.svg)
IT Marketing Services
Marketing Automation
HubSpot
If inbound and digital marketing is alive and well within your marketing plan, you probably realize that while these efforts are fruitful, they are very time-consuming to complete and hard to report on without the right tools and automation in place. Level-setting that this is the challenge that brought you to our humble blog today, let's recap your HubSpot research. For starters, here is the HubSpot version of "Why Go HubSpot:"
Why IT Resellers Choose HubSpot
-
Marketing's Goal is Generating Qualified Leads: Marketers are tasked with creating content, capturing leads, and nurturing them until they're qualified with a specific area of interest and intent signal. Now you've got a qualified, sales-ready lead.
-
Sales Turn Leads into Customers: Sales confirms interest by beginning to formally engage potential buyers often by demonstrating the value of your solution or service. They are driving from Sales Qualified to an Opportunity and converting to new customers.
-
Service Converts Customers to Evangelists: In the VAR/Channel/Reseller space, your value and relationship are won and lost in your service capability, delivery, and expertise. When margin is tight, and you're sick of product-only sales, it's no surprise you found HubSpot as the operational tool to bring your sales, marketing, and service teams together. Your service team is keeping the lights on; resolving customer issues, and taking the brunt of any difference of opinion on how the project execution may or may not be going.
4 Hidden Costs of Moving to HubSpot: How to Budget Accordingly + Make the Move
Now that you have hugged your favorite service guy/gal, back to the task at hand. HubSpot is a no-brainer, especially in the eyes of marketing. Sometimes, however, sales, service, and operations aren't quite sure it's such an easy decision. This blog outlines some tips you need to know to ensure you:
- select the right HubSpot Hubs,
- can articulate the need and reason for the investment, and, most importantly,
- present the correct numbers and expectations to your executive team.
1.) Number of Contacts
In the Marketing Hub, you pay for the contacts that you have in the system, as counted by email addresses. So be aware when signing up how many you have, and how many are useful contacts worth adding to the system. You get 1,000 contacts included with any marketing level, and if you go over, depending on your billing cycle, you will pay. Currently, it's $50 for every 1,000 contacts. So if you have 1,000, you pay month to month, and you go over to $1,001, you will be automatically charged another $50. The good news, your list is growing, the bad news, if you're not managing your contacts and their engagement, it can cost you unintentionally.
Pro tip: Do quarterly or annual billing so you can go over your limit up and down as you expand your lists without month-to-month price changes.
2. ) Number of Users
In the Sales Hub, you pay for users, and two (2) are included in the starter plan and five (5) Pro packages. Where clients get hung up is that managers and anyone reviewing data or pulling reports can use a marketing license (which is free). For clarification, in the Marketing Hub, you pay for contacts and not users. In the Marketing Hub, you don't pay for contacts, but you do pay for users. You only need a sales license if you are quoting, making calls, and using features like sales sequences, meetings, and documents.
Pro tip: If you're looking at Sales + Marketing Hubs, you can get a more significant discount with the purchase of the entire Growth suite, lately 25%. Sometimes you end up getting the whole Service Hub for free, and a good discount off both Sales + Marketing Hubs as well.
3.) Onboarding Costs
Okay, here is the BIG one. These hidden costs are where clients are sometimes surprised if you're looking to buy HubSpot without a partner. On-boarding is required for every new HubSpot Marketing Pro (and above), and it is a 90-day mandatory engagement. Regardless of Hub. The difference is the price of on-boarding per Hub. The onboarding is essential and designed to ensure that you and your team get up and running with the tool, have time allotted to get in and get going, and have an ultimately quick adoption and a happy life-long journey HubSpotting. In January 2020, HubSpot costs for on-boarding varied for the basic here is what you have, here is how you do what you need instruction.
- Marketing Pro is currently $3,000
- Sales Pro is $500
- Services Pro is $500
These prices are for necessary hand-holding to show you around the tool and how to get started. The critical difference in HubSpot onboarding vs. partner onboarding is the level of detail about the tool, what is done for you vs. what is shown to you. Quite frankly, partnering with a HubSpot expert that has experience in the IT Reseller space means we've been in your shoes, used it for years, understand where and how you will benefit most, and structure the onboarding and training process accordingly.
Pro tip: Working with a partner gets you better on-boarding, quicker start-up, and often a better value for the onboarding services. Depending on some client engagements, partners have even been known to wave on-boarding altogether if they are running the portal on your behalf and a retainer is already in place. The benefit we offer clients is our onboarding presentations, the resources we've already created to start lead scoring, and building event workflows, and we do most of the set-up for you. Plus, depending on the package you pick, MarketDesign writes and executes your first inbound Campaign in HubSpot with you.
4.) CMS: (Not to be confused with CRM)
To have your website built on the HubSpot CMS platform is a smart move if you want to offset costs you're paying to a 3rd party to manage your WordPress site, integrations, nuances, and template changes, for example. Streamline your work to just one tool. I see a lot of clients trade their WordPress management costs for the HubSpot CMS, so they don't keep having plugins to pay for or continuously waste time troubleshooting reporting, embed codes, and platform glitches.
The CMS is a $300 a month investment outside the other Hubs. While it might seem like another investment you weren't necessarily planning on, move to one tool. I promise you; you won't be disappointed. Here are two ways to determine the right HubSpot Package for your IT Reseller marketing needs:
Option A: If You Do Events: Get the CMS + Marketing Pro.
The time you will save in event preparation and automation with your contacts, registrations, campaign elements, and reporting in one place will pay for the price difference of any other tools you had before. TRUST ME. I have seen it 10x myself and with my clients. Honestly, we charge less for retainers with our clients who have Marketing Pro because we believe strongly in the impact and efficiency of the platform. Think about your events; this is always a good example for the IT partner community. If you use Eventbrite as an example, to charge for training, webinars, events, etc. it might make sense to use their free version but move to Marketing Pro and do all your forms registration, and ticketing right in HubSpot where your CRM is and all your data should be housed. FYI: Eventbrite has direct integration to HubSpot; they are one of the 1,000s of integrations to get you when you make the more; of your business operations all in one place.
Option B: If You Don't Do Repeatable Campaigns: Get the CMS + Marketing Starter.
The key with Marketing Pro is automation and social. Those are the significant differences if you are pairing with the CMS. If you aren't heavy into events and need the automation features, and you manage your social elsewhere or are still dabbling, then I recommend the CMS and Marketing Starter. This package gets you everything you need to manage your website, connect your forms and CTAs for conversations, and do email marketing, and content marketing blogs and landing pages in one place. That should run about $350 p/m.
Pro tip: If you do events and have any repeatable workflows, don't settle for a marketing starter based on cost. Work with a partner to add CMS and Marketing Pro to get a discount together. You won't want to go back and restructure your forms, landing pages, and automation when you decide to move later. After all, the goal is efficiency and having everything you need in one tool.
Justifying Your HubSpot Investment
The key to moving to HubSpot is the savings in time and efficiency you gain that out-ways the costs you will incur. To help justify your budget and investment, be sure to look at all the tools and maintenance costs you'll replace with your HubSpot investment. Then factor in what you aren't doing today (like lead scoring, PPC and SEO, and content strategy planning) that you know you need to be doing. Lastly, add the time you'll gain back by working directly with one tool.
- How much time does it take you in your email platform?
- How much time does it take you in your CRM platform?
- How much time does it take you in your Social tool?
- How much time does it take you in your SEO platform?
- How much time does it take you to connect to your website and landing page, and then back to your blog?
- How much time do you spend reporting on every activity, separately?
If you're using two (2) or more tools today, that's 2x the work. Plain and simple. Let's talk through your needs together, make sure you have all the features and functionality you need to be successful, and an onboarding path to get you up and running in no time.
