It’s hard to know everything that needs to be done with HubSpot onboarding if you haven’t been through the process before.
Even the cleanest, easiest implementations often have a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out.
We’ve helped many businesses get started with HubSpot, and along the way, we created an Onboarding Checklist that helps the implementation team stay on track and on schedule.
We’ll highlight the most important items here, after explaining exactly what’s involved in HubSpot onboarding and key decisions you will need to make.
What is HubSpot Onboarding?
HubSpot onboarding is the first phase of integrating their tools into your business to help achieve specific marketing, sales, service, or operational goals.
The process involves a series of tasks designed to help your organization realize the benefits of HubSpot’s groundbreaking platforms as quickly as possible.
The first 30 to 90 days will set the tone for your success, so it’s important to make sure your team:
- Understands and embraces the principles of inbound marketing and selling
- Stays organized and focused on tasks without losing sight of the long-term objectives
- Commits to the process of winning new business by teaching and helping others
I’m not suggesting that HubSpot marketing onboarding has to consume everyone’s attention. In fact, all tasks can be crossed off the list within four to six weeks.
How much or how little time your team spends on onboarding will depend on whether or not you enlist the help of a HubSpot-certified agency.
Agency Onboarding vs. HubSpot Guided Onboarding
Onboarding will be part of your purchase — no matter what.
When your contract with HubSpot gets finalized, you will pay $3,500 for mandatory onboarding for Marketing Hub Professional unless you opt to do it with an agency partner.
No one likes to pay for onboarding, but it is necessary if you want to see your investment pay off.
So, you have a decision to make.
Should your company use HubSpot’s service team, or hire an agency for onboarding instead?
Creative Side has been a HubSpot partner for years, and I can tell you the work that’s involved won’t differ much between the two.
The biggest difference is how much hand holding you will get throughout the process, and how much of the work you want to put on your own team.
With HubSpot client onboarding, you can expect bi-monthly consulting calls that review tasks your team will need to accomplish on their own.
An agency partner, on the other hand, is more likely to give you more attention and service. Most of them will take on the heavy heavily lifting of setting up your portal while also teaching your team how to use the tools.
Some partners may also charge less for HubSpot onboarding if you are buying campaign management services as well.
Most businesses tend to have a better overall experience when they work with an agency, as long as it’s a good one. Ask about their experience helping businesses like yours get off the ground with HubSpot, and ask for references, before hiring them.
Related Content: HubSpot Onboarding: How to Work With Your Agency Partner
Regardless of who assists with the project, you will need a good checklist to work from.
Creating The Onboarding Checklist
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1. Schedule the Kick off Meeting
Before the ink is dry on your HubSpot contract, schedule a kickoff meeting with all stakeholders that will play a role in your implementation.
This may include several departments across your organization.
Regardless of how big or small your company is, you will need the marketing, sales, and IT teams present (including senior leadership).
Everyone on the list should attend. No exceptions!
The information that comes out of this meeting will ensure everyone understands why your company is implementing HubSpot, what their individual roles will be, and how your strategy unfold after onboarding.
A typical Kick-Off Meeting agenda looks like this:
- Introduce the teams (if needed)
- Confirm goals your company expects to achieve and the timeline
- Discuss challenges that might impede progress, and commit to solutions that overcome them
- Define responsibilities for completing each onboarding task
- Agree to KPIs that will determine the success or failure with HubSpot
2. Collect Logins For Digital Assets
Gathering logins and other technical assets is sometimes easier said than done.
With so many apps for data collection, website maintenance, social engagement, and other important processes businesses depend on it can be hard to keep login information organized.
If your company uses a password management system like Last Pass or Dashlane, collecting logins is much easier.
Here are a few apps you will likely need to connect to HubSpot:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Web Hosting
- CMS Login
- Social Media
- Email Marketing Provider
- Accounting Apps (like QuickBooks)
- Payment Apps (like Stripe)
- Document Management apps (like PandaDoc or DocuSign)
HubSpot has literally hundreds of integrations, so connecting most of your apps should be easy. Custom integrations take more time, and often require the hands of a skilled developer who is familiar with the app you are trying to integrate.
3. Connect Ad Campaigns
If your team is running ad campaigns on Facebook and/or Google, you can manage them directly in HubSpot as well, enables you to get real-time insights about clicks and conversion rates along with other source data in your marketing platform.
The process of connecting ad accounts is similar to other apps, as long as the person who connects the accounts is an admin on the advertising platform with publishing permissions.
4. Scrub Email Database
Cleaning up your email contact database before migrating it to HubSpot helps ensure your CRM starts with a clean slate.
Even companies that stay engage with prospects and customers through marketing email often have a number of contacts that should be purged.
Some of them may return a hard bounce because they’ve changed jobs. Others may have stopped responding, even after repeated attempts to reengage them.
To ensure your CRM will start with a clean slate, you should scrub your database and segment the remain contacts by their lifecycle stage (leads, qualified leads, and customers) along with any other important properties that impact how and when you communicate with them.
As you export contacts from your current email provider – MailChimp, more than likely – you should also pay attention to any important metadata attached to each contact you want to save, and plan for how that information will be mapped to HubSpot properties.
5. Create a Training Schedule for Stakeholders.
Once Marketing Hub or Sales Hub has been fully integrated into your website, your team will need to learn how to use the tools.
There’s nothing super complicated about the features in HubSpot (except the Design Tools. Those of us who are not coders won’t have much success there), but it is a very deep platform that requires dedicated training.
Each department will need to understand some aspects of the CRM – like how to manage contacts and deals – as well as various tools pertaining to their unique roles.
Even senior leaders who will not play an active role in HubSpot will need to know how to find and understand dashboard reports that illustrates how the team’s efforts are translating into ROI.
This is why we recommend schedule mandatory training calls at least once a week throughout the first few months of your implementation.
It will help you get results faster and keep bad habits from creeping in.
While we are discussing training – it’s important to know it is impossible for one person to manage all aspects of an inbound marketing campaign.
Marketing is a lot of work that requires vastly different skill sets, even when you are using an “all-in-one” platform like HubSpot.
You will still need professionals to create content, manage social media, design graphics, create web modules and templates, run ad campaigns, and create automation for lead nurturing.
I’ve seen many companies try to get by with one or two people managing HubSpot, and it just doesn’t get the results.
Before going that route, I would evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing department and look for ways to fill in the gaps.
Once the technical setup is behind you, the fun part begins!
Your team will start laying the groundwork for your inbound marketing campaign by researching how your buyers make purchase decisions and mapping out a content strategy that will help your company attract, engage, and convert good-fit prospects into customers.
In the meantime, feel free to grab our HubSpot Onboarding Checklist to guide your team through the process quickly and efficiently.
Best of luck with this exciting new stage of growth your company is about to embark on!
Use our HubSpot Onboarding Template to manage the process better. Get the Checklist >>
