Forms (specifically HubSpot forms) are an easy way to get potential customer information, allowing you to create a clear direction for your sales pipeline and how you leverage the data you learn from their journey to the completion of the form.
Although there are many different platforms that you can host your forms on for conversions, the most robust and customizable is the one from HubSpot’s online form builder.
What Are HubSpot Forms?
HubSpot forms are extremely versatile and can be added to any of the different marketing tools available on the platform (landing pages, blog posts, website). The most common use of them is on a landing page, through different ad campaigns.
HubSpot works by placing a cookie in the visitor’s browser. It then tracks their journey while on your domain; how many times they visit different pages, which bits of content they are looking at most, etc. However, any data it collects is not sent to anyone until a form is submitted. Once the visitor has given you their details through a form, their journey is visible to you and gives you an idea about what aspects of your business they are most interested in, and informs how you approach your first meeting.
By using this data, you can utilize HubSpot’s lead scoring system, which gives you a clear set of metrics to determine what part of the journey the customer is at.
Why You Should Use HubSpot Forms
The main benefit of using HubSpot forms over other types is simply the amount of data it collects – and the versatility of the platform. You can leverage said data to further understand the behaviors and interests of your potential leads. With the large amount of data the forms collect, it acts as the one source of truth for all of the data in your company.
You can use forms to push gated content, which again, gives you more information about the needs and behaviors of your visitors/leads. While having a blog and video content readily available for any visitor, more serious leads will be interested in learning more about specific topics. By linking to gated content within your universal, you are more likely to get click-throughs than you are from cold advertising. For these click-throughs to be more beneficial to the lead, you want longer-form content; such as an e-book, whitepaper, or even an infographic.
HubSpot forms can also be integrated into a variety of different platforms, including large website builders like WordPress. There are two ways you can add forms to your pages, either by directly embedding the form into the code of any page or by installing the all-in-one HubSpot integration app directly into your account. If you only use HubSpot for gathering and tracking contact information, adding a form to an external platform will help you keep your information all in one place – with the freedom of keeping your builder (for either landing pages or ordinary webpages) as the one you are familiar with.
HubSpot Forms and Paid Campaigns
HubSpot forms are best used in conjunction with different paid campaigns, whether they be on social media (Facebook, LinkedIn), or outbound (Google, E-Mail).
You can get as much detail and as many required fields as you need. See this video on how to build a HubSpot form:
By using Google UTM builder, you can track a customer’s journey up to the conversion. The URL with UTMs can be added to your campaign.
UTMs
UTMs (or Urchin Tracking Modules) create a tracking ID for the URL to know how a visitor ended up on a particular page. These are majoritively used in outbound advertising campaigns, usually from social media ads or press releases.
The aim is to know the specifics of where a lead has come from so that you have a better understanding of which parts of the ad campaign are working better than others. Generally, the naming conventions are:
The naming conventions for UTMs, similar to the field-mapping integration between HubSpot and Salesforce, are different in every company. Sometimes the types are switched. It is important to ensure that you have data governance among your teams to ensure the naming conventions are the same every time you use UTMs. It is a best practice to have a document that your teams refer to when creating UTMs to make sure that the conventions are being followed – allowing your campaigns to run as smoothly as possible.
UTM Best Practices
There are some pitfalls that you may fall into when creating UTMs for your campaigns, and as such, there are a couple more best practices in order to use them correctly.
Firstly, alongside having a clear data governance structure within your company, you need to make sure that the names are the same both in HubSpot and Google UTM Builder. This is to ensure that no data is lost when the form is completed. It is important that the UTMs are also added to the form as a hidden field so that their contents cannot be changed.
By creating a HubSpot workflow alongside your UTMs, you can organize the leads from your HubSpot forms using their lead scoring tool. You can set a property value to the UTM allowing you to place different customers in different parts of their journey with you.
HubSpot in B2B
The use of HubSpot in general is a key component for all B2B businesses. HubSpot forms in particular help extensively to gain details from your potential customers, and mixed with UTMs allow you to understand their behaviors around your brand a lot better. The forms are highly customizable, allowing you to get as much robust data from your contacts, from basic information to extra fields that might be specific to your business.
Once your contact has converted, and you have given them a lead score, the use of the HubSpot sequences and workflows will allow your teams to nurture your leads and improve their relationship with you and heighten your chances of sealing a deal.
At Nituno, we are a certified HubSpot partner, and our teams are experts in the different tools that they provide. If you are struggling with how to maximize the potential of your HubSpot account, get in touch with us today to find out how our team can help.
