Today I’m going to tell you about a practical example of how HubSpot can be your ace in the hole when it comes to grow your inbound marketing and sales strategy.
To do so, I’ll tell you the story of a worldwide-known company, CASIO, in the specific its British department.
Everything started as far back as 1946, when the Japanese company CASIO Computer Ltd has been founded by the four Kashio brothers.
The founders’ purpose was to create a series of original products that can be used on a daily basis: so, over the years, the brand became synonymous with tech and fashion lifestyle for several targets, among which are musicians, artists, sportsmen and travelers.
Nowadays, CASIO is one of the leading companies in the electronic industry: in addition to electronic speakers, musical instruments and calculators, the company produces screens, electronic components, digital cameras and – last but not least – fancy watches.
But all the biggest companies know how it can be tricky to keep on with a long-term marketing strategy, above all when their company has been run worldwide.
And now’s the best part!
Keep reading to see how HubSpot changed CASIO UK marketing activity, making the department be far more productive.
A light at the end of the tunnel: the HubSpot Growth Stack
Let’s go back to our story.
When Taka Takeuchi became the new Senior Digital Marketing Manager at CASIO UK, he genuinely wanted to make the team embrace an important digital change in order to become more efficient.
That change was called Inbound Marketing: basically, letting their buyer personas find them, instead of whooping on them with old-fashioned intrusive marketing messages.
Actually, they were already using the inbound methodology, but they were missing on a pivotal aspect: the software.
Right, because they had a CRM that had been custom-built, but wasn’t responsive to the evolving needs of their sales team. Basically, they couldn’t have a clear view of their customer’s journey.
Indeed, a valuable CRM software – namely, a Customer Relations Management system – should help the sales team to manage the relationship between its company and the customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey, as well as improving the business internal organization.
At that time, they had already been using a marketing automation platform, which is a tool that allows businesses to automate the inbound content flow presented to their users, by segmenting the audience and adopting specific strategies for every cluster.
Usually, the information gotten from those platforms should provide the team with a weapon to nourish their leads, thanks to a series of useful information, e.g. purchases and performance indicators. But, in this case, the CASIO’s team was using a not at all user-friendly platform that provided them with inefficient metrics.
So, it was clear to Taka that they needed a platform that should have helped them achieve results quickly, as well as a modern CRM software: that’s how he discovered the HubSpot software, while looking for some inspiration on the Internet.
That’s when everything changed!
In 2016, the team opted for HubSpot, after being attracted by:
- Its user-friendly software appearance: it was the easiest-to-use solution;
- Its stunning support offer and access to any advice in an instant, for both technical and methodology-related questions, which was something that many other solutions didn’t provide;
- The offer itself: the so-called HubSpot Growth Stack, which is a combination of Marketing, CRM and Sales software, namely an all-in-one solution.
And they stepped right! Let’s dig into it.
The powerful combination of CRM, Sales and Marketing
Moving straight on to the subject, I’m going to illustrate you what Taka and his team made to benefit from HubSpot functionalities, that’s basically the same process you can follow to make your inbound strategy stand out:
1. HubSpot CRM
Thanks to the help of the HubSpot Advanced Onboarding Team, the process of importing CASIO’s existing contacts and data has been a quite simple one.
Besides, they started discovering the main organizational functionalities that HubSpot’s free CRM gives to all its users, namely:
- Managing your pipeline and getting an up-to-the-minute view of your entire sales funnel on a straightforward dashboard;
- Tracking your customer interactions automatically – whether they’re in an email, across social media, or on a call;
- Seeing everything about a contact in one place, by having every interaction stored in a tidy timeline, including calls, emails, meetings, and notes;
- Building better relationships with your customers through personalized, one-to-one and real-time conversations.
That’s how CASIO’s team, thanks to the HubSpot CRM, has started to see exactly what’s happening with every prospect, in both a B2B and B2C optic.
2. Creation of the Customer Journey
Then, CASIO’s marketing team started to create the customer journey by setting up some Landing Pages for their content, which included emulators, FAQs, user guides and video tutorials to support their users and customers, as well as some Smart Calls-to-Action and Forms to encourage visitors to share their details and/or feedback.
As a matter of fact, HubSpot gives to its users the possibility to launch professional-looking landing pages in a few seconds, without the need to look for the help of a designer or IT. This is doable by choosing from HubSpot’s built-in library of mobile-optimized templates, or building them directly through the on-page editor.
So, once the potential customers’ attention has been grabbed by the CTA and they filled the form, they’ve automatically entered the buyer’s journey that the team accurately designed.
For CASIO, that’s revealed a smart way to grow not only the customers’ interaction, but also the brand awareness, offering to the buyer persona some valuable sources of support materials and informative content.
“Good for the business should also mean good for the customer:
that’s the basis of a strong inbound marketing strategy!”
3. AutomatedWorkflows and Nurturing
So, after making the customer entering the first step of the journey, CASIO has been able to make them embark upon the nurturing process, through relevant emails based on their own interests.
That’s revealed a great timesaver for the team: when someone has been engaged, for instance, by downloading a piece of content, the team shouldn’t have to remember to keep following up with them because it happened automatically, thanks to HubSpot’s automated workflows.
4. Marketing Analytics
Before signing up with HubSpot, CASIO’s marketing team found it difficult to keep up with all the multiple activities involved in its sales and marketing processes.
Now, they regularly use marketing analytics and reports figuring out exactly where they should be focusing their efforts and also to prove the ROI of their previous work.
Indeed, HubSpot lets its users measure the performance of their entire marketing funnel in one place, thanks to its built-in analytics, reports and dashboards, which let you:
- Track the complete customer lifecycle, from anonymous visitor to loyal customer;
- Use key website metrics to measure both the quantity and quality of its traffic;
- See detailed reports for every one of your marketing assets, from website and landing pages, to emails, blog posts, social media accounts, calls-to-action.
HubSpot proves that there’s a better way to grow
The bottom line is, CASIO has achieved huge results in a short space of time:
- Website traffic has increased by 12%;
- Leads have incremented by 496%;
- Revenue has been boosted by 9% overall.
And what’s more, every time they send out a newsletter, website visits increase by 90% for a couple of days!
So, Taka has understood that lead quality has improved thanks to the creation of CTAs that were relevant to their different buyer personas, and now they know that when someone signs up for a demo or an event, they are likely to be genuinely interested.
As Taka’s words say:
“HubSpot is an easy way to create a culture in which people think about the customer journey, from the awareness stage to the closed deal. With the HubSpot software, everyone is accountable and nothing slips through the cracks.”
Do you want to discover more about how HubSpot can make your inbound strategy be as smart as possible? Just book a free consultation with us! We’ll be really excited to help you find the best HubSpot plan that’d work for your business, as well as consulting you on your content, SEO or social media approach.
