Enhancing your marketing processes with HubSpot AI

There’s so much talk about AI and how it’s changing and evolving the way we interact with devices in our everyday lives — but is your marketing team implementing AI tools at their disposal practically and efficiently?

With the great potential of AI comes the risk of empty hype, or worse, a counterproductive distraction.

Let’s see how you can integrate HubSpot’s AI assistants into your marketing processes to optimise your efforts and supercharge efficiency. 

Make sure AI is improving your marketing department

First things first, you need to ensure that AI is actually improving your marketing department as a whole, rather than individuals or silos.

With new AI tools being launched every month, a challenge for marketing leaders is to understand which are still in the early stages of adoption, and which are much more developed. While early adopters have seen success and gained efficiencies with new tools, some of them are less tried and tested by the wider market.

The hyperbolic claims, still-in-development tools, gated experimental subscriptions, and the general unreliability of information establish a fragile foundation for companies hoping to invest in the right solutions. 

It is essential to keep in mind that, despite the massive potential offered by AI, it also causes many problems for businesses that adopt immature tools or fail to properly integrate the tools into their departments. 

Overall, the stream of sensationalist AI headlines and the glamorisation of sleek contemplative robot faces seem to portray AI as an end in itself, instead of a means to our human ends.

However, you shouldn't ignore AI. It's changing how all of us interact with devices and apps at a staggering scale. 

As a HubSpot partner, we are keeping a close eye on the features and tools that HubSpot is continually launching in the AI space and will continue to do so. 

We understand the importance of not just knowing what the tools can do for an individual, but how to best integrate these tools into your department's way of working to achieve maximum success.

A brief history of HubSpot AI?

With new names in AI popping up daily, it is good to know that HubSpot is somewhat of an AI veteran. HubSpot began developing AI tools in the mid-2010s. 

The company has progressively integrated AI and machine learning capabilities into its platform to enhance various functionalities across marketing, sales, and customer service.

A significant milestone in HubSpot's AI journey was the acquisition of Kemvi in 2017. Kemvi was a company specialising in artificial intelligence and machine learning, particularly focused on helping sales teams with lead qualification and understanding customer intent. 

This acquisition marked a notable step forward in HubSpot's commitment to embedding trusted AI tools deeply into its products.

These tools, and their integration across the various hubs, are a direct response to customers’ growing need for supercharged efficiency.

Since 2017, HubSpot has had some AI tools in play, albeit in the background. Features like predictive lead scoring have been operational for a few years, although they were not always recognised as AI-driven solutions. 

These early tools laid the foundation for more advanced AI capabilities within the platform. The boom of GPT and similar technologies has propelled HubSpot to launch a myriad of AI tools into the platform, such as content generation and reporting analytics. 

This rapid expansion has felt like HubSpot's entry into the AI world, ensuring they are "in the game" and providing immediate value to users.

Looking ahead, we expect HubSpot to adopt a more measured approach to AI development. The focus will likely shift towards refining and enhancing AI assistants that help each employee multiply their output. 

A 2023 study revealed that marketing teams using AI can recoup 12.5 hours per week—equivalent to 25-26 working days a year. With the right support structures in place, your team can achieve similar productivity gains.

Let’s look at some key AI features built into the HubSpot Marketing Hub and how you can incorporate them into your business processes:

How to use HubSpot AI in your marketing team

Incorporating AI into your marketing workstreams can significantly enhance your team's efficiency and productivity.

Think of HubSpot’s AI tools as indispensable members of your marketing team. 

They are designed to handle repetitive tasks, provide insights, and generate content, allowing your team to focus on strategic and creative activities. 

Here's how you can incorporate these AI tools into your workstreams:

1. Strategic planning and insights

Tool: ChatSpot

Features:

ChatSpot is a versatile AI assistant designed to streamline strategic planning and provide valuable insights for your marketing efforts. It excels in quick data retrieval, allowing you to pull up real-time information on competitor activities, current SEO standings, and recent content performance metrics during strategy sessions.

This ensures your discussions are always data-driven and informed by the latest trends. Additionally, ChatSpot aids in report generation, simplifying the process of creating detailed analytical reports that can guide your marketing decisions. Its ability to prospect companies and generate content further enhances its utility, offering business insights that can shape your strategic initiatives.

How to integrate it within your processes:

• Regular planning meetings: Use ChatSpot to provide real-time insights during strategy sessions. Quickly pull up data on competitor activities, current SEO standings, and recent content performance metrics to inform discussions.
• Data-driven decision-making: Integrate ChatSpot into your weekly strategy meetings to enable data-driven discussions and quicker decision-making. Ensure your strategies are always informed by the latest insights.
• Daily operations: Use ChatSpot for daily tasks such as generating content, analysing SEO data, and creating reports. This helps keep your team updated and informed without manual data gathering.

2. Content creation and management

Tool: Blog Generator

Features:

The Blog Generator in HubSpot's AI arsenal is designed to streamline your content creation process. It can create initial drafts from prompts, significantly reducing the time spent on research and drafting.

By leveraging machine learning-backed articles, it ensures the content is relevant and well-structured. Seamless integration with HubSpot's blog software means that your content production is smooth and efficient.

The built-in reporting features allow you to measure the ROI of your content, helping you understand the impact of your efforts and make data-driven adjustments as needed.

How to integrate it within your processes:

• Content planning: Use the Blog Generator during content planning sessions to create initial drafts based on overarching themes and objectives. Save time by having the AI produce draft blogs that your team can then edit and enhance for consistency and impact.
• Streamlined content production: Integrate the Blog Generator into your content creation workflow to maintain a consistent output and reduce the time spent on initial drafts.

Tool: Email Generator

Features:

HubSpot's Email Generator is a powerful tool for drafting marketing emails with ease. It helps you create well-structured emails that can be personalised for different customer segments, enhancing the relevance and effectiveness of your campaigns.

Whether you're launching a new product or maintaining regular communication with your audience, the Email Generator ensures your messages are clear, engaging, and tailored to your recipients' needs.

How to integrate it within your processes:

• Campaign launches: Use the email generator to draft announcement emails for new product launches. Tailor emails to different customer segments, allowing team members to focus on fine-tuning messaging.
• Email workflows: Incorporate the email generator into your email marketing workflows to quickly generate and personalise emails at scale.

Tool: Social Caption Generator

Features:

The Social Caption Generator is designed to enhance your social media efforts by creating engaging captions tailored to your target audience. By generating compelling and relevant content, it helps boost engagement rates and maintain a consistent posting schedule.

This allows your team to focus more on interacting with followers and analysing performance metrics, ensuring your social media strategy remains effective and impactful.

How to integrate it within your processes:

• Social media planning: Use the Social Caption Generator to produce a series of compelling captions for social media campaigns. This allows your team to focus on interacting with followers and analysing performance metrics.
• Consistent posting: Integrate the Social Caption Generator into your social media workflows to maintain a consistent posting schedule with engaging content.

3. SEO optimisation

Tool: SEO Recommendations

Features:

The SEO Recommendations tool provides actionable insights to optimise your content for search engines. It helps you identify the most impactful keywords and content improvements, prioritising recommendations that can significantly enhance your SEO performance.

By integrating with your content management tools, it ensures that all published content is optimised, driving better visibility and reach for your website. This tool is crucial for staying ahead of SEO trends and continuously refining your strategy based on real-time data.

How to integrate it within your processes:

• Content review: Incorporate the SEO Recommendations tool into your content review process to ensure all published content is optimised for search engines. Receive prioritised recommendations that show which optimisations will have the biggest impact.
• SEO strategy: Use the tool to stay ahead of SEO trends, optimise your content strategy, and improve the visibility and reach of your content. Track and report on SEO performance to continuously refine your strategy.

Tool: Meta Description Generator

Features:

The Meta Description Generator automates the creation of meta descriptions, enhancing your website's visibility and improving click-through rates.

By generating SEO-friendly meta descriptions, it ensures that each piece of content is optimised for search engines, making your website more attractive to potential visitors.

This tool is integrated into your content publication workflows, ensuring that all published content meets the highest standards of search engine optimisation.

How to integrate it within your processes:

• SEO optimisation: Use the Meta Description Generator during the content review process to create optimised meta descriptions for each piece of content.
• Content publication: Ensure all content is search-engine friendly by integrating the tool into your content publication workflows. This helps improve your website’s visibility and click-through rates.

4. Brand consistency

Tool: Brand Voice Checker

Features:

Maintaining a consistent tone and style across all your content is crucial for brand identity, and the Brand Voice Checker helps achieve this. It uses AI-driven analysis to review your content, ensuring it aligns with your brand guidelines.

This tool is integrated into your content creation workflow, helping you produce social media posts, blogs, and emails that consistently reflect your brand's voice.

By streamlining the content creation process and reducing editing time, it reinforces your brand identity and builds trust with your audience.

How to integrate it within your processes:

• Content creation workflow: Use the Brand Voice Checker to review all content for consistency with your brand voice. This includes social media posts, blogs, and emails.
• Brand guidelines: Integrate the tool into your content creation processes to ensure every piece of content reinforces your brand identity. Train multiple writers and teams to adopt your brand's voice, streamlining content creation and reducing editing time.

5. Creative processes

Tool: Image Generator

Features:

The Image Generator speeds up the creative process by producing initial drafts of visuals based on your campaign themes and branding guidelines.

It allows for quick customisation, creating high-quality, on-brand images that can be reviewed and refined by your team.

This tool is particularly useful for experimenting with new design styles and aesthetic choices, ensuring your visual content remains fresh and engaging without the usual time and cost constraints.

How to integrate it within your processes:

• Design workflows: Incorporate the Image Generator into your design workflows to quickly create draft visuals based on campaign themes and branding guidelines.
• Visual customisation: Use the tool to produce high-quality, on-brand images that your team can review and customise, ensuring readiness in a fraction of the usual time. Experiment with new design styles and aesthetic choices at a low cost to keep your visual content fresh and engaging.

Implementing HubSpot AI in your marketing department

Assessing your needs

The first step in implementing HubSpot AI into your marketing team and work is to identify the areas where AI can provide the most value, analysing all of the activity that your marketing team does, what they produce, and what tools they use. 

Conduct a thorough assessment of your current marketing operations to pinpoint inefficiencies and repetitive tasks that can be automated or enhanced with AI. 

Key areas to consider include:

• Content creation: Are your writers spending too much time on initial drafts or struggling with writer’s block? AI tools can help generate first drafts and provide creative prompts.
• SEO and data analysis: Is your team manually tracking SEO trends and analysing data? AI can automate these processes, providing real-time insights and recommendations.
• Email marketing: Are your email campaigns taking too long to develop and personalise? AI can streamline the creation and customisation of marketing emails.
• Customer engagement: Are you missing opportunities to engage with customers in a timely manner? AI-powered chatbots and automated responses can ensure constant and effective communication.

Once you’ve identified the areas for improvement, set clear goals and objectives for what you want to achieve with AI integration. 

Examples of goals include:

• Increase content output: Aim to increase the number of blog posts or social media updates published each month.
• Enhance SEO performance: Set a target for improved search engine rankings and organic traffic.
• Boost email engagement: Define metrics for higher open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates from email campaigns.
• Improve response times: Establish benchmarks for faster customer response times and higher satisfaction rates.

Steps to integrate HubSpot AI tools

Integrating HubSpot AI tools into your marketing strategy involves several key steps:

1. Select the right tools: Based on your assessment, choose the HubSpot AI tools that best meet your needs. These might include content generation tools, SEO optimisers or email generators.
2. Plan the integration: Develop a detailed integration plan outlining the steps, timeline, and resources required. Assign responsibilities to team members and set milestones to track progress.
3. Test the tools: Before full deployment, conduct a pilot test of the AI tools. This allows you to identify any issues and make necessary adjustments.
4. Deploy and monitor: Roll out the AI tools across your marketing operations. Continuously monitor their performance and gather feedback from your team.

Effective implementation of AI tools requires thorough training and onboarding for your marketing team. 

This ensures that everyone understands how to use the tools and can leverage them to their full potential. 

Key steps include:

1. Training sessions: Organise comprehensive training sessions to demonstrate the functionalities of each AI tool. Provide hands-on exercises to help team members get comfortable with the tools.
2. Create training materials: Develop user guides, video tutorials or FAQs to support ongoing learning. These resources should be easily accessible for reference.
3. Assign AI champions: Designate team members as AI champions or super-users. These individuals can provide additional support and guidance to their colleagues.
4. Continuous learning: Encourage a culture of continuous learning by regularly updating the team on new features and best practices. Schedule periodic refresher sessions to keep skills sharp.

Best practices for using HubSpot AI

To get the most out of HubSpot AI tools, it's important to recognise that while AI can greatly enhance efficiency and productivity, using it poorly can lead to negative outcomes. 

Here are some best practices to ensure you use AI effectively:

• Proofread and edit: Always review and edit AI-generated content before publishing. AI can expedite content creation, but human oversight is essential to catch errors and ensure accuracy. Assign team members to thoroughly proofread and make necessary adjustments to maintain high content standards.
• Maintain brand voice: AI-generated content should reflect your brand’s unique voice and style. Edit AI content to ensure it aligns with your brand guidelines. This consistency helps build brand identity and trust with your audience. Consider developing a style guide that includes specific tone and language preferences for the AI to follow.
• Balance AI and human content: While AI can handle repetitive tasks and generate initial drafts, strive for a balance between AI-generated content and human-crafted content. Human creativity and emotional intelligence add depth and relatability to your marketing efforts. Use AI to handle routine tasks and support your team, but rely on human creativity for strategic and nuanced content.
• Verify information: AI tools can occasionally produce incorrect or biassed information. Always verify the accuracy of AI-generated outputs, especially when it comes to statistics, data, and factual information. Cross-check with reliable sources to ensure your content is accurate and trustworthy.
• Consider language limitations: HubSpot’s AI tools may show inconsistencies when generating content in non-English languages. Exercise caution and verify non-English content for accuracy and clarity. If your audience includes non-English speakers, have native speakers review and edit the content to ensure it meets your quality standards.

Future of AI in HubSpot Marketing Hub

As AI continues to evolve, HubSpot is committed to leveraging its capabilities to enhance marketing efficiency, drive business growth, and improve customer experiences. 

Here’s a look at the future of AI in HubSpot Marketing Hub, based on the latest roadmap and planned developments.

AI-driven enhancements and innovations

HubSpot's AI strategy focuses on embedding AI tools across all aspects of the marketing hub to streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and provide intelligent insights. Key future enhancements include:

1. AI Chatbot

Deploy an AI-powered chatbot on your website to automatically answer customer inquiries and deflect cases. This tool will enhance customer service by providing instant, accurate responses, freeing up human agents to handle more complex issues.

• Impact: By automating initial customer interactions, businesses can provide faster support, reduce response times, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

2. Content remix

Create new content with the click of a button by taking your best-performing content and turning it into new blog posts, social posts, audio files, images, and more. This tool leverages AI to maximise the value of existing content.

• Impact: Marketers can extend the lifespan of their content, ensuring a consistent flow of fresh material without the need for continuous creation from scratch.

3. AI-generated podcasting and Video

Repurpose written content into engaging podcasts and videos. This allows marketers to expand their content reach across different media formats with minimal effort.

• Impact: Diversifying content formats can attract a broader audience, improve engagement, and enhance the overall content marketing strategy.

Integration with Smart CRM

HubSpot AI tools are designed to integrate seamlessly with the Smart CRM, leveraging customer data to provide tailored AI capabilities. 

This integration ensures that AI tools are contextually aware and can deliver personalised insights and actions across marketing, sales, and customer service functions.

• Unified data: AI tools use data from the Smart CRM to provide insights that are relevant and actionable, helping businesses to make informed decisions and optimise their strategies.
• Tailored capabilities: AI features are customised to meet the specific needs of different business functions, ensuring that each team can leverage AI to enhance their workflows and achieve better results.

How Huble can help you fully leverage HubSpot’s AI tools

The integration of AI into marketing strategies is transforming the way businesses operate, making processes more efficient and enhancing overall effectiveness. 

However, to fully realise the potential of these advanced tools, having the right partner is crucial. This is where Huble steps in.

At Huble, we understand that each business has unique challenges and opportunities. 

Our expertise in HubSpot and its AI tools ensures that you don't just adopt these technologies but integrate them seamlessly into your operations to maximise their impact. 

For a comprehensive overview of HubSpot’s AI capabilities and how we can help you apply them to your business, book a demo with our team.