Smart Marketing Blog

Best Practices in Using HubSpot for Sales and Marketing Alignment

In my previous role as the marketing manager for an engineering firm, I worked with TREW on a company rebranding, which included a new website that used HubSpot as both its marketing automation tool and its content management system (CMS). To get better acquainted with the tool, I attended one of HubSpot’s in-person training sessions. For the first three days of the classroom training, I learned how to use the tools in HubSpot’s Marketing Pro subscription. On the fourth day, I was joined by one of our vice presidents of sales for a Sales and Marketing Alignment training.

Engage More, Stand Out with Sales Videos

Video is an interesting, memorable and inexpensive way for salespeople to personalize and humanize their messages, particularly for companies conducting some or all of their sales processes by phone or online. It can also have a profound effect on your connect success rate. One study I ran across found a 5X increase in email open rate and 8X increase in click-through rate for companies that incorporated videos into their sales processes.

What is a Lead Conversion Funnel?

  To understand what a lead conversion funnel is, you should know what a regular ol’ funnel is. According to “The Google”… So for our purposes, a Lead Conversion Funnel at the most basic level is a visualization of how prospects or leads interact with your company from an unknown website visitor to a new, first-time customer. The only difference with a Lead Conversion Funnel and your run of the mill kitchen funnel is that 100% of the contents poured in do not come out as customers.  This is where the conversion portion comes into play. There are imaginary holes in your funnel where leads leak out for various reasons, including disqualification, lack of interest, unsubscribes etc. In order to predict this loss with a reasonable amount of certainty, you use conversion rates to calculate the various lead stages. Each company’s conversion rates will vary but typically are fairly consistent from industry to industry.

What Keeps the VP of Sales and Marketing Up at Night?

Prospecting is one of the most difficult parts of the sales process. Why? The act of prospecting is typically interruptive, performed at the salesperson's convenience rather than the prospects, and too often it occurs too early in the buyers journey. All of this leads to frustration and inefficiency for the salesperson, and a turn-off for the potential buyer.

Think Beyond the Funnel & Leverage the Flywheel

For years, sales and marketing teams have focused their time and efforts around a funnel that focuses on attracting prospects at the top and converting them through various phases until they become an output at the bottom.   

3 Steps to Calculate Your Leads-to-Revenue Ratio

Do you want to know how many web visits and leads you need to meet your revenue goals? Follow these three steps to create the math model for your lead generation strategy.

Stop Interrupting and Selling, Start Educating and Supporting

Marketing and selling in the B2B engineering and technical space used to require exhibiting at trade shows and placing print ads in trade journals or technical publications. But engineers and technical buyers now prefer to start their product or service evaluation online instead of at events as they did in the past. More and more, these buyers want to be educated vs. sold to in the traditional sense. 

Lots of Qualified Leads, Now What

A recent customer conversation epitomized the power (and potential pitfall) of effective inbound marketing. One of the more marketing-savvy business owners I contacted said that he only reaches out to customers that “raise their hand.” This is certainly the ideal state - customers telling you they are interested in your products and services instead of the other way around. Besides, cold calling isn't fun and can be especially ineffective when your sales model requires highly technical engineers and scientists to sell sophisticated solutions to other highly technical engineers and scientists.

Video: Basics of Lead Scoring

As your inbound marketing efforts gain traction and you start to capture a steady stream of leads, you will likely encounter new issues. The surplus leads may bottleneck in the marketing > sales lead handoff, aging while waiting for review and follow up, or a drop in sales productivity as your high-value resources spend too much time evaluating leads instead of working qualified prospects. At the same time, you have a significant opportunity to monitor signs that a potential qualified buyer is ready to engage with sales.

5 Marketing Activities for Trade Show Success

Face-to-face marketing such as trade shows and seminars are a powerful way to personify your brand, capture leads, and grow customer excitement and loyalty. But trade shows can be quite expensive, so it's critical you have a clear strategy and well-defined objectives to measure your return on investment.