10 proven steps to get the most out of your HubSpot investment

To get the most out of your HubSpot investment, follow these 10 steps.

1. Appoint (or hire) an in-house HubSpot admin and commit to using the platform for They Ask, You Answer.

To get the most out of HubSpot, you need a HubSpot admin (sometimes called a HubSpot specialist). This person, usually on the marketing team, knows the platform in and out.

They are responsible for drafting and enforcing expectations for HubSpot use. They can help people troubleshoot, show them how to do things in the platform, and are committed to learning about new tools and features.

The ideal HubSpot admin is tech-savvy, unflappable, and a good teacher.

With a HubSpot admin in place, you need a strategy. Remember, HubSpot is a tool, and you need a plan for how you’re going to use the tool.

They Ask, You Answer provides you with a framework for uniting your sales and marketing efforts around a single shared goal: customer education.

When you commit to HubSpot and They Ask, You Answer, you have the tool and the strategy to drive tremendous growth at your company.

Your HubSpot admin is not responsible for making sure They Ask, You Answer is done properly — just that everyone knows how to use HubSpot to do their job better.

Tip: Don’t add “HubSpot admin” to someone’s full-time job unless you take something else away. Being a HubSpot admin may or may not be a full-time job at your company, but don’t just give it to someone who doesn’t have the time.

Checklist:

• Everyone in the organization knows (or can easily find out) who owns your HubSpot/CRM, and what their role as the owner is.
• Each member of the sales and marketing teams can articulate how you are using our HubSpot/CRM to implement They Ask, You Answer.
• You are committed to tracking your customer’s entire journey, from website visit to purchase.
• You are committed to using your CRM to show real results from your marketing and sales efforts.

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "HubSpot is at the core of our They Ask, You Answer strategy.”

2. Use conversion paths to capture quality leads, educate them, and gain their trust.

The goal of your website should be singular: To provide visitors with the information they need to become customers. This means writing helpful, trust-building content that’s easy to find and intuitive to navigate.

To get the most out of HubSpot, you need to plan and optimize conversion paths that allow your visitors to move smoothly through your site, from blog to CTA to landing page to conversion.

Then, you can use HubSpot to test every variable, tweaking over time to improve performance.

Tip: Don’t get overwhelmed thinking you need a unique CTA on every page. Start small with one great CTA — one essential downloadable resource. The others will come in time.

Checklist:

• You have easy-to-follow, user-friendly conversion paths for both direct (bottom-of-the-funnel) and transitional conversions.

• You have a process for capturing the appropriate information on new leads that enables you to do intentional, specific follow-up with each one.

• You use automation to engage with non-sales-ready contacts, sending valuable content that will build trust and prepare them for a future sales conversation.

• You regularly review your conversion paths to optimize them for the best possible customer experience.

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "We have eliminated all points of friction for contacts in our conversion and post-conversion process and are giving both new and existing contacts the best experience we possibly can."

3. Develop a robust, clearly defined, and followed-by-all internal process for how leads enter the CRM and are managed — from first touch to purchase and beyond.

Your HubSpot portal is only as good as its data, and nowhere is this as important as when leads enter your system. If different forms on your website use different properties, for example, you’re likely to end up with a confusing database.

The HubSpot admin must establish a clearly defined process for how leads are managed in the CRM. Then, they must ensure that all stakeholders follow these protocols.

Tip: Make sure you’re capturing the right information. The more blanks on a form, the less likely someone is to fill it out. Get the information you need without scaring prospects away.

Checklist:

• When new contacts are created, and subsequently move through the customer journey, they always have all of the appropriate information/properties populated.
• All contacts/companies are assigned lifecycle/lead stages that have been agreed upon across the organization.
• There is no way for a lead to "fall through the cracks" in your CRM.
• You have a process for automatically qualifying and disqualifying leads, as well as what happens after a lead is qualified/disqualified.

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "Our leads are managed efficiently and strategically by all team members."

4. Enable your sales team to use the CRM in their day-to-day operation.

Often, sales teams are resistant to fully adopting a CRM, often because they trust the way they’ve always done things over a newer tool.

However, a CRM offers immeasurable benefits to sales teams. It keeps pipelines organized, automates follow-ups, and allows sales managers to have insight into how the team is doing at any single point.

When your sales team is bought-in and fully entrenched in HubSpot, you begin to see the true power of the platform.

Tip: Be sure to fully define your sales process — and standardize it across the whole team. This makes it easier for managers and company leaders to visualize the data and make decisions.

Checklist:

• Your sales process and activities completely live in, are executed in, and are logged/tracked in the CRM.
• Your sales pipeline accurately represents your actual sales process, your sales leaders have complete visibility into the status of your sales pipeline, and you can accurately forecast for upcoming months.
• Sales managers are fully equipped to coach their team members based on real data.
• Your sales team uses content from your marketing team to educate prospects, all of which is tracked in the CRM.

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "The CRM is set up to both track our entire sales process and execute our sales strategy."

5. Unite your sales and marketing efforts with They Ask, You Answer.

Once you’ve appointed an admin and have all of your teams on board, it’s time to put your strategy into place. They Ask, You Answer is a comprehensive inbound marketing and sales strategy that lets you get more out of HubSpot.

The engine of inbound marketing is content. When you’ve committed to writing content that helps your buyers, you’ve committed to education. HubSpot is the way you track engagement, conversions, and sales results that are driven by your content efforts.

Tip: Work with IMPACT or another They Ask, You Answer certified agency to develop a shared understanding of the framework. This top-to-bottom alignment will help you set a course and move forward.

Checklist:

• You are committed to answering customer questions in your content, embracing a “if they ask it, I will answer it” approach.
• You make your content easy to find and navigate on your site.
• Your sales team “assigns” content to prospects in the sales process to address questions up front so they can have more productive sales conversations.
• You document content wins that result in traffic, leads, or sales.

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "Our sales, marketing, and leadership teams are all committed to becoming a trusted educational resource in our industry."

6. Keep your data clean and organized so you can use it to segment and run reports.

Unclean data is of little use. HubSpot experts practice regular list hygiene and other cleanses to make sure the information they’re using is accurate.

This all starts with a form fill. Make sure you’re following best practices when you first bring a contact into your system. Then, treat their data the way you’d want your own information treated.

Tip: In addition to HubSpot’s native database functions, you can use tools like Insycle and Neverbounce to perform routine data hygiene.

Checklist:

• You adhere to all appropriate data privacy and management regulations (GDPR, CANSPAM, CCPA, etc.).
>
• You can segment data for marketing, sales, customer service, and reporting/dashboards in any way our teams might need to.
• Team members can easily find information in the CRM without needing external assistance.
• You regularly evaluate the database for opportunities for clean-up and improved organization.

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "We know who everyone in our database is and why they're there, and we can report on every metric that's important to us."

7. Your CRM is the single source of truth for customer information.

There’s a good chance that HubSpot will be connected to all aspects of your business — and every stage of the customer journey.

As such, everyone in your organization needs to trust HubSpot as the single source of truth. With the right processes and competencies in place, this should come naturally, but as soon as salespeople forget to enter their call notes or marketers stop keeping lists clean, that confidence starts to waver.

Only when everyone is trained on HubSpot and committed to using it in the right way can it truly be the single source of truth in your organization.

At this point, HubSpot is fully enmeshed in your company culture, inextricable from the work you do each day.

Tip: To ensure that your sales and service teams log information regularly in HubSpot, build processes that make it easy to do so.

Checklist:

• All prospects, leads, and customers have a corresponding contact and company record in HubSpot with accurate and up-to-date property information.
• Each member of your team knows which information and properties they are responsible for keeping up-to-date, and they do so consistently.
• You log all relevant activities in the CRM and follow the mantra: “if it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen.”
• Your leadership team can see a high-level overview of all marketing, sales, and service activity on a single dashboard.

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "Our team uses the CRM for every piece of customer data and information applicable to the customer journey.”

8. Execute any marketing, sales, or customer service project or campaign in your HubSpot portal without relying on an outside agency.

While it may be tempting to hire an agency to help you with HubSpot implementation, you should be cautious. Unless that agency is invested in the education of your team, you could be setting yourself up for perpetual dependency.

Homeowners don’t want to need to call an electrician every time a light goes out. They need to learn to do basic maintenance on their own.

Same thing with HubSpot users — self-sufficiency will save you a lot of time and money in the long run. Any agency you work with should focus on training and teaching, not implementing — and you should only work with them for a finite period of time.

Tip: The more expertise you develop in-house, the more self-sufficient and profitable you will be in the long term.

Checklist:

• We have no need to retain an outside agency to execute our campaigns or manage our portal.
• The team is able to troubleshoot and creatively problem-solve issues that come up in the CRM.
• We are constantly learning new features and functionality, as well as maintaining and taking new certifications/courses.
• We have a go-to resource for HubSpot internally who will always find an answer/solution.

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "Our team has complete mastery of our CRM platform."

9. Use reports and dashboards to make real, meaningful decisions based on data.

The beauty of HubSpot is that it allows you to make data-driven decisions better than at any time in the past. If you’re getting trustworthy and complete data from HubSpot, make sure you’re using it wisely.

Use data to improve your marketing and sales practices — and to plan future initiatives.

As a They Ask, You Answer business, HubSpot can help you evaluate which parts of the framework you’re succeeding with and which parts need more focus.

With HubSpot, you can analyze all aspects of your customer journey. Important data may include:

• Organic traffic
• Dwell time
• Bounce rate
• Session to contact rate
• Email open and click-through rate
• Form submissions
• Meetings booked
• Close/won rate
• Time to close average

With this data in hand, you can evaluate past efforts and plan your upcoming strategy.

Tip: HubSpot gives you access to troves of data. Make sure you’re tracking and reporting on the metrics that make sense for your needs.

Checklist:

• We've created and surfaced reports that clearly visualize the most important and relevant data to the entire company.
• Everyone in the organization has access to a dashboard where they can see metrics and reports that are relevant to their role and team.
• Our dashboards are simple and easy-to-digest.
• The company uses the data in our reports to make meaningful decisions (for the entire company and for specific teams/initiatives).

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "We are a data-driven organization."

10. Use data from your CRM to clearly show the return on investment from your marketing.

With your HubSpot machine running smoothly, you should have accurate insight into the ROI of your marketing efforts.

Your whole team is able to see exactly how They Ask, You Answer has impacted your organization, including marketing, sales, and service.

Tip: Share reports regularly with leadership. Balance quantitative data with anecdotes and storytelling to offer a complete picture, as well as some unique wins.

Checklist:

• Your team regularly reviews and celebrates content that drives sales.
• You are able to show both revenue returns and team performance returns.
• You've created running reports for the most important They Ask, You Answer-tracking metrics.
• You have a dashboard that showcases your ongoing successes with They Ask, You Answer.

You’ve accomplished this when your team can say with confidence: "We know exactly what implementing They Ask, You Answer has done for us."