The Cheap Revolution

Review of Hubspot's Inbound Marketing System – An Entrepreneur’s Perspective

A brief history of Hubspot

After meeting at MIT in 2006, Hubspot’s founders created a digital search marketing platform designed to leverage the disruptive effects of the Internet to enable businesses to “get found”.  Just five years later, Hubspot.com ranks as a top 1000 Web Site globally and is in the top 350 most trafficked sites in the US per Alexa. 

I started using Hubspot a few years ago as part of my digital marketing business.  After watching a demo of the tool's capabilities, we decided to try using Hubspot within our company.  We quickly introduced it to some of our entrepreneurial clients as well.   I don't use Hubspot in my Philadelphia marketing consulting business today.  I'll explain why later, but first... 

Our Hubspot Review

In this review of the Hubspot platform, we explore what Hubspot does and how a startup or small business may benefit from using their software.

Hubspot’s message is all about Inbound marketing, a term Hubspot has rallied into a brand phrase.  What does Inbound Marketing do?   It allows you to turn your Website into a lead generation tool for customers.

What is HubSpot?

When I started using Hubspot, the central tools revolved around on-site organic search optimization.   The tool would help you discover a dynamic list of keywords that you could attempt to capture with your site optimization efforts.   You were able to track your competition's performance on those keywords as well, providing valuable insight into how their website's were positioned.   Coupled with the website evaluation tools, you were able to quickly optimize a site for organic search traffic.

The Hubspot platform seeks to take the realm of organic search and digital marketing out of the hands of the Internet marketing insider and put it into the hands of the entrepreneur or small business owner.  It has numerous marketing tools and tricks that allow a business owner to:

• Optimize keyword content on blog posts
• Track visitors and user engagement
• Analyze social media feeds
• Create and manage email marketing
• Nurture web leads
• View reports that measure the effectiveness of your marketing

Hubspot also supports their platform with a variety of training and advice.  They have webinars, downloadable white papers, community forums and conferences that support the Inbound Marketing experience. 

Indeed, you can tell Hubspot eats their own dog food. They offer free eBooks to their customer base on how to improve their marketing initiatives as a way to capture leads. A few worth nothing are:

• The Ultimate How-to Marketing Guide 
• Twitter for Business 
• How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day
• 100 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts, and Graphs 
• 101 Awesome Marketing Quotes

How HubSpot Works

Hubspot provides six categories of marketing software capabilities:

1. Search Optimization – Hubspot’s first priority is to get your business found in search engines.  Helping your business to optimize its digital presence for the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing is where Hubspot got started.  When I used Hubspot, I was impressed with the ocean of keyword data that I could sort through.   Hubspot helps you with finding the best keywords for your business, prioritize them and use them effectively on your Web site.  
2. Blogging & Social Media – Social and Search work closely together today with personalized searching that draws on  the rapid growth of people’s social networks. Hubspot provides the tools for integrating blogging and social media monitoring, as well as  analytics  for both, into  your marketing efforts.  
   OTHER OPTIONS: If blogging is a central part of your digital strategy, bloggers may want to consider the popular Wordpress blogging platform.  While it’s nice to have everything in one place with Hubspot, the number of plug-ins and the broad community support make tools like Wordpress a must-have tool for serious blogging strategy.
3. Lead Generation and
4. Lead Management  - These two categories fall into the realm of the digital marketers' secret weapon of conversion optimization.   If you are serious about getting quality business leads from your website and social media presence, you must pay attention to where visitors are landing when they come to your site.  Application of best practices can dramatically improve your number of leads! Hubspot tools allow non-technical business owners to optimize the “Landing Pages” and to track exactly what people did when they visited your site.   Before you call the lead back, wouldn’t it be nice to know which pages they read, which videos they viewed or which whitepapers they downloaded.  Hubspot tells you all of that and more, making it a powerful lead nurturing platform.
5. Email & Automation  - like blogging, if you are looking for a “one stop shop” then you may want to consider Hubspot.  However, the areas of Email Marketing and Lead Nurturing have really matured in the past few years and, depending on your needs,  you might be better served by email marketing alternatives like Constant Contact, iContact or Mailchimp.   Lead Nurturing giants like Eloqua, Marketo, and Pardot are worth considering as well.
6. Marketing Analytics – Hubspot’s analytics are organized and focused on driving sales for your business.  Understanding ROI by marketing activities and channels, running comparison tests (A/B analysis) and which channels get the best leads are organized into Hubspot’s “ full-funnel view closed-loop reporting”.  This is a results-driven marketer’s dream!  

Once again, there are big dogs that only do analytics like Google Analytics or Adobe Omniture, but those systems require someone who knows those platforms to craft the equivalent “conversion funnels” and channel analysis. Compared to Hubspot, those platforms are going to provide a broader range of analytics capability, but Hubspot trumps them on providing easy access to the most important numbers.

HubSpot in Real Life

While I used to employ Hubspot for my marketing clients and my company, we used it to manage landing pages and do our SEO research.   More recently, I've come across companies who use Hubspot for the analytics and the drip marketing capabilities.  Given the rich set of features, there are endless combinations of approaches to using HubSpot.  

Did it work?   Take a look at this graph of a client we launched using Hubspot for landing page optimization and search engine optimization.  

Using HubSpot, we helped this client grow their monthly traffic from zero to 15,000 in roughly six months, including a comparable growth in leads. 

We stopped using HubSpot when our client's using HubSpot took their marketing in-house.  From a digital agency perspective, that kind of sucked.  From the entrepreneur's perspective, this was empowerment - and they took full advantage of it.   

We kept HubSpot around for a while, but it requires a monthly fee and, THIS IS IMPORTANT, it requires ongoing attention and time to work.   When we stopped using HubSpot in late 2010, our small band of merry marketers did not have the time to justify the monthly expense.  But the lesson here is that someone - whether an outside agency or your internal team - must be willing to invest the required effort to use HubSpot and keep abreast of their latest additions to the toolkit.

If you're willing to make the investment of time and aren't afraid of the monthly investment (see Pricing below), then HubSpot is worth checking out.  Friend and colleague David Newman of DoItMarketing provided this review of how he walks the walk and talks the talk with Hubspot. 

Hubspot has totally lit up our visibility to our target market, independent consultants and small professional services firm owners who want to grow. We are now much more findable, visible, and credible. We get between 3-4 leads per day through our Hubspot-powered website AND in addition to that, we get several leads each week via email and phone from people saying, "I just found your site and I'm calling to see how you might be able to help us." Working on both sides of the fence (we are also a Hubspot Certified Partner), it is now very easy to share the value with our prospects and clients because we were the first to "eat our own dog food" and we continue to invest in our own inbound marketing efforts as we help our clients do the same!

If you have the technical and business skills to use an online bill payment system (e.g. from your bank),  online accounting system (e.g. Quickbooks) or navigate an online portfolio (.e.g from The Vanguard Group or Fidelity), then you can use Hubspot.  Some Hubspot capabilities will require an investment of time to be able to use them productively, but there are a host of educational resources from Hubspot.  

Hubspot support ranges across online videos, white papers, best practices seminars and an active and responsive community of marketers using the platform.   It is an exceptionally well-supported product.

Why You Should Care About Using HubSpot

Bottom line: if you are a marketer for your company, this is the most cost effective way I know of to get multi-channel, agency-level marketing help with a DIY  approach.   If you can run an email marketing program, or can get around Quickbooks, then you can use Hubspot.

Using HubSpot requires an investment of time and money - and it requires you to adopt the HubSpot methodology and platform for a lot of what you do.  Some companies, particularly larger ones, are better served by a collection of best-in-class tools.  I believe HubSpot is best suited to startups and smaller businesses. 

Try it out and let us know how it worked for you. You can get your free trial by signing up here.

HubSpot Pricing

HubSpot has a monthly fee.  As an entrepreneur, this is a strategic investment that you'll need to carefully consider.  For entrepreneurs, you can get started with the Basic, Professional or Enterprise version with $200/month up to $700/month.  

What’s the difference? 

The more advanced levels provide advanced interaction and lead nurturing techniques like A/B testing and custom lead scoring.  These are tools that you can adopt over time.   The Basic package has all of the core offerings and provides an excellent Inbound Marketing starting point.

 

Pricing captured from Hubspot site (www.hubspot.com/pricing) on 01/22/2012.

Even if the pricing doesn't work for you, there are a number of free resources from Hubspot.  Consider checking out the Hubspot Grader for a free Web Site assessment.

In Summary: Our HubSpot Review Conclusion

While HubSpot is straightforward to learn and use for the do-it-yourself marketer, it does require a serious investment of time.  In effect, you are in-sourcing your digital marketing agency.  Be ready to get to work!  If you do, the results can be dramatic. 

If you are using Hubspot, please include your experience in the comments below.   We want to hear your stories – good and bad!   By leaving your experience, you benefit the whole community of entrepreneurs reading this review of Hubspot.

- Skip Shuda

Note: This Review of the HubSpot marketing platform contains affiliate links which may provide the CheapRevolution.com with  compensation.  If you find this blog helpful, please patronize our advertisers using the links you find on the site. 

Look to the future - 2010 Social Media and Internet Marketing trends

Many of us are happy to have 2009 behind us! I've enjoyed looking over the predictions and forecasts for
  2010.  I thought it might be helpful to provide a roundup of some of my favorites - and add my reflections to kick off the conversation. 

What are your favorite Internet Marketing and Social Media trends for the upcoming year?  2010 breakthroughs may present themselves as shiny, new technologies... but the biggest surprises might come from mainstream business use of stuff thats been around for some time. 

Here are some of my favorite predictions for 2010.

 1) Harvard Business Review takes an industry level peek into how we organize our social media, business scaling, gaming, mobile and more.

2) Dan Zarella, A Social Media and Viral Marketing Scientist who also works at Hubspot, talks about Social Media trends toward more IRL (In Real Life) translation, micro-segmenting, small business Social Media Marketing and the Real time Web.

3) StartupNation has a terrific set of Top 10 Internet Marketing Predictions for 2010 from Tom Now covering everything from the explosion of the US Hispanic Market online through the rise of video blogs, Digital Portfolios and your digital footprint, Location-based Marketing and Integrated Marketing.  

4) Trendwatching wins my creative insight award though... by taking a wide angle lens on all of society and culture they forearm us with predictions of embedded generosity, intention-based online profiles and Tracking & Alerting to manage our INFOLUST.   They wrap with some reflection on the opinionated, risque, outspoken - and (might I add) rude - brand speak of 2010 that emanates from the mouthpiece of the online world.  Hmm... sounds like a teenager to me. 

My Takeaways and Favorites... 

Favorite #1 - INFOLUST and too much noise.  While I haven't heard the term before, it seems to me an accurate perspective on many of our online pursuits.  This necessitates the need for Attention Filters like alerts, automated search tools, RSS feeds and aggregation tools.  Twitter Lists, Google Sidewiki and other ways for the collective to annotate our ramblings reminds me of how folksonomies are being taken to the entire Web. 

Favorite #2 - Craving of life to meet life.  IRL (In Real Life).  As a  Meetup organizer, I appreciate the value of online meetups.  Meetup passed the 50 Million RSVP mark this year, with 5 Million Meetup groups per Scott Heiferman in this YouTube video on Meetup in 2009. 

Favorite #3 - Portfolio thinking - Digital portfolio/digital footprints.  For the past year, I've been realizing and advocating that we are all going to have start thinking in terms of portfolios. In the highly fragmented world we call 2010, it is more and more likely that our money, time and attention will be coming from/directed to a wide range of sources.  How many income sources do you have?  (I can count six and growing).  How many social (online and offline) outlets do you have (I'm well over a dozen). Have you Googled yourself lately to see your Digital Footprint? 

Favorite #4 - Embedded Generosity.  The idea of seeing tighter, micro-embedding of cause-based efforts is one of the more positive trends that helps tighten the weave of our global blanket. 

What are your takeaways or favorites? What would you add? 

BTW - I know I'm missing some great trends and predictions.  If you have one, please add it to the comments below.  

Thanks - and here is wishing you a life-inspiring 2010!

-Skip

Photo credit: www.brainygamer.com

20 Must Have Resources for Internet Marketers

Internet Marketing Tools/Software & Tools to Help Marketers

HubSpot – HubSpot is a powerful, web-based online marketing system that helps small and medium sized businesses capture and convert more qualified sales leads by an optimized web presence.  We like HubSpot because it is robust, easy to use, and they provide great support as well as a lot of opportunities to learn more about Internet marketing. Definitely a must-have if you’re a marketer who works with small or medium sized businesses. You can test drive HubSpot for 7 days.

Constant Contact – As a marketer, you know you need a “mix” of marketing activities to accomplish your marketing objectives. E-mail marketing is still a viable method of reaching your Internet marketing goals. We still use Constant Contact and we’re pretty happy with it. If you’re not sure, you can sign up for a free trial. Read also: 7 Alternatives to Constant Contact here.

Wordtracker – if you’re serious about keyword research, Wordtracker is an investment you need to make. Not only will your keyword research get done faster, but Wordtracker helps you find the most profitable and competitive keywords and you’re able to save your keyword research by project. They have annual and monthly subscriptions as well as a free trial. There are many keyword research tools out there, but Wordtracker is definitely one of our favorites.

Huddle – Managing your Marketing projects with Huddle is a snap! Huddle offers online collaboration, live conferencing, project management software and document sharing. There are five packages – from FREE to enterprise. Depending on what you need, it can be a cost-efficient way to manage your marketing projects. We use Huddle to keep track of our clients and marketing projects and continue to be pleased with the service. Update: This month customers can get 5% off at Huddle for Life by using coupon code: UHGFDX. Offer valid until 28th February 2011 on all paying subscriptions or free to paid upgrades at Huddle. 

Radian 6 – if you’re an Internet Marketer using Social Media, then you know how important it is to monitor and measure community engagement. Radian6 is a powerful platform that is comprehensive and easy to use. It’s a must have if you’re serious about social media!

Premium Marketing Resources

Market Motives – Get online marketing certified in SEO, PPC, Web Analytics, PR, Social Media, E-mail Marketing, and more.

Marketing Sherpa – Premium membership gets you case studies, how-to guides, research reports, certifications, and more.

Marketing Profs – Paid membership gets you access to marketing articles, case studies, videos, webinars, discounts on conferences, etc.

SEOMoz – Becoming a PRO member gives you access to a host of SEO-related tools. A must-have if you’re into search engine optimization.

eMarketing Association – Paid membership gets you resources, discounts on seminars, reports, whitepapers, articles, and a lot more.

Internet Marketing Books

Inbound Marketing: Get Found on Google, Social Media, and Blogs - a how-to guide to getting found via Google, the blogosphere, and social media sites.

The Art of SEO (Theory in Practice) – If you are new to SEO, you'll get a complete and thorough SEO education, as well as an array of effective tactics, from basic to advanced. Seasoned practitioners will find this book useful as a complete reference to SEO best practices.

Socialnomics: how social media transforms the way we live and do business – an essential book for anyone who wants to understand the implications of social media, and how businesses can tap the power of social media to increase their sales, cut their marketing costs, and reach consumers directly.

Trust Agents – Written by marketing rock stars Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, this book shows you how to tap into the power of social networks to build your brand's influence, reputation, and, of course, profits.

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity – As an Internet marketer, you know the importance of web analytics. This book provides specific recommendations for creating an actionable strategy, applying analytical techniques correctly, and solving challenges such as measuring social media and multichannel campaigns.

Internet Marketing Conferences in 2010

Affiliate Summit West – January 17^th to 19^th in Las Vegas, NV

Social Media Conference – January 28^th & 29^th in Miami, FL

Search Marketing Expo West – March 2^nd to 4^th in Santa Clara, CA

South by Southwest Interactive – March 12^th to 16^th in Austin, TX

Business to Business Forum – May 4^th to 5^th in Boston, MA

Probing my Social Network - what came back?

What  is your topmost reason for using Social Media? 

Search? 

Sales? 

Relationship? 

Build credentials? 

Recruiting? 

POV? 

Helping? 

Other? 

Two weeks ago, I posed these questions across my Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Yammer and LinkedIn.  I wanted to see what my network and reach was like for a random question.  The rest of this post illustrates some of the dialogue that arose in each of the channels.  

From FaceBook: 

Hey again everyone. Thanks again for participating. To answer Kevin's question... What is My Topmost Reason for using SM? 

To embrace my humanity more fully.

From LinkedIn:

Thanks to all of you for your responses. I have responded to most of you directly, although I didn't get a chance to respond to Steven T. Smith yet... which I'll include here. Steven called me out on this - and I agree that the question was deliberately vague. By leaving it vague, I was hoping to get a bit of an "ink-blot interpretation" response to the question... and each person had a unique take on the question. 

I also ran the exact same question across Yammer, Twitter, my blog, Facebook and here on LInkedIn. It was meant as a quick experiment to help me flesh out some some frameworks I'm putting together about human communication. (I think my friend Rick might have been running a similar experiment concurrently and hope to hear his findings!) Thank you for your insights and participation.

The early results are shared below. However, the responses not only helped to identify the wide range of potential uses of Social Media, but highlighted the different nature of some of the channels. For example, I received 3 Twitter responses in less than 30 minutes and then nothing. LinkedIn and Facebook responses continue to roll in after 24 hours. The LinkedIn responses were the most detailed and nuanced. I didn't receive any responses on my blog :-/. The size of my personal reach is different across each of these mediums - as is the strength of my relationships. While I personally know all 14 respondents in Facebook, I only personally know 1 of the LinkedIn respondents. 

Where am I going with all of this? I'm pursuing the perspective that "Social Media", Social Networking, Professional Networking, etc. all fall under the umbrella of Human Communication. The Social Media umbrella is just a set of "conversation extenders". If we start to look at them from this perspective, we can map out how the different media relate to each other, serve different purposes for different audiences - so that we can each create maps tailored to the demands of our most important conversations. 

So... here are the initial results of my little experiment. 

Twitter - 3 responses (all within 30 minutes) - relationship (stay in touch), listening, learning, sharing loves/gripes, sharing ideas, building company brand (FB, Twitter, Blog)

Yammer - 1 response (relationships, POV, credentials, search, drive sales, branding, thought leadership, listen to clients)

LinkedIn - 5 responses (recruiting, sales, promoting awareness, event notification, sharing resources, tracking business network, (email, YahooGroups), job leads, connecting with partners, market testing, feedback, recruiting, credential building, search)

Facebook - 14 responses (relationship, cheese, gossip, dating, reconnecting (FB), follow influencers, broadening relationship, family relationship/updates, deepening business relationships)

Blog - 0 responses

With gratitude to those who already participated!

How about you?  What would you add to this list? 

5 Easy Social Media Tips for Technologists

A couple of weeks ago, Skip and I spoke at the Chariot Solutions offices for a Social Media "Lunch & Learn". Our audience? Open source technologists!

We reviewed some of the basics, but also discussed why a person in the technical field should care. Granted, many of these technologists are already "hip" to social technology. Some have embraced the tools and are harnessing social technology to build & nurture relationships and share/collaborate with other technologists.

Quite frankly, it's refreshing that Chariot is "leading the charge" (pun intended!) and encouraging their employees to participate in social media. It's really a no-brainer; in some cases, employees of small and medium sized companies can be the best content generators and evangelists of the company brand. Of course, mileage will vary depending on your industry, how many employees you have, etc.  I'll save that for another "brand & reputation management" post, though.

Anyways, we had a lot to cover in the session since it was only an hour long, but we revealed some easy things technologists can integrate into their daily routines to participate in the company's social media efforts. Most of these things can take 20 minutes or less a day to do!

1. Share your Google Reader with other employees. If you're already using Google Reader to read the latest news and blog posts from the technological world - why not SHARE interesting links/info with your fellow employees?
2. Use Twitter to connect & share with your co-workers as well as RT (re-tweet) company news (if they have a corporate Twitter account). If you're creating a professional account, consider including your company name or area of specialty in your Twitter account. For example: "OpenSourceFrank"
3. Find and join groups on LinkedIn. Try to focus on those related to your technology niche. For example, if you're an open source developer, start your search with "open source" or "open source development".  Use keywords related to your specialty to find those relevant groups.
4. Utilize social bookmarking sites (for example: Dzone - which is like Digg, but for developers) to share news articles, blog posts, and interesting videos. Google Reader offers easy social sharing functionality. Many websites, blogs, and social networking platforms also have this social sharing functionality built-in as well. It's easy to use, you just need an account on the social bookmarking sites.
5. Comment on your company's blog. Seriously. Your blog comment doesn't have to be a dissertation. It can be simply agreeing with and supporting what the blog post is about. Naturally, we also encourage regular commenting on other, industry blogs. Do so as time permits.

There's many other things technologists can do to participate in the company's social media, of course. Knowing what your company's social media strategy, though, is key. If they don't have one, it's time for them to step up & create one. But we'll leave that for another blog post.

What are some of YOUR social media tips for technologists?

Best,
Marilyn Moran

5 Practical Tips on Following People on Twitter

I know there’s a lot of talk about Twitter these days. According to a Nielsen survey, it’s the fastest growing social networking site on the Internet today. Individuals, businesses, and celebrities alike are using it to communicate and connect with others. Back in June, I participated in a workshop called Twitter for Business 101 (sponsored by Team and a Dream).I explained the benefits of signing up, basic usage, and covered some Twitter etiquette (what and when to “tweet”).

A big part of my presentation was about searching for people to follow on Twitter. I focused a good bit on how to qualify the best people to follow. Knowing your target audience is a good first step in figuring out whom to follow. Know the topics and issues that they are interested in and ensure they align with your own. Use that as a foundation in order to start a conversation and build a relationship with them.

Note: it’s important to read people’s Bios as well as scan their most recent tweets before following them. Take this extra qualifying step so you’re not just randomly following people. It will also assure you that their tweets are of value to you. Are they frequently sharing news, links or other information that interests you? Are they actively engaging in conversation with others?

5 Twitter Follow Tips

1. Finding People on Twitter – Twitter allows you to search for people you already know or based on keywords. You can also invite people to Twitter. http://twitter.com/invitations/find_on_twitter

2.  Real Time Twitter Search – this seems like a no-brainer.  Write down a list of keywords that you’re interested in or that describes your business. Plug those words into Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/) and you will immediately get real-time results of people who are using those exact words in their tweets.  Real Time Search also includes trending topics which are the hot topics at any given time.

3.   Friend Followers/Following – Scan your friends’ following/followers from time to time. It never hurts to see who they are following or who is following them. Chances are you will find a common thread in which to start a conversation.

4.   Twitter Directories – Directories are like Yellow Pages on the web. On most Twitter directories, you can submit yourself to the directory listing that's most relevant to you – usually you will be grouped by categories/keywords or interests.  Great Twitter directories to get listed on and find people are Twellow, WeFollow, and TwitterGroups.

5.  Tweet Alerts – set up a tweet alert on your keywords so you can have conversations emailed to you. It is essentially like Google Alerts for Twitter. Good examples of online tools that can do this are Tweetscan and TweetBeep.

Let us know how you find and follow people on Twitter!

By: Marilyn Moran

Your New Job and using OPC - Other People's Content

I again had the pleasure of being a guest blogger for the Small business Blog at HP Logoworks.  This month's post was on  Social Media marketing and how to use Other People's Content for creating your Social Media content.  In that post, I talk about some of the new jobs you can try out.   In today's Whacky Wide Web, we all have to get used to wearing different hats. 

Here are some new jobs that you can fill while creating your next Social Media post using Other People's Content. 

1) The researcher.  You can aggregate content around a specific topic to create a new Blog Post.  A little research, organization and some commentary to bring it together can go a long way.  

2) The commentator.  Read an online report and deliver some useful summary points.  Ask insightful questions.  Take a Point of View relative to the report and become a new generation commentator. 

3) The evangelist.  Find someone's perspective that you like and promote it.  No one likes a cheerleader who is cheering for themselves - but we all look for good tips on who we should follow.  Help your favorite online personalities promote their message with your platform.

What new jobs are you creating for yourself in today's citizen-publisher economy? 

Read the full post at the Logoworks Blog on Other People's Content . 

Photo Credit: (Eddy Pula of RAIJSI)