Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash
HubSpot Marketing Automations for Technology & SaaS Industry
The competition in the technology and SaaS industry is fierce. Most companies have several – if not dozens – of competitors offering very similar products.
Most of your ideal customers are not technology-savvy buyers, and they frankly aren’t sure how to compare you against your competitors. To them, it feels like an apples-to-apples comparison and as a marketing leader, you’re tasked with changing that.
And some companies in the industry struggle because they are creating demand for new technology no one has ever considered. Paving the way is never easy, and getting in front of potential customers is more challenging because they don’t know that they need you yet.
HubSpot marketing automation can help ease the stress and long to-do lists for overworked, marketing professionals. Start automating repetitive tasks to build better, more meaningful relationships with customers and ensure you’re capturing leads from website visitors.
Learn more about what HubSpot’s automation tools are capable of, how other companies like yours are succeeding with the software, and how to get started on your way toward valuable ROI with HubSpot.
How HubSpot Simplifies Busy Marketers’ Days
Marketers are charged with many crucial tasks, including:- Developing marketing strategy
- Lead generation
- Lead nurturing
- Website management and SEO
- Social media
- Online reputation management
- Paid ads
- Monitoring trends
- Making the sales process smoother
- Content strategy and development
- Reporting on campaign results
And while many of these tasks are intertwined, it’s impossible to keep up in today’s digital marketplace without automation.
Your C-suite might be looking at your company and wondering why your marketing is behind that of your competitors and marketing simply can’t take on more.
The reality is, automation is how your competitors are doing more with the same resources. Many of the tasks listed above have some automation capabilities and others can be simplified by moving them under one holistic platform to manage and report on with greater ease.
Perhaps your current tools already feature automation. Your challenge is about removing repetitive tasks from your plate and managing too many open tabs, distractions, and siloed data. These challenges make it nearly impossible to have the time to sort through the data, compare ROI from various channels and make informed decisions like when to trigger customer interactions and how to best set up lead scoring.
HubSpot Marketing Hub can help you do it all, with greater ease. See how HubSpot integrates with common tools technology and SaaS companies use.As a technology company, HubSpot also sets the tone and demonstrates how to win with transactional marketing that feels like a personal one-on-one experience to the customer.
HubSpot Marketing Automation Key Capabilities
For technology and SaaS marketing professionals, HubSpot's Marketing Hub offers four key areas of automation.- Lead nurturing and scoring
- Email marketing and campaigns
- Social media scheduling and monitoring
- Analytics and reporting
Here’s a closer look at HubSpot’s capabilities in these areas.
Lead Nurturing and Scoring
Once companies find a solution for lead capture, it's time to move on to the next challenge: lead nurturing and scoring. You need to know where the prospect is at in the sales funnel and how likely they are to buy so you put your attention where it matters.
Better access to lead scoring helps you target the message to the potential buyer’s needs. Based on the lead score, you’ll know whether the contact is starting to explore their options or ready to purchase when given the right offer.
HubSpot offers a sophisticated CRM with workflows and triggers you can set based on customer actions and data you know about them.
Once a prospect moves from a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead, are they getting immediate outreach from your sales team? Or is there a lag as marketing works to transition the lead and alert sales? This is a crucial time and automating follow-up from the prospect’s assigned salesperson can make all the difference in closing the sale.
HubSpot gives you all the tools you need to decide what user actions update a prospect’s lead score and what that lead score means as far as the next content or outreach that should go out automatically or your sales team should initiate.
Automating lead scoring and nurturing ensures that new leads get immediate and ongoing attention without your marketing team needing to constantly update the contact’s status or reach out to sales to transfer attention.
Studies show that companies that use lead-scoring mechanisms increase their lead generation ROI by 77% and according to Marketing Sherpa, 68% of “highly effective and efficient” marketers attribute their success to lead scoring processes.
Email Marketing and Campaigns
Email marketing is a powerful tool. But it’s even more powerful when the message is tailored to the unique needs your prospect has.
Personalization is challenging though because it requires plenty of manual work to segment lists and creates various versions of the same campaign.
HubSpot simplifies that process. You can segment lists using clear filtering criteria. HubSpot also has powerful personalization tokens, so you can personalize subject lines and content in your HubSpot emails with any default or custom contact property. Then, from one email campaign, customize the message based on your list segments, and send just one campaign to multiple contacts while automating the personalization aspects.
As you learn what content resonates with prospects through each phase of the customer buying journey, you can automate email campaigns accordingly, so that prospects get a slow drip of helpful information that guides them through the buying journey.
Social Media Scheduling and Monitoring
With several social media platforms to monitor, marketers face time-sucking challenges to keep up with posting, responding, interacting and reporting.
HubSpot can help move those activities all under the same platform you're using for blogging, SEO, website management, paid ads, email marketing, and more. This helps you have a cohesive view of all marketing activities in one place.
Never miss a mention or comment from a follower and know more about who that person is and where they are at in the customer buying journey.
Delight your executives with clear ROI attribution to social media and the customer and prospect relationships you build there.
And because your marketing assets are all in one place, you can quickly create social posts based on other campaigns and pull in assets from those campaigns to improve efficiency and use your time wisely.
Analytics and Reporting
Technology silos make marketing analytics reporting challenging. You’re comparing different metrics from various channels, making it difficult to see which are your highest-performing channels and worth more of your time.
HubSpot offers automation tools that pull marketing stats from many channels using integrations and built-in tools to track and monitor what really matters.
You’ll see a clear ROI from every channel in a way that is easy to compare and present to your leadership team. And you’ll have access to that data at any time.
Automate dashboard and data delivery so you ensure you’re updating your leadership team regularly. Be prepared for quarterly and annual meetings without the need to collect data, place it in a third-party visualization software, and find a way to present disparate information in a cohesive way. Hubspot offers that executive view in simple, easy-to-read formats that show the full value your team brings to the table.
Tips and Best Practices for Getting Started with HubSpot Marketing Automations
Now that you know HubSpot is the solution to your time-strapped challenges, here’s a look at how to get started with the best marketing technology for companies just like yours.
Steps to Take Before Implementing HubSpot Marketing Automations
Before you sign up for Hubspot, take some time to check your marketing strategy and ensure you have these crucial elements in place.- A clear understanding of who your customer is with set buyer personas explaining them and their pain points in detail
- A frictionless buying process that ensures once you generate and nurture leads, they’ll have no trouble converting
- A strong knowledge base that helps you retain customers for your technology and SaaS company
- Marketing collateral that helps deliver solutions to pain points and challenges your ideal customer faces through every step of the buying journey
- Sales and marketing alignment to prepare for implementing a robust tool ideal for earning more conversions
- Clear goals that you’ve set in collaboration with your leadership team that outline what you need to do and when
How to Create Effective Automated Workflows and Campaigns
Effective automated workflows require good data and a clear understanding of what prospect interactions warrant a change in status and new content.
To build the best workflows, you need to have a clear understanding of the customer buying journey and what the customer is looking for in each phase.
Every workflow and campaign should also have SMART goals attached to it. You should not start planning a campaign without setting and outlining goals.
Another important step is outlining what you want to automate. Then you’ll know how many emails are involved in a drip campaign and what if/then statements are necessary. Outlining your automation first will set you up for success.
Once you think you have it all right, run several tests to ensure your automations are running the way you’d planned, and that personalization is working properly.
How to Measure and Optimize Results
Don’t get distracted by unimportant metrics. A high open rate is not a success, though it’s a good first step toward being successful. A strong click thru rate is another great sign, but it isn’t how you should measure success.
The same is true for social media metrics. Look less at likes and comments and more at the value of the traffic it is sending to your website.
Focus on conversion and ROI. Many technology and SaaS companies do not have a transactional conversion process. So you’ll look to measure the success of your automations by time savings, lead generation and transitions from marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads.
Measuring the right metrics will make all the difference in showing the value the marketing team is bringing to the table. And ultimately, business-driving activities are what the C-suite cares about.
End the Feeling of Being Overworked with Impossible Marketing Goals
HubSpot marketing automations help overworked, stressed marketers accomplish their goals and find greater job satisfaction from their daily activities.
And before you worry about adding expense to your strapped marketing budget, complete the HubSpot ROI Calculator to see how much you could add to your bottom line by adding this valuable software to your technology stack.
Diaz & Cooper is a HubSpot Gold Partner, which means the team knows the ins and outs of the platform better than anyone. Their results-driven experts can help you set up and provision your account for immediate ROI. Schedule a free consultation now.
