Is HubSpot Marketing Starter Right for My Small Business?

[AnythingPrintca]

Hey Everyone,

Have both HS Sales and Marketing Starter.  Currently steamlining Sales account, updating templates, sequences etc.   

I am really just starting to consider marketing and not sure I'm quite where I need to be to best use my current plan.

I have paid for the HS Marketing Starter for 2 years now and have not utilized it's capabilities and have under 3000 qualified leads to market to.

Based upon your expeience scaling your business using HS; I'm curious to know if there are possibly better options to use my money.  And/ or better resources I could align with outside of HS to maximize on my time and investment for marketing.   

I am a beginner and would really like to keep it simple to get a solid start and build a foundation to grow from.  Not looking to jump in both feet and devoate 20 hours a week to work and curate.  I'm a one many army!

Any and all advice is welcomed and really appreciated!

Paul

[Ben_M · Accepted solution]

Without knowing what your business is or what strategies you are already undertaking it's hard to say whether you could spend your money elsewhere. At the basic level, every business starts with sales, but you reach the point of marketing when you need to grow, or sustain your customer base through marketing based communications, ads, etc.

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

Hi Paul @AnythingPrintca. HubSpot the tool isn't the thing to ask about, in my opinion. How are you using it? That's my first question. Are you creating content marketing to drive leads? What kind of offers do you have for demand gen? Have you created workflows for lead nurturing? And what about lead scoring to ensure warm lead handoffs to sales? 

There's a lot to unpack here when it comes to why you're disappointed with how it's currently going. 

In my experience, jumping to a different platform really won't make a difference. It's the strategy behind it. I like HubSpot as the tool of choice because it's user-friendly and easy to use (as a 1-person team) rather than being complex for no reason. 

Also, what are you measuring when it comes to your success? Just TOFU leads? Or MOFU leads and BOFU sales-ready leads? What about closed deals and time-to-close? When you're truly measuring the closed-loop impact of your work, you may find some great insight into what you're doing. 

Just my two cents. 😊 Happy to discuss more if you'd like. I used to be a 1-person department, so I've been there. It can be lonely and feel very disconnected. 

[RichardFoster22]

Thank you so much for your helpful answer. I really appreciate your reply here. 

[DGarcia195]

no, would look for a better CRM and marketing tool. not sure if Hubspot is right for anyone.

[franksteiner79 · Accepted solution]

Hi @AnythingPrintca 

I would echo what @danmoyle and @Ben_M have said - withhout knowing your business, what you have done so far in terms of inbound marketing / content creation, it's hard to give sensible advice.

I worked in B2B edtech in the past and 3,000 leads in the CRM would have been amazing, because my TTM was roughly 180 universities in the UK and our average CLTV was in the six figures. 

One thing I can recommend is reaching out to your Customer Success Manager or Customer Success Team, and ask for a PDF version or screenshots of your product adoption dashboard. This is a very handy Looker report that shows each portals product adoption compared to its peer group. It is not perfect but it is a good prompt and conversation starter to think about which tools to use more, why and how.

I hope that helps.

Frank

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

Hi Paul @AnythingPrintca. HubSpot the tool isn't the thing to ask about, in my opinion. How are you using it? That's my first question. Are you creating content marketing to drive leads? What kind of offers do you have for demand gen? Have you created workflows for lead nurturing? And what about lead scoring to ensure warm lead handoffs to sales? 

There's a lot to unpack here when it comes to why you're disappointed with how it's currently going. 

In my experience, jumping to a different platform really won't make a difference. It's the strategy behind it. I like HubSpot as the tool of choice because it's user-friendly and easy to use (as a 1-person team) rather than being complex for no reason. 

Also, what are you measuring when it comes to your success? Just TOFU leads? Or MOFU leads and BOFU sales-ready leads? What about closed deals and time-to-close? When you're truly measuring the closed-loop impact of your work, you may find some great insight into what you're doing. 

Just my two cents. 😊 Happy to discuss more if you'd like. I used to be a 1-person department, so I've been there. It can be lonely and feel very disconnected. 

[Ben_M · Accepted solution]

Without knowing what your business is or what strategies you are already undertaking it's hard to say whether you could spend your money elsewhere. At the basic level, every business starts with sales, but you reach the point of marketing when you need to grow, or sustain your customer base through marketing based communications, ads, etc.