HubSpot vs Marketo

Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) solutions have been around for some time, but more recently these powerful sales and support business tools are crossing over into the world of marketing – or at least, sales lead generation.  The problem?  All claim to have a lead-generation or lead-acquisition component but which CRM solution is really going to take your marketing to the next level?  Let’s review. 

As a business consultant, I have no time for recommending ‘toys’ for marketing departments to play with.  I don’t care about your branded URL shortener.  I don’t care about the latest version of Creative Suite.  I care about more leads that convert into more sales, which close quickly, have a very low turnover, and show opportunities for up-sell/cross-sell.

As CRMs begin to become a more valuable tool for the WHOLE organization (marketing, sales, support, delivery and executives), I felt it critical to review a few of them for my clients.  After a dozen or so demos of some of the top 360-degree CRM solutions on the market, I compiled the following no-nonsense comparison of the top two: HubSpot & Marketo.

HubSpot: hubspot.com

According to them, “HubSpot’s vision is to provide a (killer) marketing application and provide great advice to businesses of all sizes enabling them to leverage these disruptive effects of the internet to “get found” by more prospects shopping in their niche, convert a higher percentage of prospects into customers and analyze the results to figure out what works for their target audience.”

• Target Market: Mid-market Enterprises
• Clients: 5500 (invested in by SFDC & Google)
• PROs: User friendly, no programming, includes SEO and Social Media tools
• Price Point: $1000/month
• Features: Email Campaigns, Lead Nurturing, Tracking, event marketing, mobile, chat
• Integration: SFDC (best plugin!), No WebEx (but they’re working on it)
• TCO: Professional help gets you going. Perfect for smaller businesses.

Marketo: marketo.com

According to them, “Marketo is built by marketers, for marketers. It combines everything you need to manage demand generation campaigns and generate quality sales leads – including email marketing, lead nurturing and lead scoring – with analytics to measure marketing ROI and forecast marketing’s impact on revenue.”

• Target Market: Enterprises-level (large organizations)
• Clients: 900 1400+ (includes clients of their dressed-down solution, SPARK)
• PROs: Can be customized/programmed to fit any situation. Social integration is awesome!
• Price Point: $2000/month (for professionals with up to 10 users)
• Features: Advanced Email Campaign Management, Advanced (segmented) Lead Nurturing, Tracking, event marketing, mobile, (no chat)
• Integration: Radian6, all of the Big 5 webinar providers (GoToMeeting, WebEx, etc.)
• TCO: Pretty much requires a marketing/CRM technology manageror champion

The Simple Takeaway

If you take the time to closely understand the above and you’ve done as many CRM demos as I have recently, this is the simple takeaway:

Infusionsoft would be good for a novice for both CRM and Marketing (i.e. integrated SFA/CRM with marketing automation). For SMbs and mid-market buyers on SalesForce.com, I would recommend Hubspot after looking at all the options (features, app exchange, and investment by SalesForce.com). For folks with a marketing staff or for agencies, Marketo makes makes the most sense.

Do you have any experience with any of the CRM-for-marketing solutions we’ve discussed?  Comment your thoughts below.  Also, stay tuned for a white paper on CRM selection sponsored by Ephor Group.

UPDATE: Lots of valuable comments/corrections below.  Be sure to give ’em the once-over.