Nearly 30 things I learned in my 30 day Hubspot free demo

If you don’t know it, Hubspot enables you to test their all-in-one marketing software for 30 days for free. I decided to use the month long demo to see if it would make a good fit for clients.

My original aim was to demo my way through all their tools, but unfortunately, work got in the way. What I did manage to discover you can read below and in my previous posts.

Hubspot’s free demo is open to anyone. Regardless of whether you are a seasoned SEO pro or just starting your own business and want to learn about online marketing, I would definitely recommend you consider at least, trying Hubspot. There are no obligations or strings attached.

If you are the latter – just starting out or looking to optimize your online presence, you’ll discover a whole new world and basically, be walked through what you need to know to be successful across all digital channels like your website, email, social media and blogging. 

If you’re a seasoned pro, you’ll recognize many of the same benefits available in other programs out there from Adwords to Analytics. But it’s nice just the same to have this amount of tools all packaged and simplified into one neat box. 

Nearly 30 things I learned (In no particular order)

53% of my traffic – My Hubspot "sources" chart showed me that more than half of the traffic to my website is driven there by my blog and social media. Content is indeed, king!

Social media – Same chart said SM drives 31% of the visits to my site. LinkedIn dominates by sending 89% (of the 31%) of the visits. This is due mostly to posting on groups I belong to.

Twitter sent just 5%. But I am only now beginning to build my twitter account so I don’t have a big following which could account for the low percentage. Tweeting my blog posts did get the attention of some very cool contacts that I am now grateful to be connected with.  

Tell me why – Off the subject, can somebody explain to me why companies are having students handle their social media conversations when SM is most likely their most important communications channel? My analytics confirms this.

Return of the blog – According to the "sources" chart, my blog drives 21% of the visits to my site. Want to get traffic? Start writing.

Easy to get started – With Hubspot, you just need to put their tracking code on your web pages and blog template, log in your social media accounts and you’re up and running – with full analytics across all channels.

No website or blog? - Use Hubspot’s own CMS system to create your own site, blog, landing pages, CTAs and email campaigns.

I didn’t really get to demo Hubspot’s CMS system as I already have a site and blog but I did fiddle with the landing page CMS template and it seemed very simple and self explanatory. It neatly helps you incorporate your keywords into messaging/content for you.I would have liked to demo the landing page and email CMS tools, if I have had more time.

From what I’ve read online, people seem to be happy with the CMS system. Although a common complaint I’ve read is that the design is too basic or simplistic.

Hand-holding tutorials – if you don’t know much about programming you won’t have a hard time working with Hubspot. They take your hand and explain everything.

Friendly support - I called twice for support. The staff was friendly and eager to help. They also followed up on my inquiries. Did their help, help? That’s another question. I’ll get to that later.

Sources chart

“Sources” dashboard – easy to read/exportable all-in-one chart to learn where your website visits come from. Segmented by: Organic Search; Referrals; Direct Traffic and Social Media.

The chart makes it very easy to discover what drives traffic to your website. You can click on one of the above for more detailed breakdown and exportable reports. Basically a one stop shop instead of going to say, different sites’ services like Google analytics, HootSuite etc…  Although they are free, aren’t they?

“Pages” tool – Hubspot’s SEO optimizer for dummies. Basically walks you through what you need to correct on your website pages to optimize for SE influencers – see my last post on Hubspot analytics.

“Prospects” tool – identifies whose clicking on your pages by company name. Great idea that sometimes misfires and only gives the visitor’s internet service provider, but I love the thought.

BTW, when I was looking at the chart today, I found out a company that I had sent an application to was just on my site. Hopefully it was the person I sent the job app to. I can check that though with Google Analytics because I use unique tags on my email links. In fairness to Hubspot, they enable this and much more with their CRM lead generating tools too.

Daily Prospects Digest – email sent everyday by Hubspot with your latest prospects – nice to wake up to.

Generosity and insight – I love Hubspot’s ebooks. I find them to be extremely informative and timely. If ever there was ever a choice between Hubspot and a competitor, I would probably go with Hubspot due just to the sheer volume of information and insight they provide free. Talk about inbound marketing…  

Lead nurturing tools – while I didn’t get to test out their lead generating tools, I did look through them. As I’ve used other email systems, I was able to get a pretty good idea of what Hubspot can do.

Hubspot’s CRM looks like it is very well integrated within the system: both for emailing and creating landing pages. You can create prospect lists (list manager), drill down through them and target and create automated and personalized email campaigns as well as automatically create lists from your landing pages.

As most companies have their website leads created via emails they usually lose the source of these leads. As far as I can tell, Hubspot solves this problem with their lead generation tools.    

 

If your website matters – if online traffic is important to your business, you should listen to and probably also, take advantage of Hubspot. At the very least with Hubspot, your site will be optimized and you’ll understand what it takes to build traffic. If you’re dependent on visits, Hubspot will make you money.

How much does Hubspot cost? - I’m not sure if anyone else has this feeling, but for me, it seems like Hubspot is hiding the price from me. Is this out of politeness or strategic? Although there is a direct click to pricing on their website during the demo it kind of disappeared for me.

It takes some clicks to find out what it’s going to cost you to use Hubspot. Once you find the price chart, you then have to decipher which plan matches your needs and business.

I think if I’m going to choose between Hubspot and the plethora of free tools available, I would like to know the cost-differential right up front. I’m sure though, that they have their reasons or maybe they don’t even feel like they are hiding the price in the first place.

3 plans -  Hubspot’s “basic” price plan calls for you to use their CMS tools for your website, blog, email… “Professional” fully integrates with your system and is geared for mid-sized companies. The “enterprise” solution is for the big boys. Each plan’s price is further dependent on the amount of contacts you have.

According to Hubpost, a contact is a person in your marketing community who you've identified and deliver targeted marketing to. This could be the CEO of a target company, a lead who just visited the pricing page, or a prospect who followed you on twitter. Customers have full control over managing their number of contacts - should be an interesting discussion.

I’m not going to post any prices. That’s between you and Hubspot.

Does Hubspot save you money? I would guess that with the price of SEO consultants today and email lead nurturing programs/vendors, you probably would save a bundle with Hubspot. Their prices are not too expensive. And the system is as they market it, an all-in-one solution.

Analytics by the numbers – for me, I like Google Analytics over Hubspot: plus Google is free.  

Google goes more in depth and has now begun incorporating social media into their reports so they now both have similar capabilities. I just have to figure out how to implement Google with my social media accounts. My initial foray a couple of nights ago left me with a headache. Hubspot’s was simple and enables you to schedule publishing via it.

Google like Hubpost, also enables you to create campaigns, A/B testing etc… so with both, you can really target your marketing and see the results.

One Hubpost advantage that I mentioned before is the way they attempt to identify visitors by company.

Captain, I can’t get the engines started – one of the days I called the Hubspot support team because my website pages disappeared from the page grader tool. The very nice support person suggested I reset my Hubspot account and change my settings with my web hosting provider. It didn’t help and her advice was wrong.

After two days down, I got an email explaining that Hubspot had been in the process of changing the page grader tool to the now called “pages” tool. My website and blog pages reappeared in my analytics. They also apologized for the misinformation regarding my web hosting settings - all was cool- almost.

I’m only a doctor, Jim – What bothered me about the above scenario was that if I was working for a company and had convinced them to use Hubspot and the same had occurred, I’d be in deep $&@%?! Imagine telling your boss that I can’t get you those reports because, well… I don’t why.

Even more damaging, if I recommend Hubspot to one of my clients and that occurred; I’m toast. 

Basically, Hubspot’s support person didn’t know that they were modifying the app so she gave me the wrong advice. I’m sure this doesn’t happen every day but it is a little worrisome.

If I was a business owner I’d be mildly pissed with the above, but I understand that things can get weird with IT sometimes. But as a consultant recommending a product to a client, I need them to have my back.

  

My blog’s tracking – no it’s not – the first time I called support it was concerning my blog tracking. The help person said she would set it up. The second time I called regarding the page tool, the support person said, I can also see that your blog is not tracking correctly, let me set it up for you. Hmmm?  

Needless to say, it was tracking both times. However, Hubspot data never did come close to matching up with my blog hosting (blogger.com) analytics. If I was using Hubspot (and paying for this capability) this would need to be cleared up. Otherwise, I could just use the blog’s free analytics.

One final note - After spending as much time as I could allot on this 30 day trial testing the software, I am convinced that Hubspot is an excellent product: especially, because it gives you so much in one box.

I’ve used plenty of email programs, CMS systems, G Analytics and you know what, Hubspot’s just seems simpler. And in the case of their email and CMS being integrated with CRM, Hubspot is miles ahead of the systems I’ve worked with.

That’s not to say that there are probably great tools out there. It could just be that the systems I worked on with other companies were bad choices.

Another good thing about Hubspot is all the knowledge they share. The ebooks are terrific and you can really practically apply the learnings they provide with their software.

Aside from the glitches I mentioned above, the test was a great success and impressive. I will recommend Hubspot to clients but I will qualify that recommendation with a 30 day trial first – because of the mishaps I experienced and to cover my butt.

For myself, I might even implement the suggestions Hubspot’s page grader gave me for my own site – I’d be an idiot not to.

The demo certainly confirmed one thing: Content is King. I'll miss my Hubspot. Hi ho inbound marketing!

About Andrew Singer

I provide cost effective communications and inbound marketing services to a wide variety of Danish companies that do business globally. From hi-tech firms like Siemens and TrackMan to more mainstream organizations like Carlsberg, Coloplast, Novo Nordisk and the Confederation of Danish Industry, I deliver strategic creative development and English copywriting services.

Check out examples of my work on my website www.andrewsinger.dk or online portfolio.