What is HubSpot?

Think back to the time before you had a smartphone.  It seems like ancient history now, but there was once a time where payphones, pagers, and disposable cameras were a part of your daily life. 

Calendars were usually kept on your refrigerator, unless you had one of those cool pocket ones you got from your local hair salon.

Flashlights? In the glove box of your car or the night stand drawer.

I could keep going, but I think you know where I'm headed: along came the smartphone, integrating everything you needed in your daily life in one, easy-to-carry device. This is the kind of innovation that, in retrospect, allows you to ponder, "how the hell did we ever survive without it?"

When it comes to marketing in the 21st century, HubSpot is to your strategy what the smartphone is to your daily rituals: it's integrated everything you need in order to be successful, all in one place. 

Let's explore further. 

What is HubSpot?

In broad terms, HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing automation software that helps you market your business online, but who is ever satisfied with broad terms? Let's skip the layman's terms and get right to the nitty-gritty. 

Getting Found

HubSpot is a platform that brings together every possible marketing and distribution tactic you need in order to attract and convert leads on your website.

This is often referred to as inbound marketing. Rather than push unwanted traditional marketing messages to an unsuspecting audience through outbound methods (– i.e. direct mail, print and TV advertisements, cold calling, etc.) inbound strategies focus on attracting the right type of prospects to you.  Inbound marketing tools and tactics include:

• Blogging
• Social media
• Search engine optimization
• Landing pages

HubSpot allows you to do all of these things using the software, and provides tools for doing them successfully. Sure, I could've simply drafted up this post and hit publish with little regard for optimal performance, but HubSpot makes that easy to do. (See below.)

Wow. So, as you can see, the software tells me I have no internal links in my article so far which will affect its ability for getting found in search engines. Not only is this critical intel, but it's also providing me with 20 possible internal links from our website to include in the post. 

I also know my blog post title is the optimal length for displaying correctly in search engines. 

Picture intelligence like this across the board, not only for your blogging efforts, but everything from email and social media to specific website pages. 

Converting Leads

Website visitors are great, but unless you're doing a good job of converting them to leads and collecting their contact information, you'll probably find yourself on the wrong side of your revenue goals.

HubSpot makes it easy to optimize each and every page of your website for lead generation. Whether it's creating calls-to-action – even smart ones that only appear to certain contacts – landing pages, or emails to segmented lists of your contacts, you can eliminate the hassle and cost of having countless tools, apps, and passwords to remember in order to generate the leads you need. 

This really only scratches the surface of HubSpot's capabilities as far as conversions goes. Because it's a marketing automation software, you can utilize workflows and lead nurturing to effectively send contacts the right content at precisely the right time.  

Why We Chose HubSpot 

While features are all well and good, you're probably thinking, "well..these guys are HubSpot partners, so obviously they're biased." 

You're not wrong for thinking that. But at one time, we were just another business evaluating marketing software like you are. And just like I'm sure you've noticed, there were no shortage of options for us to choose from.

Sometimes, the features can seem to blend together, so we looked for differentiators.  

Here's why we went with HubSpot.

1. Their Commitment to Growth

HubSpot is one of the fastest growing tech companies in the country.

But for them, this isn't good enough. Being a multi-million software company isn't their aspiration; being a multi-billion dollar one is. 

For an agency evaluating software, this was really important to us. If we were to essentially marry ourselves to a company, we wanted to make sure we partnered with a company that was just as aggressive in their goals as we are. 

2. Their Influence

Without naming anyone, other marketing software companies in the space aren't even producing their own original content. 

HubSpot employs a large team of marketers to publish as much helpful, original content as possible. Their influence travels far and wide, as you'll read original content from HubSpotters in places like Inc, Forbes, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Mashable, really...the list goes on. 

These are the type of people we wanted to work with.

3. Their Obsession With the Customer

The HubSpot Academy, headed by Mark Kilens, works tirelessly to develop content that educates users and ultimately help customers get the most they possibly can from the software.

Think about that: an entire department devoted to simply educating and helping customers get more from the product. This goes beyond standard customer service. 

Also, all HubSpot's packages offer phone support, something other marketing software companies only include in their more premium packages. 

4. Their Culture

Culture means a lot to us, as a company of happy, engaged employees means a couple things:

1. They attract top-level talent
2. They keep top-level talent happy, therefore productive

There's not much more I can say on HubSpot's culture that co-founder Dharmesh Shah didn't mention in this amazing slideshare: 

That pretty much speaks for itself.

What did we miss?

Instead of searching around for hours on the web, let us know if you'd like to chat about HubSpot.