Something a little different for this post. Let's turn our attention to HubSpot.

It’s no secret that we are advocates of HubSpot. We are a certified HubSpot agency, we offer HubSpot consultancy to our clients and we use HubSpot for our internal marketing. (This post is delivered to you via the HubSpot platform.)

The reason for this, as a marketing automation tool, is that HubSpot excels in many departments. It offers comprehensive features and functionality with little configuration required. And if you are not entirely sure of how the features and benefits work, or what they are, getting those answers is usually straight-forward.

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So, if inbound marketing is on your roadmap for the near future, or if you are looking to ramp up your content marketing, HubSpot should be the first platform to investigate as it brings with it a range of outright benefits.

SO, WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF HUBSPOT?

HubSpot offers a range of benefits, that as an all-in-one platform, you’ll struggle to find elsewhere. Of, course it’s not perfect – no marketing automation platform is. Should you want a social media management tool, then Buffer might give you more features. Just as MailChimp will provide more email marketing functionality and WordPress a better CMS and Salesforce a CRM. But if you want all five, as well as a range of other out-of-the-box features, HubSpot will provide the best solution.

“What are the benefits of HubSpot?” I hear you say. Well, here are 11.

1. HUBSPOT IS AN ALL-IN-ONE PLATFORM

Having worked within several marketing roles, one of the constant challenges I experienced was managing the multitude of platforms, systems and tools organisations typically use. Not to mention getting them all talking to each other. HubSpot simplifies this with its all-in-one out-of-the-box solution. Never again will I waste my time on those complex IT integration projects. HubSpot can take care of all the moving parts associated with the inbound marketing process, from generating leads to nurturing those leads to converting those leads.

2. HUBSPOT OFFERS EVERYTHING A MARKETER NEEDS TO STAY FOCUSED ON THE TASK (AND PROSPECT)

Similarly, as previously stated, this all-in-one platform offers all the tools a digital or inbound marketer will need. It gives marketers a CMS, CRM, an email marketing tool, a social scheduling tool, an SEO tool, an Ads tool, a chat tool, as well as analytics for all of the above, and plenty more. Everything needed for inbound and effective content creation is available within the Marketing Hub package. For more on these specific benefits of these features, we have previously published a blog post on HubSpot’s key features.

3. HUBSPOT’S ANALYTICS IS ACTUALLY QUITE GOOD

Data-driven marketing, demonstrating cause and effect, is more important than ever. Of course, interpreting and managing data is not easy. But as is generally the case with HubSpot, gathering metrics on the platform is easy. HubSpot offers basic analytics throughout all of its tools which are more than efficient for dashboard reporting required for inbound campaigns. Of course, other native analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, offer more depth but that is sometimes more depth than is needed.

4. HUBSPOT’S SEO FEATURE IS ALSO GOOD

Search engine optimisation is complex. An abundance of tools are available on the market that helps you become more visible to search engines during the research, writing, optimising and sharing of your website content. But it’s almost impossible to do everything if you have a small team or if you are not an SEO expert. You would generally benefit from hiring SEO help in this respect. But HubSpot SEO does offer the basics, which strips back all the complexities and has basic tools for non-SEO experts to help you track keywords and improve your site's ranking, as well as publish SEO-friendly content.

5. HUBSPOT OFFERS GREAT SUPPORT

When using complex products and services, issues are common. With a multitude of ways to access real support via the HubSpot support team, a comprehensive knowledge base section on the HubSpot blog as well as training courses/certifications, HubSpot makes it easy for you to solve those issues. If that isn’t enough, there are also an abundance of HubSpot and general inbound marketing user groups and networks, as well as HubSpot agencies such as ourselves, that you can tap into to speak to other inbound professionals. The benefit of having support readily available cannot go unnoticed when investing in digital tools and platforms such as HubSpot.

6. THE HUBSPOT COMMUNITY IS FRIENDLY

Inbound marketing is friendly by nature. A quick look around the HubSpot website or a chat with a staff member, or vice versa with one of HubSpot’s partners and you’ll instantly sense an air of friendliness. Just fire an email or chat message our way to find out! This friendly community is a great place to do business and to learn about inbound best-practices. Such an approach will also not go unseen with your clients, which will form the building blocks for friendly relationships with those clients – something all B2B organisations will strive for.

7. THE HUBSPOT PLATFORM IS EASY TO USE

HubSpot wins hands down in the user experience department. Its user interface is visually appealing, user-friendly and easy to navigate. As inbound marketers, our aim is to help as many of our visitors as possible by providing great content – and users benefit as HubSpot makes it easy to focus on this content since it’s editors and dashboards, as well as its content strategy and calendar feature, are easy to operate and understand. You'll do well to find yourself lost within the user interface. Using a rival platform, such as Marketo, will instantly make you appreciate HubSpot's user interface.

8. HUBSPOT HAS AN ABUNDANCE OF THIRD-PARTY INTEGRATIONS

The HubSpot platform is growing in popularity, so naturally, other digital service organisations and platforms are taking notice. With the help of HubSpot's API, third parties have created integrations to expand HubSpot's functionality. You can see HubSpot's full list of platform integrations where new integrations are being added all of the time, which is another great benefit and reason to invest in the platform. Especially if your organisation already uses third party systems that it cannot do without and will need integrating to the inbound system.

9. HUBSPOT IS GREAT FOR LEAD REPORTING… EVEN FOR OFFLINE LEADS

HubSpot gives you access to critical data about your contacts. You can access clear information about the specific interests of each contact and how long they have been looking around your website, amongst other information. Even if your contact came from offline sources, the information can be manually submitted and you can connect the dots through a personalised link as it is likely that that contact will, at some point, visit the website. You can still determine how much each website visitor is worth after combining all of your contacts - online and offline, again useful in the B2B (and the life science) markets.

10. HUBSPOT OFFERS A READY-TO-USE MARKETING FUNNEL

The best way to think of the HubSpot platform is as a ready-to-use marketing funnel. You create an account, place contacts in the most appropriate stage of the funnel, score them, personalise and then distribute the content. The platform, with this content, and other awareness stage content, can be created to start this process again from scratch. Once done with nurturing, HubSpot also gives you access to visitor data and lets you analyse the impact of your marketing strategy on sales and overall performance. This isn't the main HubSpot benefit, though...

11. ...AND WHAT IS THE MAIN BENEFIT OF HUBSPOT? IT PRODUCES INBOUND MARKETING; PULL MARKETING THAT DOESN’T ANNOY PEOPLE

The push marketing approach is concerned with pushing messages and products in the faces of clients and prospects. Not something we want to be doing, at least not regularly as our main marketing strategy. Pull marketing, on the other hand, establishes a loyal following to draw consumers to products and messages. If you are a consumer of any product, you will know the type of marketing approach that you appreciate. HubSpot makes this pull approach (inbound marketing) possible.