Marketing automation plays such an important role in the success of your business. It is the fastest and easiest way to communicate with customers, leads, vendors, and more.
You want to make sure you have a platform that helps with the heavy lifting so all you are doing is creating the content.
We decided to change platforms at the beginning of this year. Why? Because the one we had was not meeting our goals, it was not easy to use, and we had outgrown it.
When looking for a new platform there are a few steps you can take.
- Do your research – see what platforms are out there, get a demo, talk to other businesses using the platform.
- Does it integrate with your CRM or any other programs that you use?
- It is in your budget – just because the price on the website may seem too high, you can get discounts or monthly payments so don’t get discouraged by the price.
In March of 2020 we began the process of switching platforms and it was not easy. There is so much to consider when making the move.
Get prepared and have:
- A comprehensive project plan
- A dedicated project manager
- Weekly check-ins and deadlines
- Communicate with your contacts – email, blog, website notice
So, what platform did we move too????? HubSpot was the clear choice. It is the one that met all of our criteria. We are only 5 months in and still not where we need to be. It’s a work in progress.
We did a team assessment after using the platform for 4 months and here are the results.
What did we like?
- All the videos and tutorials you can watch to learn everything you need to know about HubSpot.
- Bi-weekly onboarding meetings and quarterly strategy meetings that kept us on track with implementation and marketing goals.
- Excellent customer service and follow-through. Whenever there was a problem or question, the HubSpot team got back to us super fast.
What was it lacking?
- There could have been more hand-holding for some things. I understand they want you to go out and do everything and find everything yourself but sometimes it is nice to have them walk you through it, like the Workflows.
- Even though there are great video learning resources and tutorials, it can be a bit overwhelming because there are so many.
- They could have been more involved in the initial setup on the backend. Feels like a lot of time was wasted trying to navigate that on our own.
- More information on how it integrates with Acumatica and other third-party applications.
What would we do differently?
- Be more prepared, it was more of an undertaking than we thought it was going to be.
- Dedicate more time to the tutorials.
- Bring more specific examples of tasks or campaigns we wanted to implement so that there wouldn’t be so much troubleshooting down the road.
What excites you and what should we start doing?
- It is an amazing platform, I love using it, there is still a lot of learning to do but I am looking forward to continuing with Workflows, using Pillar Pages, and get more familiar with the reporting and analytics.
- Excited for data-driven and targeted marketing so it doesn’t feel like we are blindly trying things to see what sticks.
- The platform pushes us to think about any gaps we may have in our current marketing plan and encourages us to fill them in ways that make the most sense for our business.
Implementing any new system takes time and preparation. As long as you do the research, have a plan, and timeline in place with weekly check-ins you will get there.
We are excited to see what other marketing initiatives we can do, how we can develop a marketing engine, and learn to streamline communications to our customers, prospects, and partners.
