How to get marketing ROI with Hubspot

You might have been using HubSpot for a few months now and you’re not sure if it’s really working in terms of ROI. Unfortunately, when you’re in this position, it can be easy to get frustrated and give up altogether. You might even be considering whether you should stay with HubSpot, or start looking for another platform. But before you do, read on.

The best news is that when using HubSpot, pretty much everything can be measured. From the top of the funnel (TOFU) to bottom of the funnel (BOFU), you can measure every piece of marketing that you do. That’s the great thing about marketing today. 5 years ago, if you stuck a radio advert out there - how would you know if it really worked? You wouldn’t, and that’s the mindset that needs to change. It’s no longer about pushing content out the door and hoping it brings in leads; it’s about using the data to support your strategy for increased ROI. Using inbound marketing, companies are 3 times more likely to see a higher ROI than through outbound marketing, with over 50% more leads going into the sales funnel.

STEPS TO BUILD ROI WITH HUBSPOT

These are the 8 key tools we use in order to achieve sustainable ROI growth;

Metrics: ROI is different for each company, so before anything you must review the metrics to establish what does ROI look like for your company. There are two ways to measure your ROI:

1. Simple ROI: Say your sales grew by $500,000 and the HubSpot platform spend and campaign assets equaled $50,000, you would therefore have an ROI of 900%. Here’s the metric to apply for that:
   
   (Sales Growth - Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost = ROI

2. Campaign attributed ROI: Your total month sales growth is attributed to the campaigns within HubSpot. For HubSpot marketing ROI to have meaning, it should be compared with the activity you were doing prior to using the platform. And, here’s the metric to apply
   
   (Sales Growth - Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost - Average Organic Sales Growth = ROI

Using the campaign application in HubSpot gives a clear insight into your metrics and ROI. 

Strategy: Only 27% of B2C marketers have a documented marketing strategy. HubSpot is a scalable tool, its diversity ensures you will succeed with your strategy. By jumping in straight away without a strategy, despite your best intentions, you are setting yourself up to fail. The platform provides you with plenty of information; videos, blogs and support to create your marketing strategy. HubSpot partnered agencies (like BrandManager) exist to give you a clearer insight into your goals and the strategy to reach them. 50% of B2C marketers have a strategy, but they don’t document it, which basically means it doesn’t exist.

Your strategy needs to account for:

• SEO
• Blogging
• Website
• Social
• Ads
• CTAs
• Landing Pages
• Forms
• Email
• Marketing Automation
• Contacts
• Lead Scoring
• HubSpot Connect Integration
• Smart Content
• Transactional Email
• Reporting and Analytics

I’m not going to lie, by taking everything into account for strategy, you will need to apply a lot of overtime to get it done. If you’re overwhelmed by the amount of work there is, it’s always good to start with the basics for HubSpot on-boarding, or contacting a HubSpot partner for guidance. 

A/B Testing: A/B testing is part of the strategy too, however it’s important to highlight it specifically in relation to getting a higher ROI with HubSpot because you can see A/B testing to discover what brings you closer to your goals and what doesn’t. Recurring campaigns are the easiest to plan and test for, though they do take a lot of effort to map out and see results for. Without A/B testing, you may never know that a certain headline is more effective than another and in the grand scheme of getting a higher ROI, that could be the crux of your issues. 

Social: HubSpot gives you the ability post quickly and easily across multiple platforms and channels with only a few clicks and then track your ROI. Having your metrics in mind, you can identify which platforms and channels drive leads and more importantly, which don’t. For those that don’t drive leads, you have the power to either stop using that channel, or apply A/B testing to see if you can alter the data positively to reach the target ROI.

Lists: Smart lists allow you to continuously segment your lead and customer database to leverage content automation. This means you can assess who fits where in the sales funnel and what automated experience you have aligned with that stage for your customer to receive the most relevant information. 

Smart content: When used in pages and emails, smart content takes a website that has to cater to your lowest common denominator and makes it a one-to-one experience for visitors. This reduces the one-on-one time you have to spend with leads and customers.

Workflows: The automation engine behind HubSpot that manages contacts and automated lead nurturing from a visitor to a qualified lead is scalable. Again, this helps reduce the man hours required to manage a database effectively and can be set up to create an individual narrative for each lead.

SEO: 89% of online consumers use search engines when making a purchase decision. HubSpot includes powerful keyword and page optimisation tools for everything you post on your site: from landing pages and website pages to blogs and emails. These tools allow you to get the fundamentals right for SEO without the need for a third party who may use a black-hat SEO technique, ultimately damaging your search rankings.

There are many more ways to generate ROI within HubSpot, however these are the tried and tested methods that we have used to see results for companies that we’ve partnered with.

If you feel like you're strategy needs a little revamp to boost your RIO, book a consultation with the Salted Stone team to find out where you can improve.