Are you getting everything you should out of your HubSpot Marketing portal?

The  HubOps seeds were planted when I worked at HubSpot as a Channel Consultant supporting resellers. Back then, a big part of my day was spent helping our customers understand whether or not they were optimizing their usage of the massive toolbox that is HubSpot.

Once I started freelancing, I spoke with lots of HubSpot customers and I realized I had the opportunity to turn this into a service by creating this guide for you.

In the guidebook, we’ve outlined how you can tackle each stage of the inbound methodology, and how to identify gaps and fix them. Furthermore, this guide will make sure you can fully utilize your HubSpot portal and increase the return on investment. Each chapter contains checklists for you to measure your progress.

Your HubSpot portal review should contain the following elements:

1. Persona review
2. Buyer journey review
3. Tech stack and integrations review
4. User review
5. Contract review
6. Attract: SEO, blogging, and social media
7. Convert: conversion paths, CTA design and language, form design and landing pages
8. Close: Emails, subscriptions, workflows - design, language, frequencies
9. Delight: customer engagement
10. Goal-oriented actions for your team

The first four items are covered in this blog, the rest you can find here.

Inbound methodology and tooling

The inbound marketing methodology is the heart and soul of an inbound strategy, and it’s likely that you started by implementing a few aspects of each of the four parts: 

The fact of the matter is that setting up the entire methodology in one fell swoop just isn’t possible. If you try to do everything at once, you’ll spread yourself thin, and all your efforts likely won’t make a worthwhile impact. 

Instead, it’s best to tackle smaller bits one at a time. Which leads us to the big question: Where should you start? That’s where a Marketing Audit comes in. With this easy-to-follow Audit system, we’ll identify which area of the inbound methodology should be your priority based on your specific needs. 

Persona and Buyer Journey review

Before we dive into the attract phase of your Portal Review we need to understand the current state of both your Buyer Persona and your Buyer Journey.

Personas are the basis of all we do. They inform the look & feel, the language used, offers created, and more on any webpage. To make Personas work, there has to be focus. “One size fits all” rarely works and you will find lower conversion rates. 

While many businesses has more than a handful of Personas, their focus online is only 2-3. Those who deliver the largest ROI.

When did you last review your Buyer Journey? When did you last review all activities in your HubSpot portal and whether they contribute positively to your Buyer Journey? We know firsthand how hard it can be to translate your entire Buyer Journey into well-functioning assets on your website.

Persona and Buyer Journey Checklist

•  We focus on no more than 2-3 Personas
• Our focus Personas deliver the largest ROI
• We reconsidered the validity of our Persona’s pain points less than 12 months ago
• We create assets for all stages of the Buyer Journey
• We promote assets for all stages of the Buyer Journey

 Tech stack and integrations review

Whether or not your tool stack is working for you instead of against you should be taken into this consideration before we jump into your HubSpot portal. 

• Are your relevant tools integrated?

• Are you getting sync errors?

• Are the data sources in your other tools reliable?

• Do you have duplicate tooling in your tool stack?

User review and activation

You’re nowhere without your users! You want to make sure that your users are logging in and using the tooling correctly. 

• Has everyone set up their account?

• Do you need to personalize the views for certain teams?

• Have users completed their training or certifications?

• Are people using their paid seats or should they be removed?

• Have you partitioned the relevant content to specific teams?

• Have you restricted access to sensitive tools for some users?

Contract review

It’s important to keep an eye on usage and limits to avoid tripping into a new tier without getting the benefits of this. If you are growing as you should, you can always leverage an upgrade to negotiate your contract. 

• How many contacts do you have in your contract and how many of your contracts are marketing contacts?

• When have you last cleaned your lists and do you have automation running to remove nonrelevant contacts?

• How many emails are you sending? What is your limit?

• How many users need access to Sales seats? How many are in use?

• Are you missing functionality or are you duplicating functionality elsewhere in your tool stack?

Download the full portal review guidebook here to get access to all the checklists for the Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight stages

In conclusion, optimizing the usage of your HubSpot portal is crucial for the success of your inbound marketing strategy. By following the steps outlined in this guide, including persona and buyer journey review, tech stack and integrations review, user review, contract review, and goal-oriented actions for your team, you can fully utilize your portal and increase your return on investment. It's important to tackle smaller bits one at a time and prioritize areas based on your specific needs. With the help of a marketing audit, you can identify the areas that need improvement and focus on them. Don't forget to regularly review and update your buyer personas and buyer journey to ensure that they are aligned with your business goals. By implementing these strategies, you can take your inbound marketing to the next level and achieve your desired outcomes. So, what are you waiting for? Start your portal review today and see the results for yourself!