So you’ve purchased HubSpot Marketing Hub – now what? It’s time to start setting up all of your new tools. There are so many features included in all levels of the Marketing Hub and each one will help benefit your organization in a different way. But if you don’t have a HubSpot expert working in your business, it can be overwhelming to try implementing everything at once. It’s best practice to start with the most critical tools and features from there.
Of course, all the basic set-up for brand standards is important, and you can find that under Settings, but this post is going to focus on the tools that you’ll actually be using on a daily basis. Not sure what those are? Don’t worry – we’ve got them all listed here. Keep reading for a quick guide on setting up your Marketing Hub.
The First 5 Tools to Set Up During HubSpot Marketing Hub Enablement
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Forms
The first thing you’re going to want to set up once you get the HubSpot Marketing portal is your forms. Forms are like the backbone of any lead nurturing program – whether you’re running it in HubSpot or not.
The most important part about forms is that they allow you to capture all of the new leads/prospects who are interested in communicating with you or learning more about your organization.
In your HubSpot Dashboard Jump in Marketing > Lead Capture > Forms to find your forms. From there, you can hit Create a Form and choose whether you want to make a regular form or a pop-up. You can also choose to start from scratch or use a template as a starting point.
Then, you can choose all your options for follow-up, notifications, personalization and more right on the forms dashboard. Most importantly, you can now use your form to:
- Create Lists
- Trigger Workflows
- Send Emails (both automated and regular)
- Create Tasks for the Sales Team
Now you're ready to start capturing leads in your HubSpot marketing dashboard. So what comes next?
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Emails
Emails are probably the second most critical feature you’ll want to set up in your HubSpot Marketing dashboard. Since they’re included in the Free software now, everyone can send emails through HubSpot, no matter what your license.
Why is it so important to set up your emails right away? Well, despite it being one of the oldest marketing techniques in the book, email is still one of the most successful marketing strategies when it comes to conversion rates.
It’s especially effective for upselling and cross-selling to your existing customer database (and for getting that final conversion from your contacts who are interested but are not yet customers). So, if you’re new to HubSpot and looking for some “quick wins” sending out a great email is definitely the way to go.
Related: The Top 3 Emails You Need to Improve Conversion Rates
Setting up Emails in HubSpot is fairly simple. Start by finding your email dashboard under Marketing > Email, where you’ll see the 3 different types: regular, automated, and blog/RSS. Regular emails are for sending one-time, automated are for using in workflows, and RSS are for sending newsletters with your most-recent blog posts automatically pulled into the email.
You can also choose to design emails the templated way or to use the drag and drop. If you’re new to HubSpot, we highly recommend drag and drop, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience in the Design Manager or in template design overall.
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Landing Pages
Now that you have your form created and you have an email to send people encouraging them to fill in that form, you need a page to put your form on. Landing pages are the best way to do this.
Of course, you could create a whole new website page every time you have a new campaign or offer – but depending on your software this can be time consuming. Not to mention tracking down metrics for your page and form separately can also be a challenge. Instead, HubSpot landing pages let you build, track, and test all in one place.
To build your first landing page, jump into Marketing > Website > Landing Pages. From there, you can select Create a Landing page. Choose one of the templates you already have or, in the top left, switch over to Asset Marketplace to download a new one.
From the marketplace, you can download pre-made templates so if you're not comfortable with design manager, you can just plug your content, forms, and images in to the pre-built sections.
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Social Media
Chances are your brand has multiple different social media accounts from Facebook to LinkedIn to Twitter and more. So it might be time-consuming and inefficient to manage each one by logging in separately.
If you’re planning on having any kind of social media strategy, an important part of your HubSpot marketing enablement will be to get your social accounts linked right away. Then from Marketing > Social you can publish, monitor, and report on your social posts.
Plus, in Settings > Marketing > Social you can set up blog autopublish, which means that every time you post a blog (something that didn’t quite make this list, but is also a great HubSpot tool to set up early on) it will auto-publish to your social media. That’s one less post for you to make!
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Ads
Ads are a huge part of any marketing campaign – so once you have all your forms, emails, landing pages, and social posts ready to go for your first campaign you’ll want to make sure you set up your HubSpot Ads dashboard too.
Just like social media, you probably have a bunch of different ad accounts for your company and it can be tough to monitor and track them all separately. Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Facebook Ads are the most common and thankfully, all of these can link right into your HubSpot marketing platform.
From Marketing > Ads you can run ad campaigns, target specific audiences through website re-targeting, and analyze the success of all your ads. You’ll also be able to see the number of contacts, deals, and estimated ROI of your ad campaigns.
Other HubSpot Tools to Implement ASAP
Once you’ve got your top 5 HubSpot marketing tools set up and working, there’s a bunch more you’ll want to start setting up next. Here’s just a quick peek at what your next priorities should be:
- Creating a blog
- Setting up workflows to automate emails
- Customizing some dashboards with your most important analytics
- Creating a chat bot to capture leads on your site
Feeling a little overwhelmed by all the stuff there is to do when it comes to HubSpot marketing enablement? Don’t worry – that’s what implementation partners are for!
Did you know that Flawless Inbound is Canada’s only certified Advanced Implementation Partner? That means we’re super-qualified to help you implement not just your Marketing Hub but Sales and Services if you need that too. Get in touch right here to let us know if you need some help (or just some advice).