HubSpot Academy Offers Education in Real World Business Skills

Do you recall college business courses and all that talk about “factories producing widgets” or “sales staff selling widgets” … which would have made a lot of sense if we all went into the “widget” business!

In the real world, however, we produce, sell, and market things much different than “widgets”, and we are challenged with navigating new technologies and ways of doing business that were not even thought of when we were in school.

School is Never Really Out When It Comes to Business

While our days of dorm cafeteria food are – thankfully! – long gone, we also know that school never really is out as everyone from entry level new hires to seasoned professionals must keep updating their business skills and capabilities.

Fortunately, one of the best things about the HubSpot cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform is its HubSpot Academy, which makes going back to school and acquiring new business skills easy.

HubSpot Academy offers everything from quick, practical courses to comprehensive certifications, and best of all, its completely free and online.

The Origins of HubSpot Academy

HubSpot Academy product manager Eric Peters talks about the founding of HubSpot Academy built on this premise:

“If you take a bad marketer and give them marketing automation software, it's a productivity tool. It’s just going to make them worse faster,” Peters told the Product-Led Summit in London in 2019. “We needed to first teach our customers how to be better at marketing, so that they could better use our software. That is how HubSpot Academy started.”

HubSpot Academy started in 2012 as a customer enablement and partner enablement channel and in 2013 released its first inbound marketing certification.

“This was a very modern digital marketing course with an exam at the end of it. It wasn’t the best SEO course, and it wasn’t the best content marketing course, but it was the best at bringing them all together in one holistic strategy that we call the inbound methodology,” Peters recalled.

Soon HubSpot spotted non-customers or non-partners “sneaking into classes”.

“When our salespeople started talking to those non-customers and non-partners who had now become potential prospects, they were having productive conversations. These prospects had just taken a four-hour course on the inbound methodology,” said Peters.

Fast forward to today and 200,000+ professionals have taken advantage of the HubSpot Academy short courses, certifications, and lessons, including the team here at adWhite where we pride ourselves on being trained on all aspects of the HubSpot platform through the Academy.

What is HubSpot Academy and How it Works

One of the best aspects of the HubSpot Academy is how user-friendly it is.

Courses and certifications are easy to find as you can sort by:

• Categories: Marketing, sales, service, and content on such topics as web design, web development and data privacy.
• Content Type: Courses, lessons, ebooks, or templates.
• Duration: From 30 minutes or less to 3+ hours.
• HubSpot Software: Marketing, sales and service hubs plus content on such topics as developer tools, CMS hub, account setup and integrations.
• Levels: Beginner, intermediate, and advanced categories.
• Language: In addition to English, there are limited Academy offerings in French, German, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish.

The HubSpot Academy materials cover a wide berth of business skills. Under marketing, for example, you can find courses and certifications on:

• Automation
• Contact Management
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Inbound Marketing
• Lead Generation
• Reporting and Performance
• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media
• Web Design

It is not often that “free content” is so thorough as the HubSpot Academy offers good videos and breaks down subjects logically for its “students”.

How to Earn HubSpot Academy Certification Badges

One of the coolest aspects of HubSpot Academy is the certifications offered.

At adWhite, our team proudly displays the industry-recognized badges that we have earned by taking the HubSpot Academy certification courses.

To earn the badges, you first must complete the on-demand courses taught by inbound experts, including watching all videos, and taking quizzes.

Then you must pass a certification exam and complete practical exercises, both of which are graded.

Certifications, which last for two years, can be earned in 20 categories, including:

• Email Marketing
• Digital Advertising
• Platform Consulting
• HubSpot Reporting
• Service Hub Software
• HubSpot CMS for Marketers
• Frictionless Sales
• Sales Management Training
• HubSpot CMS for Developers
• Social Media Marketing
• Inbound Marketing
• Growth-Driven Design
• Sales Enablement
• Content Marketing
• HubSpot Sales Software
• Inbound Sales
• Contextual Marketing
• HubSpot Marketing Software

Earn these certifications and you can advance your career, show off your skills, and help grow your own business and the business of your clients.

Contact adWhite today to learn more about how we can help you use any aspect of the HubSpot platform, including the HubSpot Academy, to grow your business.