HubSpot's New Add-ons Explained: Website, Reports, Ads - Oh My!

One of my favorite features of HubSpot is its unification of the marketer's toolkit.

 Gone are the days of needing to manage multiple interfaces, terminology, and payments to achieve your digital marketing goals.  

Today, we work in far fewer platforms than we did just years ago, and platforms are only becoming more robust and feature-full.

HubSpot’s add-ons are a perfect example of how companies are competing to make their platform the only platform you need, and as the consumer, I couldn’t be happier.  

The less work I have to do to make marketing software work for me, the more work I can do to make marketing work for my consumers.  After all, time is money!

So what are these new add-ons? What can they do? And most importantly, why should you care?

HubSpot Website Add-on

HubSpot’s Website add-on (formerly known as the COS, Content Optimization System) has totally transformed the way we work at IMPACT, and I would wager that it could for you.  

Let’s clear up some terminology first.

Content Management System (CMS): a web platform that allows you to make changes to your website in real-time without writing code.  

Imagine you hired a new employee and you wanted to add them to your website. You’ve got to call your web developer, right? Not with a CMS.  A CMS allows you to log into your website, make and publish those changes with even no knowledge of development.  

Content Distribution Network (CDN): a system of servers set up to deliver your website and it’s content the quickest by choosing the server that is closest to your visitors.

You are using a CDN everyday without even realizing it.  For starters, this blog article and the rest of IMPACT’s website was distributed to you from the closest server - pretty snappy right?

In fact, HubSpot's CDN is noticeably faster than its competitors.

Watched a YouTube video earlier? How about ordered a product on Amazon or ordered pizza from Domino’s?  If so, you have seen the benefits of a CND.  Nearly all major websites use CDNs because of their proven speed and reliability.  

So, what is the HubSpot Website Add-on? It’s a full-featured content management and content distribution network merged intoHubSpot’s marketing platform.

Having a CMS and CDN are great and provide great experiences for visitors, but being integrated into HubSpot is what makes it truly special.

By pairing your website with the power of HubSpot, you gain a multitude of features like Smart Content (serving custom content to different visitors), integration of all your marketing channels, mobile optimization, and an in-depth analytical view of how visitors interact with your website.

Why does the Website Add-on make sense?  I think an analogy would work best here.  

If you own an Apple iPhone, an Android Tablet, and a Windows Laptop you know how difficult it can be getting all of your products to play nicely.  Data synchronizes at different times, apps don’t work on all devices, and each platform has its own interface to learn.  On the contrary, if you own only Apple products, you know how seamless all your devices work together.  You get the same notifications, in the same style, on each device, you can use the same applications, and each device feels like the others.

This is just like integration of your marketing software with your website.  A website that is deeply integrated with your marketing software performs better, does more, and makes your job easier right out of the box.

HubSpot Reporting Add-on

As a marketer, having results in a format that is easily understandable is the key to knowing how to make improvements.  In addition to HubSpot’s default insights into key marketing performance metrics, the new HubSpot’s Reporting Add-on allow you to create custom reporting dashboards.  

This not only means that you can make different reports specific to all your different inbound activities, but you can also make different reports for different departments or personnel.  

Now your sales team can look at reports on deals and revenue growth, your marketing department can have information on lead generation, and your CEO can get the results without any of the busy work or hunting.   

Conversely, you can segment your dashboards by your different activities.

Want a dashboard that gives you insight into how your email nurturing campaigns perform or how your social media shares are effected by the day of the week and the type of content you release - the HubSpot Reporting Add-on gives you that flexibility.

Overall, the Reporting Add-on is wildly flexible by design, with options of how you display the data and to whom.

“Our customers have been asking for one thing: a centralized, personalizable hub for all of their key metrics and reports,” said HubSpot CTO and co-founder Dharmesh Shah.

“Our new Reporting Add-on accomplishes creates that, and does so much more. Because it reports for both sales and marketing, it helps businesses align those two organizations. It lets them be smart with how they approach customer acquisition.”

HubSpot Ads Add-on

If you have been wondering how to combine your workflows in Google Adwords and LinkedIn Ads in HubSpot, the Ads Add-on is the answers.

Finally, you can pull information from the two aforementioned sources straight into HubSpot and assign the results into different campaigns.  

Wondering how people are converting from certain PPC efforts? It’s now as simple as monitoring all the results through the HubSpot Ads tool.

No longer do you have to bundle your PPC sources into one campaign or source or direct visitors to separate pages to segment reports, the Ads tool allows you to track advertisement performance from click to customer all within the HubSpot portal you know and love.  

The feature that really separates Ads from using Adwords or LinkedIn Ads is recommendations.  

Your HubSpot portal is likely full of great information of what works and what doesn’t.  HubSpot Ads leverages this data to make expert suggestions on how to create, target, and convert from your Ads.  

Having these suggestions allow you to hit the ground running saving time and money from learning what works and what doesn’t.

If you are looking to increase the ROI on your paid advertisement while reducing your time managing them then HubSpot Ads is the way to go.

Reviews on HubSpot Add-ons

We have experienced nothing, but great things with the HubSpot Website Add-on, and are expecting the same from the newly released Reports and Ads.  Only time will tell the results people achieve from Reports and Ads, but given HubSpot’s reputation for releasing products that help marketers deliver great results, I’d wager that great reviews are right around the corner.

If you have any experience with them, drop us a comment below and we will update this post with your personal review!