Using Hubspot for Your Small Business

Hubspot offers an industry-leading software integration solution for both sales and marketing. They’re often the tool of choice for large enterprises, but what about smaller companies? Hubspot can actually prove itself to be a great choice for small businesses, especially those that rely heavily on digital marketing to bring in new leads. The major appeal is in the integration aspect: with Hubspot, all the tools you’ll need are together in one place. From creating your website with their CRM, to managing Facebook and search ads, to handling your content marketing and online lead generation, Hubspot consolidates everything you need in their sales and marketing software packages.

Hubspot is well-known, in part because of their industry-leading content marketing experts. Hubspot’s blogs are the very portrait of content marketing done right. The company has established itself as one of the leading authorities in that space, and millions of marketers read their blog regularly to get new ideas and inspiration.

But despite their popular and well-known blog, their products are actually integrated software suites. They offer three products:

● Marketing software. Hubspot’s marketing software system combines many different aspects of digital marketing in one platform. Their program handles web design, SEO, landing pages for lead generation, marketing automation, email, and more. While many companies use multiple software systems for these purposes — WordPress as a CRM, Moz for SEO, Mail Chimp for email, various WordPress plugins — Hubspot has consolidated them all, making it an excellent example of software integration.
● CRM software. Hubspot also offers a free CRM software system, which is designed to maximize the amount of automation you can set up. The CRM can integrate with their sales and marketing software platforms, and it’s available for companies of all sizes at no charge.
● Sales software. Hubspot’s sales software platform provides digital tools to help with every step of the inbound sales process. You can manage sales content and sales emails, hone in on new potential leads and connect easily with prospects. Their email open tracking and click tracking makes it easier to gauge which leads are engaged and showing interest.

All of Hubspot’s products are designed to offer an extensive selection of features and capabilities, and each software platform can integrate with the others.

Why worry about inbound marketing? If you’re a small business, you might not be sure how to best approach sales and marketing in the 21st century. In the past, it was all about “interruption marketing,” like TV commercials that pop up when they’re not wanted. But today, traditional advertising doesn’t always work as well as it used to. Today’s consumers are smart, savvy, well-informed people. As online ads have become more intrusive, consumers have responded with increasingly sophisticated ad blocking programs. As video on demand streaming has begun replacing traditional cable television for a large swathe of Generation X and Millennials, it’s possible to be exposed to a drastically smaller number of commercials that you’d have encountered ten years ago.

It’s a brave new world, and marketing has had to carefully adapt itself to meet the changing needs and tastes of today’s consumers. Better data collection by companies like Google and Facebook has enabled us to target incredibly narrow and specific groups of people. Instead of casting a wide net with prime time TV commercials or billboards, you can target your digital marketing efforts toward exactly the kind of people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service.

There’s also been a major shift from outbound marketing to inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is focused on bringing in leads organically. Today’s successful businesses are marketing themselves by providing useful, interesting, or entertaining information that attracts potential leads into their sales funnels.

Blogs, podcasts, SEO, ebooks, email newsletters, social media marketing — all of these forms of content marketing provide valuable, useful information for your target audience, building trust and establishing your brand as an industry authority early in the sales process, at the initial stages of the buyer’s journey.

The inbound methodology uses a four-part process that transforms people into leads:

• Attract. You need to attract the right people to your content, turning them into visitors who might transform into viable leads. Hubspot’s marketing software provides the tools you need to handle each aspect of content creation and promotion: keyword research, on-page optimization, and social media.
• Once you’ve brought in visitors to your site, it’s time to convert a percentage of those visitors into leads. To do that, you need to persuade them to hand over their contact information. Once you have their info, they’ve gone from a faceless internet stranger to a qualified lead. To do this, you need to offer them something in return. This often takes the form of informational ebooks, industry white papers, tip sheets, and other detailed information they’ll be willing to trade their email address for.
• In this stage, when you have contact information for your leads, you can use tools like email marketing and a CRM to sell things to them at the right time.
• This final stage is somewhat optional, but it turns your paying customers into brand advocates who market your company with positive word-of-mouth. People trust the people they know, whether it’s a real-life colleague or para social interaction with someone well-known. Brand ambassadors and word of mouth are one of the most effective forms of marketing available, but it has to happen organically.

There’s one common complaint about Hubspot, one that’s actually quite understandable: it’s not exactly cheap. Hubspot’s marketing and sales software platforms are relatively pricey, especially for smaller businesses. But with that said, the price gets you a truly integrated solution that combines almost every tool you’ll need in one convenient place.

If your team is new to inbound marketing, Hubspot’s training resources are excellent. Once you get the hang of all the features they offer, you’ll get quite a bit of mileage out of their software. Their integration gives you the benefit of an “all-in-one” solution. Rather than juggling a multitude of programs and plugins that handle different things, Hubspot keeps everything together in one place. This integration can be quite beneficial for smaller companies, making it easier to take advantage of a wider range of tools.

Hubspot’s marketing software is divided up into modules, each centered on a different part of the lead acquisition process.

Module 1: “Get Started”

This helps you get started and learn to navigate the software.

Module 2: “Get Found”

This content marketing module is focused on three main functions: keyword research, writing SEO-friendly blog posts based on that keyword research and using social media to promote your content.

Their keyword research tool helps you find the right keywords for your small business. They provide information about the number of searches, CPC price, and a difficulty score. High traffic, low competition keywords are usually ideal, and their tool helps you hone in on keywords where your site can actually compete in the SERPs.

After you’ve found your keywords, you can create new posts on their blog platform. Assuming you don’t already have a WordPress site, you can create your website and blog using Hubspot’s own CRM. By going to the “create article” section, you can make your first post. Along the way, the program offers helpful SEO advice. It also offers a “page grader” that rates your pages based on keyword rankings, the number of visits, and the number of inbound links.

By adding your social media pages, you can automatically publish links to your latest posts. It also lets you filter conversations, tracks keywords to keep tabs on relevant conversations and publish on Twitter and Facebook without leaving the platform.

Module 3: Convert

This module helps you convert your traffic into subscribers or customers. You can create and customize landing pages that gather information in exchange for ebooks or other exclusive content. You can also identify prospects, analyze leads, view data, and use a list builder to segment visitors into relevant lists.

Module 4: Analyze

This module provides relevant measurements and data, including Moz rank (an SEO measurement), social media followers, indexed pages, and traffic rank.

Hubspot integrates all the different aspects of your inbound marketing strategy, making it a great choice for small businesses. When you use Hubspot, it’s easy to scale up over time, and the software helps walk you through each and every step. Instead of wasting time dealing with a bunch of services and plugins, Hubspot lets you access everything quickly, keeping it consolidated in one place.

At Pulatech, we help companies like yours successfully implement and integrate enterprise software tools like Hubspot. For web content management, we frequently encourage our clients to consider making use of Hubspot’s many features and capabilities.

Not sure if Hubspot is the right choice for you? Hubspot’s marketing and sales software platforms are excellent, but they’re not the only option, nor are they the best choice for every single company. We offer comprehensive software consulting services, helping you weigh your options and determine which software is the best fit for your company’s needs.

With Hubspot software integration, your sales and marketing teams can consolidate a variety of functions and strategies within one platform. This efficient approach can help you manage your leads and sales more effectively than ever before, leading to more sales, and ultimately, higher profits.