Marketing automation has come a long way, transforming from a strategic edge to a critical element of business success. Today marketers rely on these powerful platforms to manage and optimize campaigns, nurture leads, and drive scalable business growth.

Among these platforms, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and HubSpot Marketing Hub are standout options. Each of these have their unique strengths and focus areas, making them better suited for different business needs.

To help you determine which platform is the best fit for your marketing efforts, take a deep dive into our blog where we’ve discussed key functionalities, price, and unique selling points of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and HubSpot Marketing Hub.

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive digital marketing platform designed to help businesses create personalized customer journeys across various channels. It offers a range of products and tools that cater to different aspects of marketing, from automation and personalization to analytics and loyalty management.

Here are some of the core capabilities of Salesforce Marketing Cloud:

• Write and design emails and landing pages with drag-drop functionality

• Personalize engagements through SMS and Push messages

• Automate campaigns for multiple channels

• Segment prospects and target online ads for the right audience

• Personalize interaction for every prospect based on behavior and engagement levels

• Offers predictive insights and recommendations

Key Solutions in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Suite

Salesforce Marketing Cloud comprises several solutions, each with a unique set of capabilities. Let’s check out its main tools and what they bring to your marketing needs:

1. Marketing Cloud Engagement 

SFMC Engagement is the basic building block for your organization’s marketing efforts. It helps businesses create and manage personalized marketing campaigns across multiple channels like email, social media, mobile messaging, and digital advertising.

Marketing Cloud Engagement is composed of Studios and Builders. While Studios helps businesses manage and optimize their marketing campaigns across various channels, Builders provides powerful tools for creating personalized content, automating customer journeys, and managing audience segmentation.

Studios

• Email Studio: Design, test, preview, and easily send emails.

• Social Studio: Create, monitor, and schedule social media posts, offering comprehensive analytics and real-time engagement in one interface.

• Web Studio: Manage the web experience for users, collecting data to deliver highly personalized interactions for your customers.

• Mobile Studio: Develop, monitor, and send SMS messages and push notifications.

• Automation Studio: Create and manage data and marketing automation activities, integrating them into the Journey Builder canvas.

• Advertising Studio Streamlines your CRM data with online advertising. Identify audiences that align with your target profile.

Builders

• Journey Builder: Visually maps out marketing touchpoints, automates campaigns, and defines customer journeys.

• Content Builder: Create reusable landing pages, email templates, and interactive content blocks.

• Analytics Builder: Collect data from various sources, including email campaigns, website interactions, and social media, and analyze via reports and dashboards. 

• Audience Builder (Contact Builder): Manages data on individuals or contracts, organizing them into events, populations, and attribute groups for segmentation, providing access to behavioral and demographic information.

2. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot)

Account Engagement is SFMC's B2B marketing automation solution, designed to generate and nurture leads throughout the sales funnel. It offers features such as email marketing, lead scoring, and nurturing, custom landing page creation, workflow automation, and more enabling businesses to deliver personalized content based on customer behavior.

Besides these two, Salesforce also hosts other popular solutions as add-ons to further enhance your marketing capabilities. This includes:

a) Marketing Cloud Personalization,

b)  Data Cloud for Marketers, 

c) Marketing Cloud Intelligence,

d) Marketing Cloud Personalization, and 

e) Loyalty Management.

What Do Users Like About Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Here’s what users say about Salesforce Marketing Cloud on popular review sites like TrustRadius, G2, and Gartner: 

TrustRadius:

Gartner:

G2:

What Users Dislike About Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud requires technical expertise for setup and can be a bit costly for small businesses. While these two are primary reasons why a business may not opt for SFMC, let’s check out the exact reasons why some users dislike the Marketing Cloud platform.

G2: 

Gartner:

TrustRadius:

What is HubSpot Marketing Hub?

HubSpot Marketing Hub is an all-in-one inbound marketing platform designed to help businesses attract, engage, and delight customers through various digital channels. Known for its user-friendly interface and powerful automation capabilities, HubSpot Marketing Hub provides a comprehensive suite of tools that cater to different aspects of marketing, from content creation and SEO to social media management and analytics.

Here’s an insight on what you can do with HubSpot for marketing:

• Centrally manage all marketing activities, ensuring cohesive and integrated marketing

• Create and manage blogs, landing pages, and emails with a drag-and-drop editor.

• Optimize content with built-in SEO tools, keyword tracking, and strategy recommendations.

• Design, send, and track personalized email campaigns 

• Automate workflows to nurture leads, follow up, and manage campaigns

• Schedule, monitor, and analyze social media posts from one platform

• Capture and manage leads with forms, pop-ups, and live chat, integrated seamlessly with HubSpot CRM.

Key Features in HubSpot Marketing Hub

From superior automation features for attracting, nurturing, and converting leads to blogging, SEO, and ad management, HubSpot has a lot to offer for marketers. Here are some of the core features of this solution:

• List Segmentation: Create and automatically update contact lists to optimize your email marketing efforts.

• Email Marketing: Design personalized emails from scratch or use customizable templates, and utilize A/B tests to improve click-through rates.

• Social Media Integration: Develop and automate social media marketing campaigns, engage with your audience, and monitor interactions.

• Automated Workflows: Nurture leads and automate cross-channel operations with customizable workflows.

• SEO and Content Strategy: Tools for optimizing content for search engines, including keyword research, SEO recommendations, and content strategy planning.

• Lead Tracking and Management: Segment, score, and convert potential customers using your centralized data.

• Account-Based Marketing: Enhance marketing and sales efforts with user-friendly ABM tools to build meaningful customer relationships.

• Form and Landing Page Builders: Use customizable templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop builder to create mobile-friendly designs that convert website visitors.

• Marketing Analytics: Benefit from built-in reporting and turn customer data into revenue opportunities.

• Ads Management: Integration with ad platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads for creating, managing, and analyzing ad campaigns.

What Users Like About HubSpot Marketing Hub?

Here’s what users say about HubSpot Marketing Hub on popular review sites like TrustRadius, G2, and Gartner: 

TrustRadius:

G2:

Gartner

What Users Don’t Like About HubSpot Marketing Hub?

HubSpot Marketing Hub has limited capabilities compared to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Moreover, users find its support services to be less reliable than other marketing automation tools available.

G2:

Trustradius:

Comparing Pricing of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and HubSpot Marketing Hub

Pricing is one of the main differentiating factors when it comes to selecting between these two platforms. Many users find Marketing Cloud's pricing to be too high, on the contrary, users feel that HubSpot's pricing lacks flexibility for scaling.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud uses a per-user pricing model and offers tools as standalone solutions rather than in a single payment plan. This approach can make subscriptions expensive if you need multiple features.

HubSpot offers a free and premium version, which appeals to many users. While the free version has limited automation and other capabilities, their premium plans come with a demo option. In contrast, Salesforce does not offer a free version or a free trial.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud pricing

Note: The Salesforce Marketing Cloud pricing is subject to changes. We’ve seen Salesforce slash license pricing by up to 50 percent if licenses are bought in bulk. 

HubSpot Marketing Hub Pricing

Comparing Features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and HubSpot Marketing Hub

Now that we’ve had a look at both the platforms and what users like and dislike about each of them, let’s now check how these solutions fare against one another. 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. HubSpot Marketing Hub: A Final Comparison

Here’s a final feature comparison in table form for a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of key features available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud and HubSpot Marketing Hub.

Making a Choice Between Salesforce and HubSpot for Marketing

Choosing between Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) and HubSpot Marketing Hub depends on your business needs. SFMC offers extensive customization, advanced analytics, and multi-channel campaign management, making it ideal for businesses with complex marketing requirements and the resources to invest in premium capabilities.

HubSpot Marketing Hub, with its user-friendly interface and affordability, is perfect for small to medium-sized businesses. It focuses on inbound marketing strategies and seamless CRM integration, offering a streamlined and intuitive solution. The decision ultimately depends on your specific needs, budget, and marketing complexity, helping you select the best platform for your success.

Looking for a trusted Salesforce implementation company? We at Concretio is there to help you. Reach out today to explore how we can help achieve your business objectives.

Further Reading

1. G2 - Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs HubSpot Marketing Hub

2. TrustRadius - Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs HubSpot Marketing Hub

3. Gartner - Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs HubSpot Marketing Hub

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