HubSpot Marketing Hub Review (2024) – The Ultimate Guide

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Welcome to the only HubSpot Marketing Hub review you're going to need this year.

Marketing isn't easy.

Itโ€™s a game where the rules are continually changing, driven by evolution in customer demand and expectation, as well as new technology and innovations. Great marketers need more than just skill to get by these days; they need the right tools to help them stay ahead of the competition.

Fortunately, solutions like the HubSpot Marketing Hub are here to help.

This all-in-one software claims to give businesses everything they need to launch truly compelling marketing campaigns that drive brand awareness and conversions.

The question is, could this tool be right for your company?

Let's find out.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Pros and Cons:
๐Ÿ‘ Pros: ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:
Free option to get you started

Free CRM tool

Live chat and chatbot functionality

Email marketing features

Segmentation options

Excellent A/B testing and analytics

Fantastic templates for websites, emails, and landing pages

SEO and content strategy support

Smart content to customize campaigns to your customers

Marketing automation features available

In-depth social media marketing options

Expensive for higher tiers

Some aspects are complicated at first

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is HubSpot Marketing Hub?

The HubSpot Marketing Hub is just one component of the complete conversion and customer engagement tool available from HubSpot.

Since its launch in 2006, HubSpot has been growing a reputation as a leading sales and inbound marketing software, helping businesses to attract new visitors, improve lead conversions, and gain endless potential customers.

Unlike most software providers, HubSpot doesn't just give you the tools you need for better marketing; it focuses on offering an incredible education too. There are countless free resources on the HubSpot website intended to make you a better marketing expert.

HubSpot marketing hub resources

The Marketing Hub is a component of the HubSpot product suite.

๐Ÿ‘‰ The full suite includes things like:

  • Customer support and CRM
  • Sales management
  • Marketing funnels
  • Integrations with third-party tools

For the purpose of this HubSpot Marketing Hub review, we're going to be focusing exclusively on the marketing hub, which is intended to help businesses manage all the complexities of their marketing strategy.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Features

The marketing hub is the component of the HubSpot Growth platform that uses a free CRM (read our HubSpot CRM review) and a range of unique tools to transform the customer journey from start to finish. You can attract visitors to your funnel by publishing content that's approved for SEO through the blogging tool, capture leads with a landing page, and design automated workflows with the free CRM.

Features include:

  • Professional landing page design
  • Website building and management
  • Content strategy support with SEO
  • CTA support without coding
  • Customer analytics tracking
  • Lead management and analytics
  • A/B testing
  • Marketing automation

HubSpot marketing hub get started

HubSpot Marketing Hub Review: Pricing

Before you can dive head-first into any marketing software, you need to know what it's going to cost you. Excellent features don't always come cheap.

One of the things that make the HubSpot Marketing Hub so compelling is the fact that there's a free plan for entry-level marketers and solopreneurs.

๐Ÿ‘‰ The free option gives you access to a range of fantastic capabilities to get you started, such as:

  • The full HubSpot CRM tool, including contact management, company insights, integrations, prospects, ticketing, pop-up forms, ad management, a reporting dashboard, email templates, and meeting schedule.
  • Email marketing features
  • Ad management
  • List segmentation
  • Native and collected forms
  • Live chat
  • Conversational bots
  • Mobile optimization

As with most things, there is a limit to how much you can do for free, however.

HubSpot marketing hub

If you want to access things like email automation, landing page design, social media management, and SEO for your content strategy, then you need to upgrade.

The good news? HubSpot is quite affordable – at first.

Prices start at $50 per month for the “Starter” package, which comes with a bunch of extra features to help you get the most out of your marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, the more functionality you need, the more you'll have to pay. The gap between the “Starter” package and the “Professional” tier is eye-wateringly large.

HubSpot marketing hub pricing

$800 a month is a lot more than most smaller businesses will be able to handle. Even if it does mean that you get more marketing automation options, intelligent content, and blog creation tools.

If you need to upgrade even further to the “Enterprise” package, then you'll be paying a massive $3,200 per month. This gives you access to things like CMS membership, an Events API, and content partitioning features.

HubSpot marketing hub enterprise pricing

The free and “Starter” packages are likely to be the only options available for smaller companies, while the Professional and Enterprise tiers will appeal more to large, already-established brands.

You can also save a bit of cash by combining the HubSpot Marketing Hub, CRM, Sales Hub and Service Hub with the “Growth Suite.”

HubSpot suite

Linking all of these options together is much more affordable than buying them separately if you need the functionality that comes from the different components of the HubSpot environment.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Review: Features

So, if you've got the budget, what can you actually do with the HubSpot Marketing Hub?

Well, according to the HubSpot team, the software comes with everything you need to grow traffic, convert your leads, and track your campaigns in the same place.

๐Ÿ‘‰ You can:

  • Build and modify your website without any coding or HTML knowledge. Templates are responsive out-of-the-box, and there are options to drag-and-drop your way to landing pages, blog posts, emails, and web pages.
  • Design a comprehensive content strategy: Publish blog content without the hassle of learning how to format your pages. Get real-time SEO support and make sure you publish on social media at the best times to reach your audience.
  • Drive traffic to your landing pages: Create immersive call-to-action buttons that convince your audience to visit your pages and convert – without coding knowledge.
  • Convert more visitors: Create highly professional landing pages using templates and drag-and-drop functionality, then test their performance with A/B solutions to increase conversions over time.
  • Engage customers: Connect with your website visitors using live chat, then use email tools and drip campaigns to convert your visitors into paying customers and repeat buyers.
  • Track your performance: Use integrations with HubSpot CRM or Salesforce CRM to automatically record and track the interactions customers have with your brand, then check out your reports for in-depth insights into your performance.

Let's examine the most essential features of the HubSpot Marketing Hub in closer detail.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Review: Website Building

If you want a great marketing campaign, you need to start with a compelling website.

Your website is the heart of your online presence. It's where you create the content that your customers crave and encourage prospects to learn more about your products or services.

With HubSpot Marketing Hub, businesses can design responsive sites from scratch without any prior coding knowledge. There are thousands of customizable templates to choose from, and they're all proven to be conversion-friendly.

HubSpot marketing hub templates

If you do have some existing developer knowledge, then you can add your own features and functionality in too.

Once you've got your site up and running, HubSpot helps you give your audience a reason to visit with an immersive content strategy tool. The content tool makes it easier to add blogs and articles to your websites so that you can give your audience members some real value. Plus, there's SEO advice included (on higher pricing tiers) to ensure that you're getting the most organic traffic possible.

HubSpot also allows you to add social media and PPC functionality to your content to ensure that you're reaching as many potential customers as possible.

HubSpot marketing hub market analysis

HubSpot Marketing Hub Review: Landing Pages

While a website and excellent content attract visitors to your pages, landing pages give you a way to convert those visitors when they arrive.

HubSpot landing pages strengthen your lead capturing and conversion strategies by allowing you to push your visitors further along the buying funnel. You can give visitors a chance to opt-in to email lists, webinars, demos, free trials, and more, which means that you get more customers on your list.

Like with website-building, HubSpot offers a host of templates to choose from if you don't have a lot of prior knowledge in web development. You can also implement “smart content” modules that adapt the content on a page to specific visitors:

HubSpot marketing hub smart content

With a single click, users will be able to sign up for your offers in a matter of seconds, with forms that take seconds to design and embed into your pages. The HubSpot landing page builder even allows you to check how your pages will look on multiple devices.

Once your landing pages are implemented, you'll be able to use the in-depth analytics in the HubSpot Marketing Hub to track your conversions and optimize accordingly.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Review: Live Chat & Chat Bots

If you want to strengthen your customer service strategy, then the best thing you can do is look at the HubSpot Service Hub or check out the Growth Suite.

However, Marketing Hub users can also tap into a few exciting features to improve the way that they interact with and nurture potential customers. Chatbots and live chat functionality mean that you can interact with your leads in real-time and connect customers to the right people in your team.

The chatbot and live chat features on the HubSpot Harketing Hub ensures that you can nurture the leads that arrive on your page with relevant discussions, drip campaigns, and on-brand messages.

Because HubSpot CRM is included for free as part of the Marketing Hub, you can access plenty of useful information about each interaction with your target audience. What's more, there's the option to integrate your HubSpot experience with Salesforce for more extensive reports.

The more information you collect, the easier it is to segment and personalize your campaigns.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Review: Email Marketing

Though the chatbot and live chat functionality in the HubSpot Marketing Hub are great, email marketing is where the tool really stands out for customer nurturing.

The email marketing functions in HubSpot are designed to help companies grow their relationships with their target audience.

The feature works seamlessly with the rest of the sales and marketing products in the Growth Suite, and like your websites and landing pages, you'll be able to use HubSpot's customization tool to build your emails from scratch or transform an existing template.

Once your email strategies are running, HubSpot also provides A/B testing capabilities which allow users to test various subject lines, images, text, and other components that may improve your conversion rates.

HubSpot's email marketing solutions work alongside the CRM and contact database. That means that you can use all that handy data you've collected to send the most personalized messages possible to your subscribers. Contacts can be filtered based on an extensive range of useful criteria, like name, location, job title, and more.

Just keep in mind that the more you want to use HubSpot for email marketing, the more expensive the tool becomes. Interacting with 10,000 contacts on HubSpot costs around $1,200 per month, compared to only $75 per month on Mailchimp. There are more features available on HubSpot, but it's expensive all the same.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Review: Content Optimization System

We touched on the content strategy tools in the website building section above.

However, the HubSpot Marketing Hub also comes with its own specific content builder, named the Content Optimization System. This enables companies to create more advanced SEO-optimized landing pages, web pages, and blog pages.

Because you can host your website with Hubspot, you can seamlessly integrate your entire web presence with all the various tools available from the brand. That means that it's easier to manage content as an whole strategy from email to social media marketing, in the same location.

The HubSpot marketing platform also comes with the option to add social media buttons and CTA (Call to Action) buttons to your articles and pages.

The most exciting available feature of the content marketing tool on HubSpot is the option to access smart content. However, this is only available when you pay for the “Professional” package.

If you can afford Smart Content, it gives you the option to adjust the content you show in various parts of your website, based on the interests and behavior of the viewer. For instance, you might want to show specific deals to people whoa re already categorized as a lead in the HubSpot CRM.

HubSpot Review Smart Behavior

HubSpot Marketing Hub users can add smart content to emails, landing pages, web pages, blogs, and more. It means that you can create a highly targeted message for everyone who visits your brand, improving your chances of conversions.

HubSpot Marketing Review: Social Media Marketing

Speaking of content marketing, the “Professional” tier on the HubSpot Marketing Hub also comes with access to social media tools.

Social media features allow you to share your website content with followers on social media, improving your chances of brand reach and enabling you to interact with your audience more consistently during the buyer cycle.

HubSpot even offers impressive social media monitoring solutions, so you can keep an eye on what customers are saying about your brand.

hubspot social media monitoring

Social media monitoring ensures that whether your audience members are complaining about your service or raving about your products, you'll always be ready to respond and capitalize on the situation. With marketing automation, you'll also be able to ensure that your social media posts always go out at the right times to capture the most attention possible.

For additional power, you can use the tools from the HubSpot customer service software hub to build a modern system for support, service, and guidance. This is an excellent opportunity for businesses that want to transform social media fans into brand advocates.

However, like most things in the HubSpot portfolio, accessing additional customer service tools will mean paying a lot more for your software.

HubSpot Marketing Review: Marketing Automation

One of the toughest things about marketing these days is that you need to find the time to interact with your audience as consistently as possible.

Handling everything from blog content production to social media and email marketing takes a lot of time and effort. That's why automation tools are so valuable in the current landscape. HubSpot Marketing Hub offers a range of automation solutions – if you're willing to pay for them.

Automation comes as part of the “Professional” package. Here, you can set up workflows that target leads which have visited a specific webpage in the last 7 days or a certain time period. You can also use workflows to automate internal tasks:

HubSpot Marketing hub workflow

The Workflow editor makes it easier for businesses to build useful automation from scratch, based on numerous things like a customer's birthday, subscription date, or location.

There's also the option to add specific actions to your workflow. This might include things like adding a time delay between a customer ordering a product and you send an email asking for a review. You could also add a trigger to remove a customer from your list if they don't open an email for a while.

The automation features on HubSpot are definitely useful – but they'll take some getting used to. There's quite a learning curve here for people who aren't familiar with using workflows and automated funnels to reach their audience.

HubSpot Marketing Review: The Free CRM

One of the best things about the HubSpot Marketing Hub is the fact that every pricing tier comes with access to HubSpot's free CRM.

The CRM allows for an unlimited number of customers, with the option to store anywhere up to 1 million contacts. Additionally, as with all HubSpot software, automation is a key feature here. You can streamline and enhance your outreach efforts through integrations with the HubSpot sales, service, and marketing hubs, accessing the same data across all HubSpot products.

The CRM is relatively easy to use.

It comes with simple drag-and-drop functionality that allows users to set up pipelines and deal stages that ensure that they can manage opportunities effectively. Additionally, clicking on each deal will provide an in-depth overview of all recent activity and relevant information for the deal.

This means that your team members can track things like attachments, contact information, tasks, and notes, without having to switch to a different program. There's also an option to view your deals on a visual board, which allows you to drag deals into various stages of the funnel depending on where your conversion is at the time.

HubSpot Marketing Review: Reporting

No matter what service you use to improve your marketing campaigns, you'll want evidence that it's delivering a return on your investment.

Fortunately, as a fully-integrated and comprehensive sales and marketing platform, HubSpot offers excellent closed-loop reporting. This means that businesses can easily track the results of their campaigns by channel and ensure that they're making real money from their investments.

The analytics available from HubSpot Marketing Hub is pretty impressive, with the option to dive into things like leads, customer acquisition, and campaign spend. You'll also be able to build your own customer reports, which you can add to your dashboard for access to essential information instantly.

If you want to use your reports to guide your employees, you can also send custom dashboards and reports to members of your team.

However, to add this extra functionality to the HubSpot experience, you need to pay another $200 per month – which is quite expensive.

HubSpot Marketing Review: Integrations

The HubSpot Marketing Hub has plenty of great benefits to offer. It's powerful, immersive, and even easy to use for the most part.

What's more, you'll also get access to a range of third-party integrations that can enhance the functionality of your marketing initiatives. For instance, you can integrate with Zendesk, Eventbrite, SurveyMonkey, and dozens of other popular tools.

There's even the option to align your HubSpot campaigns with Salesforce data so you can create more customized marketing solutions for each of your clients.

What's more, the full HubSpot Marketing Hub experience integrates with the complete HubSpot growth suite, for access to more sales and service features too.

HubSpot Marketing Review: Customer Service

Last but not least, before you choose a marketing tool, you need to ensure that you're going to get the right level of support. HubSpot provides a helpful bubble at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen whenever you're using your service.

Clicking this expands a search window that you can use to look up help center content without leaving the page you're currently on.

If you can't find the assistance you need this way, you can contact the HubSpot customer support team through the same panel. Although you won't always be able to access live chat, you can submit a help request via email when no-one is available.

Also, it's worth noting that HubSpot has plenty of tutorial videos and marketing training solutions to offer on their resources page too.

HubSpot Marketing Review: Verdict

If you're looking for a great way to enhance your marketing efforts, nurture more leads, and close more sales, then HubSpot Marketing Hub could be one of the best options on the market for you. It's excellent for helping you to automate and enhance your promotional solutions. What's more, you can even use HubSpot to improve the performance of your teams too.

Unfortunately, it's an extremely expensive tool if you want to access all the functionality you need to make marketing easy. That means that this solution might not be ideal for smaller businesses unless you're happy with the basic features of the “free” or “starter” service tiers.

Rebekah Carter

Rebekah Carter is an experienced content creator, news reporter, and blogger specializing in marketing, business development, and technology. Her expertise covers everything from artificial intelligence to email marketing software and extended reality devices. When sheโ€™s not writing, Rebekah spends most of her time reading, exploring the great outdoors, and gaming.

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