Leveraging HubSpot Analytics to Optimize Demand Gen Motions

Pipeline Impact Driven Data Analysis

Thankfully, HubSpot doubles as a CRM and a marketing automation tool that can crawl through your marketing motions and deliver to you the data that you really want.

• Which channel is giving me the maximum leads, conversions and customers…
• Which channel/motion is costing me the least…

It’s like Aladdin's Genie- but only if you know where to collate that data and how to utilize it.

Reading the Data

And, for being our patrons, and for simply landing on this Ebook, we thought we’d give you a practical example. Here we have taken a sample report (of course, we won’t tell you which client it is, but you can see our success from the data nonetheless). 

Let’s start with a bird’s eye view of the data-

Leveraging key metrics: Analyze metrics like lead volume, cost per lead (CPL), MQL conversion rate, and SQL conversion rate for each demand gen channel and activity tracked within HubSpot.

Here's a summary of the key findings and recommendations from the above table:

Key findings:

Paid Search: Generates the highest volume of sessions (28,644) and the highest number of new contacts (989), indicating that the company drives significant website traffic and lead generation. However, its session to contact rate (3.45%) is lower than referrals and social media.

Actionable insight - Optimizing Conversion Rate through better alignment of landing page copy with the paid campaigns.

Organic Search: Generates a considerable number of sessions (19,491) and the second-highest number of new contacts (412). However, the session to contact rate (2.07%) is lower than paid search and referrals, suggesting potential for improvement.

Actionable insight - Improving website copy, and adding value add CTAs and forms

Referrals: Generates a moderate number of sessions (2,897) but boasts a good session to contact rate (5.7%), indicating a highly engaged audience that converts at a higher rate.

Actionable insight - Doubling down on this channel, adding more external links with value add content.

Social Media: Generates a smaller number of sessions (628) but has the highest session to contact rate (7.17%) and the highest percentage of new visitors (90.98%), suggesting it attracts new and engaged audiences.

Actionable insight - Using paid ad copies aligned with the copies used for organic social posts. You can also convert some of these posts to paid ads.

Direct Traffic: Generates a decent number of sessions (17,181) but has a low session to contact rate (1.65%), suggesting the audience might not be actively seeking your services.

Actionable insight - Improving SEO and keyword ranks can lead to the right audience landing on to the website and converting into contacts.

Email Marketing: Generates the least sessions (94) and has a negative contact to customer rate (0%), raising concerns about list accuracy, targeting, and campaign effectiveness.

Actionable insight - using email marketing (both inbound and outbound) to leverage high quality contacts, as email marketing still remains the best demand generation channel.

Based on the data above, here are some recommendations that we gave to our client, who hired us to optimize its Marketing Hub:

1. Prioritize paid search: Maintain and optimize paid search campaigns while acknowledging the lower session to contact rate compared to referrals and social media.
2. Optimize organic search: Analyze and refine your organic search strategy to improve the session to contact rate. This could involve keyword research, content optimization, and link building.
3. Strengthen the referral program: Encourage satisfied customers to provide referrals and consider offering incentives to leverage the channel's high conversion rate.
4. Leverage social media: Focus on creating engaging social media content, targeting the right audience, and encouraging interaction to convert website visitors into leads.
5. Improve direct traffic conversion: Implement targeted website content, calls to action, and lead capture forms to capture leads from direct traffic.
6. Re-evaluate email marketing: Analyze and address the negative contact to customer rate before investing further resources. Ensure your email list is accurate, segment your audience, and create targeted email campaigns.

Marrying Metrics to Impact

These metrics cannot be viewed in isolation. They need to be married to impact and the motions that your marketing teams are running. That being said, here’s a little side note:

Campaign goals: Your channels are to be tailored based on specific campaign goals, such as brand awareness, lead generation, or customer acquisition

For example, paid ads can give you middle/funnel leads, who have engaged with your organic social posts. So you need to decide your campaign goals before prioritizing a particular channel.

Target audience: Consider which channels resonate best with your target audience and their online behavior.

For example, a C-suite executive is more likely to engage with your content on a website/listing site of his choice (see referrals), rather than connect with you through your paid ads.

Budget allocation: Allocate resources strategically across different channels based on their effectiveness and return on investment.

For example, allocating budget to content syndication sites for referrals makes sense only if the contacts landing on your website also convert into qualified leads.

Going Granular Into Your Customer Journey

Now that you know where your leads and contacts are coming from, let’s discuss how you leverage HubSpot reports to find which channel gives you better conversion, and which funnel stage you need to focus on for a channel.

Let’s analyze the reports above-

Direct Traffic

Strengths: This channel has a decent conversion rate from leads (140) to opportunities (83) and customers (59), showing effective engagement and quality of traffic.

Weaknesses: However, the low numbers in Marketing Qualified Leads (1) and Sales Qualified Leads (2) indicate that the quality of direct traffic may need to be improved for higher sales funnel conversions.

Recommendations: The focus should be on enhancing the quality of direct traffic by optimizing the website for better user experience and engagement. Strategies to attract more high-intent visitors should be implemented.

Paid Search

Strengths: Paid search is driving a significant amount of leads (673) and opportunities (289), with a good number of customers (187). This indicates a strong ROI for paid campaigns

Weaknesses:  The number of Marketing Qualified Leads (3) and Sales Qualified Leads (7) is relatively low compared to the number of leads, suggesting that while paid search is effective in generating traffic, the lead qualification process might need improvement.

Recommendations:  It makes sense to continue investing in paid search as it generates high volume and quality leads. Moreover, improving lead nurturing and qualification processes will convert more leads into qualified leads and opportunities.

Organic Source

Strengths: Organic search has a high number of subscribers (166) and a balanced conversion rate across leads (147), opportunities (87), and customers (91). This indicates strong organic reach and engagement.

Weaknesses: The number of Marketing Qualified Leads (4) and Sales Qualified Leads (3) is still low, similar to direct and paid channels.

Recommendations: Investing in SEO can maintain and improve organic reach. Further, creating more targeted and valuable content will attract high-quality leads and improve the qualification process.

Referrals

Strengths: Referrals have the highest conversion rate to customers (93), indicating strong trust and credibility in the referral traffic.

Weaknesses: Low numbers in Marketing Qualified Leads (1) and no Sales Qualified Leads indicate that while referrals convert well to customers, the qualification process needs enhancement.

Recommendations: Strengthening referral programs by offering incentives and creating robust tracking mechanisms will improve lead quality and ensure better qualification of leads.

Overall Channel Strategy

A channel can have a major impact on the leads flowing through each stage of the funnel and converting to the next stage. But optimizing your funnels and funnel leaks go beyond marketing channels. As is apparent in the reports above, we can conclude that-

1. Optimization of Lead Qualification: Across all channels, there is a need to improve the conversion of leads to Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Qualified Leads. Implementing better lead scoring and nurturing strategies can help in this aspect.

2. Balanced Investment: Balanced investment in paid search due to its high volume and immediate results while maintaining efforts in organic and direct traffic will result in sustainable growth. In addition to that, referral programs should be enhanced to leverage their high conversion rates.

3. Content and Engagement: Enhancing content marketing efforts will boost organic traffic and engagement, which can lead to better long-term results. Further, optimizing the website and user experience will improve the quality of direct traffic.

Thus, data backed recommendations can enhance the effectiveness of each channel and improve overall conversion rates throughout the sales funnel. But how to read that data and implement it will result in the magic that your revenue funnel needs!