HubSpot for Small Business: When You Should Consider Buying, and When to Hold Off

HubSpot can give small businesses the firepower to compete with bigger, more established brands.

But, that doesn't mean you should run out and buy it. At least, not yet.

HubSpot is an expensive tool, and it's worth every penny. But, for most small businesses, it's a huge commitment of budget, and comes with a pretty heavy contract. It's not a tool you try out and toss aside.

So, if you're ready to put the power of HubSpot to work for your business, knowing when to buy can make a huge difference in your marketing budget.

When to Buy HubSpot

With the cost of HubSpot, getting to a positive ROI isn't easy. Most businesses swallow a large marketing loss of ROI in the first 12 months. But, if you know a few tricks, you can get to positive ROI a lot faster.

Trick #1: Don't Buy Without a Website Ready to Go

A lot of businesses buy HubSpot, and then hire an agency to build their website. Since most website projects can take anywhere between 3-to-6 months to complete, that's a lot of monthly payments thrown to HubSpot without any return.

Instead, get an agency to build your HubSpot website before buying. Get as far along in the process as possible before starting your HubSpot trial, then launch your website as fast as possible. This allows you to start benefitting from the HubSpot power right away.

Trick #2: Don't Buy HubSpot Before Creating a Marketing Strategy

HubSpot has powerful tools, but you have to be able to put them to work before they benefit at all.

For instance, HubSpot features powerful email marketing automation, lead scoring, and progressive profiling. Those are very powerful tools for marketing.

• Have you written the emails yet?
• Do you know what contact intel you need to progressively profile?
• Do you know what criteria you will use for scoring leads?

What about your marketing campaigns?

• Have you written any blog posts yet?
• Do you have any lead magnets created yet?

These are all things you can, and should, do before buying HubSpot. That way, once you sign the dotted line, you can load the content into the system right away without having a long distance sprint to create the assets HubSpot needs to function correctly.

Create your strategy. Create your assets. Do as much as you can before buying the tool, so you can hit the ground running.

Trick #3: Don't Overbuy Too Soon

You may have aggressive growth goals. But, HubSpot is very growth-oriented when it comes to how they treat their customers.

Some people pay way too much for a high-capacity list of contacts. But, when you're just starting out, you don't have thousands of leads.

Why pay for the capacity for leads you don't have?

Instead, start small and scale as needed. You may eventually need thousands of contacts in your system, but only pay for them when you can use them.

Trick #4: Don't Pay for Features You Don't Need

Did you know buying straight from HubSpot includes a nonnegotiable on-boarding fee of $3,000?

No, that's not a huge amount, except for when you're already investing in HubSpot, and your website design. In those cases, it could be a bridge too far.

The only way to get around it is to buy from an agency, because HubSpot agencies don't need to be on-boarded and they assume the role of educating you on how to get the most out of HubSpot.

Saving Even More on Your First Year of HubSpot

All of our clients use HubSpot. As a matter of fact, we turn potential clients away when they don't want to use HubSpot. We believe in the power of the tool that much!

But, we also understand it's a large investment. It's worth it, but it's still a sizable investment.

So, we've become pretty creative at helping our clients save as much money as possible. And now, we're sharing that information with the public. Download our guide to see how you could save up to 60% off your HubSpot subscription in your first 12 months.