3 HubSpot Tools that Can Solidify Your Content Marketing Strategy

I've previously discussed the questions to ask before jumping into your content marketing plan and how to keep your content plan aligned. These first steps are vital to the success of your content marketing plan. According to a recent study, "60% of b-to-b marketers that have a documented strategy rate themselves highly in content-marketing effectiveness, compared with only 32% of those who rate themselves highly with only a verbal content strategy." So we now realize the ever-growing importance of sitting down and mapping out a clear content marketing strategy, but why is it that 50% of B2B marketers struggle to produce content consistently, and 49% struggle to measure content effectiveness?

As I’ve worked in inbound marketing and spent time focused on content marketing, I’ve found that the available online marketing tools are what really makes the difference between defining an marketing strategy and implementing it effectively. Using these tools every day is essential for keeping our team on track and organized, and they have greatly impacted our success. Does content marketing still take a heck of a lot of work? Absolutely! But continuing to reach for excellence becomes a little easier when the right tools and processes are in place.

Just a few weeks ago at INBOUND14, HubSpot released more hot-off-the-press tools in order to help marketers with these concerns above. I could go on for days about all the tools that HubSpot provides to help me in my daily tasks, but I wanted to highlight a few that I find especially helpful:

HubSpot Calendar

One of the newly released features in HubSpot is the content calendar. This is not just a great tool to keep your marketing team on track, but it also has some great sorting features.

You can see an overall view of all the different types of content going out by date, such as social media messages, email campaigns, blogs, and more. You can then sort by which type of content you would like to see for a clear view of all the blogs scheduled this month. In addition, you can sort by campaigns to track your aligned marketing programs across many channels.

This final rock star feature of this new tool is the ability to assign tasks to your team members. This will automatically send them a reminder email and any notes you’ve added about the new content that needs to be created. Furthermore, if you assign a template for this content, it will set it up automatically in the HubSpot portal, helping your team get started with getting this content out in a timely manner.

This new feature is a great way to keep your team all on the same page and consistently publishing compelling content. With the admin features being taken care of, your team can now put more focus back on what really matters: creating great content! This feature is available for all levels of HubSpot customers.

Attribution Reporting

One challenge that content marketers face is determining which content is actually resonating with your audience. Although you can see certain metrics from social media engagement and comments on your blog posts, wouldn’t it be nice to see which content was assisting in converting new lead on your website? Well, ask and you shall receive. HubSpot has just released a new reporting tool in the professional and Enterprise levels called Attribution Reporting.

This report will weigh out the value of your content and give you the metrics to see which content is performing better and which content is influencing your website conversions. This will allow you to understand which content is resonating with your different buyer personas and help you to adjust your content marketing plan accordingly.

Revenue Reporting

This final tool focuses on taking the concept of attribution one step further. Revenue Reporting is available for Enterprise level customers at HubSpot and connects to your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform, combining your internal company data with your marketing statistics to create a more complete picture of the effectiveness of your online strategy.

This report allows you to put a dollar figure on your content. This helps you to understand not only the influence your content is making on your visitors, but exactly how much revenue that it is generating for your company. With only 35% of marketers who have a documented content strategy successfully tracking their ROI, this new report is a very powerful tool to start enhancing the content marketing and inbound marketing space. By showing you the ROI of your marketing efforts in dollars and cents, this report can help you to quantify the value of your efforts and see where your marketing efforts are making the most impact on your bottom line.

With these and all of the other marketing tools we use on a daily basis, we can achieve greater results and meet our business goals, but we need to keep in mind that the power of marketing is putting our minds together to make smart decisions based on these findings. If you have any questions on how best to use these new HubSpot tools or your marketing strategies don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or schedule a one-on-one marketing assessment with us.