Marketing automation tools like HubSpot and Marketo are changing the way we do business. These are transformative technologies that are quickly becoming must-have tools for companies that want to remain competitive. Like so many other tools, one size does not fit all when choosing a marketing automation provider. But with several options on the market, it can be difficult to decide which one is the right fit for your business. In post, we'll give an overview of HubSpot vs. Marketo.
HubSpot is, at its core, a customer relationship management, content management, and marketing automation system. The company, and the software that bears the same name, is one of the early innovators of inbound marketing. Since the company was founded, they've expanded their HubSpot brand of software to make life easier for other aspects of your business, as well.
At the time of this writing, they have add-ons (which they call Hubs) for marketing, sales, and customer service. These tools combine with the base CRM and use powerful algorithms to help your staff more efficiently deal with both existing and potential customers. HubSpot's all-purpose nature makes it popular with businesses of all types and sizes.
In contrast to HubSpot's generalized approach, Marketo is more hyper-focused on marketing tools and automation. The SaaS (software as a service) platform works almost anywhere your marketing needs it to. Email, your website, search engines, video, and mobile devices are all a part of the solution that the software provides to its customers. While HubSpot has gone out of its way to make accessible and relevant tools for businesses of all types, Marketo's target market is mainly B2B and enterprise customers. We'll get into some implications of that as we continue with our comparison of the two.
Just by describing the two, we've given you some indications of the differences that exist between them. But that may not be enough for you to make an informed decision about which product to use for your business. Let's break down the software into several different categories and make some direct comparisons in the areas these products differ. By the end, you should have a much better understanding of how the HubSpot vs. Marketo battle stacks up.
HubSpot is great for businesses that want to test the waters of CRM and marketing automation because all of their hubs have a free service offering. The CRM is free unconditionally, and the various hub add-ons are free with a limited set of features. After that, you can choose to purchase hubs individually or as a bundle. A bundle of all the hubs comes in three tiers, priced at $50/month, $1,275/month, and $4,200/month, respectively. The company has a program for startups that could save you up to 90% off.
Marketo, by contrast, doesn't offer a free version. In fact, you won't even find their prices on the website. Because they are targeted mainly at B2B and enterprise customers, Marketo requires you to contact them for pricing information. Information from customers reveals that their lowest tier is around $895/month, and the highest tier is around $3000/month.
HubSpot's content management system allows you to host your website and easily update the pages within it. This includes marketing features such as landing page editors, search engine optimization tools, and easy call-to-action functionality. It also includes standard CMS tools for editing web pages and hosting a blog.
As a marketing tool, Marketo does include support for creating landing pages. But for anything else, you'll need a separate content management system. The software does not come with one, so you'll have to find one that integrates nicely with Marketo.
With its free tiers, HubSpot has gotten a lot of feedback from users over the years that they can use to refine their platform's usability. Because it is designed to be used by businesses of any size and with any experience level, creating software that is easy to use is a priority for the company. A product's ease of use goes hand in hand with the training available for it, which we'll discuss in the next section.
Marketo offers some very powerful features, which we'll discuss in more detail in the analytics section, but that power comes at a cost. The software isn't easy to use relative to other products in the CRM space. Because it is designed for larger companies, the assumption is that you'll have an IT department on hand who can manage the installation and management of the platform for you.
As one of the most popular marketing platforms in use, HubSpot has plenty of tutorials available for it (both from the company itself and from third-party providers). The lessons on their site will go beyond teaching you how to use their software and teach you the basics of inbound marketing in a software-agnostic way. They also offer certification courses to prove your knowledge of their software.
Here, Marketo is about even with HubSpot. The community isn't as large as HubSpot's, so you'll have a harder time getting help from outside sources, but there's no lack of training material available on how to use the software. The difficulty here, as mentioned previously, is that you will need some IT training to make the most of it.
We've already mentioned the massive community that makes HubSpot's learning resources, but these users make far more than just tutorials. HubSpot has an active and thriving app store that contains add-ons and plugins to help you with integrations. They also have additional features to help customize the tools for the specific needs of your business.
Marketo also has an app store where you will find similar plugins to those you would find in the HubSpot store. However, the community for Marketo is much smaller, so the number of plugins available is smaller, too. More obscure integrations or specialized feature needs might not have anything available.
One of the big advantages of a CRM is that it provides you with reports you can use to take meaningful action and improve business outcomes. HubSpot is no different in that regard. You'll be able to easily gather a wide range of data that has been collected by all the hubs that you own a license to and collate that data into easy-to-read reports.
Marketo really shines here, too. If you have someone who can handle the IT work, the tool will allow you access to more advanced analytics than HubSpot will. You'll be able to use highly refined analytics to predict user customer behavior with data from the CRM. Additionally, powerful segmentation tools use the software's firmographic functionality to provide a better overview of your customer base.
Hopefully we've provided you with some insight into the battle of HubSpot vs. Marketo. We invite you to browse our posts comparing HubSpot to popular interfaces like Salesforce for more information as you prepare to make your final choice.
Eniture Technology specializes in helping e-Commerce merchants grow by providing useful information, digital marketing services, off-the-shelf apps that solve common problems, and custom programming services. If you're interested in accelerating the growth of your online sales, please contact us. You might also enjoy this free information on the 10 reasons why you should be using HubSpot to grow your e-commerce business.
