Hubspot.com represents the latest shift in thinking, an approach that lays claim to attracting potential buyers to the product page, rather than the other way around.
A new approach to marketing
As the web has evolved, marketing on the web has been forced to evolve as well. What began with in-your-face aggression, ruthless email spam, page upon page of flashing banners begging for clicks and outright deception has turned into something more targeted and less scattershot.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) have become watchwords for the massive online marketing industry. Hubspot.com offers the expertise behind the concept without the big price tags that typify SEO services. The only point of SEO is to get your web site to the top of the search pages. What Hubspot.com offers is the tools and analysis to do just that, at a relative bargain basement price, $500 setup and $250 per month.
| What Hubspot offers. | Rating  |
A Hubspot web site is a full-featured Content Management System (CMS) designed as a turnkey solution for easy use by small to medium businesses, a way to manage their own web sites with a less-than-technical staff. Features include tools to upload documents that hold search engine romance and draw traffic, like white papers, surveys and press releases. In addition, easy to understand reports tell the business owner what's working. The clear advantage is a far better return on money spent to gain new business and communicate with existing customers.
| The bad news. | Rating  |
Hubspot.com offers extensive documentation, plenty of interaction, and even human contact, but they do not hold your hand. You have to build and maintain your own web site, and you are expected to market using the tools. It's not automatic, and will only return on the level of work put in. There's a learning curve and marketing will still require constant attention in order to produce.
Conclusion.
Hubspot.com fares well in a cost comparison to SEO services for hire, and head and shoulders over the cost of a traditional marketing campaign, but is labor intensive and there's a lot to learn. The virtue is really in the combination of integrated services. It makes perfect sense to attract traffic using social marketing and SEO, as opposed to sending your advertising out to the customer.