and create landing pages, Google Analytics to track your web traffic, a tool such as Buffer to schedule and monitor social posts and so on.
While taking a multiple-platform approach like that might save you a few quid, the issue is that the whole process of managing your business’ marketing online will then take you much, much longer.
The question then becomes: how much is your time worth?
With HubSpot, when we say you can do it all from just a single platform, we really mean ‘it all’:
- Manage and update website content with ease
- Create specialised landing pages
- Build pages upon which the content changes depending on who’s viewing them
- Send timely and targeted messages to leads
- Have communications automated and sent dependant on your leads’ activity, so if they take a specific action on your site, they are sent relevant content as a follow up
- Generate insightful reports across the whole of your marketing activities
- Ensure marketing and sales are working together with Growth Stack
- Manage and measure campaigns in their entirety
- Organise and nurture leads and customers with HubSpot’s easy-to-use CRM
- Track how ‘hot’ leads are with lead scoring, which allocates points to your contacts based on their activity on your site and emails
HubSpot’s CRM system is intuitive and easy to use
By now, if you’ve done a decent amount of research into HubSpot, you’re wondering if it lives up to the hype, or if it’s just another bit of kit that promises more than it delivers.
Well, as I said at the start, HubSpot isn’t a fit for some, but for those it is a fit for, the system is very powerful indeed.
HubSpot will work for you if:
1. You’re using it as part of a long-term strategy
There are certainly things you can do to get set up for HubSpot success, but you can’t expect results overnight. They do happen sometimes, but if you’re buying the system expecting immediate leads, that’s something we can’t promise.
When investing in a system like HubSpot, take the mantra that fortune favours the patient. Some investment and time will need to be spent on strategy and content alongside HubSpot to really get the most out of the system.
From our experience though – having set the system up for dozens of businesses of all shapes and sizes and working with many each month – we can tell you first-hand that it works and more than pays for itself.
2. You’re focused on learning in order to use HubSpot to its full potential
To extract any value from HubSpot, you can’t just let it ‘do its thing’.
It’s not a plug-in-and-play tool; it requires somebody with knowledge of how it works or somebody who’s prepared to learn it and share their knowledge with the rest of the team.
In fairness, the system is pretty intuitive and doesn’t take too much learning, but it does need a team of people behind it who know their stuff and are able to learn.
Whether you do that in-house, outsource to an agency or a combination of the two is entirely up to you.
3. You continue to refine your strategy, personas and content
The business world – no matter your industry – is kaleidoscopic, constantly changing in the background. On that note, your HubSpot portal will never be complete and there will always be work to be done.
It’s crucial that you get your content marketing strategy nailed down when you’re setting HubSpot up. To do that, do a lot of research, develop your buyer personas, create high-quality, helpful content and work out exactly what you want to get out of the system.
Then, set up monthly review meetings with your whole team (that means sales, marketing and operations) to find out what’s changed in the market recently and see if any changes can be made to your content to match.
Conclusion
Investing in HubSpot is a huge decision. We might be a HubSpot agency partner, but we’d never tell someone they needed HubSpot if it wasn’t a good fit for them. Strategy has to come first. If your strategy isn’t refined yet and you haven’t figured out what success looks like to you, take a step back and work on that first. Our free growth strategy template is a great starting place.
Otherwise, if you’ve recently invested some time and/or money into strategy and are looking to an easy-to-use, all-in-one system, HubSpot is a fantastic option to help you refine your communications, measure your performance and grow your business profitably.
If you’re at that stage and would like a conversation about HubSpot, please click here to request a call with our HubSpot specialists.