I’m lucky enough to live by the beach in Sydney, Australia. I’ve grown up swimming in the surf, and have a healthy respect for the ocean, but, a sign like this gives me pause.. Should I risk swimming with the sharks or will I get eaten alive?
Image source: Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash
In my daily work I get asked a lot about inbound marketing… no surprises there, given I’m a HubSpot partner. Will it work for my business? How much time does it take? What are the costs involved? While I’m a firm believer in HubSpot and inbound marketing, it’s not the right solution for every business. At a high level, there are a few key things that make HubSpot stand out from its competition, beyond a feature/function comparison, and these are the elements that I come back to when recommending marketing automation solutions.
So far, so good. But, what’s it really like? To give you further insight, beyond my own experience, I’ve pulled together a few other resources for you to make your own decisions. I’ve included reviews on the HubSpot website (bound to be positive) as well as reviews from actual users in organisations that have implemented it (who share the good as well as the bad). I hope you find these reviews helpful as you consider whether inbound and HubSpot is right for you.
2) TrustRadius - is another review platform, specifically for B2B technology buyers that connects decision-makers with trusted, in-depth insights from real users. There aren’t as many HubSpot reviews on this platform than there are on G2 crowd, but it gives an insight into HubSpot as well as the alternative platforms.
3) Nectafy inbound review - This is one of the most comprehensive reviews of HubSpot and inbound marketing. It was undertaken by a Boston based content agency, Nectafy and covers 5 years of real-world use. They show actual traffic, leads and customer conversion numbers from their website. As well as telling the story of going from newbies to uber-experienced. It’s a stellar review and well worth your time. The one caveat I will make is that they are a content agency, so they have the skills and resources to create the necessary content to keep up the momentum that successful inbound marketing requires. Publishing 3 articles a week takes an enormous amount of time, but it certainly demonstrates that, if you put the effort into inbound, then you will be rewarded.
4) HubSpot’s case studies directory - While this page will typically only share positive reviews, there are so many and you can sort by industry, region and company size to find an example that matches your own situation.
For example, here’s a story from a Melbourne based business consultancy, that “leveraged the old business to build the new one” and used HubSpot as the platform to make that happen. HubSpot was the missing piece of their business strategy that saw them grow their new business into a million dollar revenue stream in a year.
These resources are intended to help you with your decision making, however the only way to really know if you can make it work, is to try it yourself. If you’ve got some content ready to go and would like to see if you can use it to attract leads and convert them into sales then there are a couple of ways you can get started with $0 fees.
If you’re beyond the capacity of the free tools then I can arrange a free 30 day trial of the full HubSpot professional product. This will allow you to take the whole system for a run, including landing pages, social publishing, workflows, chatbots and more. Simply email me and I’ll arrange it for you.
If you have any other questions about inbound or HubSpot, and don’t want to be bugged incessantly by the HubSpot sales team, then I'm here to have a sales-free conversation. I know that some salespeople have a tendency to do what’s right for them and not necessarily what’s right for you. I’m not one of them. I’ll tell you what I really think and I’ve got no interest in selling you something that won’t be the right fit. Book a time to chat in my diary here.
Alternatively, if you’d like an inbound review of your existing HubSpot efforts, then I’ve partnered with Joe from Brand Builder Solutions, another super-experienced HubSpot agency, to do in-depth inbound reviews. You can find out more about that here.
We’re not sharks and we promise we won’t bite.