HubSpot is a powerful tool to have in your marketing arsenal. Whether you're looking to generate leads, manage customer relationships, automate your marketing processes and scale your business growth, HubSpot has it all.
With so many amazing features, it can be difficult to know where to start.
Here’s our handy guide to getting started on HubSpot so your business can hit the ground running and make the most out of the platform.
Why HubSpot?
If you’re new to HubSpot or need a reminder on why HubSpot is such a valuable tool for businesses, let us give you a quick rundown.
HubSpot stands out because it consolidates all your marketing, sales and service functions into one platform to give all of your teams a unified view of your customers at every stage of the journey.
It offers tools for everything from creating email campaigns and landing pages to managing customer data, making it easy to organise and track your business's growth efforts.
HubSpot scales with your business, helping you to attract visitors, convert leads and close deals, all in one place.
By allowing your team to work more effectively, it fosters collaboration, provides valuable insights and improves the customer experience.
Step 1 - Getting started
Once you’ve signed up to your account, you can start exploring the main tools available on the platform which are divided into ‘Hubs’:
Marketing Hub
Sales Hub
Service Hub
Content Hub
Operations Hub
Commerce Hub
Smart CRM
Check out HubSpot’s pricing models here.
We recommend familiarising yourself with the main Hubs first:
Marketing Hub
In the Marketing Hub, you can create and manage email campaigns, blog posts, landing pages, and social media content. It’s also where you’ll track your marketing performance with analytics that show how well your campaigns are driving traffic and conversions.
Sales Hub
The Sales Hub provides tools to manage customer relationships, including a built-in CRM (customer relationship management) system.
This allows your sales team to keep track of leads, schedule follow-ups and manage pipelines. The Sales Hub also offers automation tools, so your team can spend more time closing deals and less time on repetitive tasks.
Service Hub
The Service Hub focuses on improving customer satisfaction. It includes tools for ticketing, live chat and customer feedback, helping you to provide better support and retain loyal customers.
HubSpot's CRM
One of HubSpot’s most powerful features is its free CRM system - we think it’s worthy of an extra mention here.
The CRM allows you to store and manage all your customer data in one place. You can track interactions with prospects, assign leads to sales reps, and record every email, call or meeting your team has with a customer.
Your entire team has access to a unified view of your leads and customers, meaning your marketing and sales teams can work together without missing important context or information needed to proceed to the next step.
The CRM also integrates with HubSpot’s marketing and sales tools, so you can quickly launch campaigns based on real-time data.
Step 2 - Automate your marketing and sales processes
Automation is a key feature that sets HubSpot apart. By automating repetitive tasks, your team gets more time to focus on higher-value tasks while minimising human error and missed opportunities.
Workflows in HubSpot are designed to automate tasks like email marketing, lead nurturing, and follow-ups based on triggers such as form submissions or website visits, and it’s all completely customisable based on your business needs and current processes.
You can also automate reminders for sales teams, task creation and reminders to keep your sales pipeline moving.
HubSpot allows access to real-time reporting, including A/B testing for optimisation and integrations with third-party tools like Slack, Gmail and Shopify.
Step 3 - Integrate tools and third-party apps
HubSpot integrates with a wide range of third-party apps and tools and you can easily connect these tools to synchronise your data across platforms and ensure that all your tools work together efficiently.
Integrating tools and third-party apps with HubSpot allows you centralise your data into one place and create comprehensive automated workflows. You’ll find pre-built integrations with popular platforms like Gmail, Outlook and Salesforce (and many more) in HubSpot’s App Marketplace, as well as native integrations like Google Workspace and Zoom.
For more advanced needs, HubSpot’s APIs allow developers to create custom integrations for seamless data flow across specialised platforms.
Step 4 - Track and analyse performance
HubSpot’s customisable dashboards are used to analyse and track performance, providing insights into all your marketing sales and customer service metrics.
For example, HubSpot allows you to track campaign performance, website analytics, email engagement and ad campaign metrics, while sales teams can monitor sales activities and revenue performance, and service teams can track customer satisfaction and ticket resolution times.
Once you’ve set up your dashboards, it’s easy to monitor progress and identify opportunities for improvement and efficiency across your teams, and individual campaigns.
As a certified HubSpot partner, Ascensor are perfectly placed to discuss either a new or existing HubSpot solution.
Contact us today to make the most out of this feature-rich platform for your business.