If you’re involved in marketing or sales, chances are you’ve heard of HubSpot. HubSpot is software for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service, and it has an abundance of tools and resources that centralize operations and grow revenue for businesses.
As with all helpful tools, though, there are ways to misuse HubSpot so that it does not effectively help you grow your business and revenue. Many HubSpot users make the same mistakes, which prevent the software from doing its job!
Whether you’re using HubSpot yourself, or you’ve enlisted the services of a HubSpot marketing agency, these mistakes should be avoided at all costs so that HubSpot can do what it’s meant to: help you achieve your business goals.
4 HubSpot Mistakes to Avoid
1.Only using one HubSpot tool
Maybe you think it’s time to use HubSpot for email marketing or build a website so that you can start generating qualified leads. That’s great! The robust array of marketing tools that HubSpot has to offer can do wonders for your marketing efforts, and it’s certainly better to use some of those tools than none.
But the best way to make the most of HubSpot is to use ALL that it has to offer. HubSpot shouldn't operate in a vacuum. That means utilizing the Marketing Hub, where you can create content, and generate and nurture leads. But it also means using the Sales Hub, where you can close deals and engage with buyers; the CRM, where you can maintain and organize your contacts database; the operations software, where you can integrate with other systems, and develop workflows to automate processes, and more.
The best way to move a prospect through the buyer’s journey in a frictionless fashion is to keep all of your internal teams aligned. By using all of HubSpot’s resources (and taking advantage of HubSpot’s integrations), you can keep campaigns centralized and foster transparency and communication between marketing and sales. A full-service HubSpot marketing agency will help manage all the moving parts so that ultimately, you’ll convert more leads into customers.
2.Not taking advantage of the reporting function
Running campaigns without reporting on the right metrics means those efforts are not reaching their full potential. That can change with proper reporting. With a reporting dashboard full of clear visuals that display data you want and need to see, you can find out what’s working and what’s not. These insights empower you to optimize your campaigns, your spend and your efforts in real-time.
HubSpot has some default reports for use, but you can also build and customize your own. Start by setting the right KPIs for your business and then let your growth marketing agency or HubSpot marketing agency know what you want to see. You can go into HubSpot and build reports with properties that are relevant to your business and will help you make data-fueled decisions.
3.Underusing (or overusing) automation
Marketing automation helps leads close faster. Before implementing automation, make sure to develop a marketing automation strategy backed by clear goals and tactics. Once you know WHY your business needs automation, it’s time to find out the best way to use it.
When automation is underused, marketing and sales spend precious time manually doing tasks that could be done for them! Email marketing, lead segmentation, social media posts, contact lists, workflows that move buyers and deals to the proper stages – all of this and more can be automated.
On the flip side, thinking that automation can do everything and do it overnight isn’t the way to go. Automation shouldn’t replace marketing or sales teams; it should complement them. Overusing automation might lead to scope creep, where projects get scaled to a point where goals can’t be achieved.
So, when it comes to marketing automation in HubSpot, you’ll want to find that sweet spot so that it can be fully helpful without causing any harm. A HubSpot marketing agency that manages automation can help strike that balance.
4.Keeping a messy database
HubSpot has great customer relationship management (CRM) hub that lets you organize and manage contacts. What could possibly go wrong?
If HubSpot users don’t periodically clean and de-duplicate their database, then they’re left sending content to email addresses that bounce, or to companies that no longer exist! It’s best to run thedatabase through cleaning software occasionally, to remove invalid contacts and make sure your CRM is doing your business favors.
You’ll also want to segment your contacts. HubSpot has convenient folders you can create to organize your audiences. Extensive filtering capabilities let you build lists and segments based on contact, company, or deal properties. With these functionalities, you can really divide and conquer your audience. With a clean database full of contacts associated with properties that matter to your business, you can ensure that you’re keeping every contact engaged. A HubSpot database should be a pool of customers and potential customers and staying organized is the way to do that.
Conclusion
HubSpot has everything your business needs to succeed. It lets you align marketing and sales, grow revenue, and scale your business, all in one easy-to-use place. But with all those moving parts and so many tools to manage, it’s easy to misuse HubSpot!
Avoid that scary story by hiring a HubSpot marketing agency, either full-stack or specialized, whose knowledge of all things HubSpot will ensure that HubSpot is doing everything it can and should be doing for your business.
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