Getting your business off the ground is scary and exhilarating at the same time. After a couple of years devoting most of your waking hours to your company, you get to call yourself a small or medium sized business owner. But that’s exactly the moment when progress begins to stall and, for many entrepreneurs, profits start dwindling at an accelerated pace. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA) , only about half of these businesses survive five years or longer.
To stay afloat and even thrive, many small business owners are turning to technology, new research reports. More than half have adopted some type of management software with the goal of reducing manual effort and paperwork, as well as increasing customer satisfaction. Of the respondents who use management software, 42% say they prefer cloud-based products.
One cloud-based tool that is standing out as a breakthrough solution for the unique challenges of SMBs is HubSpot's marketing automation software. The platform is designed to automate marketing tasks from email marketing, to social media posting and ad campaigns.
Today, over 86,000 total customers (mostly SMBs) use HubSpot's award-winning software to attract visitors, generate leads and transform them into customers. In this article, you’ll learn what makes this platform one of the best choices for scaling small businesses:
Streamline workflows and get actionable insight through a simplified reporting structure
HubSpot is a true marketing hub equipped with everything you need to capture leads and convert them. Their customer relationship management (CRM) allows for a 360-degree view of your entire sales funnel, thanks to a visual dashboard that shows everything from appointments scheduled and contracts received to won and lost sales. There are also custom filters to sort deals by name, owner, amount or stage, which will free up a lot of time for your sales team.
Properly logging customer interactions in a timely manner — whether they take place over email, on social media or during a call — is key to acquiring actionable insights that lead to business growth. With HubSpot CRM, tracking customer interactions is seamless and easy. The system syncs with Gmail or Outlook via HubSpot Sales and records phone calls, emails or meetings in real-time. Every single detail of the interaction between a sales member and a lead is then collected in a neat timeline and teams can have all the context they need to follow up with leads when they’re most likely to convert.
The platform also provides meeting scheduling, live chat and other tools meant to optimize the process of staying in touch with prospects. While you can opt for advanced CRM features (available in the enterprise edition of Sales Hub), the basic functionality
is free for everyone.
Enhance collaboration across teams with easy-to-use tools
A common denominator of effective sales tools is their ease of use. HubSpot assists you at every step of the way with user-friendly training materials, as well as HubSpot Academy videos and 30-minute meetings with HubSpot’s User Success Coaching Team.
HubSpot set out to tackle one of the biggest hurdles for SMBs: administrative complexity. It does so through the Enterprise Accounts feature which allows administrators to manage user permissions in bulk and assign access based on individual, user role or team. User profiles include Sales Representative, Website Designer and Business Analyst.
The ease of use trickles down to every element built to improve transparency and team collaboration. For example, all users with permission to use the Social Tool can see shared social accounts in Monitoring, Publishing and Reports, which will result in more efficient social media strategies.
The enterprise edition of Sales Hub also gives customers the freedom to customize objects and craft their own enterprise sales CRM.
This means you can organize your data based on specific metrics you want to track in a form that makes it easier for you to comprehend it. You can select to display insights via pie and area charts as well as bar and donut graphs.
Create a cohesive brand look and feel with centralized asset management
The more consistent your brand's identity is across all of your sales and marketing channels, the higher the probability that customers will choose you over competitors. Repetition creates familiarity which, in turn, leads to trust which is one of the key conversion factors.
With HubSpot, it’s simple to create a memorable brand identity. Use the platform to create cohesive content that carries the same color palette, font, imagery, logos, language and tone of voice.
To help you achieve and maintain brand consistency, HubSpot puts custom-made templates for blog posts, email newsletters, social media posts and landing pages at your disposal, plus pre-built website themes.
Take advantage of real-time metrics such as open rates and click rates to determine what templates perform best or which subject lines, buttons, links or attachments have the strongest converting power. You don’t need any coding skills to experiment with new designs that highlight special promotions, personalize your messaging or make publishing changes on the fly. Not sure where to get started? Download HubSpot’s free 48-page Brand Style Guide and discover what your brand style is.
HubSpot is a one-stop-shop for all small business and going through each and its myriad of benefits are impossible to capture in a single blog post. We recommend you take it for a spin.
Americaneagle.com is a HubSpot Certified Partner whose experts facilitate the initial setup of the HubSpot tool as well as provide ongoing consulting, strategy and management support. Contact us today to leverage marketing automation for consistent business growth.
