Signs You Need Help Maximizing Your HubSpot Investment

Here’s the situation: Your company has committed to HubSpot because you know that inbound marketing is the right thing to do.

You know the stats:

• Inbound leads cost 60 percent less than outbound leads.

• Inbound-focused organizations are four times as likely to be effective.

But it isn’t working out the way you expected. You’re not alone.

Many marketers and executives greatly underestimate both the time and resources needed to become fluent in inbound and proficient with HubSpot, and the amount of content it takes truly move the needle on website traffic and online lead generation. Many sign on with HubSpot or a similar marketing automation system expecting it to do the work for them, but that isn’t how it really works.

Here are some signs that your inbound marketing could benefit from the expertise and bandwidth added by partnering with a HubSpot-certified agency.

1. Your team doesn’t have time to train on HubSpot’s platform.

(Or, you need to get your inbound marketing rolling now, and will dedicate time to training later.)

While HubSpot’s integrated solutions are all accessible from a single dashboard, it still takes a significant investment of time in learning the philosophy driving inbound marketing as well as the nuts and bolts of using all of the different tools 

for managing website content, social media updates, blog posts, landing pages, and automated lead nurturing, plus a seamless CRM program to share lead information with sales.

In fact, HubSpot says it will likely take your lead person up to three months using the software to truly feel proficient. (Download a complete timeline for implementing HubSpot and inbound marketing.)

But what if you don’t have that kind of time? If your marketing strategy (and your boss’s approval) hinge on getting your inbound marketing rolling right away, you will need to find someone who knows the system inside out to bring everything up to speed quickly and accurately.

HubSpot-certified marketing agencies have already put in the training time and know the system and the philosophy inside out. If you need to move quickly to implement your inbound marketing strategy in HubSpot, it can pay off to hire an experienced partner to help you create the processes that will put you on the road to success.

2. You don’t have (enough) great writers with time to put toward inbound content.

(Or, your team is temporarily short-handed, and you need to keep the content pipeline flowing.)

HubSpot representatives say that one of the biggest barriers new subscribers run up against is dedicating the resources needed to produce the quality and quantity of content needed to drive inbound marketing.

While they say the optimal level of blogging for inbound marketing is 40 blog posts per month, even producing half that many will likely require a minimum of 40 hours a month for short posts, and 3-4 times as much for in-depth blog posts of 1,200 words or more.

And that doesn’t take into consideration the other content needed: downloadable offers such as whitepapers, case studies and tip sheets, or the corresponding landing page content, lead nurturing emails and sales enablement materials to complete each inbound marketing campaign.

It can be nearly impossible to meet your inbound marketing content needs if you don’t have at least one writer ready to dedicate full-time attention to content creation. And chances are, like most marketing teams, you don’t have anyone just sitting around looking for work to do.

You also don’t want to just toss your inbound marketing writing to the most junior member of your staff or a random freelancer without ensuring they have the skills needed to create quality content that is engaging, informative, optimized for search and highlight your brand image and messaging.

A quality agency should give you access to experienced, professional writers and designers who understand what quality content is and why it is important to inbound marketing success. And they can provide you with just the time you need, with flexible terms, rather than requiring a commitment to a new hire, which comes with overhead, benefits, and other associated costs.

3. You don’t have a documented strategy for implementing inbound marketing or plans for content to drive individual campaigns.

If you want maximize the ROI of your HubSpot investment, you need to develop a strategy for how you will use inbound marketing in conjunction with the rest of your marketing and public relations efforts. It isn’t going to work well if you treat it as a random “add-on” that is unrelated to the rest of your communications strategy.

Bringing in an third party can help your marketing team take a step back and revise your overall marketing strategy to place inbound at the center and build campaign plans that incorporate all of your marketing in a single focused plan.

Your plan should include your brand positioning, key messaging, strategies for implementing social media, and inbound marketing campaigns that outline content for each stage of the sales funnel.

4. You aren’t seeing the results you expected, and you aren’t sure why.

If you know the potential behind inbound marketing with HubSpot, but just aren’t seeing it after several months of putting the strategy to work, it’s time to step back and try to figure out why.

We know that within seven months, 85 percent of companies using inbound marketing increase their website traffic and their leads, and 50 percent have realized an increase in sales. But what if your first year of inbound doesn’t look like that?

HubSpot offers a wealth of data and analysis that can help you find where your strategy or implementation may be falling short. A HubSpot-certified agency can use that information, plus additional audits, to pinpoint ways to change what you are doing in order to improve results.

Are you missing middle of the funnel materials to help nurture leads? Are your landing pages failing to convert because forms are too long? Are your blog posts missing the mark and not focusing on the terms your best prospects are searching online?

In marketing, as in other areas of life, it is a sign of wisdom to know when to ask for help. Don’t waste resources forging ahead ineffectively on your own when all signs point to the benefits of partnering with a qualified, HubSpot-certified agency to maximize your inbound marketing investment.

If you realize the need for outside help, but still need to bring your boss on board with the idea, put our ready-to-personalize slideshow to work. We’ve done the research and design; you just need to put in some personal touches to show your boss “Why We Need An Agency Partner.”