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Why I chose an integrated sales and martech stack?
I spent a lot of time learning different marketing and sales tools as opposed to generating leads for my business. I faced the arduous task of establishing integrations between multiple marketing and sales tools. This was holding me back from achieving my business goals.
In this blog, I would like to take you through why I chose an integrated sales and marketing technology stack for my business and how I went about evaluating the same.
Table of Contents
1. Multiple tools held me back from achieving goals
2. Challenges managing multiple tools
3. Re-evaluating my MarTech stack
4. Case Study - Increased leads by 400% by building trust with the buyer
1. Multiple tools held me back from achieving marketing and sales objectives
Websites, Blogs
I needed to promote my business online with my target audience. I needed to communicate my message at various touch points in the customer journey. I bought a website builder tool which required little to no code for designing a website.
On using the website builder, I realised that it didn’t have the capability to create landing pages. The blog posts feature within the website builder tool didn’t have the capability to address my SEO needs.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
As I started generating leads for my business, I needed a CRM tool for lead management and storing customer data. The CRM would enable me to track progress of my leads (lead management) and opportunities in my pipeline. I bought a CRM software. A CRM tool is a great investment even for small businesses.
Landing Pages
My website builder tool lacked the landing pages functionality. I needed to design landing pages for running my marketing campaigns. I bought a landing page tool.
Email Marketing Automation Solution
I needed an email marketing tool to manage communication with prospective customers who signed up at my landing pages. I needed to nurture leads via email campaigns and email lists.
I bought an email marketing automation platform that met my email marketing needs. I wanted an email marketing software that had the capability to send emails with personalised subject lines and email body.
The email marketing software also needed to have email workflow automation and sample email templates (e.g. welcome emails, newsletter) for prospective and existing customers.
2. Challenges managing multiple tools to meet my marketing and sales objectives
Integrations
I realised that it was becoming quite cumbersome to log into multiple tools for doing different things. This included website management, landing page creation, lead generation and lead nurture.
I spent a lot of time trying to integrate the different technology platforms. This took time away from my day to day marketing activities. This was not a good use of my time. This held me back from meeting my marketing goals, sales goals and business goals.
Multiple Sources of Truth
The landing pages created leads in my email marketing software. The lead list in my email marketing database was separate to the list that I maintained in my CRM. I needed to integrate the two technology platforms. This was required to get a full picture of my overall marketing efforts.
Marketing Automation Solutions
It became very hard to implement a marketing automation strategy for my business. This is because I had to deal with multiple martech tools and multiple sources of truth. It became very hard to build automated workflows for basic marketing tasks. Marketing automation tools are essential for automating marketing tasks.
Analytics Tools
The use of multiple analytics tools (website analytics, landing page analytics, blog analytics, google analytics etc.) also made it hard to measure campaign performance across different digital channels.
SEO
The blogging feature in the website builder tool didn’t meet my search engine optimization SEO needs. I had to utilise the ‘web pages’ feature in the website builder tool to create new blog posts. I very quickly hit my page limit in my website builder tool. I didn’t realise the website builder tool had a page limit (i.e. the number of web pages I could create using the tool).
This started to bog down my marketing efforts. There was no easy way of upgrading my existing website builder to a higher version with a higher page limit. I was left with the option to recreate my website in another CMS platform.
3. Re-evaluating my existing tools. Choosing an integrated sales and martech stack
As a digital marketing and sales professional, I wanted an integrated sales and martech software that would address my above challenges. I was looking for a software that would help me execute my digital marketing channel strategy.
I wanted to evaluate a Content Management System (CMS). I had a content marketing strategy that I could not fully execute as my technology stack (refer above challenges) was holding me back. My desktop research made me realise that some of the popular Content Management Systems were very expensive.
In my desktop research, I came across HubSpot CMS. This was my starting point for exploring all the capabilities that HubSpot offered - HubSpot Marketing hub, HubSpot Sales hub, HubSpot CMS hub.
I found the HubSpot suite would address my above challenges. It also had social media monitoring and management capability. HubSpot came with a good suite of marketing automation capability that I could activate as my business grew. HubSpot Marketing hub is one among many marketing automation platforms. As a digital marketing and sales professional, I thought it would be a good tool for both sales and marketing teams.
I signed up for a free version of HubSpot CMS to explore CMS and blogging capabilities. I realised that it had all the capabilities that I was looking for in one place - website, blogging, landing pages, forms, email marketing tools, CRM etc. It checked all my boxes:
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Single source of truth for leads.
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Ability to log into one platform to manage websites, blogs, landing pages, forms, email marketing, leads.
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Affordability.
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Ability to upgrade my subscription as my business grows. This is to access advanced capabilities like advanced SEO, marketing automation software and additional website pages.
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Reduce time spent on integrating different sales and martech tools.
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Customer experience for website visitors.
Note:
After signing up for HubSpot, I joined the HubSpot Solutions Provider program to enable my clients to grow their business using HubSpot. My views are based on my experiences using HubSpot. My views may be biased. Please thoroughly evaluate your options prior to purchasing any marketing, sales or website tools.
Conclusion
An integrated sales and martech stack makes it easier to manage information on leads. There is a single source of truth for leads generated from multiple digital marketing channels. There is little to no technology integration activity required. This enables marketers and business leaders to focus their efforts on achieving marketing goals like increasing brand awareness and lead generation.
Watch the below example to learn how a B2B company increased leads by 400% by building trust with the buyer.
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Are you looking to build trust with your buyer by addressing their needs at different stages in the buyer’s journey? Are you looking to raise brand awareness and generate quality leads for your business by improving your website visibility in search? Are you looking to attract buyers to your website and convert quality leads into customers?
If you answered yes, we can help! We are an inbound digital marketing agency, search engine marketing agency and content marketing agency based in Sydney, Australia. We are innovators and marketers with expertise in:
1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Are you looking to drive revenue growth from organic search? We write engaging content that ranks higher ⬆️ on search engines, increases web traffic 🚦 and generates quality leads 👑 for your business! Our SEO campaigns utilise ‘target keywords’ used by prospective buyers, has potential to increase search engine rankings and organic traffic in the long term.
2. Google Ads.
Are you looking to drive revenue growth from Google Ads? We create paid search campaigns that increases web traffic 🚦 and generates quality leads 👑 for your business! Our google ads management services includes a paid search audit and paid search campaigns (Google Ads - formerly Google AdWords).
3. Email Marketing.
Are you looking to drive revenue growth from email marketing? Our email marketing services in Sydney will enable you to nurture leads who are interested in your products or services. We write engaging content that increases web traffic 🚦 and generates sales opportunities 👑 for your business! Our email marketing services uses a human centred design approach to understand your target audience, has potential to increase website traffic and generate sales conversations in the long term.
Are you looking to drive revenue growth from content marketing? We create content prototypes to find out what message resonates with your target audience and how your product messaging is perceived by them. We write quality content to address buyer needs at different stages of the buying journey and marketing funnel - content audit, content marketing strategy, content management. Our SEO content writing services includes website content, blog posts, videos, webinars and email marketing.
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