Many businesses investigate a variety of possible avenues for their online marketing. The established company HubSpot describes itself as a one-stop marketing resource, and it is a popular option that businesses consider. However, many marketers are confused about the difference between HubSpot and professional SEO services.
Software Company vs. Professional Marketing Team
HubSpot is not really a marketing company; rather, they are a marketing software company. They make software that helps to automate processes for marketers. They sell a tool to help you perform tasks you want to do with your website and email and lead generation efforts.
On the other side of the coin, if you have professional online marketing services, a search engine marketing team is doing the marketing work for you. They are building efficiency by performing a lot of the tasks you would be doing to promote your website and attract customers. This may include writing blogs for you, distributing press releases for you, researching forums and industry sites for you, building social profiles and links, and updating social media channels.
A Grade vs. A Plan
The free marketing grader tool from HubSpot is a nice overview of the high points you should review on a website. But it is just an overview; the software is automated and it can only see certain things. If you have a custom website or something that is a little hard for the automated software to see, the data could be off. The grade you receive is based on a generalization about your industry, your audience, and the items you may need to have. It does not consider a lot of other factors that would require more research or human intervention. I have used this tool many times to get a quick overview and I do think it is valuable, but I also have seen it provide some inaccurate information when the software has some trouble seeing that you do in fact have social media on your site, or that you do in fact have a blog feed. So, just keep this in mind when viewing your “grade” and don’t lose any sleep over it.
With products like our SEO Audit, the search engine optimization team combines a set of human eyes with software tools to analyze your website more deeply. This gives us data on what is good, bad, and average about the site, and it gives you a plan for specific next steps – such as, what to fix in the website code, what to fix in the content, how often to blog or what to blog about, and what important file is missing. This is a helpful approach that puts you further into the process of getting more results in online presence.
Supplemental Tools for Your Marketing
It’s not a bad idea to use different tools to keep abreast of your marketing. The marketing grader and similar online tools encourage you to periodically review your website. The different metrics you receive can help you and your SEO team stay aware of possible trends or items to focus on. Not all data is necessarily important, but it can be educational. Some of the things that marketing software portals look at are not just related to your website, but to online lead forms and email campaigns, which are great additional ways to strengthen your sales performance online.