“The hurt caused to companies (of any size) by the technology silos between marketing and sales departments will force a fundamental relook at how they deploy these technologies. Marketing & sales can no longer afford to be separated technologically or strategically – bridging the age-old gap has to happen now to ensure continued revenue growth.”
Satya Krishnaswamy, Head of Personalization, Adobe
If you believe the gap between Sales and Marketing functions in the B2B space is going to continue to close in the 2020s, look no further than the technology. While we can outline the many reasons sales and marketing departments have been at odds over the years, it’s safe to say there’s never been a time when getting these two on the same page has been easier.
For companies that use HubSpot, multiply that last sentence by 10x.
Traditionally, HubSpot has marketed itself as a platform for inbound marketing. They created the category “inbound marketing,” and built the technology to support that function to great success in the mid-2000s and early 2010s. But the true strength of the platform has shifted.
Inbound used to promote itself through an “if you blog it, they will come” lens. Create compelling content, publish it on your blog, schedule it on your social media channels, and watch as your inbox gets flooded with leads! That part of inbound has and always will be a myth. But the part of inbound that DOES work is utilizing the content you’re creating in all parts of the customer lifecycle to help grow the company.
Nowadays, HubSpot’s strength is that it allows sales teams to see how effective its marketing team is performing for each contact, understand what the prospect is actually interested in, and change the conversation accordingly. Essentially, this is the technology answer to changing this…
to this…
Somehow, the company that railed against sales teams and outbound tactics has built the perfect tool for them to gather the intelligence they need to succeed at their job.
In 2014, HubSpot added a CRM. Since then, it has added a fully flourished Sales Hub with tools for outreach, lead nurturing, pipeline segmentation, and so much more. Its technology essentially “spies” on any prospect who has given you their information (whether through one of your website forms, or via email) and you can track, among others, every email they open, blog post they read, and page on your website they visit.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Let’s look at how each operates:
On the left, you see how Sales teams generally Attract, Connect, Close, and Delight their prospects and customers. On the right, you see the same for marketing.
Let’s look at how Marketing + Sales teams use HubSpot at each step.
For sales, it’s never been easier to automate outreach than it is with HubSpot. If you have a prospect list you built through LinkedIn or other means, you can put prospects into an automated sequence with ease.
With Marketing, all of your Google Ad tracking is seamlessly integrated into HubSpot, and your social media posts can be published directly through the platform.
For salespeople, connecting generally occurs during conversation and opens up an opportunity to educate someone on what it is they do. Creating personalized content through templated landing pages and emails is simple and intuitive with HubSpot. When you connect HubSpot forms, any lead generated becomes automatically entered into your CRM and as mentioned above, you will now be able to watch their every move 😉
The process from Connect to Close varies in length and difficulty for companies. But for Sales and Marketing teams looking to come together, this is where the tool plays nicely.
With the email integrations, workflows can be automated based on prospect behavior. Not returning an email? Let’s send Prospect A into Workflow A and remind them 3 days from now. Did they visit our website? Let’s send Prospect B into Workflow B and provide more educational content based on which page they came to.
Sales teams can use email templates based on situations, have meetings scheduled from their calendars, enroll prospects in a series of highly personalized email sequences, and find relevant files easily as they try to close their prospect into a customer.
There are two types of customer delight – educational and experiential. HubSpot makes the educational part of delighting a customer – teaching them the latest and greatest – incredibly easy and relevant.
Their SEO tool helps you research topics that people are showing interest in, and offer some derivatives as well, enabling you to create blog content relevant to your audience. As mentioned earlier, you can schedule your social media posts straight from their publishing tool. As your contacts start interacting with your content, HubSpot allows you to track this behavior, so you can gain the intel needed to write the perfect follow-up to topics.
But the biggest benefit? Everybody’s playing in the same sandbox!
Too often, the divide between marketing and sales is how they are siloed. With HubSpot, each department has access to the same files, can monitor where prospects are in the customer lifecycle and make smart decisions accordingly, and run reports that show the effectiveness of their efforts.
The structural benefits of having the Sales Hub where one department lives each day integrated with the Marketing Hub, where the other department lives, allows all parties to row the boat in the same direction, coming together to help grow your company.