How Growth Grader from HubSpot helps focus Marketing and Sales efforts

Growth at most times depends on keeping track of lead generation and conversion rates, the time it takes to convert leads, the prospecting cycle and so on. Now, while there could be multiple strategies for achieving growth, how can you figure out if your growth rates are good or optimal?

HubSpot gives you the ability to drill down and see if you are utilising multiple opportunities open to you for conversion. You may be doing some or all of these activities and it is a good way to keep going back to the tool periodically and making changes based on the results you get.

Why is this important? It widens your zones of possibilities rather than staying with a few prospecting options that the company has grown used to over time.

It asks you a range of questions regarding your current activities and helps you diagnose where the company is doing well and where you’re coming up short. That gives you a good idea of where near-term efforts should be focused and then, doing another evaluation once those areas have been addressed.

Cast your net wide in the right directions

Here are some of the assessments the Grader asks the company to make

1. There are multiple ways for visitors to convert on our site besides submitting the contact us form.
2. We create content that focuses on the goals and needs of our buyers
3. We participate in places where our best prospects spend their time
4. We run targeted campaigns to generate new visitors/leads
5. We have an SEO strategy that focuses on topics rather than keywords

Growth Grader is a great assessment point to measure the sum total of your sales and marketing effort

As you can see, this helps to understand where the company is doing well and also to suggest where new areas should be explored.

There are four directions the Growth Grader focuses on – Attract, Engage, Delight, Fighting Friction.

This also splits the stages of activity into parameters you can dive deeper into. For example, how much are you doing to attract the attention of fresh prospects ties in to the number of new leads or visitors you generate from the website or landing pages and so on.

Focusing on creating content that addresses the needs of buyers helps to sharpen the engagement aspect. That’s the point at which visitors begin to ask deeper questions and initiate interactions. Not all of this will culminate in sales but it is important to know that it is happening.

Look at scores as action points

The evaluation is meant to drive fresh efforts – whether it is conversion, opening up new pathways to conversion or to move customers to decision modes.

Diagnosing where the obstacles lie is often the best way to implement solutions. For example, if the number of leads generated is good and conversion is low, that becomes the problem to solve. Whether it is by improving response time, or outreach being increased or even to ensure that procedures for proper follow ups are put in place.

On the other hand, if lead generation itself is the issue, then the company needs to take a look at where the problems are. Should the number of campaigns be increased or evaluate which media bring in the best return on investment?

The point of using Growth Grader is to continually assess whether the actions being taken and results obtained measure up. Since markets are dynamic, expect these results to change continually over time.

At one point, let’s say, the company puts in the effort to generate relevant content. Then, at some point later, those efforts lag and it begins to show up on the dropping number of new visitors to the website a few months later.

Evaluate continually, periodically

The point of using Growth Grader is to assess whether the efforts being made are optimal or can be improved. Unless the shortcomings are addressed, the results will not change.

Focusing on growth requires breaking down the work the company already does to find gaps and then plug them. And move into areas the company may not have explored

It is also up to the company to make the assessment impartially and track whether the suggestions are being followed up.

• Qualify the metrics you will use to determine success
• Pull reports to show metrics before you start implementing playbooks
• Compare regularly to see how your efforts are paying off

HubSpot has a number of reporting tools to help you understand how the efforts made are paying off.

It helps to determine a starting point of where the company’s current efforts are, so that it becomes the baseline from which the progress is evaluated.

Taking the Growth Grader assessment early on is also a great diagnostic tool and helps employees in various departments understand what their focus should be as well.

Blueoshan can come in and help you set up Growth Grader by selecting the metrics, assessing current efforts and creating the reporting structure. This is where early work needs to be concentrated.

Working with you, we can give you metrics which should be monitored daily, weekly or quarterly. This will vary from industry to industry depending on the sales cycles as well as the conversion times prevalent in the business.

Growth Grader is part of the Marketing and Sales Professional plans from HubSpot, so it is helpful to companies who are looking to drive the next stage of growth and automation.

Talk to us on how this can be the focal point of planning and putting action plans into practice, whether it is content, lead generation or making projections.