22 Quick Wins To Find Early Success With HubSpot

[SeanReid]

Time isn't something that we just seem to never have enough of, right? "If I had more time I would get so much more done" is a phrase I hear time and time again when talking to my own customers about their strategies. This lack of time often means we are looking for quick fixes, or to learn how to use a tool to get more leads yesterday. Whenever I hear someone ask me for some quick wins with HubSpot, I'll find myself asking more questions about their goals first instead of just jumping straight into a quick win. 

The reason for this is because there are literally hundreds of quick wins out there you can use, but there is no point doing something for the sake of quick success if it's not aligned with your actual long term goals. We could build out an awesome lead nurturing workflow in only a few steps, but it's a waste if your actual problems are you cannot get leads in the first place. So before we go into my 25 quick wins with HubSpot that anyone can use, let's first go through the strategy of a quick win. There are four things that make up an effect and powerful quick win:

1. It is goal-oriented. Everything you implement is designed to solve for a very specific challenge, such as increasing your SEO, tightening up your sales and marketing alignment,  or increasing your MQL numbers. If the quick win isn't aligned to this goal, don't waste your time on it.
2. It is bespoke but systematic. Everything you build should be made for you, your process, and your customers. It should also follow a very strict plan and guidelines so that you can be ensured you are getting the most out of this.
3. There is a strong time to value ratio. The key to a quick win is in the name. If it takes a large amount of time to implement, then it should be it's own project. You can to be sure that whatever you put in place doesn't take a huge amount of time, but carries a strong amount of value. It can be easy to write it off and say "Well if it doesn't work then what harm it didn't take long to build", but that's time that could have been spent on something that brings real value to your company.
4. Quick wins are not admin. While yes, there are things that will help with your admin time and life, I would challenge you to keep that separate. If we are implementing a quick win, it should be a quick win that brings you more leads, more conversions, increases your Google rankings. These will be of greater impact.

With your goals in mind, let's take a look at those 25 quick wins with the HubSpot software that I'd recommend any user examine and implement.  To help, I've divided these up into four "I need help with..." sections:

I Need Help Getting More Customers:

• Send out an email ASAP. If you have an offer, a discount code, a new piece of content to share, then send out an email. Email is one of the easiest ways to stay connected with your leads, and that email could be the one that puts you back in the mind of your prospect. Combine this with the decision stage offer below and you'll have a strong start.
• Create a Meeting link. It's easy to do, it puts the power of booking time with your sales rep in your leads hands and creates a better customer experience. 
• Activate Sales notifications for returning customers. You are more likely to successful content with a prospect if you contact them within 4 minutes of them leaving your website. Notifications will help with this. If it's a current customer, then there is a chance for cross sell or an up-sell.
• Install chat on high-value pages. Think of your pricing page or testimonial page. If the page has no live chat then it's a missed opportunity to connect in real-time with someone that is clearly considering you are a supplier. So don't let them leave to think about it.
• Build a basic lead scoring system. (See my post on this here).
• Create a quick decision stage offer. A decision stage offer could be a live demo, or a free 15-minute consultation. You don't need to break the time-bank with this. But it gives you a reason to send an email out to your database and to use the Meetings tool.
• Retarget current customers. If you have build out lead-scoring, then find your current customers with a higher score than average, or those who are visiting your pricing pages. 
• Ask for testimonials. Again if you have a current customer with a really high lead score, then ask them for a testimonial. Testimonails are great decision stage content that can be used by both your marketing and sales teams. It's also a way to reward customer loyalty by getting them featured on your website, which could also give you an SEO boost if they link from their website to your testimonial page.

I Need Help Generating More Leads:

• Install pop-up forms. Yes most pop-up forms are annoying, but that because most pop-up forms are created with no thought. If you have a page that gets a ton of traffic, create a slide-in pop-up form that links to content that compliments the current page. For example, you could have a blog post on cyber-security, and a slide-in form for a security checklist that they can download.
• Add CTAs to high traffic pages. If you have a high traffic page with no conversation opportunity it's a massive opportunity gone out the window. If people are visiting your page in high volume, make sure there is something there to convert them, like the pop-up forms or a talk to sales CTA.
• Review your forms. Are they asking too many questions, or not enough? Beyond a name and an email address, what information could you get to help you learn more about your audience?
• Launch a bot. Bots are great, and bots are easy to get set up. Creating a simple bot and putting it on your pricing page or high traffic pages ensures you can connect with your leads at a time that works best for them.
• Turn blog content into a downloadable asset. If you have a blog post that is getting really high traffic, then start here. Task yourself with taking the content and splitting it in half. Give half of the information away in the blog post, and the rest as a downloadable guide or item.
• Turn similar blog topics onto a high converting pillar page. This is the easiest way to build a pillar page. Because while creating a pillar page can be a massive investment in time, taking similar pages and merging them into a pillar page isn't. 
• Gate content you're giving away for free. 
• Set up video. Video is easier to do that ever, that all the numbers and data point towards people preferring video over other types of content. It doesn't need to be slick, it can be be just you at your desk with a webcam, but it works.

I Need Help Getting More Visitors:

• Use your social networks. Social is a great way of getting more eyes onto your website, so don't be afraid to talk about your website or your content on your own LinkedIn or other channels. There are no businesses that cannot get even a small benefit from connecting through social, you just have to use the right channel that your audience lives on.
• Create a lookalike audience from current customers. Simply put, theses are proven customers, so continue to target these types of profiles.
• Get budget for PPC/Paid Social. If you are not doing it, you are missing out because your competitor is using it and stealing your audience. This is especially important if your business is young and needs a boost to getting discovered.
• Repurpose content as guest blog pieces. Back links are a great way to improve your SEO. So if you have a great piece of content, reach out to websites that your personas visit and ask if you can do a guest blog post on that topic. All you want in return is to be able to link back to your own website. By doing this, you will get to share their SEO ranking and see yours get better as a result.

I Need Help Understanding HubSpot

• Get certified. Certifications are amazing ways of ensuring you get the very most out of the tool and learn how it works.
• Connect with your Customer Success Manager. That's our job, to ensure you are successful using HubSpot.

I hope these tips help you out! If there is anything else you'd recommend as a quick win feel free to drop it into the replies below.

[TonyDowling]

This is really cool! I was pointed here by the Facebook partner group 🙂 

[chrisnault]

thank you for this! a great resource for our onboarding team. smiles all around 

[GF20]

There's some really useful tips here - thanks very much @SeanReid 

[Finbar_O_Grady]

Great post Sean, here is a quick win from me:

In the B2B space, we say your website should have at least 1% and up to 3%+ visitor to lead conversion. Not getting that? The check these 2 metrics:

What percentage of your visitors are getting to a landing page: this should be 20% to 25%. 

What percentage of visitors that get to a landing page, are filling out a form: this should also be 20 to 25%.

Checking these metrics shows you where your conversion paths are breaking down or can be optimised.

What other quick wins can be added to this list?