Hubspot is a company founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah that provides a complete marketing solution for inbound marketing.
What does the product offer?
Hubspot offers users a variety of packages that are all built around inbound marketing (I shall explain what that is a little later on). It was created by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah aims to offer complete solutions with the various packages being more or less applicable generally depending on the size of your company. Ultimately it is about attracting traffic and converting this into sales.
How does the product work?
Hubspot espouses the virtues of inbound marketing, that is to say marketing so that people find you rather than you pushing your products and agendas on your customer base. This makes a lot of sense and fits in with a changing business world where customers have more choice about where to go and who to buy from. To assist with this Hubspot offers a number of solutions including things like SEO and marketing on social media.
What is the initial investment?
Hubspot is marketed on a monthly basis but actually you have to pay for an annual subscription upfront. This also includes a one off training scheme of which even the basic format cost £350. This means that for an entry level package to Hubspot you can expect to pay around £2030 depending on the number of your contacts.
What is the rate of return?
Attaching a rate of return to Hubspot is a difficult thing to do. There is definite potential to grow your business but it is difficult to gauge by how much really.
Conclusion
Hubspot is a product that really is aimed at larger companies. That isn’t to say that an internet marketer wouldn’t find a use for it but I think that honestly, most people will already have a “set up” that works for them and the idea of paying a shade over £2,000 for the same services in one place probably doesn’t seem appealing. Nor do I think that marketers like this are really Hubspot’s intended audience.
Although this is undoubtedly a great product I don’t think that any small time marketing operation will really be able to put it to work hard enough to warrant the investment.
