M & A Rainmaker

HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing system is amazing. Started by ex-Venture Capitalist Brian Halligan and web architect and blogger Dharmesh Shah who basically saw that startups and growth companies needed a new way of marketing, HubSpot is a truly revolutionary concept ( Inbound Marketing ) and system.

As a business angel and sales, marketing and business strategy specialist with startups and growth companies I have recommended HubSpot to a number of my clients. Some have installed HubSpot and I have been privileged to be involved in the installation and operation of the system. One has changed from HubSpot to WordPress. This was a change that I resisted as I was sure that HubSpot style Internet Marketing was the future and would, eventually, lead to great results for my client  but as I debated the pros and cons of HubSpot and WordPress with my client I could see that it just was not going to work for them. It was too expensive and required skills that they and I did not have. Neither did they have the skills required in their partners.

In fact it turned out that HubSpot was moving upmarket -away from S.M.B.’s and towards larger companies and enterprises. I don’t think that it is any mistake that HubSpot’s pricing page’s –   http://www.hubspot.com/pricing/ – highlight a professional package that’s going to cost $600 per month plus, potentially, $1000’s in setup and consulting fees. You would probably be looking at $20,000 per annum as a typical spend. I think HubSpot are being very fair in highlighting that on top of the licensing fee there are other costs aswell. If you don’t have certain skills in house e.g. Landing Page and Call to Action design skills and analytical skills then you will need to find a partner for this and pay them aswell.

Despite all this I am STILL going to recommend that you look at HubSpot and understand what it offers and can achieve before making any decision not to use it. You HAVE to understand what the HubSpot system is trying to achieve ( Visitors, prospects and customers ! ) and you have to understand most of the ways that it achieves this. The HubSpot mantra ” Get Found, Convert and Analyse ” should be burned into your brain in the same way that it is burned into mine.

You must understand that a website is virtually useless if it is not FOUND, if it does not CONVERT visitors into prospects and customers and if you cannot ANALYSE how you managed to get FOUND and CONVERT  visitors to customers.

I can tell you that it is very exciting watching the traffic building to your website which results from the creation of great content and the distribution of that content through social networks.

It is also fantastic to watch how many visitors converted to leads and how many of those converted to orders.

Unfortunately when you are spending around £250 a month ( as my client was doing ) you are not getting the Professional package and you do not get much support so if you can’t do a number of things in house then you are never actually going to achieve the results that you need which means that you will never actually pay for the cost of HubSpot.

This is why I have spent months and months developing the WordPress based Internet Marketing Ecosystem which I believe is more suited to the average SMB and even large business. Of course in the last year or so HubSpot has developed the HubSpot plugin for WordPress and also Dharmesh has emphasized the importance of the WordPress world by investing in WPEngine ( the WordPress focussed Hosting company ).

STOP PRESS !!! January 2013 – The Internet Marketing Ecosystem ( mentioned below ) has now been incorporated into Centripetal Network Consultings’ Digital Marketing Ecosystem. Watch this video >>>> HERE <<<< to see how a system that provides all of the functionality of a HubSpot system at a much lower cost has evolved over the last couple of years.