HubSpot is one of the most powerful vehicles for driving business growth. All those powerful tools in HubSpot can be overwhelming though. Whether you’re new to HubSpot or it’s been a while since you logged into the orange sprocket, you likely need a guided tour through the platform to maximize your understanding and use of this powerful tool.
That’s why we created the HubSpot Tutorial for Beginners!
As HubSpot enthusiasts ourselves, we wanted to give you a resource for growing with HubSpot. Plus, we understand that it’s often easier to explain a product as you walk through it, so took the approach of making this into a video. Through this beginners tutorial, you will easily understand the interface while we’re explaining the product, learn why and how you’d use it, and the use cases or application for each feature.
Watch the video and bookmark it for later – use it as a starting guide for your company.
HubSpot Tutorial for Beginners by HubSpot Hacks
Come take a look around in this HubSpot Tutorial, where we help you better understand the most recent version of HubSpot, how you may want to use the HubSpot tools, and a variety of things to consider with this popular marketing automation platform.
Getting to know the features and benefits
Below are the key features associated with the HubSpot platform. By clicking on the timestamps, you will be directed to the exact moment where we discuss each topic.
If you’d like to get a better understand of what each of these features or terms mean, keep scrolling down the page to find a glossary of HubSpot terms and explanations for beginners!
0:15 – Intro
0:58 – Dashboard
1:11 – Contacts
2:08 – Companies
2:22 – Lifecycle Stages Explanation
3:04 – Activity Feed
3:11 – HubSpot Lists
4:03 – Inbox Tool (Support Email)
4:17 – Chatflows
4:23 – Snippets Overview
4:48 – Templates
5:25 – HubSpot Marketing Tab (Blog, Landing Pages, COS/CMS)
6:00 – HubSpot Ads
6:10 – Email Campaigns
6:27 – HubSpot Social
6:36 – Files and Templates (Design Tools)
7:09 – Lead Capture (CTA)
7:35 – Forms
7:56 – Planning and Strategy (Calendar)
8:25 – HubSpot Campaigns
8:34 – SEO tool
9:05 – HubSpot Projects
9:37 – Sales Tab
10:22 – Tasks
10:45 – Documents (Deals)
11:33 – Sales Meetings Tool
12:03 – Playbooks (Enterprise only)
12:23 – Service Hub (Tickets)
12:46 – HubSpot Workflows (Automation)
13:40 – HubSpot Sequences
13:59 – Reports/Analytics
15:08 – Helpful HubSpot Settings
17:56 – Closing
Basic HubSpot Terms & Explanations for Beginners
As you begin or renew your HubSpot journey, you’ll see many terms. Most of these terms will be familiar, but each has a specific meaning within your HubSpot software.
Here is a list of basic HubSpot terms and explanations to help get you started:
- Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM): a system for managing relationships with your customers.
- CRM Object: a type of a relationship or process that your organization has, such as contacts, companies, deals, and tickets.
- Contact: the object used for any person saved in your CRM.
- Company: the object used for any organization saved in your CRM.
- Task: a to-do reminder that is assigned to a user and associated with a record.
- Document: a piece of content uploaded to HubSpot’s document tool, which can be shared with your contacts via email.
- Lifecycle Stages: these are custom stages that are used to track how contacts or companies move forward in your sales process. The default HubSpot lifecycle stages include (in order): subscriber, lead, MQL, SQL, opportunity, customer, and evangelist. You cannot edit these in HubSpot so it’s important to learn what lifecycle stages are and how they apply to your company marketing scenario.
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- Subscriber: a contact who has opted in to learn more from you by signing up for your blog or newsletter.
- Lead: a contact or company who has converted on your website or through some other interaction with your organization beyond a subscription sign-up.
- Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): a contact or company that your marketing team has qualified as ready for the sales team.
- Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): a contact or company that your sales team has qualified as a potential customer.
- Opportunity: a contact or company who is associated with a deal.
- Customer: a contact or company with at least one closed deal.
- Evangelist: a customer who has advocated for your organization.
- Deal: the object used to store information about ongoing transactions throughout the stages of your sales process.
- Activity Feed: a feed that shows engagements with your one-to-one emails.
- List: a collection of contacts or companies based on criteria you set. Get the in’s and out’s of how to use active lists in this video: How to Segment Contacts Using Active Lists.
- Chatflow: chat widgets that you can add to your website pages.
- Snippet: a reusable text block that can be used on contact, company, deal, and ticket records. These can be used in email templates, chat conversations, and when logging an activity or note.
- Ads: a tool that allows you to connect a Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn ad account to create, track, and report on your ad campaigns.
- Campaign: allows you to tag related marketing assets and content (CTAs, landing pages, and social posts), so you can easily measure the effectiveness of your collective marketing efforts.
- Lead Capture (CTA): a button or hyperlink used in your content to drive prospective customers to your website and track clicks. This is also known as a Call-To-Action (CTA).
- Ticket: a record of a customer query. You can organize all of your customer inquiries in one place and track trends over time.
- Workflow: an automation tool in HubSpot that automatically enrolls records when they meet specific trigger criteria, then executes a series of marketing, sales, or service processes.
- Sequence: an automation tool that sends a series of timed one-to-one emails and task reminders to help nurture your leads over time. Want to learn more about sequences? Read our blog: HubSpot Sequences: Your Sales Superpower.
- Reports/Analytics: a tool used to analyze trends across your HubSpot tools. All accounts come with a library of reports, and your team can create custom reports.
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