Our First Week Using Hubspot for Inbound Marketing

Is Hubspot just another scam or are they as awesome as they claim to be?

As an internet marketing & web design company, we use several software (or SaaS) packages for everything from SEO monitoring to customer relationship management . If we haven’t used most of the internet marketing tools out there, we’ve researched them thoroughly enough to be able to give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down when a client asks about them. I’ll be honest, there are alot of scams out there and I’m not all that optimistic anymore about these companies living up to their claims.

About six months ago HubSpot popped up on our radar when someone we respect in the internet marketing industry ( @tim_ash ) held a webinar with them on landing page optimization. I sat through the webinar nodding in agreement to everything they were saying – mainly because I follow Tim Ash and have read his book on the same topic. Soon after attending the webinar, I was sent a follow up email about another related webinar and I attended it as well. Soon thereafter it dawned on me that I was being marketed to – in a big way.

I was so busy watching all those webinars hosted with respected industry leaders that I actually forgot I was being marketed to! (And as an internet marketer myself, you can imagine how dumb I feel admitting that.) But, it led me to my next thought – “man, these guys are good …”. By the time it truly dawned on me, they had my email address, phone number and all sorts of other details about our firm – including challenges we face and number of employees we have. And that was when I decided to take a serious look at HubSpot.

By the time Hubspot actually got in touch with me via telephone I had spent evening after evening watching webinars (instead of The Office on Netflix) and reading white papers; almost trying to find a reason to discredit them (did I mention I’m a skeptic? ). I found their information to be very much aligned with what we believe in ourselves – in short: Your website should work FOR you! It has a job to do – to bring in business; not be a billboard that no one sees.

So, after countless hours of research, we signed on for a free trial. Again, I’m half-expecting the software to be a disappointment. Sure, they talk a big game, but can they back it up?

We shall see …

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http://www.hubspot.com Kirsten Knipp

Samara & team,

So glad to see that you and Buck were able to connect and that you’ve decided to give us a shot … it is so wonderful to hear that the content we provided was valuable enough to get your interest and even respect.
I hope that we keep it up and look forward to hearing more about your inbound progress!
Perhaps we’ll see you online at the VAR Training Webinar series this month …
Best!
Kirsten

Samara Hart

Thank you for getting in touch Kristen!

I will say that your customer service has been great so far. We’ve been digging into the Hubspot tools and how they work with our Joomla / WordPress installations and have been happy so far. I sent in a request regarding better integration with WordPress and was told that it was submitted to the dev team. It’s always nice to be heard!

Soon my trial will be up and I will have a part two to this series, so keep in touch!

http://twitter.com/pc4media pc4media

Welcome aboard, Samara! We look forward to helping you and your clients be even more super successful!

You hit the nail right on the head: “Your Website should work for you! It has a job to do – to bring in business.” Let’s make it bring in boatloads!

http://pixsym.com Samara Hart

Thanks for the support Peter. I am glad I didn’t toss Hubspot by the wayside I am really actually enjoying getting to know the software inside and out!

Laura

You will not be disappointed.

http://pixsym.com Samara Hart

Thanks for the support Laura – so far, so good!

http://www.gossamar.com Eric

Samara;
As Pete said, Welcome Aboard!

I can hand-on-heart say that you will not be disappointed – provided that you do the right things with HubSpot and don’t simply use it to replace your old marketing strategy.

We find it’s best to think of this new strategy as a Process (note the capital P), which consists of 4 phases:
1) Attract – using SEO, SMM and, if needed, PPC
2) Engage – using your website copy and content
3) Convert – using Calls to Action which lead to forms which turn leads into prospects
4) Nurture with multitouch (drip) emails to cultivate from prospect to client.

You need a marketing strategy element to cover each one of these phases. Rather than try to repeat here what each of these steps entails, please visit http://www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca for details.

http://pixsym.com Samara Hart

Hello Eric, thanks for the warm welcome!

As I mentioned in my post, we are 100% on board with the inbound marketing philosophy and know without a doubt that the methods that Hubspot promotes works. My post is more about the software, not the method. As an internet marketing agency ourselves, we are just happy to see the industry evolving with great tools to match.

Jeffrey G.

I would like to know how you have done with Hubspot. Does it work ? and are you satified. Also what type of company do you have ‘

I have found that the only marketing software company that works well is a company named Wildfire,but it is only good for certain companies.

JG or [email address removed to prevent spam]

http://pixsym.com Samara Hart

Hello Jeffrey, I’ve never heard of Wildfire (except for the Facebook marketing software company). Stay tuned – I am writing a follow up to this post which will answer your questions.

Dolm

Samara,

I’m interested in hearing about how you feel about HubSpot vs the cost, now that you’ve been with them for approaching a year. I personally found them to be grossly overpriced for what the software provides, but am quite interested in your take, as I did the trial and didn’t subscribe.

- Dolm

http://pixsym.com Samara Hart

Hello Dolm,

The truth is we aren’t using Hubspot any longer. Not because it’s not a good product, but because we found the CMS to restrictive for our needs. We also needed more control over email marketing and found their email marketing tools stifling. They have improved vastly over the past year; however at the time, we couldn’t wait for the tools to evolve.

I think price is really relative to the amount of time you have to spend piecing together solutions to analyze and optimize your marketing efforts. Sure, there are other solutions out there that can take care of the pieces individually, however what Hubspot does quite well is make it easy for most to put the inbound marketing methodology into practice and analyze the results.

There are certainly clients that we have where Hubspot is a perfect fit and there are others that cannot justify the cost. For us, it wasn’t the cost of the software as much as it was the limits to the tools at the time we were using it. The value in Hubspot is really in the ability to save time in my opinion.

http://www.pocketcompassmedia.com Chuck Rayman

Hi Samara,

Just a quick note to let you know that I enjoyed reading your article. I found it to be informative and insightful. However, I do have a quick question for your…..can you tell me what you use now instead of Hubspot? I really like Hubspot but wondering what else is out there that’s comparable. I look forward to your reply.

Best,

Chuck

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