You’re nine months into a one-year contract with HubSpot, and suddenly your CEO has noticed the quarterly charge on the corporate card. He seems to have forgotten all of the “long game” conversations you had when you sold him on the idea and now just wants metrics. Is it working? What’s the ROI? Is it worth it?
The answer to these questions might be a simple and very common one: We haven’t put enough effort into it to actually tell.
Inbound marketing, whether you’re using HubSpot or another inbound platform, requires a significant investment from your company.
- Education & Training: Time and money must be spent on learning to use the platform or hiring a marketing partner who is certified. (If you’re using the marketing software at the Pro level and are working with a certified HubSpot Partner, HubSpot waives the $3,000 onboarding fee, and with good reason—it means fewer calls to tech support).
- Strategic Planning: Inbound marketing requires planning at a level of detail that ensures that all portions of a campaign, from content creation and promotion to workflow follow-up, are designed for one particular persona and to achieve a specific, measurable goal.
- Content Creation & Curation: New content must be created and promoted with a high degree of regularity. The “if you build it, they will come” mentality is still alive and well, though severely misguided. A multi-channel promotion strategy is needed to ensure clicks and content views.
- Streamlining the Sales Pipeline: By integrating sales practices using the HubSpot CRM, you can keep the sales pipeline flowing at all levels.
- Adaptability: Should bottlenecks arise due to the implementation of this new marketing methodology, be ready to make quick adjustments to business practices and processes.
Most of the complaints I’ve heard about HubSpot involve failure at a user level. Marketers are simply not putting enough time and energy into their inbound efforts to reap the rewards they were hoping for when they first invested in the platform. Lack of content is the most significant problem. Without fresh downloads, blog posts, and calls to action, your next big customer isn’t going to find you.
If your content is of a technical nature, find a firm that specializes in your field—with subject matter experts on staff to assist with your technical content writing. This type of high value content can help you attract visitors to your website and generate qualified leads. Outbound emails and newsletters are an important way to stay connected with leads once you acquire them.
However, ROI doesn’t stop at content. Whether you’re connecting HubSpot with your existing CRM or using HubSpot’s free CRM, the sales team must be appropriately following up with leads. I have seen users generate hundreds of leads only to let them run their course in a lead nurture workflow and never contact them again. A successful HubSpot user takes advantage of the sales platform, revisit notifications, and lead scoring features to ensure that the right calls and emails are going to the right contacts.
If you don’t have the staff time to invest in inbound marketing, you should consider partnering with someone who does. A certified HubSpot Partner who takes on your existing account can:
- Check your site for SEO optimization and clear CTA implementation
- Develop content, workflows, and sales processes that will take your lead generation and nurture efforts to the next level
- Provide strategy and positioning advice
- Identify and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs)
If your company has made the full investment necessary to properly take an inbound approach to marketing, answering your CEO’s question is as easy as pointing him to the HubSpot Dashboard or sending him a HubSpot Goals Report. These tools show metrics that you have taken the time to set up, and they are populated with visits, leads, and customers secured through your team’s hard work.
For a complete list of tactics to improve returns from HubSpot, download our HubSpot ROI checklist.
Launch Team is a certified HubSpot partner specializing in the high-tech B2B space, with clients in medical device, optics and photonics, engineering services, nanotechnology and more. Request a free consultation, or visit our profile on the HubSpot Partner Directory.
