Maximising HubSpot: The Importance of Audits

Businesses in the dynamic world of digital marketing are constantly looking for ways to optimise their operations and maximise their return on investment. One of the most effective methods is to use HubSpot, a comprehensive platform with a plethora of tools and features designed to streamline business operations. Regular audits, on the other hand, are required to truly maximise your HubSpot investment.

Covered in this article

What is a HubSpot Audit?
Staying Up-to-Date with HubSpot's Evolving Features
Optimising Workflows and Processes
Ensuring Data Accuracy and Compliance
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Content and Campaigns
Your HubSpot Audit Partner
Tailored HubSpot Audits by Velocity

What is a HubSpot Audit?

A HubSpot audit is a comprehensive, data-driven evaluation of your current HubSpot setup. It's a process that delves into every aspect of your HubSpot usage to ensure that you're leveraging the platform to its full potential. Conducted by a team of experienced marketing professionals, these audits are designed to identify areas of improvement and provide optimisation recommendations.

The key components of a HubSpot audit typically include:

• Platform Usage Analysis: This involves a thorough review of how your team is using HubSpot. It checks whether all available tools and features are being utilised effectively and identifies any areas that are underused or overlooked.

• Data Quality Assessment: The audit examines the quality of the data in your HubSpot system. It identifies any inconsistencies, inaccuracies, or outdated information that could be affecting your marketing efforts.

• Workflow Evaluation: The audit reviews your current workflows to ensure they are efficient and aligned with your business goals. It identifies any bottlenecks or redundancies that could be slowing down your processes.

• Content and Campaign Performance Review: This part of the audit evaluates the effectiveness of your content and campaigns. It uses key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine what's working and what's not, providing insights that can help refine your marketing strategies.

• Compliance Check: The audit ensures that your HubSpot usage complies with data protection regulations like GDPR. This is crucial for avoiding legal issues and maintaining the trust of your customers.

By conducting a HubSpot audit, you can gain a clear understanding of your current HubSpot setup and how it can be optimised to better meet your business needs. It's a crucial step towards maximising your return on investment from the platform.

Staying Up-to-Date with HubSpot's Evolving Features

HubSpot is a platform that never stands still. It is continuously evolving, adding new features and updating existing ones to better serve its users. An audit ensures you stay informed about these changes, allowing you to make the most of the platform's capabilities.

For instance, consider the May 2023 releases from HubSpot. These updates introduced a range of new features designed to enhance the user experience and improve efficiency. Some of the key updates included:

• Prospecting SDR/BDR Workspace (Beta): This new workspace consolidates the prospecting experience, including daily tasks, task progress, sequences in progress, and suggested activities. It helps sales teams manage and generate prospecting opportunities more efficiently within HubSpot.

• Coaching Playlists (Beta): This feature allows managers to build a playlist of call recordings for coaching their team, enabling efficient onboarding and training on particular topics.

• AI Content Assistant for Social Media (Beta): This tool uses AI to help teams create social media content more efficiently. It's especially useful for teams working with a recently reduced staff.

• Content Approvals for Website Pages, Landing Pages, and Blog Posts: This feature brings the content approval process into HubSpot, saving time, reducing errors, and preventing bottlenecks in the content creation or editing process.

• Goal Releases: These include the ability to create ad goals within ads, set up goals-based workflows, and set weekly or custom goal durations. These features provide more flexibility and control over tracking and achieving business goals.

Optimising Workflows and Processes

As your business grows and changes, so do your needs and goals. An audit allows you to assess your current workflows and processes and adjust them as necessary. By identifying inefficiencies, redundancies, and bottlenecks, you can streamline your operations and boost productivity. This not only saves time and resources but also enhances the overall effectiveness of your HubSpot usage.

To ensure you're optimising your workflows and processes effectively, consider the following checklist:

1. Identify Inefficiencies: Look for any steps in your workflows that are unnecessary or overly complicated.
2. Eliminate Redundancies: Check for any tasks that are being performed multiple times or by multiple team members.
3. Remove Bottlenecks: Identify any points in your workflows where work is accumulating faster than it can be processed.
4. Align with Business Goals: Ensure that your workflows are serving your current business goals and adjust them as necessary.
5. Implement Changes: Based on your findings, make the necessary changes to your workflows and processes.
6. Monitor Results: After implementing changes, monitor your workflows to ensure they're more efficient and effective.

Ensuring Data Accuracy and Compliance

As your business grows and evolves, so do your data needs and goals. Ensuring data accuracy and compliance is crucial in this context. Data accuracy refers to the extent to which your data is close to the true values. Compliance, on the other hand, refers to adhering to established guidelines, specifications, or legislation.

Data Management for Accuracy and Compliance

Data management is a key component of ensuring data accuracy and compliance. This involves the use of tools and processes to ensure that your data is accurate, complete, and reliable. It also involves ensuring that your data meets the necessary standards and requirements for your industry or field.

Identifying Inaccuracies and Non-compliance

Just as a HubSpot audit can identify inefficiencies in your workflows, a data audit can identify inaccuracies and non-compliance in your data. This could be anything from inaccurate records that could lead to incorrect decision-making, to non-compliance with data protection regulations that could result in penalties.

Reducing Data Redundancies

Data redundancies can lead to confusion and inaccuracies. For example, you might have multiple records for the same customer, or your data might include unnecessary or irrelevant information. A data audit can help you identify these redundancies, allowing you to clean up your data and improve its accuracy.

Ensuring Data Integrity

Data integrity refers to the overall completeness, consistency, and accuracy of data. This is crucial for ensuring that your data is reliable and can be trusted for decision-making. An audit can help you identify areas where your data integrity could be improved, such as by ensuring that your data is consistently formatted and regularly updated.

Aligning Data Management with Business Goals

Finally, ensuring data accuracy and compliance can help align your data management with your business goals. As your business evolves, your data needs are likely to change, and your data management processes need to change with them. An audit can help you assess whether your current data management is still serving your goals effectively and make any necessary adjustments.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Content and Campaigns

A crucial aspect of a HubSpot audit is the evaluation of your content and campaigns. This involves a deep dive into the performance of your marketing efforts, using key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine what's working and what's not. This process is vital for refining your strategies and allocating your resources more effectively, ultimately maximising your return on investment.

Understanding Key Performance Indicators

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable values that demonstrate how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. In the context of a HubSpot audit, KPIs might include metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and more. These metrics provide a quantifiable measure of the success of your content and campaigns.

Analysing Conversion Rates

Conversion rates are a critical KPI for any business. They measure the percentage of visitors to your website or landing page who complete a desired action, such as filling out a form or making a purchase. A HubSpot audit can help you understand your current conversion rates and identify ways to improve them, such as by refining your call-to-action or improving your landing page design.

Assessing Click-Through Rates

Click-through rates (CTRs) measure the percentage of people who click on a link in your content or ads. A high CTR is often a good sign, as it indicates that your content is engaging and relevant to your audience. During a HubSpot audit, you can assess your CTRs to determine which pieces of content or which campaigns are most effective.

Your HubSpot Audit Partner

Regular HubSpot audits are not just a good-to-have; they are a must-have for any business serious about maximising their HubSpot investment. They provide invaluable insights that can transform your business operations, enhance your marketing strategies, and drive growth.

At Velocity, a hybrid advisory, technology, and inbound marketing company, we understand the importance of these audits. Our team of globally recognised digital marketing professionals, copywriters, designers, developers, and business analysts are ready to help you optimise your HubSpot usage and maximise your return on investment.

Tailored HubSpot Audits by Velocity

At Velocity, we understand that every business is unique, with its own set of challenges, goals, and operational nuances. That's why we don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to our HubSpot audits. Instead, we offer a bespoke auditing service, meticulously tailored to align with your specific business needs and circumstances.

Our team of HubSpot experts will conduct a comprehensive review of your current HubSpot setup, taking into account the specific Hubs you are using, whether it's the Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, or CMS Hub. We dive deep into your processes, workflows, and data to understand how you're currently leveraging HubSpot's powerful tools and capabilities.

We then provide personalized recommendations based on your unique situation, industry best practices, and our extensive experience with HubSpot. Our aim is to help you optimize your HubSpot investment, streamline your processes, and drive better results for your business.

Whether you're looking to improve your lead generation, enhance customer engagement, or boost your sales performance, our tailored HubSpot audits are designed to help you unlock the full potential of your HubSpot platform.

Ready to take your HubSpot usage to the next level? Contact us today to schedule your HubSpot audit.