There’s no denying Spitfire Inbound loves HubSpot CRM but, so do our clients! See why this CRM stands out above the rest for smarketers.
Inbound marketing was started 14 years ago by HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Singh, and is a relatively new and niche digital marketing technique in South Africa. As MD of Spitfire Inbound, it's been a rewarding and exciting journey introducing our clients to HubSpot and all it has to offer and becoming one of the leading HubSpot partners in the African region.
The HubSpot Customer Relationship Management (CRM) allows marketing, sales and service teams to integrate their efforts with ease. HubSpot is a great tool for facilitating strong smarketing in your business. According to the HubSpot blog, the term "smarketing" refers to alignment between your sales and marketing teams created through frequent and direct communication between the two. Meaghan McCann, Associate Product Manager at HubSpot, says, “Better alignment between your marketing and sales teams can result in an average of 20% annual growth,” and that couldn’t be truer.
A fitting analogy for this would be tandem cycling. If two cyclists were on a tandem and pedalled at 30km/hr, they would have a higher velocity than two cyclists on separate bicycles pedalling at the same rate. This means the cyclists on the tandem would get to the destination more quickly than the others, with the same amount of effort. According to the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Tandems have 50% less wind resistance than two single bicycles. They also use 20% less power per rider than two separate cyclists when cycling at the same velocity. The HubSpot CRM is the tandem all marketing and sales teams need. When aligned, marketing and sales efforts hold a higher ROI. A good CRM implementation should provide robust insights for the marketing and sales team to help improve products and communications to customers.
Not all CRMs allow you to see the entire buyer’s journey the way the HubSpot CRM does. The HubSpot CRM allows you to see the very first point of contact a lead made with your business. This means that marketing and sales efforts are informed with the correct data. This becomes especially relevant when combined with the Hubspot marketing tools.
Why do salespeople love the HubSpot CRM
The CRM has been designed with the user in mind, the sales person is able to quickly incorporate the system to their process so adoption is fast and intuitive. Most CRM’s are designed for reporting and tracking purposes, Hubspot designed their CRM to focus on sales team productivity first. Reporting is important but not if it gets in the way of sales. Ultimately marketing is all about driving more sales and what I love most about the HubSpot CRM is that it tracks sales back to marketing and sales efforts.
Our Commercial Director, Trevor van Rensburg, has had a lot of experience with an array of CRMs and says, “The other CRMs I've had experience with only created more work for myself and my teams. They weren’t as intuitive and seamless to implement as HubSpot . Being able to update almost everything in this CRM has been a great time-saver.”
What should marketers be looking at specifically
Marketers should be looking at the customer source part of the HubSpot CRM to see exactly how long it took for a prospect to become a customer, the value per customer, as well as the frequency of purchase per customer. Although it’s dependent on the business, I believe this kind of insight and data can be useful to national or international companies. They can track discrepancies between cities and countries and perhaps test a new technique in one country and assess if the data shows success of the marketing efforts. By using the HubSpot CRM, the testing of marketing campaigns is done efficiently, and is cost-effective.
Another feature of the HubSpot CRM that marketers should pay attention to is the chat functionality that, if used properly, can help marketers gain insight into what questions customers are asking. With this information, more informed decisions can be made on what marketing material to create.
But don’t just take my word for it. Here is some feedback from our clients on their experience with the HubSpot CRM:
Wendy Mitrovich, Brand Manager at Polyflor South Africa, says, “Being able to manage our database more efficiently and having more insight into how our content affects the buyer’s journey is what I love most about the HubSpot CRM. The fact that it is so easily updated with the correct and relevant information for both our sales and marketing team really makes this CRM stand above the rest.”
Lynne Nel, Manager of fleet solutions at EQSTRA Fleet Management says, “The reporting and the dashboards in HubSpot are indispensable to us here at EQSTRA. Being able to organise our social media in an automated schedule has helped streamline our marketing efforts.
Having somewhat of a small marketing team, it’s really helped the team focus on the bigger picture and motivates them by being able to see where their efforts are going and if they are working. It’s helped the marketing team to see where they can assist the sales team and vice versa.”
Heather de Vos, General Manager of fleet solutions at EQSTRA Fleet Management says, “Hubspot CRM gives management a clear view of customer interaction, lead source and what is in our sales pipeline.” I work predominantly with the sales team, however, I do attend the Marketing meetings so through these interventions I can see how we connect the dots between the marketing initiatives to generate leads which hopefully continue to become a sales qualified lead.”
“In our business there are multiple influencers so when a lead comes in from HubSpot, it is predominantly an individual looking to satisfy a personal need, like a log book. However, we are cognisant of the fact that individuals may also be influencers within a corporate business, so we never un-qualify a lead based on face value. We plan to work closer with the marketing team so that we target these type of individuals coming through as leads.”
Jill Munger, CEO of time&space says, “I like having all contacts and prospects in one place. The fact that the team has access to our business development is great. Tracking email and task management are amazing tools.” By using the HubSpot CRM, the marketing team is aware of the sales teams requirements, marketing approach is aligned to support sales teams needs. Marketing can track progress, targets and activity and tweak their efforts accordingly. The HubSpot CRM has helped our productivity as lengthy meetings aren’t always required because all the information is easily available to us to keep us all up-to-date.”
There are plenty of CRM softwares out there but none quite like the HubSpot CRM. Easily one of the top free CRM solutions for any business in any industry to use and align their efforts to achieving their business goals.
Do you think your business is ready to take on the world of inbound marketing? Contact us to help you determine if HubSpot is the right tool for you.
