In today's fast-paced world, nailing your marketing game is a must. And guess what? HubSpot's here to make it a breeze! With everything from lead generation to social media management all in one place, HubSpot is like your trusty sidekick in the digital jungle. It's easy to use, super customisable, and packed with tools to help you shine. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, HubSpot's got your back, helping you reach your audience and make waves in the market.

So, what are you waiting for? Let's dive in and unleash your marketing magic with HubSpot!

Importance of Marketing for Businesses

Marketing is crucial for businesses as it helps them create brand awareness, generate leads, and drive conversions. It allows them to reach their target audience and differentiate themselves from competitors in the market. Even the best products or services may go unnoticed without effective marketing strategies. However, incorporating a marketing system into the businesses can become chaotic with the mountain of different platforms, agencies and software available. This is where an integrated software like HubSpot comes in handy.

HubSpot offers an all-in-one platform enabling businesses to build strong operational foundations. It not only provides tools for lead generation and nurturing but also helps with tracking and analysing data to improve campaigns. With HubSpot's user-friendly interface and comprehensive features, teams can effectively reach their target audience and establish a solid presence in the market.

Benefits of using HubSpot Marketing Tools

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub is an inbound marketing software that helps businesses attract, engage, and delight customers. It focuses on creating valuable content tailored to the needs of its target audience rather than interruptive tactics like cold calling or advertisements. This approach allows businesses to build trust with potential customers and establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry.

Compared to traditional marketing methods such as print ads or TV commercials, HubSpot Marketing Hub offers an all-in-one digital system for businesses. With the rise of digital media and evolving online media consumption, consumers are turning away from traditional advertising channels and spending more time online. It’s no longer a choice to use digital marketing channels; it’s a must. 

HubSpot combines integrated tools for high impact, such as email marketing, social media management, blogging, SEO analytics, and more. Helping businesses streamline their efforts, enhancing processes and effectiveness.

Sounds great, right? 

Let's delve into some of the top-notch features of HubSpot that will take your digital marketing efforts to new heights.

Understanding HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Features

Now that we know the principles and the main benefits of using HubSpot for marketing, let's touch base on some of the top features you can expect: 

• Lead Generation and Capture: HubSpot provides various lead-capturing tools such as forms, pop-ups, and live chat options that can be customised based on user behaviour. These features help businesses collect valuable information about potential customers and tailor their messaging accordingly.
• Accurate Reporting: HubSpot provides robust analytics tools that help businesses track the performance of their marketing efforts. Measuring the effectiveness of campaigns and understanding visitor behaviour to make data-driven decisions while improving strategies from essential metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, email open rates, and more all in one place.
• SEO Tools: HubSpot offers the ability to monitor and optimise content based on best practices to help businesses' content efforts rank higher on search engines. Suggesting essential keywords for headings, meta titles, tags, external links on content like blogs and websites, and more. In other words, it makes your content more visible and appealing for search results pages and, ultimately, your audience. 
• Website and Landing Page Optimisation: HubSpot will assist you in optimising your content efforts to enhance visitors' experience with suggestions like image size, content loading times, anchor of text, and more. 
  
  

It's important to note access to some of these features will depend upon the subscription. There are three different types of subscriptions, Starter, Professional and Enterprise. Make sure you review these in depth before selecting one! 

HubSpot Marketing Tools to Look Forward

What do you think so far? Organisations will unlock more features and extended capabilities in their portal depending on the subscription chosen. However, it is important to note that not all businesses require the same features and capabilities among the different tiers. That’s why we've broken it down for you even further so that you can choose the best plan for your business.

Main Marketing Hub Features

If you would like to learn about HubSpot Marketing Hub features and pricing, check it out here! 

In addition to these benefits, HubSpot offers comprehensive resources for learning about inbound marketing strategies through blogs, webinars, and certification courses. This makes it an ideal platform for businesses that may not have a dedicated team or budget for extensive training in digital marketing techniques.

Not too sure about which one to choose? 

5 Essential HubSpot Marketing Hub Tips 

In the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, mastering the intricacies of the HubSpot tools we just listed can be a game-changer for your strategy. So, here are five essential tips to maximise the benefits of HubSpot's Marketing Hub and propel your campaigns to new heights:

Tip 1. Always be Tracking and Analysing 

One of the critical tips for success in the HubSpot Marketing Hub is to track and analyse data consistently. This platform provides businesses with a wealth of information about their website visitors, leads, and customers. This is why marketing analytics plays a crucial role in measuring campaign success and identifying areas for improvement. 

HubSpot offers robust reporting tools that allow businesses to easily track key metrics such as website traffic, email open rates, social media engagement, and more. This data helps organisations make informed decisions about future campaigns by understanding what resonates with their target audience and gaining valuable insights into what strategies are working well and where there is room for improvement.

The very first step to utilising this great tool is to start connecting your HubSpot account to platforms like Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram to gather as much information and interaction from your prospects as possible. What's better is that it collects and tracks data from paid and organic platforms, such as landing pages, emails, and links clicked with the help of UTM codes. If your website isn't hosted on HubSpot, you'll also want to make sure you have placed the HubSpot tracking code into the code of your website. 

Actionable Tip: Go to the HubSpot marketplace to see all the apps HubSpot can connect with! You will be surprised how many app integrations the platform has.

Tip 2. Take your Data Collection to the Next Level

Contact data collection is a cornerstone for businesses aiming to forge meaningful connections with their audience. Gathering insights about customer interactions enhances the understanding of prospects' needs, empowering organisations to craft highly customisable experiences and products. 

That's why the greater the collection of insightful data, the better the communication, which, in turn, promotes a more personalised and impactful engagement. HubSpot Marketing Hub makes this process super simple through a myriad of practical tools, including customisable forms that tailor data collection based on specific needs, ensuring that every piece of information gathered is relevant and valuable. 

Pop-ups can be strategically integrated into websites to serve as attention-grabbing prompts, engaging visitors and encouraging them to share pertinent details. Moreover, the live chat options HubSpot provides facilitate real-time interactions, fostering immediate engagement and capturing valuable insights into customer preferences and inquiries. 

Using a multifaceted approach enriches the pool of collected data and allows organisations to refine their messaging in real time, adapting to the evolving needs of their leads. By seamlessly integrating these tools, HubSpot transforms data collection into a dynamic process, guiding leads effortlessly through the sales funnel and creating a personalised journey that significantly boosts conversion rates.

But it doesn't stop there! HubSpot also allows you to create lead-scoring rules quickly. Lead scoring enables organisations to detect and identify which leads are most likely to become customers based on a methodology that assigns values to leads based on their behaviour and attributes. 

There's a lot you can do when it comes to data capture. We recommend starting by creating a list of questions regarding simple personal details, such as names, to create relatable and comfortable communication. As well as email for points of contact. 

Then, write down some questions that facilitate your business to understand their visit or interest in their enquiry to tackle precisely their needs and wants.

For instance, "What is your enquiry about?" or "What can we help you with?"

Recommendation: When creating your list of questions, include your sales, customer service, and marketing teams to gather valuable questions from all ends of the funnel.

After creating the list of questions, you can then make your forms and add queued progressive fields, which will automatically populate questions upon the prospect's "new or existing" collected data. That way, you can collect more information over time and refrain from spamming your leads with the same questions over and over. 

For more information about how to use progressive fields in forms, HubSpot has a great how-to guide here! 

Tip: Avoid asking personal questions in online forms for the first time unless there is solid interest in proceeding with an opportunity. For example, "How much money do you make?" Or "Where do you live?".

Tip 3. Collaboration Between Teams

Collaboration between teams is essential for effective digital marketing efforts. HubSpot's ecosystem integrates seamlessly across teams, enabling interprofessional communication through comments on assets, the ability to review assigned tasks, review the marketing calendar and manage approvals, which enhances quality control from managers before anything goes live.

Cool, right? 

Let's talk a little more about the commenting and approval functionalities to get you started with these great operational processes for your team.

The collaboration sidebar will appear when we open an asset in HubSpot, for instance, ads, blogs, landing pages or forms.

The integration of the sidebar is intuitive, which facilitates its adaptability, and to leave a comment and assign it to a team member. It’s as easy as clicking on the comment icon, which will chuck you into comment mode. From there, you can click on the specific element you would like to leave a comment on. 

With the approval tool, you will need to set it up first! To do this, you will need to go into Settings → Account Set Up → Approvals. Once there, enable the approvals on the portal for your different marketing tools, such as website pages, landing pages, and blog posts.

Important Note: This feature is only available for Enterprise subscriptions.

Once set up, you can now return to the asset and request or grant approvals from the collaboration sidebar. You will then have the flexibility of options to customise your approvals, such as choosing team members who can skip approvals (Super admins have permission to approve marketing emails by default.)

If you would like to learn more about the functionalities, such as the calendar and tasks of the new approval functionalities, HubSpot has a complete guide here! 

Tip 4. Utilising HubSpot A/B Testing

At times, your engagement rate in your marketing efforts is less than ideal, and in some cases, simply changing an image or the font will be enough to drive positive engagement with your audience.

HubSpot allows you to test and compare small details in your marketing efforts, capturing engagement levels between the tests. It even allows you to take it to the next level by segmenting and displaying ideal content between your personas' profiles. Even a minor change can be a game-changer in the eyes of the right audience. 

HubSpot allows you to create and implement testing over landing pages, blogs, CTAs, website pages and forms. What's better is that the testing functionality is not confined to a singular testing aspect but extends its reach across the entire customer journey. 

For instance, marketers can experiment with different layouts, content variations, and design elements on landing pages to identify the most compelling and effective presentation.
 

Blogs can undergo testing to determine the optimal writing style or content structure that resonates with the target audience. On the other hand, CTAs, the pivotal links between engagement and conversion, can be fine-tuned for the highest click-through rates. Meanwhile, website pages can be tested for optimal navigation and user interaction. Last but not least, forms, critical for data collection, can be optimised to minimise friction and encourage completion with different types of themed questions or tone of voice. 

As an example, let's go through the steps to create an A/B test on emails:

1. Navigate to the Marketing Hub – Email 
2. Create an email 
3. Click on Create A/B test
4. Once in it, you can switch between the two emails in the same window. It is recommended to name the test email for future reference.
5. You can now consider the varying items in the email, like formatting and style of the content, email sender, type of image contents, and length of the subject line. 
   
   

Once the emails are completed, it will be essential to set your test configurations, such as A/B distribution, winning metric and test duration. 

      6. Select the group of audience you would like to send it to

      7. Finally, send your A/B test email and wait for the insight to surprise your team

Example:
If you would like to learn more about this powerful feature, here at the hood' we have a complete guide! 

Tip 5. Integration of the New Features and Tools

Another vital tip to maximise your use of the Marketing Hub is to keep in the loop with new features and tools that HubSpot offers. The platform consistently rolls out updates to enhance capabilities and refine the user experience. This commitment to innovation ensures businesses have access to cutting-edge functionalities that significantly elevate their marketing strategies.

For this reason, HubSpot has a designated section for users to access the latest development features. It allows you to integrate Beta functionalities for the teams to familiarise with the HubSpot products. 

To get to the Product Updates area: 

1. Click on your account, then click on Product Updates 

      2. And now, you have access to the list of Beta, in development, sunset, live or coming soon               products in the portal! 

If there is a feature you would like to see Hubspot implement, you need to check out the community! HubSpot has dedicated a community space, reviewed by the HubSpot product team, where users can share their suggestions for the HubSpot team to evaluate its incorporation.

And there you have it—our top 5 tips to wield HubSpot like a marketing superhero, helping you navigate the ever-evolving world of digital marketing.

We genuinely hope these tips become your go-to playbook for maximising results with the HubSpot portal. If you've got questions or need a bit of wizardry guidance along the way, don't be a stranger. We're ready and waiting to help you master the marketing magic with HubSpot. Cheers to marketing success, and let the enchantment continue! 🚀✨