HubSpot remains one of the most popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Marketing Automation tools available. It provides a wealth of benefits for marketers and sales teams alike. In essence, it’s a collection of software designed to work together to help you and a HubSpot marketing agency market and sell effectively, as well as provide an excellent customer experience.
HubSpot offers users both an incredible depth of resources and a centralization of all their communications to a single source of truth. However, despite its popularity, our research suggests that as many as 50% of marketers believe they aren’t getting the full potential from their HubSpot integration.
Like any solution, it has strengths and weaknesses and cannot proclaim to be the best at everything, and the best HubSpot marketing agencies understand the benefits and limitations. They will also help you to find the best integration to ensure you’re getting the most from your subscription.
In this article, we’ll examine what to look out for when hiring a HubSpot marketing agency – and what to avoid.
Audit Your HubSpot
Do you see the ROI you want from HubSpot? Are you using all the functionality you need, or are you paying for other software to do things HubSpot does?
We can help. Our free audit benchmarks your HubSpot and gives you tips to improve.
Audit Your HubSpotHubSpot Marketing Agency: The Benefits
HubSpot marketing agencies are a type of HubSpot-certified partner. These agencies met specific criteria set by HubSpot, showing they understand how to use its tools effectively for their clients. Certified partners are ranked by HubSpot, based on factors such as managed revenue, best practices in their content marketing, how many clients they bring, and other factors.
New users often find themselves inundated by HubSpot’s offerings. HubSpot can be an amazing tool, but it can also be an overwhelming tool. HubSpot realized this and now requires all users to undertake an onboarding process upon purchase of their solution. This onboarding can either be done through HubSpot themselves or via a HubSpot marketing agency, like Nituno.
Onboard HubSpot with an Agency
HubSpot’s onboarding process is charged as a flat fee and will provide you with consultancy, an action plan to achieve your intended goals, and some accountability to help you along the way. It can be thought of similarly to receiving detailed blueprints for a house. If you’ve got the architectural knowledge and the time, you can use it to create something great. Otherwise, however, it will be wise to utilize professional help. Enter, the HubSpot Marketing Agency.
A HubSpot marketing agency will offer you consultancy and accountability as well, but can extend beyond an action plan to take on the technical setup themselves. Even if your team is perfectly capable of doing this without outside support, it’s important to consider your bandwidth – are you already very busy with other aspects of your business?
Set Your Marketing Strategy
Furthermore, if you plan to use a marketing agency outside of this onboarding process, having them assist with the implementation of your HubSpot is a great idea – it gets you on the same page and allows them to immediately start building a marketing strategy – making it a win-win for your business.
It’s important to note that it’s not just new users who benefit from partnering with a HubSpot marketing agency. Any business that’s struggled with implementing a good strategy for their HubSpot use would benefit greatly. HubSpot is a powerful, flexible tool with a wide scope that many users never fully realize. Mastering it entirely takes time. Partnering with a HubSpot marketing agency can give you better results from your campaigns immediately.
HubSpot Marketing Agency: Things to Consider
Does This Agency Know Your Industry?
HubSpot caters to both B2B and B2C companies – which generally need to implement very different strategies for successful marketing. Make sure this agency caters to the marketing help you need, ideally by having happy customers with similar needs already in their portfolio. It’s also important to get an understanding of their company culture. If they’re using short-term interns for most of their writing, you’re not going to get the level of commitment or continuity you require.
Do They Work With Integrity?
Obviously, your HubSpot marketing agency must actually be HubSpot certified, but beyond that, they should also be demonstrating HubSpot best practices on their own website and showing that they understand SEO. You’re looking for an agency that won’t just help you in a rote, piecemeal way but will strategize as their first step. Look for evidence of that proactiveness within their own site – it’s unlikely you’ll receive a higher quality or attention to detail from them than what they are doing for themselves.
Do They Write With SEO In Mind?
A firm understanding of SEO and a concrete strategy is crucial for any HubSpot marketing agency, both in terms of creating a successful content marketing plan and for using HubSpot effectively. Look for a SEMrush certification on the agency’s site, and study their portfolio of clients to see if their websites are crawlable and ranking well. There’s no point in creating beautiful content without the SEO to drive traffic to it.
Do They Recognize HubSpot’s Limits?
It may sound counterintuitive, but the best HubSpot marketing agency may not be entirely evangelical about HubSpot. Realizing that HubSpot has weaknesses, where it may need to be supplemented for other tools in your marketing strategy, is an excellent sign – it shows both a depth of understanding of HubSpot’s capabilities and a desire to ensure you’re getting the best return out of your marketing spend.
A Summary of a HubSpot Marketing Agency
The details may vary, but generally, the best HubSpot marketing agency for your needs will be experienced users of HubSpot themselves, and have a strong company culture that upskills their employees. They should know your industry and be able to demonstrate that in their portfolio or via testimonials. They will be SEMrush and HubSpot certified, while demonstrating a good marketing strategy via their own website and social media presence, and write with SEO in mind.
Your ideal agency should be well-educated in different forms of marketing such as inbound and outbound, PPC, and more, and understand the value of combining these for B2B success.
Conclusion
At Nituno, we are a HubSpot and SEMrush partner with certified HubSpot experts to ensure your marketing is set up to reap the benefits of HubSpot, and turbocharge your growth. We use a combination of inbound, outbound, video, and paid advertising to drive traffic, establish brand awareness, and make your voice heard as a trusted thought leader. If HubSpot’s not quite working for your business or you simply don’t know where to begin, let’s work together on your HubSpot deployment today. Don’t be afraid to get in touch.
