How HubSpot Can Transform Your Manufacturing Business

CRM (customer relationship management) platforms like HubSpot have changed the way manufacturers use technology to interact with customers, build meaningful and lasting relationships, manage operations, and improve employee productivity.

The CRM marketplace is crowded but there are several standouts that are ideal for both growing, mid-market and enterprise level organizations. Salesforce has long reigned supreme at providing Enterprise level solutions however HubSpot has continued to dominate the startup and mid-market segments while moving up market to attract enterprise level organizations. In fact, HubSpot was recently rated as the #1 CRM by G2 Crowd For manufacturers struggling with a fragmented process, HubSpot can help organizations streamline business operations, centralize information, and create a seamless customer journey.

Digital Transformation

If you’re not interacting with your customers online, you’re falling behind. In the past, traditional marketing strategies were predominant. Today those traditional marketing generate 50% fewer interactions with customers than digital marketing.

To increase customers that bring lifetime value and allow you to offer more value to your customers in less time, organizations must go through a digital transformation.

A digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how a business operates and delivers value to customers.

How HubSpot Can Transform Your Business

HubSpot’s interface offers comprehensive features and functionality across several business Hubs. These hubs include:

• Sales Hub – Helps sales teams track and manage opportunities.
• Marketing Hub – Helps marketing and sales teams engage prospects and customers through the entire customer lifecycle.
• Service Hub – Helps customer success teams proactively address customer needs and wants.
• Operations Hub – Helps operations teams streamline communication, processes and offer full visibility on business functions.
• CMS Hub – Helps you see who is engaging with your website and create rich website experiences for your customers

HubSpot allows you to integrate all your business operations into one central ecosystem where all departments communicate and track customers across their journey.

Brand Awareness: Brand awareness refers to the familiarity of consumers with a particular product or service. Why is building brand awareness important even after a sale? Because up to 95% of customers are not in the market for any goods and services at any one time. Only 5% of B2B buyers are in-market to buy right now! That means 95% of the buyers that you reach are out-of-market and will not buy for months or even years. Creating brand awareness increases the probability that your business will come to mind in different buying situations. And according to small business trends, these types of repeat customers spend 33 percent more than new customers.

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub and CMS Hub help increase brand awareness through:

• Social Media Automation
• Social Listening and Reputation Management
• SEO Optimized Blog Interface
• Integration with Major Digital Advertising Platforms (Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)
• Rich Analytics on Ad Campaign Performance
• Robust App Marketplace with over 2,000 out of the box app integrations.

Lead Generation: One advantage to HubSpot is of the success of the Inbound methodology for growing organizations. Inbound marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. HubSpot lead generation tools include landing pages with customized articles, videos, and contact forms that offer your ideal customers premium content. Some examples of how businesses can stimulate lead generation using HubSpot’s marketing Hub include:

• Blogging with SEO optimization tools built into the platform
• Custom online product configurators
• Pricing calculators
• Product selection quizzes
• Digital Line Cards to introduce products and services
• Request for Quote Forms Custom landing pages used for social media, pay per click and other digital advertising campaigns
• Event registration pages for webinars, in person meetings, and other live or remote events and workshops

Lead Nurture: As lead generation attempts become successful, the immediate nurture process that occurs plays a pivotal role in conversion. A quick response increases the likelihood of that lead entering your company’s sales process.

A study by MIT found that responding to a lead in 5 minutes, rather than 30 minutes, will increase that probability by a factor of 21. But according to the Harvard Business Review, only 26% of companies respond within five minutes of an inquiry.

With HubSpot, a business can reduce response time through workflows that automatically distribute a follow-up email as soon as a lead requests information. Additional HubSpot lead nurture tools include:

• Workflows that include emails or other relevant content to further address a lead’s needs and pain points
• Automated internal tasks, deal progression, and customer communication by sending customers the right information at the right time in their journey.
• Enrollment in follow up campaigns based on unique customer behavior or attributes such as engagement, location, industry, job function and more.

Customer Retention: It’s important to continuously engage your customer with content that is important to them after a sale. By creating that value, you generate an environment that enables product adoption and brand awareness.

• Product Adoption: This is the process of users becoming aware of a product, understanding it's value, and beginning to use it. Reaching this stage is important because when users fully adopt your product or services, they become repeat customers. You achieve higher retention and lower churn. All of which translates to consistent revenue over a longer period.

Customer retention marketing tools you can utilize in HubSpot include:

• Automated order acknowledgement, sales order tracking and fulfillment notifications, and order status or service delivery updates which help to validate a buyer’s decision and purchase
• Custom landing pages with how-to videos and guides that create momentum for product adoption
• Automated tracking emails that reduce administrative tasks
• Customer survey and referral requests which can increase brand awareness and trust
• Curated Product Emails
• Customer list segmentation for extremely personalized customer communications

Customer playbooks that allow you to make sure critical details unique to each customer are documented and tracked when it comes time to install, ship or deliver your product or service.

How Manufacturing Teams Can Benefit From HubSpot

To prove successful marketing strategies, leaders need to be able to quantify their return on investment. When customer information lives across multiple databases, it’s tough for leaders to measure attribution of marketing campaigns. HubSpot’s reporting features offers management teams insight into every area of their organization’s efforts and can help them identify their teams’ active needs or issues. HubSpot’s reports include:

• Contact Analytics: See more information on your contacts like country, lifecycle stage, and how they found your website
• Traffic Analytics: Track sources, pages, and campaigns that are driving traffic to your website
• Campaign Analytics: See how your marketing efforts are impacting your business. Track performance over time.
• Sales Funnel Reports – Track how prospects and customers are moving through your funnel to identify weak spots.
• Revenue Attribution – Identify which marketing assets and campaigns are driving revenue to the business so you can double down on what’s working
• Sales performance – See how your sales team is performing individually and as a whole
• Understand which lead sources are more likely to convert to opportunities
• Ad Performance – Measure how well your ads campaigns are performing

The Value of an Integrated Customer Management System

Imagine all contacts, sales history, marketing content, website, operations processes, automation, and analytics living in one place. A CRM like HubSpot allows companies to achieve this integration. With HubSpot’s integrated technology stack, businesses can have one central source of truth and reap the value of an integrated system.

Benefits of an Integrated System

• Create processes that can be repeatable and scalable
• Faster communication with internal team and external customers
• Accuracy in communication so critical details are not missed along the way
• Creates data that can drive more a customized experience so you can connect with your customers on a deeper level
• Allows you to identify your organizations weaknesses and strengths
• Aggregated access and a complete overview of marketing campaigns
• Overall improvements to marketing operations
• Greater visibility into the performance of every department

Summary

Integrating a CRM platform and digital technology into everyday business practices will drive a more customized experience, help you build better connections with customers, and differentiate your products and services business among competitors. With HubSpot you have a blank canvas that you can customize to your specific processes.

To learn more about HubSpot and how it can transform your business, give Donnelly Marketing Group a call at 888-964-1577 or email info@donnellymgroup.com