If you are in the process of onboarding HubSpot and looking to expand your marketing team, or perhaps you’re a HubSpot user and looking for a new Marketing Manager - it’s essential that you find someone with HubSpot and Inbound Marketing experience.
HubSpot is a large, powerful and at times, complex platform, and to fully train an individual on all the intricacies of HubSpot, you will no doubt have to carve out a chunk of your time to help get them up to speed.
Inbound Marketing, on the other hand requires experience of actually executing campaigns before you can understand what works successfully and what doesn’t.
But what should you be looking for? How can you identify a HubSpot superstar? In this blog, we’ll outline the things you should look for when recruiting a HubSpot marketing manager.
CV Screening – what to look for
1. Two or more years of experience using HubSpot
This is, of course, the most important thing to look for. You need someone who has been using the tool for a few years and understands the ins and outs. Don’t worry, we’ll put the use of HubSpot to test during the interview phase, but at this stage if someone says they’ve been using the tool for a number of years then that’s a good sign!
While experience using HubSpot is important (and absolutely necessary in this instance) there are other things that you should also look for, particularly experience in content creation, SEO and social media management.
Why? Because content, SEO and social media amplification are all key components in the Inbound methodology; every Inbound campaign is built (and enhanced) using them.
Inbound Marketing starts with content. A blog is, according to HubSpot, the “best way to attract new visitors to your website”. That content on your blog is optimised for specific search terms, helping interested parties to find your blog online. You then use social media to amplify the reach of your content, increasing its exposure and awareness of your brand.
Experience in these three things, as well as HubSpot experience, is a good start. Make sure you look for applicants that have experience in them and the skills to boot!
2. HubSpot Certifications
As the most accredited HubSpot Diamond partner, we love HubSpot certifications. We know that in order to deliver the best services to our clients and to keep on top of the latest HubSpot and Inbound Marketing developments – we need to educate ourselves!
HubSpot and Inbound is always changing – and on that basis, we need to know everything there is about the tool and the methodology if we are to help our clients make the most of it.
As a result, we regularly have competitions to see who can get the most accreditations and pass with flying colours!
If you are looking to hire a HubSpot Marketing Manager – you should look for one who ideally has most – if not all – of the HubSpot certifications and has them listed on their CV. Not only will they have a good understanding of HubSpot, they will also know how to make it work for your business.
3. Experience in integrating HubSpot with other platforms
Sure – HubSpot has everything you need to manage your marketing and sales activity but you will want a HubSpot Marketing Manager who knows their way around different marketing tools and software. For example, we often have clients ask us about WordPress and Salesforce integration in HubSpot. HubSpot supports the integration of these platforms natively but configuring WordPress and Salesforce to work with HubSpot requires some know-how.
HubSpot has a huge array of different tools, all of which can be integrated seamlessly with the platform. Think about the tech stack that your marketing team uses; does it include things like Wistia, Eventbrite, and Hotjar, for example? If someone has experience integrating other tools with HubSpot – it’s a good indication that they know their stuff!
What to look out for during the interview process
1. Knowledge of Inbound & Growth Marketing
This goes without saying, but it’s pointless hiring a HubSpot Marketing Manager if they have no idea about Inbound Marketing and how it works. HubSpot is designed for Inbound Marketing and every tool in the platform is designed with the Inbound methodology in mind.
It’s incredibly easy for people to claim they have experience in HubSpot, or that they ‘know’ HubSpot which is my personal favourite, but for hiring managers to later find out that they in fact, do not.
It’s also important to appreciate the fact that while HubSpot is designed for Inbound Marketing – some people may not necessarily be using the tool in the same way. Some use HubSpot purely for its CRM, while others might just be using HubSpot for their blog or email marketing activity.
On that basis, make sure that any HubSpot Marketing Manager you talk to or interview has a good understanding of the Inbound methodology and how HubSpot can be used to help attract, convert, and close customers. Ask them about the buyer’s journey, content strategy, and lead management – see if they know their stuff.
In an ideal world, they will have worked with an agency, consultancy or business that uses Inbound Marketing and HubSpot. Knowing how Inbound works and actually using it are two different things – and you really want your HubSpot Marketing Manager to be able to hit the ground running.
2. Familiarity with all the tools in HubSpot
HubSpot has come a long way since its conception in 2006. It’s gone from ‘just’ a Marketing Automation platform to a full stack of marketing, sales, and service tools designed to help businesses grow.
Social media, blogging, analytics, workflows, reporting, live chat, bots, email automation, and much, much more – can all be done from within HubSpot.
Of course, it goes without saying that in order to actually benefit from all these tools, you need to know how to use them.
Sure, they might have experience using HubSpot from a CRM perspective - but do they know how to use all of the marketing tools? (and vice versa)
With this considered, a good way to see how familiar they are with HubSpot is to set a few tasks for them to do. You could, for example, ask them to:
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Build a blog
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Set up a workflow based on your specifications
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Pull a report from HubSpot
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Add contacts to HubSpot
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Build a landing page and thank you page
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Build some CTAs, forms and lead flows
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Build website pages
If they can do all of the above – and make no mistakes – it’s a good indication that they’ve used the tool before and run detailed campaigns.
3. Up to date with the latest Inbound Marketing & HubSpot news/developments
Again, HubSpot is always changing. As well as being accredited, being aware of upcoming software updates to the HubSpot platform, such as new tools or changes, will put you in a good position to accommodate those changes. For example, when HubSpot released its content strategy tool – our marketing team had already devised a strategy on how to use it and leverage it for content creation. Soon after we had created a pillar page using the content strategy tool and that pillar page is ranking on the first page of Google within a few weeks.
Any HubSpot Marketing Manager you hire should be immersed in HubSpot and Inbound Marketing. They should have HubSpot’s website and a Google search for Inbound Marketing news bookmarked in their browser!
That might be a slight exaggeration, but ultimately anyone you consider hiring should love HubSpot and Inbound, much like we do, and be able to talk about latest developments.
The points we have outlined above should help you to find HubSpot superstars throughout the recruitment process. Filling your team with the right people, people that can help to grow your business and make best use of HubSpot, is crucial but if you don’t have the time or the money – there is another option: outsourced marketing support.
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