hubspot horror stories: why clean crm data is critical for paid media

Messy HubSpot data can wreck your paid media performance. Leads go missing, reporting is a nightmare, and ad dollars get wasted. In this episode of Digital Banter, we’re joined by Alexis Garrison to unpack real-life HubSpot horror stories, the costly mistakes companies make, and how to clean up your CRM for better tracking, smarter decisions, and stronger results.

Podcast Transcript

You’re listening to the Digital Banter Podcast. The show where we tackle the challenges of B2B marketing head on and aren’t afraid to tell it like it is. Join us weekly as we talk to industry leaders, explore opportunities that impact the bottom line, and rev your company’s marketing engine with actionable insights and tips.

It’s time to burn the old B2B playbook and build something that makes an impact. Here are your hosts, Andy and James.

Andy : What’s up everybody. Welcome back to another episode of digital banter today. We are talking about data. Specifically HubSpot data and how much it can absolutely screw up your marketing and advertising, especially in the B2B world. Joining us today, we have Alexis Garrison, owner and founder of AG Digital Group.

Andy : Alexis, how’s it going?

Alexis : Hey, how are you guys?

Andy : All right. You’re ready to talk about some horror stories about HubSpot and how it can absolutely mess up everybody else’s, uh, Strategies and execution.

Alexis : I am. Are you ready to know the truth about what happens with your data when that is the case?

Andy : I think I already know what the truth is, but

James : I’m just excited to actually swap horror stories with this, this, this podcast might not actually ever get to the resolution section, but, uh, maybe we will, I want to start today’s podcast the way that we’re going to be starting every podcast moving forward to learn a little bit more about you, Alexis.

James : So the question that I like to start with is, uh, What’d you want to be when you grew up and how did you end up in B2B marketing?

Alexis : Yeah, I definitely did not want to be a B2B marketer. Um, that is for sure. I probably didn’t even know what B2B marketing was when I was little. Um, my dream was to be a sports broadcaster, actually.

Alexis : You know, as every little girl’s dream was when they were playing sports and wanted to be on ESPN and do the whole on field reporting thing and, and take it from there. But, um, I found media, um, agencies when I was in college and I kind of really liked the idea of media planning, media buying. Um, and my journey would be to be kind of adapted organically.

Alexis : I think, um, I started with traditional media purchasing before digital became What digital is. Um, so, you know, tv buys radio station buys and kind of those types of insertion orders. And, um, my brain got really analytical really fast. I think my first job out of college was the only job I ever had, um, to take a math test as a requirement to get the job because of media buying and planning and that thing.

Alexis : But to this day, I think that that’s probably the most one of the most useful jobs I ever had. Yeah. Um, and then I started working for agencies and I got really into digital and became a strategist within the marketing space. Um, and I really started adapting and liking, figuring out user journeys and buying models.

Alexis : And I kind of went from paid media, um, marketing and just wanted to expand my skill set when I found out. I need to know all the pieces of the puzzle. Um, I like knowing every intricacy of everything that’s going on. So if you’re going to tell me just to run Google campaigns and then I don’t know where they go after that, that doesn’t sit well with me.

Alexis : So I need to know where they’re converting, how the landing page is working. Are we creating contacts in HubSpot and how are they being treated afterwards? And it just kind of spiraled from there. Honestly,

James : I think it makes a lot of sense though, as like, You mentioned you started in traditional, right? So buying print radio TV, like what’s the main problem that I think us B2B, we want to measure everything.

James : Right. And what is like the back in the traditional days, like the, the measurement of that is not very easy to do. And I feel like once I kind of had a similar path where like I started to learn how, cause I started in paid search, which was like in 2013, the easiest thing to measure ever. And it just, it does become like super fascinating.

James : And then like, as you get into B2B, the measurement gets like more and more and more complex, which makes it more interesting. But also, I don’t know, maybe we can get into this a bit today too, but where we’re at with that now is certainly also not as good as it used to be.

Alexis : Yeah, absolutely. I remember creating third party tags and dart for publisher and tracking impressions against all of those tags and reconciling digital buys.

Alexis : And at that time, digital buys were an extension of print publications, or if you bought this many spots on TV, they would give you this many impressions on their website and those types of things. And then there was just this massive switch to. All, all paid media online, all digital, that entire presence, and we still call it digital marketing.

Alexis : I feel like everybody refers to it as digital marketing, but it’s really just marketing at this point. Um, you know, I think there was just a massive adaption to, to that, that realm that we live in every single day now. Um, I can’t even tell you the last time I had a client ask me to. by a print ad for them.

Alexis : So, um, but it did it. That analytical like mindset and background just really kind of helped drive me, I think, throughout the stages of how my career progressed. Um, and wanting to know and find solutions to why things weren’t performing well or if they were performing well on from visibility side from a paid standpoint.

Alexis : Why is that not translating to business success? And where are we losing that foundation and that That gap. Like, is it actually an issue with performance or is it an issue with how we’re managing the data? Um, and that’s kind of how it’s streamed into me deciding to learn HubSpot and Marketing operations and revenue operations.

Alexis : And now it’s a whole, whole nice little bowl of, of interesting facts.

Andy : Do you remember the first time you got the keys of the car to like a client’s HubSpot account?

Alexis : I do. And I had no idea what I was doing. Um, actually it was at a agency, uh, James Hellick we’re connected as well. So it was, I remember working on this client and they were a SAS, uh, tech client and they had.

Alexis : Probably the best HubSpot instance to this day that I have ever seen in terms of this, this marketing head of marketing was so particular in how his data was because he was responsible for it. And a lot of times we don’t get to work with from the agency side. We don’t get to work with really, really knowledgeable and invested heads of marketing because they’re hiring an agency to do that.

Alexis : Right? So this was fantastic. I mean, Yes, it was a lot of work because we had to be very particular, but that actually taught me so much about HubSpot and what like a, a good HubSpot instance should be essentially. Um, and I think that was, that was my first light switch into, Oh, these are how the pieces work together.

Alexis : And what happens after we, you know, created a new lead.

Andy : Was it one right after that, the immediate shit show and you’re like, wow, this is not what I just saw.

Alexis : I, I can’t tell you the last time I logged into a HubSpot account and I was like, oh, this is fantastic.

Alexis : Like

Alexis : I can’t, I’m so excited to like not have to do very much.

Alexis : Normally I log in and I’m like, well, what is going on? And I need to spend like five hours putting my brain around how to fix this. Um, so it’s very rare that you find an instance that is. Oh, that’s a good one. I

James : was going to say that. I’m going to put that in the chat, but I’m going to leave it. I’m going to put that in the chat, but I’m not going to do anything.

James : So I’m not going to do

Alexis : anything. That’s it. So then we’re going to do a send request.

Alexis : Like, do you want to, do you want to like a no particulars or are you? Yeah. I

James : want to know like the client name, what their budget was like

Alexis : where they’re at

James : now, if they’re still working at your job.

Alexis : I think one of the worst instances I have ever seen was it had 40, 000 data mind contacts uploaded into the system.

Alexis : Um, from like six years prior that. We’re all unengaged contacts. So they’re paying for this instance that they have no idea what’s going on in any of it. Um, and also just no, no structural setup at all. So no lead management processes, no statuses, nothing aligned to anything that they’re doing whatsoever.

Alexis : So leads would come in from their marketing tactics and they wouldn’t even know where they came from. They would had no idea how to attribute success to anything because nothing was set up. They just kind of took all of their contacts and like, let’s put it into HubSpot and see what happens thinking that it would set up itself.

Alexis : Um, and then five years later, things just kept piling up, piling up, piling up. And when you get to that situation, it takes longer to cleanse your data and clean your instance than it would just to honestly delete it and start over. There have been, there have been times that I told a client I think you should just delete everything that’s in here and start from scratch.

James : I could definitely see that. Like

Alexis : it’s easier.

James : Unfortunately, the, the problem that you see is usually more in large enterprise companies, cause they’re the one like. I feel like a small, this is something that we witness all the time. Like startup people shout out, like they mostly have their shit together because you have a marketing leader who’s actively involved, like in the tactics of it and like they feel a much larger responsibility for like every stage of the process, which has its own pros and cons, but like usually things are like.

James : More well kept together versus like a CMO who is removed and they only answer to the board and then they have a marketing ops layer of a team of 20 people than a demand gen of 20 people and then the product of 20 people like That’s that’s right. And then sales of a hundred people like that’s where it seems to be always just never a good situation

Alexis : Yeah, I noticed Lately, I’ve been working on a lot of kind of mid level companies, um, not necessarily startups, not as large as big, huge global enterprise.

Alexis : Um, but a lot of the times I find a big issue between just the sales team understanding how HubSpot operates. Um, and that kind of lack of training and knowledge in, oh, this is how our HubSpot is set up. This is how it works. And this is what is asked and needed of me in order to move contacts forward or keep the instance clean or let marketing know, okay, this lead that you gave me is fantastic or this one is really bad.

Alexis : So I think a lot of things can actually be resolved in investing in training, um, and knowledge, um, within how HubSpot operates. Um, we were talking about disasters. I think one of the biggest things that I see is the Misuse of HubSpot. I think that’s probably a better case of a disaster than than anything is treating HubSpot like it is a sales outreach platform because that’s not its intention and it’s not what it’s designed to do.

Alexis : Right? Um, Like it may be a little controversial to say that, but using it as a cold eat like outreach platform is fundamentally goes against what HubSpot was designed to do, right? Um, it was built for inbound leads, nurturing warm leads and managing relationships with customers or opportunities. Um. It’s not really supposed to be a database for cold outreach and cold sales sequences and things like that.

Alexis : And don’t get me wrong, I know HubSpot has this like sales workspace area now. Um, so it can be a little misaligning and a little confusing why they would offer that tool if that’s not the case. Um, but that’s for warm inbound, right? Um, especially when, you know, Still in their policies and things like that.

Alexis : It clearly outlines that cold outreach is, you know, against their hub spots essential policies. Um, and so we see a lot of that. And I see a lot of thousands and thousands and thousands of cold contacts in the system. Um, and from a marketing perspective, it’s like, would you rather have a database of Mhm.

Alexis : 5, 000 engaged contacts with a 15 percent conversion rate, or would you rather have a database of 50, 000 cold contacts with a 0. 1 percent conversion rate? Right. Yeah. So

James : to your point, it like it kills measurement, right? Like, I mean, you’re on the paid media side too. Like one thing that I’ve seen, you mentioned dumping cold contacts and that’s like something that call it a common mistake that maybe people can take away and fix and not do anymore.

James : But like all of the B2B marketing programs, everybody’s moving away from like lead gen to demand gen. And part of like what you want to look at is. Those conversion rates from MQL to SQL to pipeline acceleration metrics. And when you dump 40, 000 leads that you got from zoom info or even thousand leads that you got from a conference, like those aren’t leads that are going, like, that’s going to hurt your overall.

James : So if you’re measuring like customer acquisition costs, like all of those, it’s just going to skew everything down to pipeline and revenue conversion metrics down the board, like all those things that you’re trying to improve. Are all going to be skewed at that point.

Alexis : Yeah. Yeah. And I see, I even see people uploading lists and marking them immediately as an SQL.

Alexis : Um, They’ll say, well, we got this list from a trade show. So they’re, they must be qualified, right? They’re within all the ICPs that we needed. And that’s why we attended the conference of the show and then reps are just, you know, Oh, I have an SQL. Let’s start reaching out. Um, But that’s not going to show good data for you either from, you know, a management perspective, you have 2000 SQLs that you haven’t been able to push forward into an opportunity.

Alexis : So what are you doing wrong, Mr. Sales Rep, or are these actually qualified leads or not? Um, and a big thing that I always fight with is, well, then how do you manage that? Like, what do you do with those lists that you get? What do you do with these? Event attendees or these sales intel lists that are supposed to be right within our target criteria.

Alexis : And I utilize those on the paid media side, right? So how can I leverage these lists within my targeting capabilities? Um, you could upload to LinkedIn, you could try and, you know, convert people on that list because they are within your key demos and see if you can push them into engagement that way. Um, but there are other tactics that you can use.

Alexis : And there’s also, you know, designated sales platforms for things like that. So, um, just a different kind of business adaptation, I guess, um, in order to, to actually see qualification and, and qualified leads within your, your CRM.

Andy : Yeah. I mean, I think you’re both touching on this as the fact of like, how are you using it, right?

Andy : Is it a CRM or is a marking automation and reporting tool? Cause that’s, that at its core is the fundamental difference. If you’re treating it as a CRM, then if I’m the sales side of things, like I would ask, why wouldn’t I want to upload my event list? Because that’s how I’m going to track it. But that comes back to like a tech stack and understanding what’s the purpose of, let’s say Salesforce in this instance versus a real CRM.

Andy : Or if you’re just trying to, you know, kill birds and have multiple things happen to have a single tech stack. I think the, the big question then I have is like. How, how do you overcome that Alexis? Like you said, you had the golden goose, so to speak of the perfect setup as your initial one that you got access to.

Andy : And everything since then has failed to live up to that. So like, how do you approach understanding where to even start in cleaning up that data or disorganization?

Alexis : Yeah. And that’s, I mean, it’s a good question. Cause there’s so many different ways. I don’t think one project has been the same. I can’t, it’s not an out of the box solution for every client, every business, every account that comes my way because they’re all structured differently.

Alexis : Um, one of the biggest things that I tell people when I am onboarding to start working with them is I am going to become an extension of you. Like I need to know every nitty gritty detail on how you operate. What your customer journey is. We need to map out a visual of the entire process from start to finish, not even in HubSpot, like we need to just workshop every process, everything that’s out there and how ideally you want your audiences to move through your business structure, right?

Alexis : Um, a lot of times too, it depends. So some people use. of HubSpot and Salesforce. Some people just use HubSpot. Some use, you know, some do use a sales outreach platform and then HubSpot and then Salesforce. So like, it just depends on how you’re utilizing it. HubSpot has expanded so much over the last few years.

Alexis : Um, it used to just be for marketing purposes, right? For marketing automation, for nurturing, all of that kind of stuff. And that’s why a lot of companies. Salesforce, especially larger companies, enterprise companies, big, huge companies use both still. And rightfully so they have massive teams and they need to segment businesses, but HubSpot’s capabilities now have invoicing and deals and quotes, and they have everything that you can possibly do from an inbound lead perspective all the way through sales.

Alexis : So it depends. If HubSpot start to finish, you can, if you’re going to use HubSpot and sale and then Salesforce. you use HubSpot as marketing, right? You, you warm the leads, you nurture them to a point of, okay, they’re a sales qualified lead. They’ve done this many engagement points. They’ve requested a demo or they’ve engaged with 10 pieces of our content.

Alexis : They’ve whatever the qualifications that you assign and structure, and then they pass to Salesforce. And those two systems obviously talk to each other. So if it closes, it gets pushed back to HubSpot. So the marketing can see, cool. We sent them this lead and Now they closed. Awesome. Fantastic. Or closed, lost or so.

Alexis : You can just see and manage, you know, your data that way.

Andy : All right. So I’m gonna ask a triggering question then.

James : Fine. I got a better triggering question, I think, while we’re talking about transition and tools working together. Something that we see all the time is that clients want to migrate from HubSpot to Marketo because they feel like they’ve grown out of HubSpot.

James : I want to get your opinion on that. I want to know why somebody would consider making that change. Uh, like you mentioned before, I know HubSpot has changed a lot. Um, to me, it’s, it’s net. I’ve seen that done a lot of times and it’s never been good. So I want to hear your opinion.

Alexis : Yeah, um, that is a triggering question.

Alexis : I actually manage a lot of transitions from Marketto or Zoho to HubSpot. Um, I have honestly never had an account that’s been like, we hate HubSpot. We’re leaving and we’re going to Marketto. Um, I have from the paid media perspective, I have dealt with both Marketto and Zoho and the lack of data, I guess, and like segmentation and the capabilities.

Alexis : Um, From my perspective, aren’t as robust as what HubSpot offers. With that said, it’s also a matter of user experience, I guess. Um, because you’re going to get out of HubSpot, what you put into HubSpot, right? Um, you have to know the ins and outs and how to structure and set up so you can see things the way you want.

Alexis : And I’m sure it’s the same with, you know, Marketo and Zoho, but I haven’t, 100 percent gone down those rabbit holes because I’ve just seen from a paid perspective and the difficulties with attributing success to marketing programs from those systems. Um, and that’s one of the bigger struggles that I’ve seen.

James : Yeah, definitely. Uh, what was it? Their landing page functionality and tracking functionality is always like, I don’t know, I don’t get it. salesforce people too. And I don’t even think that it pairs as well with Salesforce as HubSpot does. So,

Alexis : yeah, I don’t, Marketo, no, I don’t think it has the same mapping capabilities that HubSpot does.

Alexis : Um, I think one of the benefits of HubSpot is just the way it’s able to map every single data point from Salesforce to HubSpot and vice versa. Um, and those, you know, are very important aspects. So you don’t lose data in the back and forth, um, migration between the systems because I have seen that quite a bit.

Alexis : If somebody even like if somebody is using QuickBooks for invoicing, for example, right? Um, I just had this situation, so it’s fresh in my brain. Um, and no, using QuickBooks is fine. But the problem is that QuickBooks doesn’t 100 percent understand HubSpot’s language and HubSpot doesn’t 100 percent understand QuickBooks language, right?

Alexis : So you have to figure out a way to map the data so it perfectly aligns back with that deal that you created or that opportunity created so that when an invoice is paid, it gets automatically marked as paid or closed or close one or whatever you’re doing within the system. So and those are sometimes require like custom integrations and things like that.

Alexis : So when you have systems that speak really well to each other and work really well with each other, like HubSpot and Salesforce do, I’m a full advocate of using The easiest implementation and easiest approach possible versus going down any custom approaches.

Andy : All right. So my triggering question was based off of all of the different capabilities that exist within HubSpot these days, who should own it, who in the organization should own it?

Alexis : Yeah, I, I think marketing should own HubSpot fully 100%, but I also think there’s a responsibility on the sales team to manage contacts that are assigned to them. I think there’s. front where marketing is generating these leads, nurturing these leads, getting to them a point where, okay, Mr. Contact, you’re now a sales qualified re lead.

Alexis : I’m going to assign you to our sales rep, right? And then sales rep responsible for like SQL to close one. But with that said, I think it’s still marketing. job to, you know, do continued nurture, set up the automations, make sure that anything and everything that can be automated between those processes in those stages is done.

Alexis : Um, for example, if one thing comes to mind, say a business works on demos, like demo requests are fulfilling demos. Um, and An SQL is considered a demo request. They want a demo, you scheduled one. Once that demo is set to complete in HubSpot, that should trigger a lifecycle or lead status change, right? So that should be marketing’s responsibility to make sure that that workflow and automation is operating correctly.

Alexis : Um, same with maybe even follow ups, like thanks for, you know, requesting demos. So there’s certain aspects there. I think that marketing should be in charge of the cleanliness of the data and making sure that. It’s operating correctly and efficiently. Um, and this is going to be controversial to say, but I also think it’s really important to set permission levels and have spot.

Alexis : Um, I think that certain people should have ownership over, say, properties, for example, and not everybody should be able to go in and edit or create properties, um, forms. I’ve seen huge issues with like, people, everyone and anyone creating forms, and then they create new fields, and then those fields don’t actually map to anything.

Alexis : And so then you’re getting a bunch of contacts with no emails, no first names, we have no idea where they came from, it’s a blank submission. You know what I mean? Because it’s not mapped correctly. So, I think that Making sure that processes are in place and there’s documentation behind everything and that, you know, everybody has a responsibility and that’s clearly outlined in your business model is important.

James : Forms is a good one. That’s like a

Alexis : list.

James : Like, if you want to make a list of like common mistakes, I feel like that’s one of them. Letting your forms be a free for all. I think everyone has seen the, I mean, just from a tracking perspective from like. What’s the thank you page experience to like just create like everyone’s seen like when you like five different ways that you can submit the same information rather than some sort of like standard structured process and that makes tracking a nightmare.

Andy : Are you a thank you page person or are you a modal frame or modal form submission tracking person?

Alexis : I am a thank you page person. Um, because I, I don’t believe in one data set to be the source of truth. Um, that might sound like weird. Um, but I think that it’s very important to make sure that you’re double, triple checking.

Alexis : So say conversions, for example, that’s a huge one. Um, people will be like, well, I have 50 conversions in my Google ads. Well, a conversion isn’t necessarily a contact because they could have already been a contact. Um, So I always, or, you know, and then a form submission. So you have conversions, you have form submissions and then you have like new contacts.

Alexis : Right. Um, I like to make sure that if I’m seeing 30 form submissions, that I’m also seeing 30 plus thank you page views. Um, so I, I track both. Um, I like to to make sure that I’m double checking everything that that I might need information on. So that’s why I use thank you pages.

James : I have a, I’ve banned the word conversions in our agency.

Alexis : Well, they are important though, right? But

James : you, you talk about them by what they are.

Alexis : Right, exactly. And that’s why when I do reporting, I always, always, always have definitions. I’m like, these are, you got 50 Google conversions, right? And conversions can be. Whatever we discuss, they want to make sure that their ads are they’re doing.

Alexis : And then, but you also generated 20 net new contacts in HubSpot. So your cost per new contact is this, and your cost per conversion is this. And I keep them so separate. I keep them. Because they’re both so important. That’s what like, you know. So even

James : with like the conversions at this point to like, was it going to get super technical?

James : Like there’s all conversions in Google and like conversions in Google and you can have primary and secondary and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we’ve just like taking over stuff from agencies before where they’re like, sure, like they’re tracking like this key page view. But when you review their reporting, it just is like spend impressions, clicks, conversions, conversions that includes.

James : Everything from demos to key page views to video plays to just like all of the stuff that’s like, yeah, cool. It’s kind of interesting and can help you optimize and make sure you’re meeting the right people. But like, it’s not your client thinks conversions are leads and

Alexis : I’m going to be devil’s advocate though, because if you’re running brand campaigns, your conversions aren’t leads.

Alexis : It’s your conversions or something different. Your conversions are going to be website traffic. They’re going to be clicks. They’re going to be different metrics than your conversion points for a lead gen program. Right? So, yeah. And I just

James : think that’s like in your conversations with the client and even you can rename the conversions in Google data studio, what they are.

James : So you can say like, Oh yeah, we spent this much and we got this many video views instead of using the word conversions, use the word video views.

Alexis : Well now. Analytics calls them events. So

Andy : we don’t talk about Google analytics on this podcast. If

Alexis : a client is already structured where they’re, that’s how their Google ads is pulling their conversions in.

Alexis : It’s going to show, it’s going to show a vet. Like if you have a Looker studio report set up, it’s going to show events. And then you have to filter by key events and you have to, Oh.

Andy : You talked, you, you talked about the nuclear option on HubSpot. That’s the nuclear option on the paid side of things. .

Alexis : Yeah, but that’s, I mean, data tracking is huge right now and I think that that is a missed conversation in general because I don’t think everybody is aware of how difficult from a marketing perspective, with all of these new cookie policies and privacy policies, it is to take a list of, you know, 20 people that all say they came from direct traffic because they didn’t say yes.

Alexis : track my cookies, um, to find out if those are actually direct traffic or if they came from a paid campaigns. And that’s a whole other wormhole. And I think I always like to think from the client perspective too, is like, well, what are they doing? Like, why are they working so hard on reporting? Well, because we’re trying to find accurate data for you and it’s very, our job, our jobs have been made very difficult because of that.

Alexis : Um, So it’s implementing best practices, like going back to tracking URLs and UTMs and campaigns and making sure that everything and anything is structured with no confusion from the beginning. And that, so

James : I’m with you on like the, uh, the gaps in the data. That’s like something we see all the time. And I think another thing question that you get all the time of, like, why doesn’t HubSpot match Google ads?

James : Why doesn’t HubSpot match this? Why doesn’t HubSpot? Everybody’s like looking for like this perfect data set. So my question is, is like, what should they expect as far as like mismatching and data, like variance between different channels and then also like based on all the nuances you said before, like, what do you think the future looks like for tracking?

James : Like, do you think we’re always going to be able to rely on contact data in a hub spot? Or is that going to be a pain in the butt too?

Alexis : Yeah, I think. I mean, I’m used to that question between even if, if a client has their website connected to HubSpot, even the traffic shows differently between the two, right?

Alexis : It’s because they track different things. Like sometimes if you have your GA4 set up, so it tracks every single session and HubSpot is only tracking net new sessions. So it just, there can be so many reasons why the data is off and mostly because they, they track differently, right? They have different approaches.

Alexis : They have different. First touch, second touch, last touch. How are we? What’s our attribution model? I have no idea and that’s, you know, a whole other project. Um, but I think that it’s just important to have the conversation of what do you want your truth to be? Are we only going to look at HubSpot or are we only going to look at GA?

Alexis : Like there needs to be one source of truth that your business on versus looking at so many different systems, instructors and points and trying to figure out the why it’s just, we’re going to look at this. This is, this is what we’re going to report on and we’re going to, this is our baseline, right? So this is how we’re going to show X, Y, Z.

Alexis : Um, I think right now with. The way that all of these new regulations have been put into place is we’re kind of almost in the future of data tracking because it’s a pain in the butt. Um, and another reason why thank you pages are so great, because that also helps with with conversions and easy tracking.

Alexis : And if you’re not using those, it becomes even a larger project. But, um, like I said, I think it’s just implementing all of the best practices that we used years ago when we had to manually track a lot of stuff. Then we had this really nice. Marketing is so easy because everything automatically tracks everything for us.

Alexis : And then it went back to, oh, no, we’re getting rid of cookies. So now we can’t track everybody and you have to figure out how to do that. Um, so it’s going back to those best practices like tracking URLs, thank you pages, you know, all of these different things that we may be just kind of like got lax with, um, and implementing those best practices again.

Alexis : I think that’s the, that’s. I’ve run into a lot. Um, the only problem is if you can’t rely on count contacts, I don’t know. At that point, you’d have to rely on GA and your UTMs and

James : yeah,

Alexis : do that whole process. But I, I 100 percent anytime I’m running marketing programs, I set up a campaign in HubSpot. I use that campaign ID and all of my tracking URLs so I can track every initiative that aligns with that.

Alexis : I also always set up an active list so I can pull like first referring sources, GC, LID, because that’s a little loop around to figure out what came from Google or not. And 9 times out of 10, there’s probably about 50 percent of that list is indicated as direct traffic. So I always set up automations to check, to change that.

Alexis : So if they came from this source as the first referring. change the original source to paid. So just so we know, you know, have those in place and the structure in place to be able to, to tell a story, I guess, is the best approach there.

Andy : So when we talk about lacks, I didn’t want to use that as a jump on off point to lead scoring and to get your opinion on what the best practices around ideal lead scoring program looks like.

Andy : I’ll use an extreme example of. James, correct me if I’m wrong, but one of our clients had essentially two page views as equating to an MQL, if I remember, or was it, it was a form submit and two page views, which was what was a

James : form submit and two page views, any page view, by the way, any page,

Alexis : any page view.

Alexis : Okay. Okay. Um,

James : the thank you page to the. It was a whole thing because like, uh, lead, like lead ads were not, even if somebody submitted like a demo and they went from an ad to, so basically they submitted a demo, but there was only one page view in the demo. So they never got made at MQL, even though they raised their hand and said, Hey, I want a demo of your product.

Alexis : Well, a demo should be an accelerator anyway. So it should have been scored as. whatever it is for an MQL and that’s an, it should just be an accelerator at that point. But I run it, I don’t know if you guys run into this, but I run into a lot of clients that don’t have a lot of mid funnel initiatives. And by that, I mean, most of their CTAs and their conversion points are contact sales that request a demo and mostly just bottom funnel objectives, like no warming, no initial contact creation.

Alexis : So I run into this a lot where we’re trying to set up. management and like life cycle stages and lead statuses, but they have no true MQL, right? So how do you move a contact through the funnel if we don’t even have an initiation point? So if they’re not, they’re just all sales qualified at that point, right?

Alexis : So what’s the point? Um, but for lead scoring, If that’s the case, they don’t have a lot of like assets in their tracking, say organic interactions, paid interactions and stuff like that. It really depends on how they value engagement levels. Um, HubSpot, I don’t know if you guys know HubSpot recently just released a new lead scoring.

Alexis : System. So under marketing now is where lead scoring lives and it’s a whole new lead scoring platform. Um, and it’s actually done by events or contact parameters. So you can say their first name is known, their last name is known, their email. I don’t think any lead should be an SQL or an MQL if they don’t have an email address.

Alexis : That, that bothers me so much. I’ll see these contacts that are marked as like, even opportunity sometimes that have no phone number and no emails. Like, how do you know this person’s an opportunity? Have you talked to them?

James : We met what we were talking about before too. Like when something is an opportunity, it should have a revenue value.

Alexis : I think there should always, there has to be a deal if there’s an opportunity. And that’s, I see that all the time. I, one of the first things I do when I go into a HubSpot instance is create active lists of misalignment. So if somebody is marked as, I would say, contact has life cycle stage of opportunity, but no associated deal.

Alexis : Okay. You have thousands of contacts that are opportunities or companies that are opportunities that have no deals. So are they an opportunity? Probably not. Um, so like those things, like that’s kind of what starts the whole little spiral effect of data cleanup is finding, getting a picture of it first.

Alexis : You have to, you can’t, you don’t know how bad it is until you start, you know, looking at the unalignment, but back to lead scoring in terms of that. I think if you really don’t have any true, like mid funnel objectives, the only real lead scoring would be to go off engagement, right? But I don’t think that, I think engagement has to be weighed.

Alexis : So, and that comes from like upper management at a company saying, okay, we think somebody that has, you know, clicked on two of our ads, engaged with us on linked in seven times and been to 10 pages of our website, including two of our guides, they’re going to be, you know, considered qualified enough for sales to say, Hey, we’ve noticed that you’ve been on our site.

Alexis : You’ve checked out a few things. How can I help you? Right. Um, but lead scoring is, I found is kind of almost a sensitive topic with clients and you really have to work together with them to, to see how valuable certain aspects of their business are. Um, And getting workshops done to, to get that kind of situated out.

Andy : That comes back to ownership, right? If to your point, if marketing is owning it, the question is, is it a shared responsibility across the marketing team? Is it a single person that owns it? And there’s rhetorical, this isn’t like necessarily need to be answered, but it’s like, You know, if it’s owned by a single person, okay, is that person given the resources they need to succeed?

Andy : Do they have the skill set to be successful? Are they collaborating with the various stakeholders, sales in particular here? And do they have the empowerment to slap wrists if somebody starts uploading event lists and attendees and things like that? Like how empowered are they? How skilled are they? And are they also like valued in the organization or are they just seen as an afterthought because money is being invested elsewhere and you’ve got a junior level person managing a key piece of infrastructure.

Andy : That’s got to power your entire strategy.

Alexis : Yep. And this is why that initial conversation is so important is that. documentation, that process outline that, you know, getting a database of these are our business policies. This is how we operate our system and making that your holy Bible of this is how our company works.

Alexis : So then marketing team can just take that and And use that, right? And then, and this is the biggest struggle I have when I work with new clients is they don’t understand the lift.

James : It is tough. Like, uh, RevOps is like, I saw a post last year, like the fastest growing job title in marketing or something like that.

James : I think it makes a lot of sense, because like, what we see all the time is like, someone’s just kind of like thrown into it. Oh yeah, like. This person, they made a marketing report in HubSpot one time and now like they’re the HubSpot person. And I think that that’s like, it’s just like a huge flaw because it’s a completely, even on the paid media side, like it’s a completely different skill set to be able to set up reporting in HubSpot than it is a data studio dashboard with LinkedIn and Google ads metrics.

James : Like it’s a. It’s just way different. It’s a lot harder, a lot harder. I was

Alexis : talking to somebody about rev ops the other day, actually, about the growth in that position and that that position truly understands marketing strategy and what the sales team needs and is kind of that in between person of how to really expand business operations and how to leverage, you know, both departments to work together, but make them cohesive at the same time.

Alexis : Right? Um, but From your guys perspective, when it comes to clients and you’re running paid programs and they’re in HubSpot, what are some of the biggest, you know, concerns or questions you get when they’re looking at their HubSpot instance from, and wondering, you know, about their marketing programs and how they’re doing?

Alexis : Is it that they can’t see the data or they don’t know how successful they are?

James : There’s a lot of things the mismatch is always like a big, just like we talked about that a little bit before of like, why doesn’t this match this? Why doesn’t and then, um, what is the single source of truth is also like a common argument or discussion because on the paid media side, like, I’ll be honest, I lean more on some of the paid media based metrics because attribution gets lost.

James : Like you’re, yeah. And HubSpot setting an attribution window or whatever it last click, first click, whatever it may be. And, you know, as we, that works for like lead gen activities, it doesn’t work for branding activities. It doesn’t show anything in the journey. That’s for like those longer attribution when those are better in the ad platform, but that ends up having a mismatch.

James : So that’s like. That’s the common thing. And then I feel like we’ve gone through them all lead scoring, huge issue. Uh, and then just the data being an absolute mess.

Andy : Yeah. Data, the data being a mess then translates into, we always, we want to ideally try to merge the data on the HubSpot side with the ad platform side.

Andy : We can do it if it’s in a clean. and there’s actual rules and parameters that allow us to roll it up. But if it’s a bunch of junk, you can’t do anything consistently.

James : Our goal is always to track somebody from form submission to close one deal and attribute it to paid media. Like that’s. Our goal, and it’s about 10 percent of the time that the client has the infrastructure to actually do that.

James : That’s

Alexis : yeah. And it’s have all these form submissions from paid and then it just starts to fall off because you have no idea where it ended up, but to that point to attribution, and that could be a whole other discussion in and of itself is how a client attributes success. Some clients look at all touch points.

Alexis : Some look at. First touch point is the holy grail. Some look at last. It’s just and you have to from the agency side be aware of, okay, they like to see data this way and they attribute success to this part of the touch, right? Or they give a little bit of success to each one. Um, and that’s also a whole other ball game and something that, you know, we as marketers have to be aware as and have that discussion with the client too.

Alexis : Because Sometimes a rep can be like, well, I talked to that client at an event, but you’re saying that it came from paid media and that’s how we got their contact information in there. Okay. So it’s a little bit of both then, right? 50 percent here, 50 percent there. I don’t know.

James : That is the answer though.

James : That’s just like not the answer that the board likes to see. Right. It’s like the right way to do it would be look at every single contact and then look at all the touch, every single close one deal, and then map it back to all the different touch points that they had. And then you can see and map out common customer journeys to see like, okay, where’s the areas where we should be investing money.

James : Now that sounds simple when I say it that way, but you’re talking about. Hundreds, if not thousands of close one deals, and then trying to, that’s where like a lot of new attribution tech is very cool because it can identify those commonalities. Um, nobody wants to pay for that. They just, they just want to look at last click attribution or first click wrong with it

Alexis : because they, what do they say?

Alexis : The articles say that. It takes seven touches to get somebody to convert or something. Seven. I think, I think the number

James : 73, there’s some

Alexis : weird stat out there about how many touches it needs to get somebody to convert, but it could have been, this person had five touches of our LinkedIn campaign and one touch from an event and a conference.

Alexis : And it’s like, okay, so all of those are marketing objectives, right? Those are all marketing tactics. So I’m going to attribute that to marketing. So that’s another, you know, Way to do it too. I, it just so much of this depends on businesses structure. And that’s why I think it’s very important when you are an outside source and you’re coming in and working with a client to become a member of their company, right.

Alexis : And just fully adapt to what their needs are, their goals are. And it’s so different between everybody. And there’s not a perfect solution or answer for, for anyone, which. Kind of crappy to say because I know we all want just what’s the answer? How do we

Alexis : fix it? But it really depends

James : I wish I could give this person credit, but I saw something on LinkedIn like a couple of days ago and they asked the question of like, how to something about like how much of revenue should be attributed to marketing and this person, they were like all of it.

James : And I think that’s true. At the end, like, cause, and I think that that’s like the piece that like people miss, it’s like, well, somebody heard of you before they reached out to sales, cold outreach is marketing, like, and there’s like all of these, all of those components to it. I just thought it was like, it made a lot of sense.

James : Like the better your marketing is, the more revenue you’re going to make, like every, you could say that about a lawn care business. You could say that about a B2B SaaS company. Like that’s where revenue business comes from.

Alexis : Right. I mean, unless a rep brings a client directly to you and it’s like, oh, they’re converting.

Alexis : We’re, we closed a deal and they never touched anything to do with,

James : yeah, but where did that come from? How’d they meet them? Did they meet them at an event? That’s marketing. Did they meet them? Did they, and this is where like part of the argument would be that like, uh, SDRs are marketing, like that’s just an email marketing program.

James : That’s what that is. Uh,

Alexis : so I was thinking about this earlier actually about how even with HubSpot stuff is to understand even HubSpot or to get, you know, Marketing operations, revenue operations. You have to be a strategist. You have to be a marketing strategist and understand marketing in its entirety.

Alexis : You have to know technical implementations as well. So you’re already a marketer. Now you’re understanding the technical aspects. You understand the website and the user journey, and you also understand your entire business process. I think marketing is one of the only teams that has to fully, fully understand.

Alexis : The entire business model, the sales process, the business process, and come up with your marketing strategy, implement that strategy, manage the website, manage your organic and your SEO. Like they are, they touch everything at any time.

James : Alexa, did you study marketing in college by any chance? Yeah. So everybody knows what the four P’s are.

James : Yep. Like everyone thinks of promotion, but there’s pricing distribution product.

Andy : It’s placement. Actually not. Distribution. Yes. But it’s place. But place. Yeah. Remember distribution is a D not a P. I’m just being.

Alexis : I feel like there’s way more than four now though.

Alexis : We have. I feel like there’s so many different areas.

Andy : Analytics and

James : website and more.

Andy : Back in my day, they were all four Ps. Um, anyway, so as we kind of come to a close, Alexis, I think I have like, I think it’s a twofold question, but for people that have tuned in today, um, if we think about like having HubSpot in a solid place for them to operate their business, but through the lens of, let’s say like a maturity model, like what, what would that look like?

Andy : Like, Somebody listening today is like, Oh, I got lead scoring down pat. Like it’s nailed. You know, does that put them like middle of the roadmap? You know, what would that look like for somebody that’s got a huge shit show versus somebody that’s like in a really solid place and they can make actionable decisions?

Alexis : I think baseline basic, okay. You kind of know what you’re doing. HubSpot, um, instance would be, you have life cycle stages. robust. You know what your stages are. Everybody in your business knows what your stages are. You have statuses that define where they are within that life cycle stage and you have the lead scoring that pushes them or flows them.

Alexis : Some people don’t like the word pushes, but um, flows them from initial contact to Sales outreach. I don’t think you need lead scoring through the entire process. I think just the like from initial contact creation until you hand it off to sales. That area of lead scoring is super important, especially if you don’t have any mid funnel initiatives that are currently live that are like generating those warmer leads, right?

Alexis : Um, that to me would be like baseline. Um, as well as form follow ups. I think there always needs to be like some kind of automatic engagement. Because I’ve seen so many times where a form doesn’t go anywhere. So why is somebody is filling this out and there’s no process to follow up or get in touch or something like that.

Alexis : And that to me is baseline. Um, then you just get into more robust build outs, like marketing nurtures, sales sequences, reengagement programs, like then you just start to build it out, but you need those foundations or you’re never going to have insights to your business conversion rates. at all. You’re not gonna know anything about how you’re doing in terms of the overall business plan, right?

Andy : So what are three things that somebody that listened today can go do right the second to up their game when it comes to their CRM or marketing automation, whatever they’re using HubSpot for?

Alexis : The first thing I would do is check your how clean your data is and to see your data hygiene. So I would pull active list and say, okay, we have This many contacts that are in this life cycle stage, but have no contact owner, or they are, you know, this life cycle stage and they have no deal, for example, or whatever we want to do.

Alexis : So see where your data’s at. How is there a misconnection between your lead status and life cycle stages or? You know, get a sense of how accurate your information is first and foremost. And that, that to me is priority one. And then check on your properties. Um, there are so many times I get into an instance and somebody has like hundreds and hundreds of properties that are unused and just clean them up.

Alexis : Same with workflows. So a lot of times workflows will have warnings and, um. clean up instances. So like things like that is baseline. I think that is the first thing anybody needs to do is clean up their instance and see where they’re at. And that’s to get a reality check of what you need to do next.

Andy : Cool. All right. Well, Alexis, thank you so much for joining us today. How can people learn more about a G digital group and reach out to you?

Alexis : Yeah. Um, so you can email me or LinkedIn probably is the best. I would just go to AG digital group, um, LinkedIn page, um, or Alexis Garrison, just right on LinkedIn. Um, and you can message me there.

Andy : Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today until next time, guys, we’ll see you on the next episode of digital banter. Catch you later.

Thanks for listening to the Digital Vanter podcast. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss an episode. For more resources and to keep up with the show, visit dragon360. com. Until next time.