Ainhoa Rodriguez-Muguruza
A CRM is a key component of a philosophy that approaches the customer as an invaluable asset around which your construction brand should evolve and grow. HubSpot represents a change of paradigm in marketing and sales processes, including the specification process, and helping building product brands become more customer-centric, ensuring their growth. Is your 2023 strategy benefiting from all the perks of using the right CRM?
The Past, Present, and Future of CRM
In 2018, 59% of companies used CRMs. Today, 65% have adopted one. It has become part of the reality of any company and CRMs are the fastest growing software type, with a expected market value of $146 billion by 2029! CRMs are helpful, and they are enabling companies to manage their databases comfortably, efficiently, and most importantly, successfully. 2023 is on its way to becoming the year of CRM, with exciting transformative changes ahead.
But it is not only about adoption. Many companies acquire a software that they end up never using… Yet, this is not the case with CRM as, in 2022, the use of CRM increased from 56% to 74%. People are becoming more aware of the benefits of using a CRM, and integrating this software with their operations, marketing, service, and sales processes. It is not about automating processes, but about mapping them, and making sure you can report about them.
According to usage statistic, the main elements that attract companies to using a CRM are their reporting abilities and their easiness of use, which 43% of the companies adopting a CRM that they consider user-friendly. Whilst functionality might have been a dealbreaker in the past, the reality is that adoption is prioritised! Did you know that 7% of companies will simply drop a CRM if they perceive it is too difficult to use? And 22% will think about it!
Withal, 57% of companies perceive that their CRM is their most valuable software and, in 2022, they were ready to spend 12% of their marketing budget on CRM. The willingness to invest in new CRM solutions is clear, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, after which over 75% of companies felt compelled to make more investments in digital tools for customer management. Those that resist to this change will have difficulties catching up with an industry that is constantly evolving.
Challenges Adopting a CRM
This revolution has not come without friction. Changes in the technology that a company utilises, particularly if they have more than 50 employees, can be tricky and, if not done right, can lead to dissatisfaction from the team and poor adoption. It is clear that adopting modern and customisable CRM is the way forward, ratified by the fact that 91% of businesses over 11 employees now use a CRM. But if implementing a CRM is on your roadmap, you should be aware of these setbacks.
In average companies of up to 100 employees, it can take around 11 months to fully implement a CRM… Sometimes even more! And it is not only about implementation. Ensuring the CRM, you adopt is integrated to other software and personalised to me your needs can be crucial for success. ROI coming from your CRM could also take a while to show, with a minimum of 13 months needed to start seeing how a CRM works at its full potential.
So, it is important to be patient. At the same time, you want to make sure that the CRM that you are trying to make work is the right CRM for your company. If fact, almost 7 out of every 10 companies recognised having changed their CRM recently because it did not have the feature that they needed, because it did not support a business of their size, or because it was not supported in a way that they wanted, mainly due to some CRM not being available cloud-based.
And this last concept is particularly interesting! Cloud-based technologies are becoming increasingly popular and, whilst for some of us, it is an integral part of our everyday life, they are a fairly new addition business tech-stacks. In 2008, according to SuperOffice, only 12% of companies used cloud-based CRM, as opposed to server-based databases. In 2020, that percentage increased to an incredible 87%, mainly due to the number of young companies that prefer cloud-based solutions.
What Makes HubSpot The Right CRM for Your Building Product Brand
HubSpot has really tried to untangle some of the complexity that has surrounded CRM implementation and has placed this software at the core of any business. As a crucial part of scaling a business, HubSpot understands that a CRM software needs to be able to cater to different teams, different departments, even different branches, whilst keeping all the information in the same place and having a single source of truth.
For HubSpot, your CRM should not be a cobbled bundle of software, but rather a crafted solution that enables you to deliver on a few essentials.
- Your CRM platform should be customizable without compromise, and it should be able to meet your needs without having to sacrifice time and budget
- Your CRM platform should be connected with any other software that you use, starting with your website and extending beyond sales to bring together best-in-class tools for marketing, sales, customer service and operations people.
- Your CRM platform should be customer-centric, fuelled by seamless customer interactions instead of manual data entry
Understanding that a CRM is key to your success has actually allowed businesses around the world to improve their Customer Satisfaction Score in 2.8 and their Customer Retention Rate in 3.3!
Leading Customisation Capabilities
For some CRM users, this question might seem implausible… Is your CRM customised to meet the needs of your team and business? Popular CRMs do not offer the capability for users to customise the fields, layout, and interface of the information that is inputted on the database. They are… clunky! And they expect users to adapt to the platform rather than ensuring that the platform can adapt to the team.
This often leads to discontent amongst the team, costing money, time, and effort, and resulting into a team that does not want to use a particular platform because it simply does not work! A CRM should help you optimise your processes, not force you to reformulate them. Almost every single element within HubSpot can be customised, making it one of the easiest CRM to use with even better adoption rates!
Fully Integrated and Connected
The bigger the business, the more likely it is that other software needs to be used in tandem with your CRM. That is not necessarily a problem… although it can become one if your CRM is not integrated with other elements of your tech stack. Software used for inventory, finances, quoting, etc. might need to be used alongside the main database, and that can cause for information to be duplicated, outdated, or worst-case scenario, lost.
HubSpot is designed within an ecosystem. This means that not only does the platform connect with elements like your website, your email marketing software, etc. but it can also be integrated with over 1,000 apps, including Xero, Sage, etc. that offer real-time two-way data syncs and historical sync. Through these integrations, most used software within your company can be connected to create a carefully curated CRM platform.
Designed with the Customer at Heart
HubSpot defines themselves as a customer-centric company and aims for their CRM to enable other companies to go through the same journey, where they implement a framework that fosters a positive customer experience at every stage of the customer journey. This is becoming a more and more popular movement, with businesses realising that if they do not put their customers first, their efforts will not land!
A customer-centric philosophy invites businesses to listen to customers, and to align their goals with those of their customers. Rather than trying to push products, customer-centric businesses identify the needs and try to meet them, anticipating what their customers wants, and providing them with a level of expertise and authority that creates a bond between the brand and their audience. Isn’t that what we all should strive for?
Which HubSpot Product Should You Implement in the 2023 Marketing Strategy for Your Building Product Brand
And here comes the tricky part. Where do you start? HubSpot offers different products, different Hubs, and each of them focuses on different parts of the customer journey.
Marketing Hub
Those interested in how HubSpot could support their marketing efforts can find in HubSpot’s Marketing Hub a dear friend. Including tools such as a blog, social media scheduling software, SEO analyser, Ads management, and email marketing software, this is the most popular product that HubSpot offers, and has repeatedly been proven to deliver outstanding ROI, particularly enabled through its use of behavioural targeting, marketing automation, and smart content.
Sales Hub
This product has been praised for its efficacy improving performance and saving the time of sales teams all over the world! Because of its functionality to notify sales representatives and track potential leads, starting conversations and, most importantly, deepening those relationships, has never been easier, supported through additional features like pipeline management, playbooks, performance reports, and sales and forecast analytics.
Service Hub
If your worry is within customer relations and service, you might want to look into a customer service software that allows you to help your clients efficiently, delighting your audience as they interact with you. The Service Hub includes features such as conversational bots, ticketing systems, knowledge bases, time-to-close reports, and feedback surveys, ensuring that you are able to give flawless service, and identify any elements that you might want to improve.
Operations Hub
But if you have the feeling that your data is not ready for any of the products above, your might want to consider HubSpot’s Operations Hub, designed to help you clean customer data and curate datasets. This product allows for a more comfortable experience of data management through its programmable data quality automation. It can help you get up to speed and ensure that your data is stored correctly and accurately.
CMS Hub
Specific for those that are looking for a different website experience, the CMS Hub is perfect for incorporating your website (or websites!) into your strategy. Whilst other CMS providers might be more popular (and slightly cheaper…) but HubSpot’s CMS Hub offers the opportunity to connect your CRM to your website, creating better content, leveraging customer data to optimise your website, and reporting on all those areas, optimising your web content without effort.
About Insynth
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.