What I find is that at many companies, technical administrators are the ones selecting a CMS, whereas marketing professionals and sales reps are the ones who'll be using the CMS and working on the website. All too often, marketing departments end up spending valuable time setting up complex systems, or trying to find data and information in a maze of technical applications and tools. A Content Management System (CMS) should in fact support your business by offering comprehensive insights and easy management.
The question I want to answer for you in this blog is: How can you, as a marketing department, contribute to the growth of the business by hosting your website within HubSpot? As a Customer Experience Consultant, I've had the opportunity to set up the HubSpot CMS and website for a number of different companies. In this blog, I want to take you into the world of the HubSpot CMS: when is it suitable for your organisation, and when is it definitely not? Let’s dive in!
When you shouldn't choose HubSpot CMS
- Heavily database dependent
You should determine beforehand whether you're heavily database dependent. If you are, the HubSpot CMS simply isn't suitable. So when is this the case? In e-commerce, for example, when you carry a lot of products. It also isn't suitable if you have extensive product portfolios and want to filter them dynamically. - Technical tinkering on the CMS
Your technical colleague keeps mentioning service-side scripting, server settings and hosting cPanel. In marketing terms, this means that they want to tinker with the CMS's server and the website themselves. If your technical colleague wants to have control over the settings, manage the CMS themselves, and use it to initiate actions, the HubSpot CMS isn't a suitable package either. After all, the CMS is set up so that you, as a non-techie, can remain fully in charge of the website at all times.
You should definitely use the HubSpot CMS...
HubSpot's CMS is suitable for companies who use their website as a 24/7 sales machine and where the marketing department should be in charge of the website – not the technical department. Having this responsibility means that marketers must be able to be self-manage the website.
- When you want to manage content easily
The advantage of HubSpot's CMS is that you can manage all content on your website in one integrated platform. You are no longer dependent on different tools. And of course you want to use your website for actions; things such as sending a newsletter, updating your social media, emailing converted contacts, starting a live chat on your website pages – the possibilities are endless. But you also want insight into the performance of your website: how much traffic you attract, which visitors click where, which pages have a high rating, etc.
You'll often end up using an array of tools in this elaborate ecosystem. You have MailChimp for your newsletters, InterCom for your live chat, and Google Analytics and Semrush for your traffic analysis. They're all champion tools in a specific area and useful to give further weight to your tactics. The hard part is tying all these tools together.
As a marketer, you want to provide insight into the ROI of your activities – your website is a 24/7 sales machine, after all. HubSpot offers one integrated platform where you can view and analyse the impact of all your activities in one single system. This will help you prove that click #43 in the penultimate newsletter is the same person who landed on the website two weeks ago via your LinkedIn post, and finally came back yesterday to convert via the demo request form on the website – and is now a Sales Qualified Lead. HubSpot is worth its weight in gold: it makes it incredibly easy to prove – in cold hard customer data – how marketing activities contribute to the growth of the business. Every team lead, manager, and director will love it. - When you want to optimise content
HubSpot will give you insight into the performance of your website, your forms, and your calls to action (CTAs). HubSpot can even suggest improvements for those elements.
To find out whether a certain page is performing to its full potential, you can create an A/B test in HubSpot by simply adding a button. HubSpot ensures that everything works technically, so you don't have to worry about redirecting traffic, creating sample sizes, or adding codes to show the A and B variations. It's as simple as publishing a button – and voilà, you're testing and optimising. - When you want to personalise content
By personalising your content you'll be able to offer a better user experience. Personalising means packaging content in a way that appeals to the reader personally. You can tailor the cases shown to your customer and their particular issue. With HubSpot's ability to find out this information and to personalise and tailor the experience to the visitor, you can create a better user experience.
Your rating will improve, since your content is more relevant to your visitor's issue. This includes an increase in the number of pages viewed, the average session length of visitors, and the number of outreaches, such as a completed contact form or a demo request.
Multilingual website in HubSpot CMS
HubSpot's CMS also works well when managing a multilingual website. Marketers can easily publish alternatives of the same page in different languages by clicking a button and selecting the desired language. What makes HubSpot user-friendly is that it allows you to create and manage all language alternatives for a particular page from one page in the CMS. Within that page, you can switch to the various languages for a clear overview of all your website pages.
Why is this such a big deal? Every marketer knows that a French customer may have different wishes, or may be susceptible to different arguments, than a customer in the UK. With this feature, you can adapt the website for each country, focusing on the user experience, culture, and different markets. By creating an alternative, you can change the content of that particular page, since they're stand-alone pages. While they're independent in terms of content, they're still technically linked – important in terms of your SEO. This way, you can tell Google that the same page exists in a different language, and the URL at which it can be found.
So how do you build a page using the HubSpot CMS?
In HubSpot, it is possible to work in modules, with the website being a large collection of separate building blocks. Every element is an independent building block in itself – things such as an image with text, a form with a photo, a header, a piece of text, etc. You build a website page in the HubSpot CMS by placing all those separate elements on a page in any way you like.
By adding modules and using drag and drop, you can link the building blocks to each other in any number of ways, including adjusting the order. And within the modules you have the option to change things around. You can post a video instead of an image, add or remove a link to a background page, or change the background colour.
Tip: Before you get started on actually building a website page, it is essential that you first decide on the tactics and strategy for your website.
Please note! HubSpot CMS: extremely user-friendly
The HubSpot CMS scores extremely high when it comes to user-friendliness. HubSpot is committed to making your life as a non-technical website operator as easy as possible. This means that all things that have technical implications – such as creating an A/B page, personalising content, or publishing a page in other languages – are simply a matter of selecting the option, adding the content, and publishing, all in your HubSpot CMS. HubSpot handles all technical implications in the background, so that your website always complies with the correct code set-up and the guidelines for search engines, and performs well in terms of loading time and user experience.
HubSpot CMS is 100% geared to marketing professionals
The ultimate goal of marketing professionals and sales reps is not to build a high-performing website, but to build a high-performing sales machine. Your website is your trade show booth that never closes. Your 24/7 sales rep who never sleeps. Your website can talk to your customers at all times to help them find a good solution.
And because the HubSpot CMS is built for marketers and sales professionals, HubSpot puts them first when it comes to the development of the HubSpot CMS platform. Because, let's face it – as a marketer, aren't you the mastermind with the right ideas? Make sure, therefore, that you can work completely independently without interference from gatekeepers and IT – which is exactly what the HubSpot CMS delivers.
Are you a marketer who wants to be in control of the CMS and website?
If your company's technical administrator is still interfering with the CMS and the website, it is time that you – the marketer – take charge and start working with the CMS and the website independently. You're the marketer with those great ideas, after all, so show them!
Treat yourself and book a free CMS consultation. This way you'll find out whether the HubSpot CMS is a good match for your company.
