“Campaigns” is one of the most overused and misused words in the sales and marketing world. It can mean anything from a specific messaging initiative to a particular list you are going to target. Being a HubSpot user doesn’t exclude me from this complex reality.
However, it’s important to note that HubSpot uses the term “campaign” differently than other CRM and marketing platforms do. Let’s discuss some of those differences.
In Salesforce.com, for example, you can place people into a campaign. It's a method of putting people through a particular marketing action. You can reach out to people through phone, mail, and email campaigns.
With HubSpot, a campaign is not simply an action to be taken upon a group of people. Instead, it’s a grouping of marketing and sales assets. A campaign is a way of batching certain marketing assets so that you can report on them as a single entity, regardless of how/where people encounter those assets.
Considering the distinct differences in the use of the word “campaign” between HubSpot and other CRM and marketing platforms, it’s no surprise that people get confused or frustrated when first using HubSpot campaigns.
Keeping this in mind, we’d like to give you some quick and easy tips on setting up campaigns within HubSpot.
So, what is HubSpot's official ruling on how to use campaigns? Here’s a direct quote from HubSpot’s knowledge base:
“The campaigns tool allows you to tag related marketing assets and content so that you can easily measure their effectiveness of your collective marketing efforts.”
This is obviously a good description and a great concept, but what HubSpot doesn’t mention in their training is at what level to set your campaign. Without taking into account the level of the campaign, it’s nearly impossible to expect everyone in your organization to use the HubSpot campaign tool consistently.
For example, should you build campaigns around offers? Should you build campaigns around funnels (i.e. groupings of offers, emails, and their progression down the sales pipeline)?
Perhaps you should build campaigns upon a particular topic? If you're writing/producing/creating a lot of assets on a particular topic, do you group those assets?
Or maybe you should you build a campaign around an event, such as a webinar, live event, meetup, conference, or networking event.
Luckily, we know there is a proven method to setting up campaigns in HubSpot and we're going to share that with you today.
Remember, as HubSpot says in their description of campaigns, its purpose is to report on your marketing efforts collectively. That means we should build our campaign on the foundation of reporting.
The team at Pipeline Ops has compiled months of testing and analysis to bring you the best level to set your campaigns. We’ve found the best way to build a campaign is around the goal of each funnel.
A marketing or sales funnel is a series of webpages, email messages, and automation that brings people through a progression of steps toward an action you want them to take, like requesting a sales call or making a purchase. HubSpot’s famed Flywheel is made up of many funnels that work together.
When building a HubSpot campaign, you want to look at one complete funnel and the goal of that funnel. Let me give you some examples.
If you build a webinar funnel, you’ll have ads, emails, landing pages, and blog posts that are all driving people to that webinar registration. But, the webinar itself isn't what you're building your campaign around.
You're building around the entire funnel, and that's usually with the goal of getting into some sort of sales call. So, your campaign will be built around the post-webinar items, the follow-up emails, sales offers, and connections made with the people who attended the webinar, etc.
All of these are working parts of the funnel that make up the foundation for your campaign.
Another example is a re-engagement campaign. You're trying to get people into a sales call, so you run ads and emails targeted to the “cold” people on your list to try to get them engaged. Your end goal is to eventually have them ascend into a sales call.
If you have a new e-book, then the ultimate goal is to get somebody onto your lead list and into your database. You can also use e-books in a larger campaign where somebody downloads an e-book or a checklist, but that's not the last step in that campaign. The longer term goal is to get them into the webinar that's coming up and then after the webinar, into a sales call.
You should base your campaign around where you want people to end in that campaign (i.e. where you want that funnel to end). It's not always a purchase. The campaign may be just to get them engaged with sales, or just to get them on your contact list.
As I mentioned earlier, there's a ton of confusion among HubSpot partners, HubSpot Facebook/LinkedIn groups, and within the HubSpot community, etc. about the level at which to set your campaigns. But now you can rest assured that by basing your campaign around the goal of your funnel(s), you’ll set your campaign up effectively and stay on goal.
I’d love to hear what you think about HubSpot campaigns and our HubSpot campaigns best practices. Please leave a comment below and I’ll see you online.