When Should I Hire a HubSpot Partner Agency for My Business?

You’re here because you’ve heard about HubSpot and you’re curious...

“Am I the right client for a HubSpot partner agency and inbound marketing?”

That’s a tremendous question. Because, if you are a good candidate, a HubSpot partner can accelerate your business at supersonic speeds.

And if you’re not - there’s still a great deal to take away from exploring this avenue of growth.

So let’s get stuck in. We reveal the right time to hire a HubSpot partner agency. And exactly how inbound marketing support can ignite radical developments for your business.

An All-In-One Marketing Platform

To understand how a HubSpot partner can support you, you’ve got to get to grips with the platform.

HubSpot is an inbound CRM that covers all bases. It can help you:

• Attract website visitors - marketing
• Convert leads - marketing
• Close customers - sales
• Delight customers - customer success
• Measure success - analysis
• Quantify an ROI - analysis

Need a refresher on inbound marketing? Simply put, it's a proven methodology that leads customers to you naturally. This is achieved through

• Search-optimised content - helps users find answers to their questions and meet their needs.
• Content strategy - engages with users during each buyer stage, helping them move along the sales process to eventually make a purchase.
• Email marketing - builds relationships with new and existing customers and delivers information on offers etc.
• Social media - builds brand awareness, connects users with your business organically and starts online conversations to increase your follower base.

HubSpot has the tools, plugins and features needed to execute marketing strategies, automate content campaigns and measure your inbound marketing results - all in one place.

And it works. 83% of HubSpot users saw a measurable increase in lead generation within seven months of use.

Why is it so effective? The platform isn’t just built to attract customers. Every new visitor is guided along a buyer journey, as the platform naturally develops their interest through content (more on this later).

What Does a HubSpot Agency Partner Do?

A certified HubSpot inbound marketing agency is the mastermind behind the system. They help businesses with HubSpot software implementation, campaign management, transparent reporting and ongoing support.

These agencies are the real deal - they have to attend HubSpot’s Academy and pass the exam to become certified partners.

Using the HubSpot platform and inbound marketing methodology, these marketing specialists help businesses:

• Move to the next stage of growth
• Drive sales
• Measure website performance
• Raise your brand’s profile
• Manage your social media campaigns
• Automate labour intensive tasks
• Increase sales productivity
• Enter new markets
• Generate leads
• Strengthen customer relationships

The HubSpot platform is a partner’s power tool. Inbound marketing experts within the agency use it to automate and manage your content marketing campaigns, measuring performance and user behaviour to create personalised customer experiences and drive sales.

So if you’re considering investing in inbound marketing, you should think about hiring a certified HubSpot partner to get the best results. Keep reading to find out if this next step is right for your business.

What Stage Is Your Business At?

If you’re a small or medium-sized business that’s looking to attract more leads and customers online, you’ve met the first criteria. Because HubSpot is designed to do exactly that.

What it doesn’t do is help businesses like e-commerce sites process quick transactions. It’s all about the buyer journey - helping users move through each buyer stage.

Did you know 81% of shoppers conduct online research before buying? Or that 72% of buyers turn to Google during awareness-stage research, with 70% returning to Google for consideration-stage research?

Also, you might not know that a prospect's journey can last from three months to longer than a year

For organic purchases, customers must be able to:

• Find your content through search tools like Google
• Be educated at the awareness stage
• Come back for more at the consideration stage
• Be encouraged to buy

And - because HubSpot has all the tools you need to meet those goals, helping you publish and promote content - it effectively increases sales.

According to Search Engine Journal, which publishes articles from marketing experts - inbound leads cost 61% less than outbound leads.

Which makes sense. Paid media, direct mail, cold calling and all other forms of advertising are expensive and not as effective as inbound marketing. A person is much more likely to buy from you if they found your business independently. So inbound marketing also results in higher rates of return.

If you’re serious about growing, inbound marketing is where the action’s at. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to hire a Hubspot partner agency to help you use the platform.

Are You Willing to Invest in Content?

“Content marketing is the gap between what brands produce and what consumers actually want.” - Michael Brenner

When you’re here to reach the summit of success and not sit back while others beat you there, online content is your rocket fuel. Compelling content that’s SEO optimised:

• Solves people’s problems, making them value you
• Makes your products or services enticing, closing sales
• Is a pleasure to read, encouraging customer loyalty
• Educates readers, strengthening your position as a thought-leader

Content can be:

• Blogs
• Articles
• Emails
• Newsletters
• e-Books
• Social media posts
• Infographics
• Videos
• Podcasts

HubSpot partners rely on these kinds of content generation to be effective. And a partner can help you curate search-optimised and valuable content, working hand-in-hand with experienced and talented writers to build your Google rankings and ignite organic engagement.

If you’re not quite ready to invest in content - for instance, you might have a small customer base and you’re working on nurturing those existing relationships - you can invest in content on a smaller scale or at a later date.

But for businesses that are ready, a HubSpot agency will maximise the effectiveness of this inbound marketing tool, using content at all online touch points to cover the entire buyer journey.

Do You Have a Sales Team?

Your sales team is integral to the workings of HubSpot. They get involved during the final stages of the buyer journey, when you’ve landed a sales call and are ready to close a lead.

HubSpot helps them nurture customers, sending follow-up sales emails in response to specific online activities. They also gain a play-by-play on customer activity within the platform’s customer management portal. This way, potential customers become unmissable.

For example, the sales team will be notified automatically via HubSpot if a user has abandoned their cart or spent significant time on a product page. The platform can identify and track IP addresses from different companies, monitoring how they engage with your content from time spent per page to the links they click.

This feature helps salespeople to identify prospects and nurture them. Marketing Wizdom recently revealed that 20% of customers are lost because of lack of nurturing. To successfully build your customer base and get value from HubSpot, you need an established sales team.

A Partner Agency Can Help You Maximise Potential

But it’s no good giving your sales team a powerful tool like HubSpot if they don’t know how to maximise its potential.

Enter a certified HubSpot partner agency. They help clients train their sales people on the system, reducing the time it takes to get familiar with HubSpot so they can be fully operational and ready to close leads seamlessly.

An inbound marketing agency will also show you sales team how to use the tracking software and data analysis. So they can understand how customers move through the buying funnel and where their role comes in. This way, marketing and sales work flawlessly together, supercharging sales as one team compliments the other.

How Much is Your Business Worth?

To use HubSpot and get the most out of a partner, your revenue should be between £500k and £5 million.

Why? It’s a sizeable investment. For the software alone, you should be looking at the professional (£665 per month) or enterprise package (£1,960 per month).

There is a basic package that sits at £165 per month. But you don’t get access to marketing automation, goal-based nurturing, salesforce integration and more (you can see a full list of the services on offer here.)

So really, anything below the professional package is for testing the waters. For when you’re not sure if you need all the bells and whistles at this stage in your business.

A HubSpot partner is only truly necessary when you have the full package. It’d be like trying to bake a delicious cake with only half the ingredients. The result would be sub-par and certainly not worth the initial outlay.

Over to You

By now, you should have a clearer idea of whether inbound marketing used in conjunction with a HubSpot agency is right for your business.

But if you do have any burning questions, we’re here to help. Book your inbound marketing review so we can discuss your strategy! Scroll now!