Why HubSpot is the Best CRM for B2B Businesses

If you’ve been hanging around Hivehouse Digital, you’ve probably heard us mention HubSpot. That’s because not only do we use HubSpot software to help run our agency but we’re also a HubSpot Platinum Certified Agency Partner. 

Now, after reading the title and that intro you may be thinking — of course a HubSpot partner agency would recommend HubSpot. In reality, we became a HubSpot Partner because we actually loooove using HubSpot. 

But before we jump into what it means to be a HubSpot Partner and why we believe HubSpot is the best CRM for B2B businesses, let’s start with the basics. What the heck is HubSpot?

What is HubSpot?

Not to be confused with WhatsApp or GitHub or any other two-word smashed-together style names, HubSpot is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and company. 

If you’re unfamiliar with a CRM system or software, they provide a place to store customer and lead information. They also offer ways to communicate with customers and leads and manage those communications and the resulting data. If you’re old-school, you can think of CRMs as a digital Rolodex that allows you to communicate with everyone on your Rolodex all in one neat package. Pretty magical. Sounds like something Dumbledore might carry around. 

As its name implies, HubSpot is built with a Hub structure. Each Hub is loosely based on an organizational department. 

• Marketing Hub – Manage, design, and build your emails, landing pages, social media, campaign, and other content here
• Sales Hub – Prospect, create deals, forecast performance, create and access playbooks for sales teams
• Commerce Hub – Invoices, payment links, quotes, and everything else to get your business paid quickly
• Content Hub – Create blogs, website and landing pages, customer forms, podcasts, and more. 
• Service Hub – As in customer service, such as live chatting, creating service tickets, making calls, and more
• Operations Hub – Helps you sync contacts between different apps and report on the combined data

Why HubSpot? 

Now, there are quite a few CRMs out there. If you check a software review website like Capterra, there are over 1911 different CRMs. Needless to say, we haven’t tried all 1911 CRMs but our team has a wide variety of backgrounds and experience with different CRMs and we’re all quite happy with HubSpot. 

So, let’s break down the reasons why we believe HubSpot is an incredible CRM for B2B businesses. 

It’s Easy to Use

If you’ve worked in marketing or sales for more than one company (or even just one) you’ve probably used different CRMs. Personally, the first thing that struck me about HubSpot in comparison to other CRMs was how intuitive it was. While there are extensive HubSpot tutorials and you can even become a certified HubSpot expert, for the average Joe Schmoe it’s incredibly easy to get your feet wet and start working. 

For example, creating a marketing email — one of the most reliable ways to market in B2B industries, is as easy as drag and drop. 

In the above image, we have the email on the right and the different assets you can drag and drop into the left — text, images, video, etc. Plus, if you need a more robust email, you can create custom HTML or even custom drag-and-drop blocks. 

It goes beyond just email. That same intuitive-ness is pervasive throughout HubSpot. The user interface is easy to navigate and menus are well-organized, creating a smooth overall experience. Anytime a new feature is introduced to a user, HubSpot will offer a quick 3 – 5-step tour. Plus, each Hub is interconnected, which helps dissipate organizational siloes. 

Of course, we’re simply referring to the default user interface. HubSpot can slowly become bloated with created assets and files and more difficult to navigate if it’s not maintained properly. Which, if you do need help simply maintaining and optimizing your HubSpot, we can help. 

HubSpot Understands What Marketers and Customers Want

HubSpot’s Hub system makes it easy to know where to go to perform certain tasks, but the Hubs still manage to work together to keep your customers and leads at the forefront of everything you do. 

HubSpot has an inbound marketing methodology built into the system, which means that when contacts are entered into your system, they begin their buyer’s journey. If you’re unfamiliar with the buyer’s journey, it’s a way to track the progress of potential customers from awareness of their problem to the purchase of a solution. 

With HubSpot, you can track where each member of your audience is along their journey and tailor messaging to their situation and needs. This is critical in the B2B world where sales cycles can last for 6 months to a year. 

It’s also beneficial for your customers because they receive marketing that’s relevant to them. It’s great for marketers because they can now work within a system that’s operating on the same strategic plane. 

Makes Your Job Easier

As if the easy-to-use U.I. isn’t enough, HubSpot has one of the most intuitive ways to automate repetitive marketing and sales tasks – workflows. With workflows, you can set up automated events. For example, if a user signs up for a marketing webinar, they receive an email invitation and then are notified of other future events. Once the workflow is set up, it can be scaled to effectively market to thousands of contacts. 

Sales can also join in on the fun, too. Workflows can pull in contact information automatically to create personalized workflows, or your sales team can get experimental and A/B test automated emails to see which yields the best results. You can even automate notifications when a prospect takes a certain action. For example, you can create a task to call a prospect whenever they open your most recent email. 

Workflows are similar in design to email in that they are based around easy-to-use building blocks, despite containing enough flexibility and options to create complex and highly targeted marketing. 

Beyond workflows, A.I. capabilities have also been added to HubSpot to make your daily work easier. A.I. in HubSpot can be used for things like generating copy from scratch or suggesting subject lines based on the body of the email. It also generates images. Like most A.I. solutions, it’s best when paired with a human hand but can save an incredible amount of time or kick-start your brainstorming.

Flexible Pricing

HubSpot is a powerful sales and marketing CRM, but it isn’t one size fits all. You can choose from a few packages depending on your organizational needs or even just grab one of the individual Hubs. 

HubSpot’s packages are called “customer platforms” and each customer platform is a bundle of the Marketing, Sales, Service, Commerce, Content, and Operations Hubs with varying levels of access. 

If you opt for one of the standalone Hubs, they can also be further customized with the available Starter, Professional, and Enterprise levels — each of which scales to the size of your business and needs. 

This flexibility allows HubSpot to work wonders for companies from 1,000 plus employees all the way to one-man-band entrepreneurs.

Get the Best CRM That Helps You Work Smarter

For B2B businesses, CRMs can feel like a necessary evil. With HubSpot, you can take your business from good to great. We’ve listed some of the critical ways HubSpot has helped our business grow and kept customers happy, but there are a myriad of ways that HubSpot makes our lives easier — but we try to keep our articles on the shorter side. To hear more about how HubSpot can make your business more cohesive, informed, and faster while keeping your customers at the forefront of everything you do, head over to HubSpot or talk to our team about a free trial!