Item: HubSpot Marketing Hub
Rating: 10
Author: Stephanie Gaughen

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use HubSpot across the whole organization. Sales and operations uses this to gain lead insights and find content they can send to prospects that showcases our expertise. For marketing, we use HubSpot throughout the day to manage everything but the website, which is still hosted in WordPress.

Pros and Cons

Support team and consultants are great. They always have answers and suggestions. They are always accessible. I rarely have to wait to talk to support.
Committed to innovation and improving the product. They understand that when I'm successful, they're successful because I renew our license.
Understand the rapidly changing role of the marketer. We have to control all our digital outposts and prove our ROI. You can do that with all the tools in HubSpot.

Like Salesforce, they have really started to build an ecosystem of partners. The technology can be used for the DIY marketer, but there is definitely a learning curve to all the best practices for each tool and keeping up with them. I have no doubt that people who use a partner agency are more successful because they have access to many subject matter experts who can all keep up with technology changes. Still, it's possible for someone with beginner knowledge of digital marketing to learn Hubspot and online marketing methodology.
As much as HubSpot is DIY, you still have to work with a webmaster or someone with knowledge of HTML and CSS to really ensure the functionality and design flows with your website if it's not hosted on HubSpot CMS.
Pre-designed templates, call-to-action buttons, etc., are very limited and nobody should really be using their freebies. You really have to spend the $$$ on a designer who can make landing page and ebook templates, CTAs, etc.

Return on Investment

Huge impact. We blew our 2013 goals out of the water. Leads from our website increased from 5 avg. per month to 40-60 per month, with somewhat limited content. We expect that with more content efforts next year, these with double.
Better info. for our sales team before they engage with a prospect. We know what pages they viewed, emails they clicked, etc.
It's awesome to run all marketing from one place. Their social media tools such as Social Inbox greatly increase ability to engage in social community more quickly and easily.

Alternatives Considered

Pardot, Marketo, Constant Contact and ExactTarget

We moved to HubSpot from Constant Contact, which was a substantial leap forward in marketing technology. Compared to other popular solutions on the market, HubSpot is much more affordable and still gets results. A large enterprise might need a more robust marketing system with multiple software solutions but HubSpot is a great all-in-one tool for companies who want to combine blogging, email marketing, social media and SEO into one place.

Likelihood to Renew

Once on the platform, it's difficult to not renew your license. That's typical of any CRM or marketing automation. We have invested a lot of time in learning the tool and the methodology so it would be a waste not to renew. Plus we are seeing the results we were promised.

Likelihood to Recommend

For HubSpot to be successful, as for any CRM or marketing automation software, you have to embrace the methodology and make sure your behind-the-scenes processes and philosophies match up with that technology. For example, we realized sales teams in two different divisions of our company had completely different approaches to the sales process. One was consultative as HubSpot suggests, the other was not. We had to make some really tough business decisions based on our internal processes in order to really make the technology work.

This is not unique to HubSpot. There's also a big time commitment to creating content to run the system. You can't just turn HubSpot on and expect your leads and sales to grow exponentially. You have to lay the groundwork AND your sales team also has to know how to close these leads.

Inbound leads are very different from traditional leads. They are way more educated and have probably done a lot more research before even contacting you than ever before. It can be difficult for people stuck in old sales ways to learn this new approach.

Products Replaced

Yes - Constant Contact and HootSuite. These are light years away from the capabilities HubSpot offers.

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability
Product Reputation
Prior Experience with the Product
Existing Relationship with the Vendor
Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Analyst Reports

Price - we have a small marketing budget so we really needed to see and prove the ROI. I don't see how we could do that with any of the other popular marketing solutions out there like Pardot, ExactTarget or Marketo.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

It's definitely important to learn what features you will need help with from a vendor and research potential vendors in each ecosystem. For example, each solution has templates for email and blogging but the best designs are customized. You need to make sure you can find a vendor who will support your vision and branding for that marketing solution.

Implementation Rating

Now that we are a couple years in, we clearly see what we should have done differently to implement HubSpot. We are now helping customers with their implementation strategies and inbound marketing plans. It's really important to involve your sales team and sales manager as much as possible so you can set up your CRM to support inbound marketing and vice versa. They also need to understand how the process will work with lead nurturing and timing. If they're not familiar with consultative selling, they will need training and a methodology overhaul in order for them to support marketing. Remember, you can have the latest and greatest technology, but you still have to do the work as HubSpot suggests and close leads as customers. They don't come wrapped on your doorstep right away.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

We are a HubSpot partner, so we (Nuvem Consulting) implemented on our own.

Implementation Phases

No - We did buy a block of consulting time with HubSpot to help guide us through implementation but there weren't any specific phases when we implemented. I think HubSpot has a better defined path now but I would still recommend doing the implementation step by step instead of trying to do everything at one time.

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a major issue with the implementation - Once we were about six months down the line and feeling pretty good about using HubSpot, and generating tons of leads, it became clear that we didn't have processes to support our efforts to actually close leads as customers. Sales reps weren't getting the right info. from lead gen forms, we didn't have persona paths / lead nurturing outlined, sales didn't know how to follow up with inbound website leads or when, and data quality from our CRM was not supporting our marketing efforts.

Implementation Issues

Personas and target market not well understood or defined - this hurts content and lead nurturing strategy
Sales process was not defined to support inbound marketing
We didn't have a master "plan" for implementation - we just wanted to do everything as quickly as possible

Support Rating

Support team is phenomenal. I never wait when I call. If email support, I usually hear back within a couple hours, especially for issues that can be easily resolved.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Exceptional Examples of HubSpot Marketing Hub Support

We transitioned to a new brand name and URL a few months ago. We kept our existing license and portal but need to make a few technical switches. HubSpot was really awesome with supporting us in the effort and we didn't really encounter too many problems. We did have some technical glitches with our subdomains and analytics tracking but support was able to resolve within 48 hours. Because of this, we had very little downtime with any of the features on HubSpot and no downtime with our website launch.

All Around Great Product and Brand

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with HubSpot