Within this increasingly globalised and competitive business landscape, brand relevance is more important than ever. Companies turn to marketing strategies as they strive to make the brand stand out and enhance the desirability of their products and services against countless other competing brands.

Nevertheless, the arrival of disruptive digital technologies, combined with increasing customer experience expectations around personalised, relevant experiences, have made it more challenging for marketers to keep the brand relevant. The Internet and social media have allowed customers to have more control over how they discover and interact with different brands, share their feedback, and get inspiration for their next purchase. Social media and digital platforms can also magnify the impacts of both negative and positive publicity as a single tweet or Facebook post can go viral in a matter of seconds.

This further punctuates the importance of a brand’s online presence as brands work to give customers the best possible online experience.

The importance of building a strong online presence

There is no doubt that the Internet is taking the world by storm. This is why companies must work doubly to establish an online presence, enabling them to showcase their products and services to an unlimited number of customers as well as communicate and engage with those customers seamlessly. Moreover, according to Hubspot’s State of Marketing Trends Report 2022, social media was the top marketing channel in 2021, with Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook being the top 3 social media platforms marketers are using in 2022

There are over 2.14 billion unique online shoppers following the increased digitalisation ushered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Marketers also shared that their most common and effective digital promotional channels included social media and websites. Nevertheless, while the importance of having an online presence is widely accepted, the real challenge is to draw and sustain customer attention. With customer attention span becoming lower than ever on top of everything happening online, brands have to be easy for consumers to find, get info from and connect with, and all that can be streamlined through a functional and seamless website.

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However, building and running a website is a different struggle altogether. In the first place, the costs of building a website including web designing, functionality, domain, and hosting can range somewhere between $12,000 to $150,000 per year depending on the complexity of the requirements. Website maintenance services can also add another $400 to $60,000 per year, depending on the operation costs.

Additionally, for business owners who are not tech savvy, selecting and hiring reliable and competent web and app developers can be a huge headache particularly in light of a global shortage of software engineer supply. Once the website is set up, the owners must then continuously oversee its performance, update its content to optimise for search engines, and ensure the relevance and consistency of its brand messages and content over time. To do so, it needs another dedicated team of marketers who develop the content and tend to the customers’ online experience.

How HubSpot’s has revolutionised website creation and management

Considering the context, HubSpot was born with the mission to help businesses craft a strong online presence without breaking the bank or needing to spend a large amount of time and effort building and creating their website.

Established in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in the United States, after over 15 years in operation, HubSpot has grown into a leading CRM platform that provides software and support to help businesses grow better. HubSpot’s platform includes marketing, sales, service, and website management products that start free and scale to meet their customers’ needs at any stage of growth. Today, thousands of customers around the world including top multinational corporations such as Spenmo, EngageRocket, Peakflo, and grove among many others, use HubSpot’s powerful and easy-to-use tools and integrations to attract, engage, and delight customers.

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Among HubSpot’s impressive offerings for customers, there are several services that stood out as the most valuable to both startups and global corporations. CMS Hub launched with the Pro and Enterprise (Apr 2020) versions meant for organisations with in-depth CMS needs, and subsequently, the Starter version (Aug 2021). Seeing the opportunity in the market, the team then launched the Free version earlier this year to equip businesses with a free and sophisticated suite of content management tools to build websites or upgrade with free hosting, visual editing features, and more. This makes it easier and cheaper than ever to design and implement remarkable CRM-powered websites.

The free CMS tools consist of advanced features such as theme library, cloud hosting, custom domain mapping, and intuitive data analytics to help create the most pleasant digital experience for customers and provide beneficial insights for businesses to improve their products and services, and target potential customers more effectively. Furthermore, the newly introduced free drag-and-drop website builder tool added significant value to HubSpot’s offerings. Thanks to this feature, marketers no longer need complex technical knowledge about coding to build the website, and they can visualise and preview the content before publishing the website to ascertain their desired look and functionality

HubSpot also goes to great lengths to ensure the security of the website with SSL certification and two-factor authentication at no additional costs.

How HubSpot empowers SMEs to thrive on the digital sphere

Since its inception, HubSpot has focused on democratising the digital sphere, facilitating businesses’ access to an online presence, moving their business operation and customer journey online, and leveraging the power of the internet to create compelling advantages. “SMEs are at the heart of Singapore’s economy and having a website is an opportunity for them to ‘share their business card’ to thousands online; aiding them to build awareness and credibility, and drive greater adoption and sales. At HubSpot, we are focused on helping companies grow better, carve new niches and better engage their customer groups,” said Simon Wong, Director, JAPAC at HubSpot.  

HubSpot’s product quality is highly proven as demonstrated by its customer satisfaction and the impressive success stories experienced by its customers. Businesses have found various applications and benefits from adopting HubSpot’s free CMS and other services to streamlining sales and marketing activities, launching more personalised marketing campaigns, integrating data, generating more leads, and increasing conversion rates.

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“We use Hubspot’s CMS hub to create and manage the content of our website. It is straightforward and easy to use, which means almost everyone in our company can operate it. Aside from allowing us to create a visually appealing and professional website, it is an all-in-one system that provides us with content features to help our company grow. Top it off with its comprehensive analytic features, we’re able to benchmark our performance to understand and scale TyrAds’ online presence” said Zino Rost van Tonningen, CEO at TyrAds, a performance marketing agency based in Singapore.

With a user-friendly interface, easy-to-use built-in tools, and the company’s strong desires to assist customers with the most innovative and relevant solutions, HubSpot’s free CMS Tools can usher any new startup into the digital age. 

For more information, visit the company’s website here.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Hubspot

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