HubSpot for Cannabis, CBD, Psychedelics, Web3, and More
Some agencies and marketers fill their days with Amazon ads, drop shipping, and widgets-galore, but we're lucky enough to spend each day with entrepreneurs at the cutting edge of tech, financial and professional services, and emergent industries. Sometimes we find these high-growth spaces sometimes move so quickly, it's tough to find time for fundamentals like growth marketing, customer journey, and CRM practices that overall will reduce costs and professionalize the industry.
Whether you're cultivating cannabis, brewing CBD concoctions, or exploring the psychedelic cosmos, today we're making the map on implementing great CRM software practices for these growing industries. Read on for 5 key considerations of implementing a CRM.
Why You Need a CRM
Last month, in our cheeky 4/20 post "High Time for CRM: Boost Your Alternative Medicine Business with HubSpot," we tackled the case for using that favorite of corporate software tools, the CRM, even in explosive spaces like psychedelics, since these tools are essential for personalized marketing, maintaining compliance, and scaling in fast-evolving markets like alternative health. There are dozens of CRM tools to choose from, for our money for emerging industries like alternative health and other middle market business we like HubSpot, for its power, ease of use, and ability to unite both sales and marketing teams.
Configuring a Process
Once you choose a CRM provider, it's time to pull it out of the box and turn it on. We often counsel our clients against conflating process and technology--Payroll and time tracking software isn't HR, and a CRM tool isn't customer relationship management on its own. If you haven't already, it's important to model your customer's journey from start to end. How do they first become aware of your product? What are their first interactions? Do salespeople or consultants book a meeting? What is the goal and outcome of each meeting? What determines if someone is a customer? An evangelist?
Once you answer these questions, you can build out that process in a pipeline HubSpot. Start by creating custom deal stages that reflect your sales funnel and customer journey. Then work back through the process to add prompts for any relevant properties, such as lead source, deal size, qualification criteria, documents, and more, to ensure you're capturing all necessary information for analysis and reporting.
Configuring Marketing Tracking
After we've implemented a pipeline for working leads, it's time to get them into the CRM in the first place. To make the most of HubSpot's marketing tracking capabilities, start by connecting your website, social media channels, ad accounts, and other digital assets to your CRM. This will enable you to monitor the performance of your campaigns and gather valuable insights about your audience.
It's very important to add the HubSpot code to your website, but consider also swapping your form's code for conversion actions for HubSpot forms, which are smart and draw on the underlying tracking technology.
Lifecycle Automation
Now that you have marketing tracking installed to capture leads, and your sales and customer lifecycle process configured, you can make the most of the tool to automate the entire customer journey with email sequences, SMS messaging, and more. Consider an automated email series to educate new subscribers about the benefits of your products, provide personalized product recommendations based on their preferences, or even send gentle reminders for appointment scheduling and follow-ups. Set up automated rules that mark your best customers as potential evangelists, and equip them with the tools to refer others. Re-engage past dormant customers with discounts or a free consultation. The possibilities are endless.
Train Your Team
A CRM system is only as good as the people using it. Invest time in training your team on how to use HubSpot effectively. This includes not only technical aspects like data entry and navigation but also best practices for customer engagement, communication, and follow-up. Document your processes and create a resource library, so your team has a one-stop-shop for all things HubSpot-related. We look for our clients to use an internal Wiki tool, like Notion or Slab, so that they can run an effective process with a growing team.
Consider a Partner
Speaking of that growing team, going it alone can be daunting, especially when diving into the deep end of CRM implementation. That's where we come in! HubSpot-certified agencies like ours to help make the most of the tool. We've got the know-how, experience, and life jackets to navigate the CRM waters together, ensuring a smooth and successful journey.
Alright pioneers, we are just the folks with the tools, we follow your lead into the unknown but hope that at least we can empower you with tips for setting up the best customer journey in a tool like HubSpot.
