HubSpot is a popular CRM (customer relationship management platform) that empowers your business with tools that can help you learn more about your customers and effectively monitor and organize your sales funnel. A CRM is designed to provide you with the means of meeting the needs of your customers with historical customer interaction data which can be leveraged to increase the likelihood of converting business prospects into sales. This is achieved through the management of such business processes as customer interaction, customer data, and access business information. This software can prove to be an invaluable tool for your company, as having a better relationship with your core customers will allow you to generate more revenue through a deeper understanding of customer needs and position in the buying process.
HubSpot has grown to become an extremely powerful and flexible tool to grow your business through an array of inbound marketing efforts, sales and customer transaction information, and the organization of your sales process. The numerous services offered by HubSpot are divided into four distinct hubs: CRM, Marketing, Sales and Service Hub — all of which can be combined into one user-friendly dashboard if you want to take advantage of the entire suite of features HubSpot has to offer. By using their software and the features within, your online business will be able to qualify your leads to determine whether or not the prospect who visited your website can eventually become a customer, which will allow you effectively allocate your resources and marketing efforts.
HubSpot Inbound Marketing Methodology
Inbound marketing is among the most important aspects of running a successful business, as this type of marketing is designed to attract customers to your website by providing them with content that is helpful and relevant to what they’re looking for. In order to implement a successful inbound marketing strategy, you will need to have high quality content at every stage along the customer’s journey throughout your website, eventually moving them to make a purchase or sign up for your customer email list. The use of search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and content marketing via blog posts are a few common methods of inbound marketing.
Unlike outbound marketing that requires you to initiate the conversation with customers via television commercials and print ads (which can very costly), the customers will find you at the exact time they are looking to make a purchase and all you have to do is make sure that you create content that will interest the target customers and core audience of your business. The approach that HubSpot takes with its inbound marketing is narrowed down to a core strategy of attract, convert, close, and delight, which they believe will allow you to convert people who have never visited your website before into customers who regularly purchase from and promote your business providing exponential growth and a cost effective ROI.
When attracting customers to your website, HubSpot focuses on blogging, content strategy, and social media. As they work their way through the convert and close aspects of inbound marketing for your website, they will focus on chatting with site visitors, implementing forms that customers can fill out, and nurturing leads. In the event that this strategy has been successful, HubSpot will then delight the new customers on your website with smart content and meaningful customer conversations. The HubSpot approach to inbound marketing can be highly valuable to your website, as their services are known to be among the best in the industry, allowing you to avoid costly marketing mistakes.
HubSpot Services & Offerings
HubSpot offers a substantial number of services and features that you can use to improve your inbound marketing and grow your website, from the ability to track all contact activity to the ability to create canned snippets for each account on your website. The base CRM package that is available for free offers a small number of features from each package, including the marketing, sales, and service hubs. With the marketing hub, you can receive an SEO and content strategy feature as well as optimization for mobile devices and marketing automation.
The sales hub is designed with sales teams in mind, providing you with features like company records, the ability to create up to 1,000 e-mail templates per account, and multiple deal pipelines. The service hub is focused on customer service with features that include team e-mail and conversational bots, allowing you to improve the customer service facet of your company. HubSpot can also be integrated with a wide array of different platforms that you may have built your website with, such as Shopify eCommerce and WordPress. If you have used Salesforce as your CRM of choice, certain HubSpot packages even allow for the integration of Salesforce.
HubSpot Cost & Pricing
HubSpot starts out as a free service and can cost as much as over $2,000 each month. There’s no need to worry, however, as there are an extraordinary amount of features at your disposal to give you the customer insight that you need to grow your business online, even at the free level. Whether you select a free package or a costlier one, you will be able to start implementing core CRM features into your business pipeline.
HubSpot CRM (FREE)
The HubSpot CRM is free forever while providing you with a hefty amount of features, which are further divided into features for marketers and features for salespeople. This specific CRM platform is designed to provide your business with a solid customer relationship foundation with core features like content management, the integration of Gmail, and the inclusion of insights into your contacts and other companies.
Some of the other offerings that might be of interest to you include the fact that you can store up to one million contacts and companies as well as the fact that any member of your team can use the CRM. The extended features for marketers include lead ads that can be used on Facebook, a lead analytics dashboard that goes into detail about the prospective customers, and customer forms. Salespeople can make use of such extended features as meetings, e-mail templates, and e-mail tracking notifications.
HubSpot Marketing Hub
The HubSpot Marketing Hub is designed specifically with a focus on marketing and starts at $0 per month. The pricing for this platform is divided into five tiers that include free, starter, basic, professional, and enterprise, the last of which is priced at $2,400 per month and provides you with extensive features to accommodate a larger business such as custom event reporting, custom revenue reporting, marketing automatic, and goal-based nurturing. All of these features are meant to further your marketing campaigns, allowing you to effectively capture leads, track their activity, and plan your marketing around the information you receive. Despite the fact that the free and starter packages are lower tiers, you still receive such services as contact management, the removal of HubSpot branding, and custom form fields.
HubSpot Sales Hub
The HubSpot Sales Hub allows you to select a HubSpot package that is centered specifically around the sales you make. The pricing structure offered with this hub includes a free tier, starter tier, and professional tier with prices that extend from $0-400 per month. The free tier is designed for use with a single salesperson and provides you with features like e-mail scheduling, e-mail templates, and meeting scheduling, while the starter tier offers additional features like live chat, phone and e-mail support, and prospects. If you opt for the professional tier, some of the extended features include multiple deal pipelines, sales automation, and smart notifications.
HubSpot Service Hub
The HubSpot Service Hub offers a single professional package that is priced at $400 per month and is designed specifically to be used by customer service teams in your business. With these features, you will be able to connect with customers and get them to start promoting your business. The main features with this hub include live chat, conversational bots that can help your customer service seem more streamlined, a conversations dashboard, and ticketing. If you start using this hub and decide that you would like more features, the two extended features available for you to select include the ability to receive customizable reports for $200 per month and the ability to increase the API call volume from around 40,000 to 160,000 per day for $500 a month.
Hubspot Vs. Other CRMs
HubSpot is an extremely powerful and easy-to-use CRM, but there are many competitors out there that can provide their own unique set of features and value to your business. While HubSpot is designed to provide you with every customer relationship management feature that your business might need, certain competitors may be a better fit for your business.
Hubspot vs. Salesforce
One of the premier CRM services aside from HubSpot is that of Salesforce, which is why you might want to know about the differences between the two before making your final decision on which to select. Due to the services provides by HubSpot and Salesforce, the former is best for owners of small to medium sized businesses (our opinion) while Salesforce is better for larger businesses with a greater budget and operational resources. However, HubSpot is cost-effective, streamlined and easy-to-use, which means that you will be able to manage the features available with this service more easily.
Salesforce is comprehensive, allowing you to add or delete features at your leisure, but the configuration and setup of this CRM can be difficult and somewhat time-consuming. Even though HubSpot is ideal for owners of small businesses, it is an all-in-one solution that will fit the needs of any business size. The primary offerings from Salesforce that cannot be found with other CRM solutions include the ability to create quotes and membership sites. You can start with two users on HubSpot and five on Salesforce with both costing a little extra for each additional user. Both of these solutions have their benefits, which you should consider before choosing the solution that’s right for you.
Hubspot vs. Others
With how HubSpot works and the features that it provides to you, it’s a very quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive CRM to use, particularly due to the inclusion of a free option. The variety of CRM options available for you to use allow you to select the one that fits the exact needs of your business. The other platforms that you can use for your business range from extremely minimal and bare bones to extremely complex and robust with a large number of features and available customization options. While these options can certainly be beneficial to your business, what HubSpot does well is that it starts out by giving you all of the features that you need, allowing you to expand functionality as your business grows.
As you learn how to use this CRM, you will be able to dip into their more complex features and start to incorporate them as your business grows. The CRM that you choose largely depends on what your business needs are as well as your goals and capabilities. Once you have identified these goals, you can select the HubSpot platform that will offer you the features you require to continue growing your business and improving the relationship that you have with your customers.
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