HubSpot is a software used for inbound marketing automation tools. Loaded with all the benefits you’ve come to expect from this industry giant, HubSpot Marketing Hub helps you increase your traffic, convert leads, track progress, and manage every aspect of your marketing campaigns. Complete with email, forms, ad management, live chat, reporting and more, this one-stop shop lets you manage everything from one place for efficiency and results.
Pros
- Best in class for marketing automation
- Includes full CRM integration
- Great social media management tools.
Cons
- Big jump from starter plan to pro
- An expensive option
Ideal for SMBs, midsize businesses, and enterprise-level organizations
Main uses: lead generation, email marketing
Price: from $40 per month
Free trial. free software forever
SEO
The HubSpot Marketing Center has a great SEO wizard that literally gives you optimization tips as you type to get your content search engine ready. The site also has built-in analytics so you can get SEO ROI.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one area where the HubSpot marketing hub has come full circle. It has the usual elements like customizable email templates, responsive layouts, and automatic scheduling of marketing campaigns, but there’s so much more. HubSpot’s Marketing Center collects data points from all over the web, including job information, social profiles, and other relevant information. HubSpot then helps you use this information to seamlessly target and personalize your communications for each prospect.
HubSpot Marketing Center has a smart drag-and-drop email editor, so you can include that personal information in every email you send. It’s one of the most intuitive and easy-to-use email editors we’ve seen yet.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is just as important as the other two techniques we’ve already mentioned. You can use the social monitoring tools in HubSpot’s Marketing Center to monitor your customers, listen to what they have to say, and continue the conversation whenever you want. Respond instantly to a customer’s complaint or compliment from a social media channel. You can also send posts to your various social media channels and automatically send them to your email. It covers the most important ones including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
HubSpot also includes contact management across popular social media channels, so fans can be included in your CRM for tracking, loyalty rewards, and communications. You can also use this tool to get customer reviews and automatically transfer those reviews to your website for solid social proof.
Website Design
The HubSpot Marketing Center starter plan offers limited features for creating landing pages and designing your website. You’ll find page templates, responsive layouts, and basic reports. More advanced plans come with more detailed features. However, website design is definitely not the focus of this product, so don’t expect incredibly advanced features.
The HubSpot Marketing Center also has marketing tools that you can incorporate into your website design. For example, you can create and customize calls to action to suit your target audience, conduct A/B testing, and promote seasonal products.
Chatbot
HubSpot Marketing Hub can also be used with HubSpot customer service software so businesses can provide extensive customer support to their customers. This is a big deal because people often turn to chatbots for quick answers to make decisions on the spot.
Even the free plan allows you to perform some basic chatbot operations like creating tickets and booking appointments. More advanced plans include custom branching logic, programmable bots, and webhooks.
Lead Generation
HubSpot Marketing Center really does generate and manage leads well. The entire system is built around a comprehensive CRM, so you can manage every aspect of your leads from the moment they share their email address. The HubSpot Marketing Center really impressed us with its in-depth analytics and real-time reporting. You can see up-to-date data about any potential customer, such as what pages they visit on your site, who they are, and where they work.
From there, HubSpot’s Marketing Hub lets you automate your email responses so you can engage leads as they move through the decision-making process. For example, you can set up rules to send a personalized email as soon as a potential customer reviews an article on your site. Contact forms, flyers, and other means of direct contact are really useful for gathering information about potential customers and following up with them.
Live Chat Software
HubSpot Marketing Center also integrates live chat. So when you get a new or returning customer, you’ll be able to communicate with them immediately. And by the way, this feature is available even with the free plan.
Pricing
HubSpot Marketing Center comes in three tiers (or four if you count the freemium plan), which we’ll cover in more detail below. It’s pretty generous that all HubSpot Marketing Center plans include the full HubSpot CRM suite, which is huge. You will get tools like:
- Communication management
- Site Activity
- (Limited) Email Marketing
- Advertising management
- List segmentation
- Ticket sales
- Ability to create landing pages, blogs and other types of content.
- Personalization techniques such as calls to action and smart content.
- SEO and Content Strategy
- Live chat functionality
- Chatbots
- shaper
And much more. So there’s a lot to offer before you start paying for something. Once you start looking at paid plans and marketing center plans in particular, there are some differences between them. Below is a summary of the three marketing center plans:
HubSpot also has a free Marketing Hub plan that gives you access to all the features of HubSpot CRM, a form builder, sending 2,000 emails per month, ad management, list sharing, team email, and more. That’s actually an impressive list for a freemium plan, and some SMBs will be able to get by just fine with this option.
However, if you want more advanced features like ad retargeting, SEO and content strategy, Google integration, social media support, etc., you should opt for more advanced plans. The starter plan has many of the marketing tools you’ll be excited about, including email marketing, networking website activity, and chatbots. And while it’s a big jump from the Starter plan to the Professional plan, the good news is that all but the largest corporations will be more than happy with the Professional plan.
This tier two plan comes with tons of marketing tools like a full suite of marketing automation, lead nurturing, A/B testing, custom workflows, and much more. Meanwhile, the Enterprise plan offers even more detailed features such as event automation triggers, company-wide campaign reporting, revenue reporting, and more.
In addition to any plan, HubSpot allows you to pay for add-ons for more detailed functionality in a specific area (sales, service, CMS).
Customer Service
The HubSpot Marketing Center has award-winning customer support via email or phone. You can also chat with a live chat representative to ask questions on the spot or explore the vast library of help documents and training articles. The HubSpot Marketing Center also has a community forum that allows other users to ask how things work for more practical solutions.
Bottom Line
The HubSpot Marketing Hub is a comprehensive automated marketing solution that includes all the bells and whistles. Although it is more expensive than some other options, it really has a lot to offer for the price. Plus, it still undercuts some competitors like Salesforce’s Pardot. The HubSpot Marketing Center includes all the marketing tools you need, including email, SEO, social media, and analytics. So if you’re looking for something comprehensive, this is the place to be.