CRM (Customer Relationship Management) as a concept came into being to enable organizations to track interactions and developments with leads (and prospects) and existing customers. Salespersons visit leads daily, try to convert them to their products or services, and visit existing customers to cross- and up-sell to enhance their business volume. Acquiring a business deal is easier for existing customers, and it has been estimated that it costs five times less to conduct business with existing customers than new ones. Therefore, tracking interactions with existing customers when the salesman visits them is as important, if not more.
In today’s world, Marketing has assumed various forms. Digital Marketing through social media, writing blogs, sending WhatsApp messages and emails, popups on Websites, direct calling, motivating influencers to talk about your product or service, traditional print, and electronic media advertisements, billboards, sponsoring events, etc., are all employed to varying degrees.
Again, the nature of marketing in B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) interactions are different. The latter includes Retail, Real Estate, e-commerce, etc. In contrast, the former typically includes all Consumer Goods (both FMCG and Durables) manufacturers selling through brick-and-mortar channels and industrial products. Consumer Goods are considered B2B because they make their way to the ultimate consumer through intermediaries like distributors and retailers. The challenge lies in integrating all the channels and extracting useful information; that is where CRM and Marketing Software step in. HubSpot is a cloud-based CRM and Marketing platform that not only assists in tracking leads but also assists in Marketing through various channels and analyses the data to generate actionable information. It is meant for companies of all sizes, including SMEs.
Table of Contents
The Components of Hubspot
HubSpot Marketing Hub
Features Include:
- SEO tips – how to drive traffic to your website by adding the right keywords and from the appropriate components of Social Media, like Facebook and Instagram.
- Creating the right look and feel for your Web Page.
- Lead generation by identifying the individuals amenable to your products or services by analyzing their behavior on your website or their interactions on social media.
- Reporting and Analytics (described below)
HubSpot Sales Hub
- Engage leads and customers through Chat
- Generate emails or direct calls
- Tracking interaction with leads to identify best performers among sales reps in converting prospects to customers.
HubSpot Service Hub
- Tracking customer calls.
- Analysing Customer Executive efficiency by analyzing recorded versions of conversations
- Measuring Customer Satisfaction Scores
- Employ automated chatbots.
What does HubSpot do?
HubSpot is a CRM/Marketing Software that enables monitoring outbound and inbound leads, tracking pipeline sales, contact management, email campaigning, and other marketing channels to track interactions. It also offers various reporting tools to analyze the data collected per the business user’s requirements. It does not just engage with prospective customers but also generates automated marketing inputs like emails and messages to try and convert them. For existing customers, it offers information on new products and services.
It helps design SEO-optimized blog posts by suggesting the keywords mainly used by customers. It enables the management of all Social Media accounts of a customer from one place. It organizes all your marketing data, tools, and campaigns logically — enabling Marketing and Sales to speak in one voice.
It helps in identifying the same customer irrespective of the channel. For example, a customer with the mobile number 9971004583 and the email ID upalcy@gmail.com needs to be recognized as a singular entity if it is the same customer.
Its campaign management tools ensure that the same message is conveyed to the customer to avoid confusion in his mind if conflicting information emanates from different channels. I still remember an edible oil company stressing its fat-free composition in a WhatsApp message and its contribution to fizz and taste in another. The two were conflicted with each other.
Hubspot and Inbound Marketing
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is aimed at the customer trying to solve his problems, thus binding him to your company. It discovers the customer’s pain points and conveys to him how your product can somewhat mitigate those issues. It has its reflections in SEO or Search Engine Optimization. The pain points the customer is searching for are incorporated in the blog or your website and defined as keywords. It also helps tailor Email or message headings or content to draw his attraction. He will look at you as a guide and a mentor instead of a person out to do commerce at his cost. “If it results in a sales deal, so be it. If not, I have nothing to lose. I have gained a friend,” should be the philosophy.
For example, a distributor of consumer goods may need help with the best manner to approach the retailer or a retailer on the message to be conveyed to the ultimate consumer. A consumer of books on a website may be looking for a book that solves his gardening problems. A traveling salesperson may face a problem: after using his GPS for 3 hours, his battery gives way and is a pain to recharge. As an electronics dealer, you should recommend a high amps power pack for him.
Blogs, Videos, Web Designs, and email campaigns need to be focused on this aspect if you decide to follow an Inbound Marketing philosophy.
Hubspot Flywheel is the Inbound Methodology adopted by Hubspot
Flywheel provides a pathway to attract the customer through 3 phases – Attract, Engage, and Delight. While Marketing will generate blogs, do event marketing, and publish paid ads to generate value for the customer, the sales team would contribute through social selling, like contributing to a social or an environmental cause with the potential of attracting customers to your organization. The Customer Service Team will contribute to the customer’s ease of doing business while communicating and designing solutions for him interactively.
Reports available on Hubspot
- Relevant to Digital Marketing Traffic Analysis: The traffic to your website may be of various kinds. A user may type in your URL directly on the browser, or he may click on a link in another website or reach your website through Google search. The IP addresses can help identify the user’s location – at least roughly. You will thus be able to analyze which website offers the maximum leads to you.
- Email Dropouts: When an Email is sent to an ID, the owner may not click on the link or, worse, may block the sender. Email dropouts as a ratio of the total number of emails sent thus enable us to derive the efficiency of email marketing vis-à-vis other channels, which can be further analyzed by comparing it with other channels like Google Search or social media.
- Which Pages on the Website generated the maximum conversion to Sales? A particular page may attract users to your products and business, and it needs to be analyzed so that the URL of that page can be sent through emails, at least for a while.
- Articles contributing to the maximum sales of All Direct Marketing should highlight such articles for some time. Trends are mostly seasonal, so the campaign should continue till the articles in question display decreasing trend and some other article is on the ascendancy.
Other equally valuable reports could be categorized as follows:
- Product-wise analysis of Sales includes capturing seasonal trends. Region-wise and Period-wise analysis also helps in knowing where to focus the sales personnel and during which months.
- Every business has its KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. It could be the attainment of a sales target, conversion/win rate (percentage of leads converted to customers), average deal size, revenue attained, channel-wise sales and conversions, etc. These could be further broken up at the level of the salesman or locality or State as well as on demography.
Hubspot provides all the above and allows you to customize your formats and create a dashboard, typically a graphical representation of these metrics.
How Does Hubspot Help Small Businesses?
It offers a free CRM to small businesses, which helps them during the startup years. Features of Free CRM include Live Chat, templates to generate landing pages, reporting dashboard with three dashboards and ten reports per dashboard, integration with Facebook Messenger, the ability to send simple messages, using email templates and tracking Email replies, basic bots, maintaining up to 10 lakh customer contacts, meeting schedules, Deal pipelines, etc. Some more features may be added by spending $ 67 $ per month. However, using the complete range of features is costly.
Conclusion
Hubspot’s range of features is versatile and covers the gamut of CRM and Marketing. It is conducive for Digital Marketing, tracking leads, and sending out emails to contacts. Its range of reports and ability to customize is noteworthy.
So is its concept of Inbound Marketing – a new concept that is increasingly becoming important.
