Why you should build your next website on the HubSpot Platform
Over the past decade, we’ve seen content management systems go mainstream.
From Blogger and Drupal to Joomla and ExpressionEngine there are more than enough CMS options to choose from but, which one helps you get and keep customers best?
WordPress is by far the most popular CMS and has been the leading CMS for a long time with a record 74,652,825 websites built on the platform.
WordPress is a great CMS. It’s easy to setup and it’s virtually free to get started.
I love WordPress, use it daily and have many clients using it with huge success.
That being said, sales and marketing has and is still going through a massive change and along with it, so has the marketing technology landscape.
If your goal is getting and keeping customers using advanced inbound marketing strategies that create one to one relationships, then you want to build your website on a sales & marketing platform rather than just a Content Management System(CMS).
Here’s why…
Your website is supposed to be the central hub for all your marketing both online and offline. All of the marketing you do should be focused on getting people to your website.
This is called Inbound Marketing.
I’ve built many websites and inbound marketing systems on top of content management systems like WordPress using plugins and other third-party web applications.
It can and does work but, it has its limitations, drawbacks and many challenges.
When I first started to pay attention to what tools like HubSpot provided about 4 years ago, I got very excited and also had a sense of relief.
If you’ve not heard of HubSpot before this post, you are going to like this very powerful online growth engine.
Hubspot is not just a CMS but rather an entire sales and marketing system that gives you the power to personalize your content and turn your website into the core hub of your marketing strategy.
Your website should be more than just a pretty face, it needs to be both beautiful and highly effective at getting and keeping customers.
So…What do your website visitors want?
For starters, you need to understand that consumers expectations of websites have changed.
They want content relevance and they want it to be fast and safe.
That’s basically it.
74% of consumers get frustrated when content appears that has nothing to do with their interests
When people click on a link, they want the page to load now. Not in 15 seconds or even 5 seconds.
If it takes more than 3 seconds to load, you’ve lost 40% of your visitors. When we all know the effort it takes to get visitors to your website, this can be frustrating.
To help make pages load in the fastest time possible, HubSpot uses a content delivery network(CDN) and powerful Web Application Accelerator (WAA) by Akamai.
According to an independent study done by Brendan MacArthur, HubSpot’s website platform is ranked much faster than the Demandware, Drupal, Adobe QC, Joomla, and WordPress.
It’s fast and that’s what you want.
Website Security
Did you know that WordPress websites get upwards of 17 million cyber attacks per day?
There is a long list of security vulnerabilities with WordPress that you or your webmaster needs to manage on an ongoing basis.
It’s not fun and is time-consuming and a risk that you just don’t need to worry about when you build on HubSpot.
Hubspot uses a secure firewall solution to keep hackers from accessing, or taking down your website and their operations center is monitoring all of this for you so you, or someone you have to pay, doesn’t have too.
This lets you focus on sales and marketing, not technology management.
This is one of my favorite things about not having to manage the hosting servers, plugins, and updates on other CMS platforms.
Almost everything you need is in one application.
Building a Growth-oriented Website
Websites today need to do so much more than just manage content. A few static web pages and a blog are just not enough if you want a growth-oriented website.
Your website needs to be setup so there’s a straight and simple path for visitors depending who they are and why they are on your website.
The websites that are ranking the highest in Google and that turn strangers into customers all have these 7 things in common.
1. Quality Website Content
“Top ranking websites have 900+ words of content per page.”
Regardless of the platform you use, quality, relevant content is number one. Your content needs to be focused on your ideal buyer (a human), not the search engines(a computer algorithm).
It should include relevant keywords and terms but don’t overdo it.
Again, write for the humans, not the machines. HubSpot makes creating content simple and fast.
One of my favorite time savers is the pre-written blueprints available that load different templates for you right into your editor.
They help you kick-start your blogging with a blank post, ‘List’ post, ‘How to’ post or ‘Visual’ post template so you’re not staring at a blank page.
2. Ready for visitors anytime, anywhere
Mobile users surpassed desktop users in 2014.
I say surpassed, meaning that both devices still very much exist today and your website should be able to deal with this.
There are millions of both desktop users and mobile users searching and browsing every day.
Your website and content need to be able to adapt depending on the devices your visitors are coming from.
Many website builders today still require special templates or additional coding to optimize for mobile. HubSpot was built using responsive design, so your content will look great on any device without any additional work required.
You can also see what your content will look like with the Device preview tool before you publish it.
3. Relevant content for key buyer personas
Buyer Personas are at the heart of every successful marketing strategy.
When you know the desires and challenges of the people you want as customers, then creating relevant content for them becomes less challenging.
Presenting that content to your buyer personas at the right time also becomes very important.
HubSpot has this very cool functionality called smart content that can personalize the visitor’s experience and present different content to different people based on their buyer’s journey life cycle stage or other contextual moments or events.
For example, you can have different messaging on the home page for new visitors vs returning customers. You can even designate completely different paths for different stages or different personas.
HubSpot Personalization functionality is huge and worth exploring more.
To me, we are just seeing the beginning of personalized contextual marketing technology and HubSpot is innovating very well in this area.
4. Search Engine Optimized pages
Hubspot has an amazing on-page optimization tool for each of your pages and blog posts.
You enter the keywords the page or post is about and you’re provided with SEO tips and information to make it better, right inside the same tool you are writing in.
You can easily learn what’s currently working on your blog, landing pages, and website and receive a customized “to do” list to improve SEO for all your content. This tool not only helps you fix and improve your pages, it helps you learn how to write better content and understand what the search engines are looking at to rank your page.
5. Enticing Calls-to-Action as soon as they arrive on your site
Calls-to-Action have one purpose. To convert the visitor to become a lead.
In HubSpot, you can create compelling Calls-to-Action on your website in minutes from right within the application. You don’t need design or coding skills.
It’s very easy to link it to any landing page on your site, and get more of your website visitors convert into leads.
6. Websites that integrate or tie-in to email, social media and all your forms of communication.
Your website shouldn’t be silo. Integration matters more today than ever.
It gives you great clarity, context, speed, agility, and efficiency.
Email Marketing
HubSpot comes with email marketing and social tools built right into your application and fully integrated with your contacts and all other tools in the funnel.
You can use a mail program like MailChimp but this approach is still disconnected from your website and your main contacts database.
Most email software only allows you to upload a list and send to it. Because HubSpot’s is integrated with all your lead generation tools & your CRM, it helps you attract new subscribers and grow your list over time.
Using personalization features and marketing automation, your emails can match the unique interests of each recipient.
When your email is integrated you are able to do actions such as sending an email when a user visits a certain page or downloads a specific piece of content.
Without leaving HubSpot’s you can segment your list, remove duplicates, and even add personalization to make your emails and communication more relevant to your audience.
Social Media
HubSpot brings social media into the same application so you know what your customers and leads are saying about you on social media.
HubSpot’s Social Inbox plugs into your contacts database, color-codes your customers and leads, helps you prioritize your engagement, and makes managing your social audience simple and scalable.
Integrations
Our marketing stack includes not just HubSpot but over 30 other applications that touch the customer in some way.
Your website needs to integrate and communicate with these other applications to close the loop and keep everyone in your organization in sync with where each prospect & customer is at, right now.
With HubSpot Connect, you can easily integrate with a whole list of other applications.
7. Full-Funnel Marketing Analytics
The path to conversion is not always a straight line. That’s why HubSpot gives you more than website traffic reports.
It can show you how your customers first discovered you, what emails and social messages they’ve engaged with, and what ultimately led them to purchase from you.
You can use HubSpot Analytics on its own or alongside Google Analytics to give you all of the data you need in one place to measure and learn how your marketing is working.
An all-in-one Sales and Marketing platform
For someone that’s been building websites and running marketing campaigns for over a decade, having one tool that manages over 80% of the marketing technology you use is a compelling reason alone to use HubSpot.
Companies that use the HubSpot Website Platform see 10-20% more traffic compared to using another platform.
Aside from all of the features and functionality I’ve described above, I find that after using HubSpot for more than 4 years, I find it very easy to use.
It’s been designed to make the workflow of delivering marketing campaigns simple and intuitive.
The user experience is designed in a way that makes sense and follows the path of least resistance.
In Summary
If I have peaked your interest and you want a personalized demo of HubSpot, contact me and I will provide you with a free no obligation walk through of the software and answer any questions you might have.
