How to Conduct a HubSpot Audit: A Complete Walkthrough?

HubSpot stands out as a leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform, widely recognised for its robust capabilities, particularly suited for business-to-business (B2B) companies aiming to expand.

HubSpot’s true power is only realised when leveraged fully. This underscores the importance of using HubSpot to its fullest extent. Proper use allows businesses to enhance growth efficiently and in a manner that is both organised and measurable.

The journey to maximise HubSpot's effectiveness starts with a crucial step: conducting an audit of your HubSpot portal, data, and workflows. This HubSpot audit not only ensures they are streamlined and optimised but also unlocks the full potential of your HubSpot usage.

What Is a HubSpot Audit?

A HubSpot Audit is essentially a comprehensive examination of each tool within your HubSpot account. This audit enables you to identify areas that require enhancement and key efficiencies. 

Conducting a HubSpot audit helps you organise and streamline your business processes, leading to better business performance.

Why do you need to conduct a HubSpot Audit?

A HubSpot CRM audit reviews how well your portal handles marketing, lead nurturing, sales, content, and the overall user experience. It's important for anyone who wants to make the most of their HubSpot subscription.

Here's what a thorough HubSpot audit can do:

• Make the process of generating and nurturing leads, as well as selling, more effective.
• Keep your data clean and organised, allowing for more accurate analysis and better insights.
• Improve your marketing campaigns by providing reliable data and performance metrics.
• Track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to understand your customers' actions better.
• Make your messages more targeted by improving segmentation and workflows so you reach the right customers with the right messages.
• Help you perform better by making it easier to analyse data, target the right people, and respond quickly.

Also, a HubSpot audit ensures your platform is tidy and well-organised, helping to avoid issues such as:

• Going over your contact limits.
• Sending messages to people who don't want them.
• Potentially damaging your reputation for sending emails.

While a HubSpot audit can be a detailed process, using HubSpot audit templates can help keep everything structured and smooth.

Benefits of HubSpot Audit

The purpose of a HubSpot portal audit is not just to offer quick fixes or point out problems (though that's included, too). It's about equipping you with the tools to unlock your potential for digital growth and achieve sustainable results.

A HubSpot Audit helps ensure that you are fully leveraging your HubSpot tools and strategies. Here's what it involves:

• Maximising HubSpot ROI: HubSpot continually updates and expands its features. The audit will identify new opportunities and offer insights on enhancing your current activities to maximise the return on your investment and efforts.
• Sales & Marketing Alignment: It's crucial for your sales and marketing teams to collaborate together towards common goals. This alignment streamlines internal processes, improves customer experiences, and boosts your business's growth through increased conversions and revenue.
• Increased Conversions: You can significantly improve your conversion rates by fine-tuning your messaging and content to better connect with leads. The HubSpot site audit will highlight underperforming areas and provide recommendations for improvement.
• Customer Retention: The HubSpot audit also focuses on keeping your existing customers happy, not just acquiring new ones. Addressing issues in customer service helps retain customers longer, which is more cost-effective than finding new ones.
• Decreased Buying Cycle: The HubSpot CRM audit examines your processes to find ways to shorten the buying cycle. By reducing the time from lead to customer, you save time and money, speeding up revenue generation.
• Improved Efficiency: With your teams aligned, HubSpot's automation tools optimised, and your processes streamlined, you'll free up more time for strategic planning. This shift allows you to move from focusing on daily operations to developing long-term marketing strategies.

What Is Included in a HubSpot Audit?

Depending on the HubSpot package you have, the tools available for your business will vary. During a HubSpot portal audit, you need to assess the specific HubSpot tools you are using. 

HubSpot has a range of plans, each with different features across its CRM, sales, marketing, and service tools. It's important to audit both the common tools shared across these plans and the unique features specific to different packages.

• For CRM, this includes snippets, tasks, custom objects, emails, files, templates, landing pages, and workflows.
• In the Marketing Hub, you need to review buyer personas, blogs, campaigns, forms, emails, and CTAs.
• The Sales Hub includes tools like emails, files, snippets, tasks, templates, and other custom objects.
• For the Service Hub, focus on reviewing conversions, feedback, tickets, automation, and the knowledge base.

HubSpot Audit: Marketing Hub

The HubSpot Marketing Hub provides all the tools your marketing team requires to interact with your target audience, increase your brand awareness, and engage with prospects throughout the buyer’s journey.

Refer to this checklist as a guide to evaluate and enhance your use of the HubSpot Marketing Hub.

Website Traffic

To examine website traffic, you should:

• Analyse where your traffic is coming from.
• Review your website's analytics.
• Monitor the number of visitors.
• Evaluate the overall performance of your website traffic to understand the usefulness of your online presence.

To increase website traffic, consider implementing strategies such as:

• Utilising and improving website pages.
• Enhancing blog activities and posts.
• Optimising your social media presence and promotional efforts.
• Focusing on relevant long-tail keywords.

Landing Pages

Begin by reviewing the design, messaging, and call-to-action (CTA) on each of your landing pages to ensure they match your marketing objectives. Concentrate on making your landing pages mobile-friendly, use straightforward and brief forms, and evaluate your website’s speed to ensure a smooth user experience.

Blog Posts

Assessing your blog posts is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of your website's content. This can be done by checking:

• The accuracy of the information provided.
• The readability of the content.
• The use of visuals to effectively engage and inform your audience.

Additionally, remember to analyse engagement metrics like page views, comments, and shares to spot important trends.

Lead Scoring Model

Lead scoring is crucial for prioritising and nurturing leads in HubSpot. When conducting your audit, assess your lead scoring model and pinpoint areas that need enhancement. 

Update the lead scoring criteria to reflect engagement levels and adjust the weighting of web pages according to their intent.

By refining your lead scoring model, you can more effectively prioritise leads and improve lead generation and nurturing processes, leading to higher conversion rates.

Workflow Automation

Regular audits and optimisation of workflows are crucial to keeping your HubSpot account organised and efficient. 

Examine your existing workflows, identify any that are redundant or no longer needed, and remove them to maintain a streamlined HubSpot account.

Ensure that all workflows are set up correctly and that tasks are assigned to the right team members. 

By consistently reviewing and refining your workflow automation, you can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing, sales, and service operations.

Marketing Channel Performance

Evaluating the performance of your marketing channels is crucial for making data-driven decisions and achieving better outcomes. 

Analyse your data in relation to your goals to define which channels are performing well and which need to be improved. 

Use this data to identify opportunities for growth, establish targets, and track progress.

Consistently assess your marketing channel performance to ensure decisions are based on data. This approach will help you refine your marketing strategies and meet your business objectives.

HubSpot Audit: Sales Hub

Conducting a HubSpot Sales Hub Audit will enable you to evaluate the tools and packages in the Sales Hub, leading to better efficiency in sales processes, higher customer satisfaction, and enhanced productivity.

Here's how to perform a HubSpot Sales Hub Audit:

Deal Pipelines

Begin by analysing the stages, properties, and pipelines of your deals to ensure they are consistent with your process.

Pipeline Automation

Check the effectiveness of your pipeline automation to gauge its accuracy and pinpoint areas that need improvement. This evaluation can enhance revenue and drive better financial outcomes.

Sales Pipeline Reporting

You can conduct an audit of sales pipeline reporting by:

• Assessing how the sales team utilises the Sales Hub
• Ensuring data entry is accurate
• Analysing key performance indicators to gain valuable insights into your sales team's operations

Forecasting Accuracy

To verify the precision of your forecasts and make more accurate sales predictions, examine your sales forecasting process by calculating the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE).

Sales Team Performance

Track key performance indicators by establishing clear goals and objectives, and use the data to make more informed decisions.

HubSpot Portal Audit: Service Hub

The HubSpot Service Hub is an essential tool for any customer success team. When functioning optimally, this software can transform the customer experience and significantly enhance customer satisfaction.

To ensure your HubSpot Service Hub is operating efficiently, follow these steps:

Service Hub Settings

• Inspect your Service Hub settings to verify they are correctly configured.
• Ensure your team settings, notifications, and communication channels meet your business requirements.
• Review your ticket settings and properties to make sure you are gathering the necessary information to support your customers.

Ticketing Processes

• Assess the efficiency and effectiveness of your ticketing process.
• Ensure that your ticket statuses and stages are correctly set up and consistently applied.
• Check your ticket routing and automation rules to confirm that tickets are assigned to the appropriate team members at the right time.

Knowledge Base

• Evaluate your knowledge base articles to confirm they are current and accurate.
• Ensure that your knowledge base is organised logically and is user-friendly.
• Review your search functionality to guarantee that customers can easily find the information they need.

Customer Feedback Processes

• Assess how you collect and handle customer feedback.
• Check that there is a system in place for responding to and resolving issues raised through customer feedback.
• Evaluate your customer satisfaction metrics to ensure they are in line with your business objectives.

HubSpot CRM Audit

By assessing the key features of your CRM marketing portal, you can ensure that it effectively aligns with your marketing, sales, and service departments.

Refer to the following HubSpot CRM audit checklist:

Organising Contacts

Regularly maintain your contact database to keep it structured and segmented. This includes merging duplicate contacts, removing outdated or irrelevant contacts, and cleaning up contact properties. A well-maintained contact list prevents issues and supports accurate reporting.

Examining Deals

Evaluating deals involves checking the deal stages, properties, sales representatives, and deal pipelines to ensure they are in sync with your sales process and accurately represent your business activities for improved outcomes.

Optimising Properties

Review and update company and contact properties, including custom properties, regularly. Avoid property sprawl by using 'text input' options instead of 'choosing options' wherever feasible. This practice helps standardise and maintain consistency in property data.

Final Words

As we've discussed, a thorough HubSpot audit goes beyond just ensuring you're following best practices. It's a strategic effort to improve every part of your business's online activities and customer relationship management. 

This approach helps streamline your operations and uses data to promote growth, enhance how you engage with customers, and increase your revenue. 

By regularly performing these audits, businesses can stay competitive, adjust to market changes, and consistently achieve their goals.