Structuring Campaigns in Hubspot

[Bishop]

I've been involved in digital marketing for nearly two decades, so campaigns are not foreign to me. However, the way HubSpot uses campaigns has lead me to question the best practice for setting them up.

First I'm here because of this feature (imo a limitation):

adding assets or content that are already associated with another campaign to a new campaign will remove them from their current campaigns. 

This causes a significant challenge to my way of using campaign tracking historically. It's always been standard for me to create a peice of content, then use it in multiple campaigns.

For example, let's say I create a peice of content:

• "How to make a blue widget."

Traditionally, I may use that content in 3 different campaigns that all involve different channels and strategies: 

1. Blue_Widget_Campaign
2. Widget_Awareness_Campaign
3. How-To_Campaign

To me, content-to-campaigns has always been a one-to-many relationship. However, with how Hubspot structures campaigns, I can only associate a peice of content with one campaign. This simply doesn't fit within how I've spent decades running campaigns.

For the experts out there, how do you structure your Hubspot campaigns when you can't use a peice of content in more than one campaign?

[Josh]

Thanks for the ping @jennysowyrda!

The way that we define campaigns won't really solve the problem that @Bishop is having.

We define a campaign based on the primary objective and the assets that are tightly knit with that objective would live within that campaign. If there are pieces of content that might live in multiple campaigns, it might be an indicator that either we've got multiple campaigns that are too close in topic or the content piece should be broken out into another topic that would live under the other campaign. Sure, it doesn't always work out perfectly like that, but in most cases, it works.

In the example about Blue Widgets. The campaign would be "How to Make Blue Widgets" which would have awareness, consideration, and decision level content associated with it. I wouldn't need a specific campaign for each stage of the journey. My end goal is still the same regardless of the stage they are currently in. I can then use other contact properties to help define which stage a prospect is currently in based on their content consumption and/or engagement. 

This may not work for everyone, but it's how we think about campaigns.

Josh

[Bishop]

Hi Josh,

Thank you for your response. Something you brought up that may be helpful. You specifically say:

• "We define a campaign based on the primary objective"

Can you elaborate on this further? Maybe provide an example?

When you say "objective," I immediately think about company objectives (lead capture, sales conversion, etc.) and prospect objectives (solve a problem, get a widget, etc). These things I traditionally would look at as success metrics of a campaign -- but not the campaign itself.

For example, let's say I've created a campaign, we'll call it the "Widget Awareness Campaign." The objective of the campaign is lead-gen. Within this campaign I have the following content:

1. Pillar page: "What is a widget"
   • We'll be ranking this via organic search. 
2. Landing page: "Best Widget"
   • We'll be promoting this page via paid search
3. Gated Content Download: "Guide to widgets"
   • This content will be accessible through both the pillar and landing pages
4. Email Drip: Ten different emails that further educate on widgets
   • These will be slowly delivered to anyohe who downloads the gated content

Now, I also have a campaign that we plan to launch on Social Media and some Internet Forums where all the members are quite aware of widgets -- a general awareness campaign isn't needed. Instead, we're going to launch our "Blue Widget" campaign and see if it gets any traction.  If initial campaign results are positive, we may run a variety of color based campaigns parallel. If results are negative, we may never run a color based campaign again.

Here's the rub though, I want to use the "Guide to Widgets" in each color based campaign.

Does this mean I have to make a copy of this content for every campaign? 

Or am I completely misunderstanding Hubspot campaigns?

[Josh · Accepted solution]

Hi @KeyWestScott,

In your case, this is what I would probably do:

• Create a separate campaign so you can gauge your effort on social and the forums you mention
• Associate your specific assets to that new campaign
• In regards to the "Guide to Widgets", which overlaps, that is gated content so I would clone the landing page for this campaign which also gives you the ability to customize the landing page a bit more for this audience who is already familiar with widgets and will allow you to track the performance of that guide specifically, without having the need to duplicate the actual piece of content.

As far as your first question...

When we think about our business objectives we try to align them with prospect objectives. When we create our campaign, they are tied more to prospect objectives with the understanding that those eventually tie to our business objectives.

Josh

[Bishop]

Thanks for your insight. I was conflicted about creating duplicate content (and making a mess in the dashboard) but your response really confirmed that it's the only path for me. 

[KeyWestScott]

Thanks, @jennysowyrda .

To your issue, the only ways that I see a "solution" is to.

• create a "master" campaign.  Kind of a "one ring to rule them all" scenario.
• or create each piece of content that is more directly focused on campaign A and then another piece that is focused on campaign B.

In this way (option 2) you could have HS track the separate campaigns.  THEN using UTM's for your links that you would specify your "master campaign" and track that in your Google Analytics or whatever you use for outside HS tracking. 

Granted not a consolidated view but may give you what you're looking for.

Not sure if that was what you were looking for or if I understood/misunderstood your needs.

HS is setup such that each piece of content is related to one and only one campaign and never the two shall meet.....

Scott

[Bishop]

Hi Scott,

Thank you for your response.  I think it's important to mention that I'm very concerned with being able to analyze my campaigns via multi-touch attribution as well and I failed to include in my original post. With multi-touch considered, here are my thoughts on your options:

• create a "master" campaign.  Kind of a "one ring to rule them all" scenario.

For clarification. Are you suggesting that using my previous example, I'd create a "widget" campaign and then assign all content to that, regardless if it is a how-to, color-intent, etc. concept?

If so, this seems like a dilluted way to structure the campaigns. If for example we dedicated 50% of our resources to "how-to" content and 50% of our resources to "color-intent" content, we wouldn't be able to analyze this at the campaign level, if I'm understanding correctly.

Can you let me know if I'm misunderstanding?

• or create each piece of content that is more directly focused on campaign A and then another piece that is focused on campaign B

I suppose this could work if all of the content was no-indexed landing pages. But let's suppose that I've created a pillar page. I'm going to run three different campaigns this year, vastly different in many ways, yet all will bring people to my pillar page at some point. I wouldn't want to create three different versions of my pillar page just to include it in three different campaigns. What if I ran 10 different campaigns this year, I'd need to make 10 versions of the page?

Again, am I misunderstanding your idea? 

Please advise

[KeyWestScott]

After I posted thought that it might be best and typically quicker if you could contact your Acccount Manager at HS, and book some time with him/her and explain what your needs are.  Mine has been a WORLD OF HELP, in different scenarios that we've tried to visualize and implement. And can even help impliment the changes.

Scott

[KeyWestScott]

@Bishop I think you got me on both points.

To your statement on option #2, you stated that "three different campaigns this year, vastly different in many ways".  This would indicate that, Yes, you would need to create the different campaigns, hence the Vastly Different statement.  And yes, you would have pillar page for "How to choose a Blue vs a Green Widget" (top of funnel) and (branching off at this point, based on if they chose a Blue or Green). Then others for "How to make a blue widget" OR "How to make a Green Widget"(middle of funnel) then "How to Use a Blue Widget" (bottom of funnel), assuming they chose the Blue Widget option.  Then track the progress from one funnel to the next, down the Sales Pipeline.

I think I'm following your logic, here.

Scott

[jennysowyrda]

Hi @Bishop,

Thank you for your feedback! I want to tag in a few experts to get their insight in this matter!

@DanielSanchez, @Josh, @KeyWestScott, @22Eighteen do you have any tips for @Bishop?

Thank you,
Jenny