Our thinking about HubSpot, AI, & removing silo'ed data

A little over a year ago we were in the same boat. Our agency was chugging along nicely with a strong referral network keeping us growing at a 'steady-ish' rate, but with a slight decrease in growth velocity. Size comes with a realisation that the law of diminishing returns is a real and unfortunate thing. Slowing growth make us look to inbound marketing The decrease in growth velocity caused us to look closely at how we generated business and we decided to get real with our own digital marketing. As long-time digital marketers

As with all things you generally get what you pay for, but there are some sweet spots in the marketing automation software space where some of the solutions are genuinely affordable. Scalability with Affordable marketing automation software A small caveat here, I would not recommend going with a cheaper solution or a solution that can’t scale, reason being it takes a lot of time and effort to get a marketing automation platform up to speed and delivering results. Don’t underestimate the time it takes and the cost of your time to set the system up. We recently provided HubSpot to a

Although not the sexiest part of marketing automation, and despite being around for a few decades now, email marketing is still the top lead generation medium in the B2B space according to a 2017 report by Chief Marketer. So what core features do you need to look for in Marketing Automation software? 1. Easy to use email editor An easy to

There are a host of email automation software providers available globally, and a number of vendors (local and international) that we do suggest using locally here in South Africa. Email Automation is a cornerstone element of the fast growing space in digital marketing called marketing automation. What is email automation used for? Triggered emails: Welcome emails Abandoned cart emails Refer-a-friend Milestones like birthdays and anniversaries Scheduled emails:

Setting the website optimisation stage We recently launched a new 1,400 page website for one of Africa’s largest law firms. The job was enormous: we trimmed the website from a massive 17,000 pages to 1,400! Some of you reading this might ask: "Why would you trim all that content? Content is so valuable!" Well, here’s the thing: those 1,400 pages we kept brought in 97% of the organic search traffic. The rest of the ±15,000 pages were just noise and a complication for the firm's marketing department content managers. The website Page Speed numbers were so

This is a great question because it is so often overlooked when businesses are evaluating a CRM platform. All too often they look at the feature set and online reviews without evaluating who left those reviews and what size businesses they worked at. Ease of use is directly proportional to the level of features in a CRM. On top of this, the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of the CRM platform must come into account. Both of these are web and app design & development terms, and in relation to CRM, they mean the following: User Interface: The visible

The truth is I don't really get asked this question too much anymore. HubSpot CRM has permeated the market and there are loads of successful cases where HubSpot CRM has been implemented and works great. If this article is too HubSpot specific and you want a general overview of CRM - check out this article - What CRM should I choose in South Africa? Here are the top features we love in HubSpot CRM: A fully functional CRM for free Using free versions of Sales Hub, integration of Gmail

The client, a safari travel operator working on three continents was currently using Salesforce CRM, and at a large cost, had over the last year integrated Salesforce into both this booking engine and their sales operations. Disillusioned by the sprawling licensing costs and the ongoing monthly bills to customise and integrate Salesforce, she had pulled the plug on the project and wanted to move over to HubSpot CRM. On the flip side, we have another potential customer in the medical technology industry that was desperate to move from their legacy CRM system over to HubSpot CRM. They cited

Inbound is complicated and expensive An inbound campaign is definitely not the least expensive option out there, there are lots of moving parts. It takes a healthy dose of skilled digital practitioners required to get it right. In response to the inbound campaign proposal, our client asked how much an SEO retainer would cost. Their logic - if we are at the top of Google when our potential clients search for 'fleet management' - their given industry - the enquiries would come in. Below I cover my logic - and reply to our