The 10 Best HubSpot Certifications for B2B Inbound Teams

Many think of the inbound methodology as a “marketing thing.” If that sounds like others in your company, it’s time for an organizational shift. 

For your B2B company to truly experience inbound growth requires aligning all your teams and getting organizational buy-in of the inbound approach from more than just your marketing department.

But let’s face it; it can be difficult to capture the inbound methodology and communicate its potential to grow your business to others. That’s where HubSpot certifications come in. 

What are the Benefits of HubSpot Certifications?

HubSpot certifications are self-paced courses that are often paired with an exam or practical exercises on multiple topics relevant to a B2B organization’s growth strategy — everything from inbound basics to digital advertising, sales training, lead segmentation, web design, and more. 

Certifications do more than educate your teams; they help create buy-in and are especially important to complex B2B companies that are making the shift from traditional to inbound marketing. They also:

• Provide continuing education for your sales, service, and marketing teams
• Encourage teams to build, validate, develop, and expand their skills
• Demonstrate an eagerness to learn and add credentials for career advancement
• Offer recognition when displayed on social channels such as LinkedIn

Ready to get started? Here are our recommended HubSpot Academy certifications to start with for various teams in your organization, listed in order of priority.

Recommended HubSpot Certification for Everyone

Inbound Certification 

There are many reasons to get your free inbound certification. In a nutshell, it’s the best way to provide your teams with a well-rounded understanding of the philosophy behind your inbound program. The inbound certification takes less than two hours to watch all the videos and includes four interactive quizzes. Your teams will learn about:

• The fundamentals of running an inbound business 
• Growing your business with the flywheel model
• Creating buyer personas
• Developing a buyer’s journey
• Setting business goals 
• Getting started with inbound

Recommended HubSpot Certifications for Marketing Teams

In addition to the foundational Inbound Marketing Certification Course, marketing teams should check out the following courses.

Content Marketing

Receive an overview of the power of content marketing and practical tips for creating and repurposing your content to attract and engage humans and search engines alike. Twelve lessons and 11 quizzes will cover:

• Planning a content marketing strategy
• Writing quality blogs and coming up with ideas
• Creating topic clusters and pillar pages
• How to promote content
• And more

HubSpot Marketing Software

Like any major initiative, you need a solid foundation. This course provides the knowledge you need to see how all of HubSpot’s tools work together. Note that the resources, videos, and quizzes are free, but if you want an official certification for this course, you need to complete a few additional exercises and have a Pro or Enterprise HubSpot subscription. In general, you’ll learn about using HubSpot Marketing Hub to:

• Explore the contacts database
• Use buyer personas
• Create a content strategy and campaigns
• Create blogs, landing pages, CTAs, forms, and segmentation
• Understand social media, email, and workflows
• Leverage analytics and reports

HubSpot CMS for Marketers

In under two hours, you’ll learn the basics of how to use the HubSpot CMS (content management system) to create and manage a high-performing website. In this course, you’ll learn:

• The fundamentals of HubSpot CMS and how to create a great user experience
• How to create web pages and optimize them for search engines
• What it takes to create great blogs
• How to organize and manage assets in HubSpot CMS
• How to use HubSpot CRM in combination with HubSpot CMS for maximum results

Email Marketing

Your team can master the fundamentals of email marketing with this course. We all know the challenge of standing out in a prospects’ inbox, and this course provides practical how-tos about:

• Contact management and segmentation
• Email deliverability
• Analyzing email sends and testing
• The importance of email design
• Lead nurturing and relationship building

Recommended HubSpot Certifications for Sales

Inbound Sales

Individual sales reps will receive actionable tips on identifying and connecting with new prospects with the inbound methodology as a guiding principle. It can serve as a great introduction to shifting their mindset from cold calling and outbound sales efforts. Learn about:

• The fundamentals of inbound sales
• Prioritizing active buyers over passive buyers
• Earning the attention of buyers who are empowered to take action
• Understanding context and delivering personalized sales presentations

Sales Enablement

A foundational principle of inbound success is aligning sales and marketing to ensure they’re on the same page and working toward the same goals. This course helps your teams do that by:

• Aligning around shared revenue goals
• Developing lead qualification criteria
• Holding teams accountable with an SLA (service level agreement)
• Using buyer personas and creating a hero statement
• Understanding the power of content in sales
• Nurturing after the sale
• And more

Frictionless Sales

Gaining a competitive advantage in today’s marketplace requires going beyond the sales funnel and reducing friction by embracing the sales flywheel. The frictionless sales course takes only about an hour and is ideal for sales leaders who want to:

• Enable their sales team to spend more time selling
• Align their sales team with their target buyers
• Motivate and transform their team with a culture of continuous learning

Recommended HubSpot Certifications for Customer Service

Service Hub Software 

One of the best ways to grow your business is by delighting the customers you already have, and that means developing an unrivaled approach to serving their needs. This certification helps customer service managers and agents:

• Grasp customer journey mapping
• Understand HubSpot’s help desk tools
• Set up chat conversations and job tickets
• Establish a knowledge base of helpful resources
• Set up customer feedback surveys and advocacy

Bonus Courses

While they won’t get you an official “certification,” there are separate tutorials in HubSpot Academy that will help customer service reps dig deeper into key service hub features: 

• Conversations (chat and messenger)
• Tickets
• Feedback surveys

Recommended HubSpot Certifications for IT/Website Management

HubSpot CMS for Developers

If your marketing or IT team has its own web developer, they’ll appreciate learning about HubSpot’s CMS (content management system). The course contains lessons that will help them:

• Learn how to build and manage websites on the HubSpot CMS
• Use the CMS tools to create various assets
• Maximize their effectiveness with HubSpot tools 
• Streamline their processes and increase productivity

Growth-Driven Design (GDD)

Today’s web developers need to approach web design with a growth-driven mindset rather than taking a one-and-done approach. Any web designer will benefit from the lessons learned, including:

• How to use the GDD methodology to build and optimize a website that delivers user value and drives business growth
• How to develop a strategy, build a launch pad website, and implement data-driven continuous improvement cycles to get your website running at peak performance for inbound results

Not Sure Where to Start?

Are you feeling overwhelmed? No worries, just take things one step at a time and don’t go it alone. Talk with your team and others within your organization to begin the inbound marketing conversation. An organizational shift won’t happen overnight, but HubSpot certifications can play a pivotal role in getting there and ensuring that the messaging remains consistent.

If you’re still at the stage where you’re struggling to align your sales and marketing teams, check out our helpful guide below. When everyone’s on the same page, you’ll begin to see a wonderful story unfold.