Our team had the privilege of attending HubSpot's annual Inbound Conference in Boston last week. Along with 19,000 other sales and marketing pros from around the country, we spent four days attending inspiring keynotes and educational breakout sessions. We're going to write about some of our key take-aways in future posts, but first I wanted to share some of the best new HubSpot features that were announced for their product offerings in 2017.
1. Re-Built Reporting from the Ground Up
We're excited about the new reports because they're a) beautiful and b) even more useful than the reporting HubSpot already offers. The new reports combine the goodness of Google Analytics with the sales driven element of reporting that HubSpot has always exceled in. Not only will you have the number of leads and contacts your site is generating, you'll also be able to see unique sessions, devices used, bounce rates and more.
2. Facebook Ads Integration
One of the keynote speakers at Inbound was famed author and venture capitalist Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary built a fledgling liquor store into a multi-million dollar online wine seller in the early 2000s, and the way he grew so fast was through Google Adwords. He used Adwords when they were new, cheap and underutilized by other businesses and he was able to make a killing. The next "Google Adwords" for Gary? Facebook Ads. He says that Facebook Ads are a major opportunity for small businesses in the next 18 months. Almost all of our clients use Facebook Ads and have seen positive results, so we were thrilled to see that HubSpot will be adding a deep integration with Facebook. Soon you’ll have the ability to measure and optimize your Facebook Ads inside HubSpot. This rounds out their integrations with the top ads networks, giving you the power to quickly test and assess your investment in paid media.
3. Content Strategy Tool
If you're a marketer, you're probably sick of hearing about how you need to be "writing more content." Yes, content marketing can be effective, but you must go about it the right way. You can't just write about any old random topic and hope for the traffic to start pouring in. You have to write quality content centered around the topics your prospects are searching for. And that's just what HubSpot's new content strategy tool will help with. The tool helps you identify topics that get results (read: people are actively searching on them, but they're not exceedingly competitive).
4. Brand New Mobile App
The new mobile app combines marketing, CRM and sales for one beautiful, unified experience. I barely used HubSpot's old app, but I use the new version all the time. I'm a heavy CRM user, so it's great to have the bird's eye view of my upcoming deals at my fingertips.
5. CRM Improvements
HubSpot offers a free CRM. Usually, free software leaves a lot to be desired, but not in HubSpot's case. The CRM is simple but powerful, and incredibly easy to use. I use it almost as heavily as I use the paid marketing platform, so it's exciting to know they are making the CRM even better with permissions, meeting links that tie in to your calendar, chat tools for your website and much more.
To learn about all of HubSpot's new features, check out this page on their website.
