In this article, we’ll explore how HubSpot Brands, previously referred to as Business Units, can be leveraged to streamline complex operations, strengthen brand consistency, and enhance organisational efficiency at scale.
Each brand has its own strategy, assets, and audience, yet you’re tasked with ensuring consistency, efficiency, and alignment across all these moving parts. With teams spread across various markets, using a mix of tools and systems that don’t always integrate, and maintaining a unified approach feels like navigating a maze.
Previously known as "Business Units," HubSpot Brands streamline the management of multiple brands within a single, centralized HubSpot portal. By consolidating your brand oversight into one unified system, you can keep each brand distinct while maintaining control, visibility, and efficiency across the entire organisation.
Let’s dive into how HubSpot Brands can simplify the complexities of managing a global portfolio of brands, enhance cross-team collaboration, and ensure consistency—whether you’re handling the implementation in-house or partnering with a HubSpot solutions provider.
What are HubSpot Brands?
HubSpot Brands are designed to help organisations manage multiple brand identities within a single HubSpot instance.
Image source: HubSpot
In our work with global organisations, we’ve seen firsthand how Brands can provide the structure needed to support nuanced go-to-market strategies across regions, subsidiaries, or product lines. By segmenting assets, audiences, and reporting by brand, teams can maintain clear boundaries while still operating under a unified system.
That said, simply switching on Brands isn’t enough. For most organisations, making the most of this capability requires thoughtful planning: mapping out how each brand will operate, what permissions are needed, how content should be structured, and how data will be managed across the ecosystem.
The setup needs to reflect your organisation’s reality, not just the defaults available out of the box.
Technical nuances of HubSpot Brands
At a technical level, HubSpot Brands introduce an additional layer of organisation within your portal, essential for managing the operational complexity that comes with a multi-brand setup. But deploying it well isn’t just a technical job, it’s strategic.
Brands offer a framework that allows for differentiated marketing execution, data segmentation, and permission management. When implemented with intent, they give large organisations the ability to localise strategies while still retaining control and visibility at a global level.
In practice, this might mean defining unique workflows and assets for each brand, setting up clear governance rules, or segmenting CRM data so that brand-specific teams work only with what’s relevant to them.
We've seen organisations try to manage multi-brand environments without this structure—and it quickly becomes unmanageable. Getting the technical configuration right from the start, and aligning it with internal processes, is critical. That’s why we recommend working with a partner who can map the platform to your operational model, not the other way around.
Add-on features enhancing brand management
When set up effectively, HubSpot Brands unlock a range of advanced capabilities that support more sophisticated brand strategies. These add-ons don’t just enhance platform functionality, they give organisations the flexibility to adapt how each brand operates within a shared system.
Some of the key features include:
- Custom branded experiences: Each Brand instance can be tailored with its own tone, assets, workflows, and messaging. This flexibility allows marketing teams to reflect the distinct personality of each brand while maintaining alignment with broader business goals. But in practice, ensuring brand governance across multiple teams and markets can be challenging—especially without a clear operational model behind the tech.
- Performance reporting at scale: One of the major benefits of Brands is the ability to report at both the parent and brand level. With proper implementation, leadership can track brand-specific performance metrics while maintaining a consolidated view across the organisation. We often work with clients to define what “good” looks like in this context—what KPIs matter most for each brand, and how to surface them in meaningful ways.
- Centralised campaign coordination: Brands act as a command centre for orchestrating multi-brand campaigns, cross-sell initiatives, or shared audience segmentation. The system enables agility, but only if it’s underpinned by structured naming conventions, governance protocols, and clearly defined ownership. That’s where strategic configuration becomes essential.
When used well, these features can transform the way large organisations manage their brand portfolios, but they’re not turnkey. They require structured planning, platform expertise, and ongoing optimisation to get right.
Understanding when to implement HubSpot Brands is just as important as knowing how the feature works. In our experience working with large, multi-entity organisations, the need for Brands usually becomes clear when existing systems start to strain under the weight of brand complexity.
When to use HubSpot Brands
Here are a few scenarios where we’ve seen Brands offer immediate and lasting value:
- Managing multiple brands under one corporate umbrella: Managing multiple brand identities within a single HubSpot portal can quickly become chaotic. HubSpot Brands help restore order by separating assets, domains, and teams into distinct spaces that still operate within a centralized system. That said, it’s not a plug-and-play solution. Strategic planning is needed to define how brands will coexist: what should be shared, what should be siloed, and how to balance autonomy with control.
- Tailoring access and communication at scale: Enterprise teams often need nuanced permission structures, especially when different business units or regions operate independently. Brands allow for precise access control and custom email subscription preferences per brand, essential for managing governance and compliance across distributed teams. We've helped clients build these structures from the ground up, aligning tech configurations with organisational reality.
- Structuring for long-term efficiency: HubSpot Brands provides a framework that is built to withstand the complexities of a multi-brand ecosystem, making it easier to manage and optimize your operations without constantly needing to reconfigure your infrastructure. By leveraging HubSpot Brands, you can maintain operations across your global portfolio while safeguarding the efficiency of your existing processes.
But that future-ready flexibility comes from doing the hard thinking early on, deciding on governance models, data architecture, and internal processes before you scale.
In each of these cases, technology is only one part of the solution. The real impact comes when HubSpot Brands are implemented with intention, mapped to your business model and structured to support growth. That’s why we recommend working with an experienced partner who can guide the process and ensure the platform is set up to serve your goals.
Limitations to HubSpot Brands
While HubSpot Brands open up powerful possibilities for multi-brand management, like any enterprise tool, they come with limitations that organisations need to be aware of upfront. We've worked with clients across various sectors who’ve run into these challenges—often when scaling fast or trying to retrofit structure into a system that wasn’t initially built for complexity.
Here are a few limitations to keep in mind, along with insights from the field:
- Asset mobility is still limited
Moving assets, like emails, workflows, or templates, between Brands isn't currently a streamlined process. For example, in a project with a global research firm, we encountered the need to manually recreate campaign assets during a brand restructuring effort.
The lack of drag-and-drop transfer options meant increased admin time and higher risk of errors. Workarounds exist, but they typically involve careful planning upfront or custom-built solutions to support asset governance across brands. We often help clients implement naming conventions, folder structures, and asset strategies that reduce these headaches in the long run. - Subscription experience can create confusion
Another common pitfall arises with re-subscription emails. In certain setups, users who unsubscribed and then re-engage via forms may receive a default email tied to the parent brand, rather than the specific one they interacted with.
This misalignment, while small on the surface, can erode trust, especially in regions with strict data protection rules or with audiences expecting tailored brand experiences. It’s one of the reasons we advocate for rigorous testing and brand-specific content audits as part of any multi-brand rollout.
These limitations aren’t deal-breakers, but they do highlight the need for strategic implementation. Brands are a high-potential feature, but they require thoughtful configuration, structured processes, and often, support from a partner who understands the real-world implications.
That’s where a HubSpot consultancy adds value, helping you not only work around limitations but anticipate them before they become roadblocks.
Best practices for implementing HubSpot Brands
Successfully deploying HubSpot Brands is about more than just flipping a switch in your HubSpot portal. To truly unlock the power of this tool, you need a thoughtful and strategic approach.
Here are some best practices we recommend when setting up HubSpot Brands for large, multi-location organisations:
- Plan your brand governance upfront: Establish a clear governance model before activating HubSpot Brands. Decide who will control what assets, which teams will handle which brands, and what workflows should be standardised across the system. Clear governance prevents confusion and ensures that as you scale, each brand operates with the right permissions and oversight.
- Define clear KPIs for each brand: For HubSpot Brands to be truly effective, it’s essential to define specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each brand. Having tailored performance metrics helps organisations track success at the brand level and understand how each entity contributes to the overall business objectives.
- Standardise naming conventions and workflows: With multiple brands under one HubSpot portal, consistency is key. Establishing standardised naming conventions, workflows, and processes ensures that your teams stay aligned and your brand assets are easy to locate and manage. This is particularly important for scaling operations as your brand portfolio grows.
- Ensure data segmentation and privacy compliance: When managing multiple brands in one system, it’s crucial to set up proper data segmentation to ensure that sensitive brand information is handled correctly. Ensure that each brand's data is siloed appropriately, and follow privacy compliance regulations like GDPR, especially when working with international teams.
- Regularly optimize and review the setup: Implementing HubSpot Brands isn’t a one-time task. As your company grows and changes, so will your HubSpot configuration. Set aside regular intervals (quarterly or bi-annually) to review and optimize your portal to ensure it still aligns with your business goals.
By following these best practices, organisations can unlock the full potential of HubSpot Brands and create a sustainable, scalable framework that supports their long-term growth.
Making HubSpot Brands work for your organization
HubSpot Brands provide the underlying structure global organisations need to manage complex brand portfolios at scale. But like any powerful system, how you implement it makes all the difference.
Whether it’s defining governance models, aligning brand strategies, or structuring teams around shared tools, the value of Brands is only fully realised when they're integrated with intention and expertise.
We’ve seen what’s possible when large organisations take a strategic approach to multi-brand architecture, and we’ve also seen where things can go wrong without the right foundation.
If you're evaluating how to structure your HubSpot portal to support long-term growth, this is the moment to step back, assess, and get the right setup in place. Speak with our team to explore how Huble can help you structure HubSpot Brands around your business.
