If you have multiple brands or regions under a single umbrella and looking for a sophisticated approach to maintaining operational efficiency, HubSpot business units can be a powerful tool.
HubSpot business units are a feature that helps businesses manage multiple brands or divisions within a single HubSpot portal. It is particularly useful for organizations that have diverse product lines or customer segments. Separate business units allow you to maintain brand consistency and look into each brand’s performance.
This blog is your guide to understanding what HubSpot business units are, along with their advantages and disadvantages.
Think of HubSpot business units as creating separate compartments within your HubSpot platform for each distinct part of your business. It is a tool that helps companies manage multiple brands or products within a single HubSpot account.
Business units allow you to keep your marketing and sales efforts focused. Each unit can have its own branding, such as logos and colors. You can also segment your contacts and companies and create tailored experiences for different customer groups.
Additionally, business units provide dedicated reporting and allow you to track the performance of each brand or product independently. This means you can make data-driven decisions for each part of your business without getting lost in the overall numbers.
To access HubSpot business units, your company should be subscribed to either the Enterprise tier of HubSpot Marketing Hub or HubSpot CMS Hub. You should also know that only super admins can create and edit business units.
Here is how you can create a new business unit.
Go to the "Settings" section of your HubSpot account.
Find the business units tab in the left sidebar menu.
Click on “Create New Business Unit” which you can find in the top-right.
Choose a name for your business unit and then click on "Create".
To find the business units in the main navigation, click on your profile picture and hover on the business unit. You can select the business unit you would like to explore. You can check out the different parts of the CRM associated with the specific business unit.
Credits: HubSpot
Credits: HubSpot
HubSpot business units are beneficial for businesses operating with multiple brands or geographic locations. For example, a multinational corporation with different product lines, such as consumer electronics and automotive, could benefit from using Business Unites to manage each division separately.
Similarly, a company with various regional markets, like a clothing retailer with operations in North America and Asia, can use business units to tailor marketing efforts to each area’s cultural preferences.
When you create different business units, you can ensure that each brand maintains its unique identity and messaging. This way, you can avoid confusion among target audiences and further improve brand consistency. For instance, a luxury fashion brand and a budget-friendly clothing line can coexist within the same HubSpot account without diluting their respective brand images.
Conclusively, here are some scenarios where you might need multiple HubSpot accounts.
There is a legal concern between brands
Your brand has to be promoted in different regions
You have different independently owned companies
Here are the advantages of using HubSpot business units.
HubSpot business units offer a solution for maintaining different brand identities within a single platform. When you create separate business units for each brand, you can ensure that your messaging and design elements remain consistent and aligned with each brand’s unique positioning, as each business unit can have its own logos, color palettes, subscription preferences, email footers, etc.
This prevents brand dilution and confusion among your target audiences. Moreover, you can tailor your content to the specific needs and preferences of your target audience. You can also deliver a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints that will improve customer satisfaction score.
You may get overwhelmed while managing multiple campaigns across different brands. HubSpot business units help streamline this process and provide a centralized platform to plan and execute campaigns for each brand independently.
You can create and manage campaigns specific to each business unit and eliminate clutter, which improves the campaign performance. Furthermore, this way, you can accurately target your audience by segmenting contacts based on their affiliation with specific business units. This also helps you gain insights into the performance of each campaign and make data-driven adjustments.
It can be a challenge to keep track of design assets for multiple brands. HubSpot Business Units offer a centralized location to store and manage design assets specific to each brand.
You can organize design assets such as images, logos, and templates within their respective business units. You will witness better teamwork by providing easy access to brand-specific assets for design, marketing teams and streamlining the design process by quickly accessing the necessary assets.
Coordinating efforts across multiple brands can be complex. With the help of HubSpot business units, you can facilitate communication and collaboration among teams working on different brands.
This will let you centralize information and resources and enable efficient communication and knowledge sharing. You can foster collaboration between teams working on different brands to achieve shared goals. Additionally, ensure consistent messaging across all brands by sharing best practices and insights.
HubSpot business units help you organize your marketing assets efficiently by associating them with specific brands. This improves how the assets are accessed. Just make sure to categorize marketing assets (e.g., landing pages, emails, forms, etc.) based on their associated business unit. You can easily find and reuse relevant assets and save time and resources. Furthermore, you can streamline marketing flows by having all the necessary assets in one place.
HubSpot business units help you identify a structure in HubSpot where cross-selling among different business units can easily be managed. It can create a win-win situation for both entities or brands.
While there are several benefits of HubSpot business units, it still has some limitations. Let’s discuss them.
While HubSpot business units offer an excellent opportunity to create distinct brand identities, it can be cumbersome to move assets between business units. For example, when you try to transfer a piece of content or a design element from one brand to another, you may have to use manual effort and duplication. This can be time-consuming and may have errors.
In order to avoid this, you can consider creating a central asset library for shared resources and using templates to expedite the asset creation process within each business unit.
A major issue with using business units is managing email subscriptions across different brands. Users might receive multiple subscription emails if they subscribe to content from different business units. This can lead to email clutter and users may get annoyed. You can implement clear opt-in and preference center options for each business unit to eradicate this problem.
Additionally, you can also provide a centralized subscription management portal to improve the user experience.
Implementing HubSpot business units involves additional costs, as you need to purchase add-ons. While the long-term benefits can outweigh the initial investment, it is essential for you to carefully evaluate your budget and the return on investment before making a decision. You can consider starting with a smaller number of business units and gradually expanding as your needs grow.
Setting up multiple business units with distinct branding and reporting involves considerable complexity and time. It requires careful planning and configuration. If you want to streamline the setup process, you can try to involve HubSpot experts or use available templates and resources.
Business units provide a solid foundation for managing multiple brands. However, some features may be limited compared to other HubSpot features and tools. For instance, advanced reporting and analytics might not be as robust as in the core HubSpot platform.
If you want to overcome this limitation, you can explore third-party integrations or custom reporting options to increase your data analysis capabilities.
HubSpot Business Units can be a valuable tool for your organization if you want to manage multiple brands or divisions effectively. They act as a centralized hub for different marketing activities and improve brand consistency. While there are many benefits of Business units, it has some limitations, like asset mobility and email management. Make sure to carefully plan while implementing them.