HubSpot Onboarding

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What is covered in HubSpot onboarding?

If you’re watching this, you may have bought HubSpot or you’re thinking about purchasing HubSpot for your organisation.

Your onboarding plan will vary depending on which version of HubSpot you buy. For every HubSpot onboarding program, however, there are key components that should be covered:

How long does HubSpot onboarding take?

Your HubSpot onboarding & set-up takes about 6-8 weeks in total for implementation of one hub. This covers the discovery, implementation and training components of your onboarding.

This can vary based on technical dependencies but generally we’re able to get client setup, trained onsite and using the system within a 6-8 week period.

Discovery Phase: The most important step

Your onboarding commences with a discovery workshop with your marketing and sales team.

During this discovery workshop, we will unpack your customer’s buyer journey. That is, what are all the steps they take from being a stranger to your business to prospect all the way to them becoming a raving fan of your business.

At the end of the day, one of HubSpot’s biggest objectives will be to help you move people through the buyer’s journey with powerful tools and automation.

The discovery phase is the most vital step in your entire onboarding process. In this phase not only do we unpack your buyer’s journey but also identify the business goals this tool is supposed to solve.

Identifying your business goals and priorities

The biggest thing our discovery phase will uncover are your business goals. This will help us prioritise things like:

• Defining and increasing the number of sales-qualified leads
• Optimising your conversion and close rates
• Decrease customer churn
• And increasing automated contact with your existing clients

Building Your HubSpot Journey Map

After working on hundreds of portals over the last decade one fact crucial factor relating to the success of HubSpot projects has emerged: Building a great Customer Journey Map can make or break your HubSpot implementation.

So after your discover workshop this is the first thing we do. We build a best practice Customer Journey Map for your review and approval:

Implementation Phase: setting up your HubSpot portal

Once the discovery phase is complete that’s when we move to the implementation phase.

The implementation itself has two steps, the first being technical setup. This actually is the easy stuff if you have an internal technical resource or utilise the services of an agency.

Technical implementation includes things like connecting your domains, connecting your emails, adding the HubSpot tracking code and connecting Google Analytics. There’s a list about 10 things we have to cover and get sorted for you before you use the tool.

The technical step should take less than a week with testing.

The next step is the portal setup. This is the fun stuff, in our checklist, there are about 30 items we either help you with or setup directly.

Portal setup includes things like:

• Setting up contact properties
• Your contact views
• Reporting dashboards and notifications
• Automation workflows
• Email templates
• Landing pages coded and designed
• Connecting your Google and Facebook Ads
• Integrations to things like event modules, SMS software or any internal systems you are already using

The importance of launching with a hero campaign

The important thing to note is we like to launch HubSpot with an awesome hero campaign for our clients. This not only lets you get runs on the board quickly and impress management and the rest of the organisation but also gives you a working example of how all the different tools of HubSpot work with each other.

Examples of launch campaigns we’ve done include:

• Creating a campaign for an onsite event
• New product/service launches
• Launching a brand new newsletter

If you do onboard with HubSpot directly definitely research some of the launch campaigns that would work for your particular business and be sure to run them as soon as your portal is set up.

HubSpot Onboarding Options: Buying Direct vs Buying Through an Agency

HubSpot requires onboarding for every purchase because it can be complex and you actually have a couple of different options. You can purchase directly from HubSpot or an experienced partner agency like RedPandas.

The biggest difference is who will actually be doing the work. With HubSpot, they will provide a consultant and an action plan and do their best to keep you accountable to get key milestones done.

Benefits of buying through an agency

Buying through an agency has a number of additional advantages. Not only will they provide you with an action plan but depending on who you use, they can implement a lot of the technical work as well as the strategic work like building a launch campaign, emails and workflows.

Also, nothing quite beats training someone in person onsite. Depending on your onboarding program, RedPandas will come out to you, train you and your team to ensure every person who will use HubSpot is confident and comfortable using the system

If your team is already pretty busy, launching a new system like HubSpot can be a lot to ask and can be time-consuming. Using an agency like RedPandas can free up a lot of your time whilst leveraging off the experience we already have, from setting up portals on a regular basis.

Who is buying onboarding direct from HubSpot suited for?

We find HubSpot’s onboarding is best suited for companies with big marketing teams or if they have a dedicated person where most of their time is dedicated to HubSpot.

How much does HubSpot onboarding cost?

Pricing wise every agency is a little different. At RedPandas our onboarding pricing is purposely priced competitively alongside ‘HubSpot’s Professional Onboarding’ price. This way you get all the guidance and resources you would purchasing from HubSpot but with the added benefit of execution and someone helping you do the work as well.

As a bonus, we’re often able to negotiate a better ongoing monthly fee saving you in the long run.

As a comparison, HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Professional Onboarding is priced at $4,320+GST and follows a guiding coaching model. For one hub, e.g. HubSpot Marketing Professional, our fee is $9,750+GST and includes execution as well as comprehensive training.

View our HubSpot Onboarding Packages here for a complete overview of HubSpot pricing.

Be aware of agencies offering you sub-$1000 onboarding packages where HubSpot retails at the $4,000+ mark. You’ll notice little to no hands-on execution and limited inclusions. As an insider tip, they are often selling onboarding as a loss leader to earn the ongoing HubSpot commission.

Download our ‘plug in your own data’ excel pricing calculator and visit our HubSpot Pricing page for more candid information on HubSpot’s pricing packages.

What is included in these costs if I go through RedPandas?

1. An Accredited HubSpot implementation trainer
2. Your HubSpot portal full technical set-Up i.e. DNS updates, coded templates, minor integrations
3. A 2 hour discovery workshop
4. A documented implementation checklist, plan and timeline
5. Your portal set-up to your needs, including properties, contact views, forms etc.
6. Creation of your very first Inbound campaign using HubSpot
7. Integrations to things like event modules, SMS software or any internal systems you are already using. We can also offer advice on more complicated or bespoke integrations
8. 2 x Training sessions with your RedPandas HubSpot trainer
9. 2 x HubSpot Dashboards, one for Sales, one for Marketing
10. Ongoing support and resources from the HubSpot support and customer success teams

Contact us today to learn how we can create your organisations customised HubSpot onboarding and implementation plan.