Where HubSpot Fits Into Your Go-to-Market Strategy Supporting Digital Growth

Accounting firms sell all types of financial products: tax, valuations, investment, compliance, consulting, cyber and more. Going to market with any product requires advanced planning, and there are many reliable tools available to streamline operations. In 2004, two MIT graduates created HubSpot, which is now recognized as the premiere inbound marketing system. Businesses of all sizes and in every industry are using HubSpot, and there are several reasons why it is the right tool for accounting firms that want to grow.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a business software system that offers a full platform of tools for marketing, customer service, sales, and customer relationship management.

There are several core features:

• Websites: fast, secure, hosted websites connect the site to all of the rest of the marketing ecosystem/efforts.
• Content Strategy: optimize content in HubSpot to perform for SEO.
• Calls to action: CTAs are cornerstone to any successful digital marketing campaign, and HubSpot enables testing, tracking, and more to enhance conversion.
• Ads: target users and track ads directly in the platform.
• Social media: integrate and publish to all major social media platforms, monitoring metrics as you go.
• Blogging: HubSpot websites feature Learning Resources, or blogs, that aim to generate leads and improve site performance.
• Landing pages: capture more contact info with landing pages that are mobile-responsive and built to convert.
• Campaigns: build full, automated multi-channel inbound marketing campaigns, then track how those campaigns perform.
• Forms: all good websites have a form strategy, and HubSpot makes it easy to create then embed custom forms on a site.
• Lead flows and workflows: HubSpot automations are available for higher-end customers and facilitate a hands-off approach with if/then actions and automated workflow designs.
• File manager: manage all assets within the hub, making it easy to store and share as needed.
• Conversations: a shared inbox makes it easier to manage customer experiences and keep track of touchpoints.

To see the entire product offering from Hubspot, click here.

What Can HubSpot Do?

HubSpot can be a client experience tool, sales tool, service tool, a CRM, a relationship manager, and an operational hub. It’s important to understand that HubSpot is only as good as the people driving it, and it must be supported by shared goals, initiatives, and metrics.

Firms tend to adopt marketing tools in HubSpot first. Some use it for sales, but even those with more thorough feature use often only utilize around 40% of what HubSpot can actually do. 

When it comes to facilitating a go-to-market strategy, HubSpot is great for accelerating growth.

Building a GTM Strategy

There are four main components to a go-to-market strategy (GTM):

1. Product-market fit, or understanding the problems a product will solve for consumers, and the market it will sell in.
2. Target audience, or a defined group of people who are willing and able to buy the product.
3. Competitive analysis, or understanding whether there is a demand for the product and who direct and indirect competitors are.
4. Distribution, or defining channels by which the product will sell.

Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is an illustration of a campaign in HubSpot. This shows the type of visualization HubSpot provides of an accounting firm in the restaurant niche. They are targeting franchises with 1-10 stores, seeking to gain an audience with a CRO or CFO. HubSpot provides marketers with insight into clicks, impressions, inquiries, and conversions, enabling the team to understand the full client journey and make strategic choices to support each touchpoint

How HubSpot Supports the Strategy

HubSpot supports all primary and related components of a solid GTM strategy. Here’s how:

Product-market fit

This is a boots-on-the-ground analysis effort. It may require sending forms and surveys for research and is an intelligence gathering exercise. The contact management tools, form-builders, and data tracking devices in HubSpot make it easy to start gleaning insights as soon as a first response. Because of how robust the system is, all the data you need can communicate with every product on the platform. As a result, it is easy to reduce data silos and ensure the conclusions you are making are as accurate as possible.

Finding a target audience

This is also easily doable in the HubSpot system. Through virtually any integrated channel — email, social media, ads, etc. — you can quickly see the types of people who are responding to outgoing messages. It’s important to know who is opening emails, clicking on ads, linking to your website, or filling out forms. These are the keys to refining a target audience. As a result, this picture gets clearer the more you reach out and do (or don’t) get responses.

Competitive analysis

Conducting a completive analysis in the digital world means comparing websites, social media platforms, and also leveraging news stories and alerts. Data gathering devices in HubSpot can make this possible as well, and the platform can be used in tandem with Google Analytics, SEO tools, and other intelligence efforts.

Distribution

Is perhaps when HubSpot shines the most. If your firm hopes to have any size digital footprint, it must be active on many platforms across the internet. The health of your website, activity of your social channels, and engagement with email lists are all essential to the overall success of product sales. HubSpot makes it easy to deploy messaging, then track it all the way to a conversion point. Thus, ensuring optimal clarity into what is working best.

Get Help With Inbound Marketing for Your Firm

If your firm is making more than a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, and you don’t have a system like this in place, we need to talk. Winding RIver Consulting is a HubSpot certified partner and knows the platform and the benefits it brings to accounting firms.  Reach out now.