The Art of War for Business: HubSpot vs Marketo

  

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 “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss”.  

This is one of the popular quotes from the English translation of SunTzu’s The Art of War.  The author of this more than 2,000 years old book, Sun Tzu, was a Chinese military general, strategist and a philosopher during the ancient China’s warring states period (around 200 to 400 BC).

Sun Tzu elaborates on how to overcome a conflict using specific procedures and methods. When engaging in war, according to Tzu, the main objectives are to evaluate your environment, identify your strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your opponent.  And then develop a strategy based on these assessments to win the war.   The calls to actions are planning sieges, effectively forming your army, using force, maneuvering your army, using espionage and fire attacks.

Today, the influence of the book went on to the eastern and western military thinking.  The Art of War has been applied to many fields even outside of the military.  It even went beyond business and legal tactics and strategies.

The focal lesson of the book is about how to fight wars without actually having to do battle. It gives insights on how to outsmart one's opponent so that physical battle is not necessary. As such, it has been used as training guide for many competitive endeavors that do not involve actual combat.

Many business books have also incorporated its lessons to office politics and corporate strategy.  There are many Japanese companies have required their key executives to read the book and apply its lessons in their corporate management strategies.  The book is also popular inspirational guide among western business management people who want to succeed in competitive business situations.  It has also been applied to the rivalries among producers, marketers and even among politicians.

The “War” in Marketing Automation

Sun Tzu considered war as necessary evil that must be avoided as much as possible. But in the competition among software manufacturers and marketers, it is truly necessary for it brings vast opportunities to the end-users.

In the continuing “war” for marketing automation dominance, we see lots of brands competing among each other to get the lion share of the market. We say thanks for this “war”.  Marketers, business owners and even consumers benefited from this competition.  The wide array of marketing solutions available in the market gives us the freedom to choose which is effective, efficient, reliable, user-friendly, versatile and most of all, suited to our budget.

Let’s now take a look at the two competing marketing solutions, the HubSpot and Marketo. These two were chosen from software available in the market because both went out in the market almost simultaneously.  

HubSpot

Marketo

HubSpot’s primary features

Marketo’s primary features

Now If you ask us what’s good your business, we cannot immediately give our answer even though we are using Hubspot’s all-in-one solutions.  As a professional inbound marketing consulting firm applying the lessons of  Sun-Tzu’s the art of war (for business), we need first to evaluate and analyze your business environment.  We need to identify your business strengths and weaknesses as well as your competitors’ (opponents’), then we will help develop your business strategy, and finally, identify the needed automated solution to arm you in your business battle.