If you plan to use HubSpot for your business or optimize your use of the platform, you may want support in managing this comprehensive and expensive tool.
You then have two choices: Work with a HubSpot specialist or a HubSpot agency.
While both options can help you achieve your marketing, sales, and data management goals, there are key differences to consider.
This article is part of my blog series on how to find the perfect match for managing your HubSpot Portal.
In this specific article, we'll explore the pros and cons of working with a HubSpot specialist versus a HubSpot agency, so you can make the decision that's most relevant to your organization.
Summary
- Why get support in managing your HubSpot portal
- HubSpot Agency
- What makes an agency a “HubSpot agency”?
- The business model of a HubSpot agency
- Minimal risk taking when choosing your agency
- A mission follow-up guarantee
- A focus more “Marketing” than “Operational”
- Outsourcing a dimension of your activity
- HubSpot Specialist
- Operational expertise
- A real investment in your organization
- Optimal responsiveness
- A possibility of internalizing skills
- Comparison table: HubSpot Specialist / HubSpot Agency
- What to choose ?
- Endnotes
Why get support in managing your HubSpot portal
HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing, sales, and customer service platform that helps businesses attract, engage, and convert customers. With a wide range of features, HubSpot allows you to manage your entire activity, automate a large part of your processes and guarantee clear and efficient management of your database.
Over time, the adoption of the platform takes an increasingly important place in your operational management. The challenges you want to meet with this tool will come with new technical needs and management time.
To fully leverage the power of HubSpot, working with the right partner is crucial. Especially when internalizing that key skill is not possible.
Choosing the right HubSpot Specialist or Agency can make the difference between managing your portal efficiently and getting bogged down. A good partner can help you implement HubSpot effectively, provide ongoing support, and achieve your marketing goals.
On the other hand, working with the wrong partner can waste time, money and resources. The wrong partner can provide bad advice, mismanage your HubSpot portal, and prevent you from getting the vision and results you want, or worse, ruin your operations.
HubSpot Agency
A HubSpot agency is an agency that specializes in providing marketing and content creation services using the HubSpot platform. These agencies are typically staffed by marketing professionals who have extensive experience using HubSpot and can help businesses develop marketing strategies through their use of the platform.
What makes an agency a “HubSpot agency”?
There are a myriad of marketing agencies but some of them claim to be “HubSpot Agency”, what does that mean?
The mention of "HubSpot Agency" indicates that the agency is in partnership with HubSpot through a program called "HubSpot Partners". The agency is encouraged to advise the adoption of the platform to its customers and to guide the marketing strategies proposed around the use of the tool.
HubSpot marketing agencies therefore have a good command of the platform's tools and features related to the implementation of a marketing strategy.
The business model of a HubSpot agency
In addition to the HubSpot affiliation, these marketing agencies are based on the optimization of human costs to carry out the implementation of marketing strategy on your portal.
In order to guarantee profitability, agencies need to segment their services into well-defined and replicable offer packages.
This has the advantage of offering a clear vision of the actions carried out during the support. You pay “X” to get “Y” in “Z” months.
Conversely, you lose flexibility and adaptation to the needs of your business.
Minimal risk taking when choosing your agency
Another advantage of working with a HubSpot agency, the risk of choosing the wrong agency can be easily reduced.
Agencies are institutions with a certain visibility on their experience and results. It is then less risky to go to an agency that has a “storefront” and which has already had the opportunity to achieve marketing successes for other players in your industry.
It is also possible to secure your choice by selecting your agency from the HubSpot partner directory. The ranking of these agencies is mostly based on the number of positive reviews from former clients.
A mission follow-up guarantee
Working with an agency means working with a team that can take turns and ensure the absences or departures of individuals. Unlike a freelancer or a HubSpot specialist operating alone and who can be forced to stop the mission, you are guaranteed that the agency will deliver what has been agreed even if your main contact has to leave the project.
A focus more “Marketing” than “Operational”
As presented earlier in this article. HubSpot agencies are mainly marketing agencies using the platform to implement their strategies. Although they will always offer CRM implementation or process automation services, their strength lies mainly in carrying out marketing efforts.
HubSpot is certainly a complete marketing management tool, but its real value lies in its ability to manage the entire operations of each of your teams. Working with a HubSpot agency specializing in marketing is probably not the most effective solution for developing your company's operations and taking full advantage of the tool.
Outsourcing a dimension of your activity
A situation where the choice of a HubSpot agency may be relevant is, if you do not have the internal human resources to ensure the definition and implementation of a Marketing strategy, and if your operational needs related to the platform are limited to the management of marketing campaigns.
HubSpot Specialist
A HubSpot specialist is a person, freelancer or employee, who has an in-depth knowledge of the HubSpot platform in all these aspects. Although a HubSpot specialist often has a wealth of knowledge in terms of digital marketing, business organization and data analysis, their main strength lies in their organizational skills, their overall understanding of a company's operations and a strong skill in database management.
Their role is to help businesses make full use of the capabilities of your HubSpot platform to achieve your marketing, sales, and customer service goals. They can provide advice and ensure the implementation of all types of projects related to the platform.
HubSpot specialists are certified by HubSpot, which demonstrates their proficiency in using the platform and their commitment to ongoing training.
Operational expertise
The sole mission of a HubSpot specialist is to develop your portal, optimize it and meet the needs of each of the teams linked to your portal.
Although often able to provide expertise on your marketing and sales strategies, the HubSpot specialist is responsible for ensuring the best management of your organization's operations through the optimization and automation of your marketing campaigns, the ability to provide clear and harmonized performance reports, saving time in your business processes and maintaining the most organized database possible.
A real investment in your organization
Unlike a HubSpot agency, a HubSpot specialist should be considered as a true member of your organization.
For medium or long-term support, a HubSpot specialist will often prefer to work with one or two partners at most in order to guarantee the most complete investment possible and responsiveness to the needs of your organization.
It is through this close relationship between you and your HubSpot specialist that the latter acquires knowledge related to the needs of your teams, the specificities related to your organization or your industry and is able to create a fully optimized portal for your organization. .
Optimal responsiveness
HubSpot is a cornerstone of your organization, its management, development and the tasks related to its use are constantly evolving and directly linked to the needs and emergencies of your business.
A HubSpot specialist acts as a full member of your organization and is aware of the issues and challenges facing you. By being mainly focused on your support, the HubSpot specialist can therefore intervene and respond immediately to your problems without having to juggle the emergencies and schedules of other partners, and without wasting time in the transmission of information and the risk that the problem is only understood on the surface.
A possibility of internalizing skills
The relationship between your HubSpot specialist and your different teams allows for better transmission of information. A team knows and understands why your specialist has implemented such and such actions, because they have a direct impact on the latter's efforts.
As a Freelancer, a HubSpot specialist is also more likely to provide detailed documentation of the actions taken to ensure succession or potentially fully integrate your team.
Comparison table: HubSpot Specialist / HubSpot Agency
| HubSpot Specialist | HubSpot Agency | |
| Type of support | Personalized support | Packaged offers |
| Focus | Operational | Marketing |
| Skills | Insourced | Outsourced |
| Adaptability | Flexible | Stiff |
What to choose ?
This article has demonstrated that there is no solution better than the other. In reality, these two types of support are completely different in nature.
If you are looking to outsource your marketing efforts and maintain a basic use of your HubSpot portal, the HubSpot agency is the most relevant solution for you.
If you don't need external marketing management and you identified the need to optimize your operations and taking advantage of all the possibilities that HubSpot offers for your organization, the HubSpot specialist will be the best choice once knowing how to take the most out of your collaboration. At HS Simple, we can help you find your long term HubSpot Specialist.
Endnotes
If you want to better organize your data and learn how to automate your operations on HubSpot, I created a private web page referencing all the workflows I presented in my channels: the "Workflow Box".You can access it immediately and for free by clicking here.
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