Whether you are a marketing professional or a business executive, you've probably heard some buzz around marketing automation software. If you work with us here at TMC Digital Media, you have heard about HubSpot (and may even be using it already). Inbound Marketing is all about quality lead generation that can be easily passed along to the sales team, and automation software makes a difference.  

1) BUYER PERSONAS

Assuming you have been taking the time to map out on paper what your ideal customers look like, where they go for information, and what challenges they face - what do you do with them now?  

Buyer personas helps marketers create the ideal content strategy and campaigns to drive your leads through the buyer's journey. HubSpot allows a marketer to store, reference, and ask new visitors what kind of buyer persona they are. Once we know a visitor/lead's buyer persona, we can nurture them down the right content path to become a sales qualified lead - automatically. 

You've spent all of that quality time identifying your ideal customers. Shouldn't they be leveraged in the most optimal way? Haven't done this yet? Learn more here with this free buyer persona guide.

2) KEYWORDS

Keyword research is essential to getting found on the web. Once you have identified hundreds (if not thousands) of keywords, how do you plan on determining how your content ranks? How do you optimize your blog posts, landing pages, and key website pages? 

HubSpot's Keyword Tool provides direct insight as to how well your content is ranking. It also helps marketers determine on which keywords to focus. 

Do you know which keywords you rank best for? How are you maximizing your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

3) TRACKING MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

Think blogs, landing pages, thank you pages, forms, emails, social media posts, and traditional print. How do we track all of these individual tools and tie it all back to a single campaign to measure results?  

Set up and track campaigns in HubSpot. Determine whether a print ad is outperforming a digital ad by viewing the amount of visits, conversions, and net new leads.

Need to determine which blog post or email is performing better than the others? Analyze the most important data for your campaign to determine what's working and where to double-down.

How are you tracking your marketing campaign results today?   

4) COLLECTION OF SALES & MARKETING INTEL

As your website visitors engage with you online by self-identifying and filling out forms, HubSpot collects this intel in specific fields. Having all of this marketing and sales intel available allows marketers to target specific lists of current and future customers with the most relevant additional content.  Remember, the prospect/customer has all the power.  With one click, they can unsubscribe from your list and they'll never hear from you again. 

Do you know who is on your website and what content they are interested in?

5) PERSONALIZATION

Marketing to your buyer personas is all about trust - turning strangers into visitors and visitors into leads.  

Your valuable content is generating new visitors. Next, we have to get that visitor back to your website to provide them with another valuable piece of content. One way to get them back is by sending them a targeted, personalized email.  

Using HubSpot Smart Forms, content and workflows, marketers can determine the visitor's buyer persona, their current challenge, and where they are in the buyer's journey since this intel is collected on the backend. Take email for example. A follow up email using their email and company name can be sent to the contact thanking them for reading a particular post or downloading a particular offer, and guide them to the next article (i.e. case study, success story). Doing so only increases the chances for this email to be read and action to be taken.

Are you personlizing your emails and content to your current and future customers?    

6) GET THE MOST OUT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media management can be time consuming. A marketing manager has to schedule daily posts (sometimes up to 10+ times on Twitter), reply to followers, listen to what's going on in your own social world, and drive leads from your social followers.  

HubSpot provides marketers (and sales/executives) a platform to be able to schedule and manage posts, even directly from your Chrome browser. You can set up keywords to follow and track activity across 'the big 4' to ensure a prompt reply. Most important, you can track how many visitors, leads, and customers you acquire from your social media efforts.

What social media tools is your company using? And how much are you spending on them?

7) SALES RECEIVES SALES QUALIFIED LEADS (ONLY)

It's marketing's job to pass the most qualfied sales leads to your sales team, right? Assuming your company has defined what a sales qualified lead is, HubSpot has the ability to track the Lifecycle Stages of the lead process.  

Once a lead is labled an SQL, it is ready to be shared with sales. All of the visitor's website/content history collected over time is then shared with sales as well. Marketers can set up HubSpot to automatically label leads as SQLs based on various triggers like answering 'yes' to the question, "Are you ready to speak with your local sales rep?"

Is your marketing team sending the most qualified leads to sales?

8) CLOSING THE LOOP/MEASURING ROI

One of the biggest challenges for any manufacturer is measuring its return on investment of marketing campaigns. Think about all the money spent on tradeshows, the hundred of thousands of dollars because you HAVE to be there. How much of your marketing budget is allocated to print campaigns? How much are you spending on blogging, social media, email marketing, and other inbound marketing methods?

Now ask the question, "Am I able to determine how many customers we have closed (that have bought our product/service) because of tradeshows, print, inbound, and other marketing dollars spent?"

The HubSpot platform allows marketers and executives to track marketing campaigns and determine exactly how many net new leads and customers you have aquired. Leadership can then determine what campaigns are working better than others, and can adjust their budgets accordingly to meet specific goals.   

Do you know the ROI of all of that money you spend on marketing?

9) SHARED DATA ACROSS ALL BUSINESS UNITS/CRM INTEGRATION

Another equally important challenge for factories is how they will share the marketing, sales, and post-sales data/intel with all of the necessary business units. Does your service team have direct access to customer data? How about your sales person who is about to call an existing client? Do they know of the support issue and whether it was resolved before potentially walking into a fire-storm? How do we keep everyone on the same page?

If you are using the FREE HubSpot CRM, all data seemlessly syncs between the marketing and sales sides. Using Zoho, Salesforce, or other paid CRM systems?  Not to worry. HubSpot integrates with these. 

Oh, and using (or thinking about using) ORGO?  TMC has developed (and continues to develop) a seemless HubSpot to ORGO integration so leads and intel are pushed automatically to ORGO Leads.  

How are you sharing data within your company today?

There is still a lot for marketers, sales, and executives to figure out in order for manufacturers to continue cost-efficient growth. Think of HubSpot as the vehicle that will help get us all there. However, someone has to know how to drive this vehicle, which is why manufacturers are looking to tap into TMC Digital Media's expertise.