HubSpot is a robust growth stack that can propel your marketing efforts forward and make lead nurturing and generation easier than in years past. Unfortunately, sometimes a HubSpot portal can get messy or unorganized. And when that occurs, it can be difficult to know what leads you have, what stage they’re in, and what offers are converting.
Luckily, there are steps you can take to get your account on the right track. Continue reading for our recommendations on how to organize your HubSpot portal.
First, Audit Your Portal
Once you’ve realized your HubSpot portal could use some cleanup, don’t worry. Marketing is a hectic job that involves many hats, and sometimes things fall to the wayside. Understanding the need for, and then implementing, a HubSpot cleanup is something all marketing professionals who utilize the platform should do from time to time. And to be fair, HubSpot houses a lot of information.
So, what does an audit of your portal entail? To kickstart your effort, start by asking yourself these questions:
- What tools are you using? HubSpot is known for it’s easy to use blogging platform, email functionality, and social media. More often than not, people are using those tools within their growth stack. A follow-up question could be: How are you using these tools?
- What tools are you NOT using? This piggybacks on the above question. While most marketing teams use the standard tools, sometimes they miss out on others, like thank you pages and smart CTAs. In fact, last year we audited 14 portals and noted the offerings most overlooked.
- What’s working well and what’s not working well? Looking at your data can highlight what in your inbound strategy is performing and what’s underperforming. It can also illuminate any gaps you may have in your approach. For example, your landing pages could be driving high conversion rates, while the CTAs within your email campaigns are receiving low CTR.
- Are there any outdated items live on your site that should be archived? No one wants to have a content block that features a service you no longer perform, so looking for items like this is necessary.
After you examine your HubSpot account – which generally takes around a week or so – it’s time to begin organizing.
Determine Your Conversion Funnel
If you’ve already mapped your conversion pathways, that’s great. But revisiting them is a good practice to keep your funnels healthy. If you haven’t done so yet, mapping their path from start to finish will only strengthen your marketing skills – and your portal and subsequent lead nurturing!
Now, what does this look like? It starts by defining which of your offers is TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU. For a refresher, these stand for:
Top-of-The-Funnel (content that’s used to attract potential leads)
Middle-of-The-Funnel (content used to qualify an interested lead further)
Bottom-of-The-Funnel (content or methods used to convert an interested lead)
When you can label your offers as TOFU, MOFU, or BOFU, you can start creating a conversion funnel. For example, let’s say you have a short eBook related to your services that someone downloads. What is the next step you would want them to take in their journey? Would it be a case study? And if they read and respond positively to your case study, what do you offer them next to seal the deal? Perhaps a free trial or personalized demo? All of this creates a conversion pathway.
Pro Tip: When it comes to creating and understanding your pathway, have a naming convention in place to stay organized. Using a naming system can help you quickly identify what components are TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU. If you’re unsure how to name your offers, try a simple convention such as: Funnel Stage – Category or Content Type – Offer Title.
Clean Your Database
Perhaps the scariest – but most necessary – step to cleaning your HubSpot accounts is taking a look at your database. Auditing your portal, creating a great conversion pathway, and organizing your offers is excellent but will not be effective if your database is not active. If someone hasn’t interacted with your brand for over two years, they’re distorting your data.
Helpful questions to ask that can help clean your database include:
- Are your contacts up-to-date? As mentioned, it’s a good idea to clear out anyone who hasn’t engaged with your company in a long time.
- Do you have inactive ones? Look and see if any of your contacts have no activity whatsoever. These are also warping your data.
- Are they all filled out with your desired information? For some businesses, having an email and name is fine. Others may want more details like job title, company, and more. You may need to adjust your forms if you find you don't have the data you need.
- Are there any competitors hiding in your database? Cleaning your database may reveal contacts from your competition who’ve signed up to learn your strategies.
Segment Your Contacts
Your marketing strategy is dependent on sending the right content to the correct contact at an appropriate time. You don’t want to email your entire list with information that’s only relevant to someone who’s primed to buy. Therefore, it’s only natural to segment your contacts after cleaning your database and organizing your TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU offers.
With HubSpot’s active list functionality, your contacts will join the correct list whenever they meet the right criteria (set by you). Likewise, they’ll be removed if they no longer meet those conditions. You can also create fixed, or static, lists if you know you need to make follow-ups to specific contacts based on a promotion you’re running.
Look Through Your Offers
After going through these stages, it’s time to fine-tune your offers. That involves, yet again, asking yourself several questions centered around different pieces like your landing pages, emails, forms, CTAs, social media, and workflows.
Landing pages. Are your landing pages using different templates for different stages of the buyer’s journey? Are you A/B testing headlines, copy, and buttons? Have you used thank you pages for further conversion efforts? Are your contacts entered into follow-up nurtures after filling out a landing page?
Emails. Similar to your landing pages, are your email campaigns relevant to your contact’s stage in the buyer’s journey? Do your emails utilize templates and CTAs? Is the content too long? Are you testing your subject lines?
CTAs. Your CTAs live across your content. Are you using smart CTAs that reflect your conversion pathway? Are you A/B testing the language and look of your CTAs? Are you using too many CTAs on your website, blog, landing pages, or other content offers?
Social media. Are you posting every day on your various platforms? Are you using social media to promote your landing pages and blogs? Do you interact with your users and display authenticity? Do you use HubSpot’s social media calendar to stay organized?
Workflows. Are your workflows moving smoothly? Can you locate any bottlenecks that may disrupt your lead nurturing? Do the steps make sense? Do emails need to be rewritten?
Celebrate Your Hard Work
After going through all of the above efforts, you need to create goals for your marketing team based on your work. This can include objectives like increasing your views to your blog or landing pages. Or, you may want to improve your email’s click through and open rates. Whatever it is, record it somewhere for your team to see and track. Because then you can begin using HubSpot’s robust reporting and performance tools to follow-up and see your performance.
Need help cleaning?
We know that organizing a messy HubSpot portal is easier said than done. Even with our tips and guidelines, it can be overwhelming. But you’re in luck. At LyntonWeb, we’ve seen our fair share of HubSpot portals, so we know proper HubSpot hygiene. To get help cleaning your account, schedule an audit with us today.
