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Have you recently signed up with HubSpot, and are about to start your 90-day onboarding? Or are you considering whether to join the over 100,000 businesses that rely on HubSpot's suite of tools to meet (and surpass) their goals? If either of these scenarios apply to you, then you've come to the right place.
HubSpot is a great tool for growing your business — but like any tool, you need a certain level of knowledge in order to put it to good use. In this guide, we'll cover what you can expect in your first 90 days as a new HubSpot customer. We'll dive into the best practices for setting up your Marketing, Sales and Service Hubs. And we'll provide some useful tips on how to get started the right way. Let's dive in!
Obviously, no two businesses are exactly alike. When it comes to onboarding with HubSpot, it logically follows that no two businesses will use the platform in the exact same way, either.
That's why it's so important to have clearly in mind your specific business challenges, successes and goals — and to be upfront about them. Only then can your onboarding journey lead you to the right destination.
Here are some key points to keep in mind:
As Jemma Legg, Chief Operating Officer at SpotDev, says:
"As a previous direct client of HubSpot, I cannot understate the value of jumping into your portal and taking a look around. Click buttons just to see where they lead, export reports to evaluate their usefulness, or create dummy workflows to experiment with automation — anything to help you get an organic feel for the platform. There's not much you can do that's irreversible, but if you're unsure, reach out to your onboard specialist."
HubSpot's Marketing Hub onboarding is designed to help your business develop a more personalised and effective marketing approach, as you engage with your consumers. Marketing Hub includes a variety of tools and processes such as:
What can you do to get the most out of your Marketing Hub Onboarding? You and your team will need to complete certifications and project work over your first 90 days; you should expect to spend between 8-12 hours per week on those tasks, plus regular calls with your onboard contact. If that sounds like a heavy investment, don't fret: our team at SpotDev can take on the heavy lifting for you, while equipping you with the needed skills to move a project forward.
It's true that Marketing Hub can help you to land some quick wins — and who wouldn't like that? But before you can achieve those wins, you need to focus on the basics. Here are the fundamentals — i.e. the foundation upon which the rest of your hub will be built:
Jemma Legg continues:
"My first experience with HubSpot was with the Marketing Hub and creating a workflow. The sense of achievement you feel when [you] can automate a complicated process or a sequence of events that people said "could not be done" is essentially why I became a HubSpot specialist. I love sharing my knowledge with our clients and partners so they can experience that same joy!"
Focus on setting up users, roles and permissions with future growth in mind. Over time, you may have a lot of users working in your marketing hub — including 3rd party providers. Make full use of features like assigned roles, teams and content partitioning to keep your portal secure, and avoid any unexpected edits.
It's important that you already have a detailed overview of your existing sales process to share with your onboard contact at HubSpot. This information will allow your onboard specialist to determine which kind of Sales Hub is right for your company — and what further training may be required.
You should expect to set aside some time to work through the transition process with your sales team. You will also need to participate in calls with multiple stakeholders. The amount of time you could spend will vary, depending on how much training your team needs, along with several other factors.
It's overly simplistic to view Sales Hub as a tool that turns leads into customers. The reality is, Sales Hub can become a holistic portal element — one that helps you to qualify leads, report on all of your sales activities, and promote effective communication across the board (sales reps with prospects, sales reps with other sales reps, and even the sales team with other departments).
In the final analysis, Sales Hub tools can free up your reps to do what they do best: sell! That being said, here are some vital elements that need to align in order to make that happen:
Matt Nortje, Head of Digital and Training at SpotDev, explains:
"Setting measurable goals for your sales team is paramount. You can set goals for calls made, deals created, meetings booked, and revenue. You can then set monthly goals for your sales team on the measurement you chose. By setting goals, it is easy to see how your sales team is performing and if KPIs are being met."
Is customer satisfaction a top priority for your company? If so, then you want to ensure that your support team always has the tools available to provide an exceptional customer service experience.
That being said, it can take some time for your service reps to learn a new system — especially if you're migrating to HubSpot from another help desk tool. You may need to do some prep work even before your 90-day onboarding so that you can remain focused on customer service with minimal friction.
When analysing how best to use Service Hub, you'll need to consider these important factors:
Don't underestimate the impact that a knowledge base can have on your service levels. Empowering customers to self-solve their support issues is a great way to provide service without getting bogged down in countless tickets.
Alex Birkett, Growth Marketing Manager at HubSpot, states:
"A study by Forrester confirmed that customers prefer knowledge bases over all other self-service channels. This is likely because the vast majority of customers want an immediate response to their customer service question — 90%, in fact."
HubSpot's CMS Hub will enable you to create exceptional web content quickly and effectively, even without experience in web development, (CMS stands for "content management system," by the way.) Onboarding for this hub will include training on how to use features like:
You can expect regular calls with your onboarding specialist during your first 90 days, as well as spending some time on additional training and certificates as you move forward.
The CMS Hub has a lot of moving parts to take into account during your onboarding journey. For instance, think about these factors:
CMS Hub is a helpful complement to your content strategy - not a substitute for it. As your site is being set up, focus on SEO and topic cluster functions as part of your project strategy. Continue to train and upskill your team. Make sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to SEO, A/B testing, and basic UX, so there's consistency across your entire content library.
As we've mentioned before, a CRM is only as good as its data. That's why it's vital to audit and streamline your data so that it's clean, accurate and ready for replication across all of your key applications. Expect a deep dive into your current data processes during your 90-day onboarding, with the goal of creating a "single source of truth" throughout your enterprise.
When it comes to your CRM data, there are two elements that will play a key role in your Operations Hub onboarding process:
Make good use of one of the most exciting parts of the CMS Hub: Custom Code Actions. These Actions can help you manage unique customer touch points that aren't available in standard automation options. At the same time, take a holistic view of the customer journey by working across all of your databases.
As you embark on your 90-day onboarding journey, it's important to "not miss the forest for the trees." In other words, you must remember that partnering with HubSpot is not a business goal in itself; rather, it is a means to an end.
Of course, that raises an important question: what are your goals? If you want your company to grow, it's vital that you have a clear objective in mind, and several smaller goals that will get you there. As a philosopher once remarked: "When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind."
If you want to have the "wind at your back," so to speak, then you need to use SMART goals. These goals are:
For example, let's say you want to attract more traffic to your website. How can you transform that (somewhat vague) desire into a SMART goal? Perhaps you could reframe it in this way:
Within 3 months, I want to increase traffic to our company website by 20%.
When you state it that way, your goal:
Once you have your SMART goals in place, you need to make a plan of action. Your plan should answer questions like: How are we going to achieve our goals? Who exactly is involved, and what part should they play? How many resources do we need to allocate to this project?
Finally, review your progress on a regular basis, and be willing to make adjustments as needed. If you follow this process, it may not always be "smooth sailing" — but you'll get where you want to go (with an assist from HubSpot).