topic Re: Best Practices for Marketing Campaign Setups in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Best Practices for Marketing Campaign Setups

GTorres-Soler8 — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 14:34:14 GMT

Hello,

I'm looking for guidance on how to best set up campaigns in HubSpot, mainly understanding what folks consider the anchor campaign and supporting assets.

For example, our team (as probably many B2B companies do) create a lot of long-form content. Guides, eBooks, Playbooks, etc.

Currently, each content piece has it's own campaign. We utilise a mix of distribution channels for this content, with some paid and some organic. Currently, we're splitting out the paid (sometimes) campaigns as their own. We did it this way because we found when we had all assets associated to the one campaign, we weren't able to see which one of the individual channels or partners performed better thant the other - that left us unclear on where to invest our money moving forward.

We want to be consistent. Should the content be the "anchor" piece, and all distribution channels (where possible) just be associated as assets? How would you setup Ad campaigns that are promoting content (so you are able to associate them)?

Are we able to then slice it up by distribution channel?

Any feedback or commentary would be quite helpful. Thanks!

Re: Best Practices for Marketing Campaign Setups

JessicaBaskey — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 03:12:10 GMT

Hi @GTorres-Soler8 ,

Great question! Campaign setups can definitely get confusing, especially when you’re juggling lots of content and different channels.

What I usually recommend is to think of your content piece, like a guide or ebook, as the main “anchor” campaign. That way, everything revolves around that key asset.

Then, set up separate campaigns for your different distribution channels or paid ads. Link those back to the main content somehow (through naming or associating assets) so you can track both the big picture and how each channel is doing.

For paid ads, create individual campaigns promoting the content and tie them back to the anchor. This way you can easily see which channels or partners are actually working.

Naming things consistently helps a lot too - it just makes everything easier to find and understand later.

Best,

Jess

Re: Best Practices for Marketing Campaign Setups

GTorres-Soler8 — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 18:11:17 GMT

Thanks, Jessica.

Sounds like what we're hoping to do but the breakout of each campaign is what is causing confusion now.

For example, we launched a content piece "2025 Mid-Year Check-In." It performed very well, partly because we promoted it across several different newsletters. However, because we can't specifically see how the newsletter performed, since it was a third-party newsletter, and we can't report on tracking links through HubSpot, we set up a separate campaign for the newsletters.

We created separate campaigns for the 3rd party newsletters but we couldn't attach the same LP - because it was associated somewhere else.

I review one of the newsletter campaigns and it appears to have performed poorly. None of the contacts generated from this newsletter specifically were there and no insight on how it performed.

My ideal setup is something like you mentioned -- have the the content piece be the ANCHOR content or ANCHOR Campaign, and then the ability to see which channel, specifically, drove the most new contacts, and also revenue.... I would also love to track spend and ROI. If we spend 5k on one neswsletter and 5k on another promoting the same content - which one drove the most deals, influenced the most contacts, and generates the most new contacts - and where to reinvest next time then.

What you are describing sounds like it should be a 'sub-campaign' or something like that, but that's not possible AFAIK?

My question is then around campaign setup.

Does this mean that to get the channel-specific data or distribution-specific data, we should be creating multiple landing pages (one per vendor, for example, plus one to use on our owned channels)?
Should we also have separate forms for each partnership?
Do we even need tracking links then if we use it this way?
Can we report on tracking links?
Is there any way to update existing campaigns -- most importantly the content pieces -- to track accordingly moving forward?
Can you share your campaign setup blueprint or playbook if you have it? Especially around what the "anchor" piece is and how to create and manage the supporting assets around it. We work with a ton of different vendors and partners and we'll be using our own content for 90% of it, so I want to make sure we're really understanding the impact of these vendors

Re: Best Practices for Marketing Campaign Setups

Victor_Becerra — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 21:07:02 GMT

Hi @GTorres-Soler8
Thank you for reaching out to the Community!
I'd like to invite some community members who are subject matter experts to join this conversation.
@Adriane @Lucila-Andimol @danmoyle - Would you be able to share any insights on this? Your expertise would be greatly appreciated.
Best,
Victor

Re: Best Practices for Marketing Campaign Setups

danmoyle — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 19:41:58 GMT

Hi @GTorres-Soler8 and welcome to the Community! You're asking great questions, and common big picture ideas in HubSpot. And @JessicaBaskey has given yoou a lot of good insight already. Here's my attempt to also help.

Yes, the HubSpot best practice for multi-channel content promotion is to treat the main content piece as the anchor campaign and associate all key assets (landing pages, forms, emails, ads) with that campaign to centralize reporting. Then, to achieve channel-level attribution and ROI tracking as you're looking for, I'd suggest using asset-level tactics because HubSpot campaigns do not support sub-campaigns or native hierarchy ("sub-campaign") structures.

So how would I structure it? Like this.

Anchor Campaign Structure: Create one HubSpot campaign for each core content piece. Then associate all related assets (landing pages, forms, emails, ads) that pertain to that content with the campaign to consolidate performance data.

Forms: I'd only use separate forms only if you absolutely require different form fields or want to clearly identify the source in the contact properties. For most cases, tracking links with UTM parameters are sufficient for source attribution.

Channel Attribution & Performance Tracking: This is where you start to split efforts in the tools.

For owned channels like your website or organic social channels, use a single landing page and form, then use HubSpot’s campaign associations and built-in analytics for basic source attribution.
For paid or partner channels like those 3rd-party newsletters, media buys, or sponsored placements:
- Create a unique tracking link for each channel/vendor using HubSpot’s tracking link tool.
- If you're looking for even more granular visibility, I'd consider cloning the landing page and form for each significant partner or channel. This allows distinct asset reporting but can increase maintenance.
- Associate each variant asset (such as a cloned landing page) with the same anchor campaign.

Tracking Links and Attribution

Here's where I think it gets real granular. I'd suggest using tracking links with unique UTM parameters for each channel/partner distribution, even for newsletters. This enables HubSpot to capture first-touch and last-touch source.

HubSpot's campaign tool can report on tracking links associated with the campaign, but the granularity, especially for 3rd-party emails, depends on correctly setting UTM parameters and ensuring contacts click and convert through those links.

The key is to be consistent with your UTM parameters. Here's an example, which helps you think into the future with more links, but being able to bucket your reporting data for better analysis.

utm_campaign: This will always be the name of your HubSpot campaign (content-2025-mid-year-check-in). HubSpot does this automatically when you use its builder.
utm_source: This identifies the platform or vendor (partner-newsletter-a, linkedin, google).
utm_medium: This identifies the marketing channel (cpc, email, social)
utm_term: This can be the specific terms you're using in your promotion or ad copy.

It's true that you can't attach one LP to multiple campaigns. We're not able to assign a single HubSpot asset to multiple campaigns. This is a known limitation (or maybe it helps us not confuse ourselves). If you need strict asset-level reporting in multiple campaigns, you must clone the asset.

Answers to your specific setup questions in the response to Jessica:

Should we create multiple landing pages?
Only if essential for reporting clarity. Otherwise, use unique tracking links per channel to one landing page. For high-value or high-volume partners, clones may be justified.

Should we have separate forms?
Not required unless the partner/channel requires unique form logic or you want source capture on the form level. Use tracking links instead wherever possible.

Do we need tracking links?
Yes, they are essential for attribution on shared landing pages or forms. Always create and use unique tracking links for each paid or partner promotion.

Can we report on tracking links?
Yes. HubSpot campaigns can include and report on tracking links; you can see how much traffic and how many contacts each generated.

Can we update existing campaigns and content for better tracking?
Yes. You can retroactively associate new or existing assets with campaigns, and update distribution links to include UTM parameters for future attributions. Going forward, standardize this process for consistency.

There is no perfect workaround for channel “sub-campaigns,” but hopefully what I've shared here, a lot of best practices I've seen over the years for B2B content campaigns with multi-channel distribution, helps.

Re: Best Practices for Marketing Campaign Setups

GTorres-Soler8 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 23:16:28 GMT

Thanks @danmoyle - I appreciate the thoroughness in your response! We have been using tracking URLs for a while, but unfortunately struggling with the quality of the tracking - we will investigate whether or not our format is consistent.

Lastly, we're looking to track ROI and spend on each campaign - especially if it's an anchor piece that we're putting advertising money (or 3rd party newsletter money) behind it. If we keep all the 3rd party vendors under the same campaign and track them as assets like you suggest, should we be adding the spend to that campaign?

Re: Best Practices for Marketing Campaign Setups

danmoyle — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 12:29:53 GMT

Happy to help in any small capacity @GTorres-Soler8 - even if it's confirmation or commisseration 😁 tracking can be difficult.

As for adding the spend, I'd say yes to that. Test it out and see if it seems to give you more accurate reporting. I think it would.