So You're Using HubSpot, Now What?

If you’re like millions of other business owners, you’ve probably implemented an inbound marketing strategy in order to maximize on the digital age. Inbound is now by far the most effective way of marketing your brand and your products or services.

But such a big change in your marketing can be overwhelming and it can seem impossible to get started. You have to learn so many new things and start so many new activities, like creating content, updating social media, and more.

You’ve invested in HubSpot software to make the process easier. Though this was a great decision, you might be confused as to what to do next.

Just follow these steps and you’ll be on your way.

Get Your Whole Team on Board

HubSpot needs to be used by your entire team if it’s going to provide the best results. So make sure your sales and marketing people are on board. Train them to use the program properly to ensure that they don’t give up on the CRM because of confusion or frustration.

Do Your Research

CRM can only be as effective as your inbound marketing strategy. If you don’t do your research and deploy a solid strategy, HubSpot unfortunately won’t be much help to you. Do competitor research to learn about opportunities you can capitalize on and how you can differentiate yourself. Do buyer persona research to understand exactly who your perfect customer is so you know who to target. Do keyword research to know how to reach your audience with SEO.

Create Content

With your buyer persona, keyword list, and point of differentiation in mind, start creating content—and lots of it. You’ll need some for tailored email messages. You’ll need some for your blog, for your website, and for your social media sites. Make it interesting, original, helpful and informative. Your content will be the base of your inbound marketing strategy.

Move All of Your Activities Over

If you already blog on a different platform, send email lists in a different email program, or sign in to your social media accounts on a suite, it’s time to streamline your efforts. There’s no reason to have all of these marketing activities so disjointed from each other. HubSpot is an all-in-one platform, so move all of these activities over to it for a streamlined process.

Add Contacts and Companies to the Database

CRM can be highly effective at helping you keep your leads, prospects and customers organized so you never miss a sales opportunity due to incomplete or missing data. Add contact information to the database by importing lists or let the program do the work automatically, and you’ll have a full list of organized records so all of your contacts can be easily tracked and viewed when needed.

Download Sidekick

If you haven’t already, download HubSpot Sidekick. This tool will save you time while prospecting and maximize your emailing efforts if you use Outlook or Gmail. It’ll be right by your side and can be easily integrated with your new CRM.

Engage a Digital Marketing Agency

Inbound marketing can be time consuming and complex to do correctly. There are a lot of activities to perform, best practices to learn, and analytics to monitor. And when you use HubSpot software to streamline your efforts, you now have a new program that you’re required to get familiar with. You have to learn the ins and outs, experiment, learn with trial and error, troubleshoot, check out tutorials, and figure out what every tool is used for and how to use it.

If the thought of this is overwhelming to you, engage a digital marketing agency to help you navigate the CRM and help you learn how to use it. As well, a digital marketing agency can help you come up with the best inbound marketing strategy for your unique business, so you can optimize your results.