Streamline Hubspot Onboarding with a HubSpot Partner Agency

Wow, So There’s a Lot to Set Up! Who Does All That?

Given this enormous scope, HubSpot onboarding can be expected to contain a plethora of small, technical “connecting and configuring everything” steps that are easy to overlook. Handling it all yourself, in-house, would take a few HubSpot experts on-staff at a bare minimum, and even then it could take a good while to cross every “t” and dot every “i”.

Luckily, this isn’t necessary. The team at HubSpot is always available (for a fee) to guide you. A HubSpot partner agency is another excellent resource, and these agencies can often take care of everything faster, with less work on your part, and at a lower expense. Both of these options take some of the load of HubSpot onboarding off of your plate and give you an expert consultant with the know-how to prevent anything from falling through the cracks.

So you’ve got a choice to make. Who will assist you with the HubSpot onboarding? HubSpot? Or a HubSpot Partner Agency?

Option 1: HubSpot

Working directly with HubSpot is a straightforward option.  Many larger companies — with time, budget, sufficient in-house marketing personnel to facilitate, and work hours to spare — have opted to handle HubSpot onboarding directly through the HubSpot team. 

For companies in this situation, it may seem easier to just pay HubSpot an additional $3,000 (for Marketing Pro) or $6,000 (for Marketing Enterprise) in onboarding fees. This added expense becomes a part of your initial purchase of the software and you can be done with it. No search is necessary for a right-fit agency. And after all, it’s easy to put your faith in the brand that made the product. 

However, the truth is that working with HubSpot is more expensive and generally takes a lot more in-house work. The team at HubSpot will be available to guide you through the HubSpot onboarding process, but there’s very little they’ll actually do for your company (you’ll be the one doing, for the most part).

• What They’ll Do: In exchange for your $3,000 or $6,000, HubSpot will provide you with an expert consultant to meet with you, make recommendations, provide resources, and lead you through all of the necessary steps to connect your systems and get started. They may alert you to certain useful HubSpot tools and suggest that you use them. They might let you know that you’ll need to connect your subdomains and provide an article on how to do it.
• What They Won’t Do: What the HubSpot team won’t do is actually go into the back end of your portal and hook up your website, migrate you off of existing platforms, upload contact lists, build out deal stages, or other such tasks. This will all be up to you and your staff (under their guidance). It is  possible to pay for an escalated package at a higher cost to get some additional assistance, but the price of onboarding is a significant investment on its own.

Option 2: HubSpot Partner Agency

Each HubSpot partner agency is a certified expert on the HubSpot technology suite with specialization in at least one of the HubSpot Hubs, if not two or even all three.  Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and Elite tier partners—which are easy to find and filter with the HubSpot Solutions Directory—have also distinguished themselves for living up to the highest expectations for performance and experience in HubSpot software. HubSpot officially recognizes such special skill with a tier label.

The biggest advantage of working with a HubSpot partner agency is that most will waive the traditional $3,000 HubSpot onboarding fee and take care of a large portion of the process without you lifting a finger.  In truth, not every part of HubSpot onboarding can be done by someone else — your involvement is needed in some areas. But there’s no better way to streamline the process than working with a HubSpot partner agency.

• What An Agency Can Do: The HubSpot onboarding process is a breeze with a team of agency experts right in the weeds, handling complex tasks and checking all the boxes with professional speed.  It would be tough to list, in detail, everything an agency might take on as a part of HubSpot onboarding, but here’s a sampling—based on our own process at Market Veep—just to give you an idea:
• Install your HubSpot tracking code across your website (for analytics)
• Add subdomains for landing pages and email sending
• Migrate your existing blog (from Wordpress, for example) into HubSpot and redirect all links
• Switch over the forms on the back end of your website
• Facilitate HubSpot integrations with other top software
• Strategically configure your HubSpot CRM
• Customize the default settings for deal stages (to match your actual sales process)
• Upload brand colors, fonts, time zone, and more into your HubSpot site
• Import existing contact lists, and help to segment them for proper email distribution
• Set up and customize landing page and Hubspot email templates
• Connect HubSpot into your company social media channels
• Configure your live chat and popups to drive leads through HubSpot

• What An Agency Can’t Do: As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts to assemble before this engine can hit the ground running! It wouldn’t be realistic to think the agency can get it all done in an hour on day one. Most of the process will get finished within a week or two, and all HubSpot onboarding can usually be wrapped up within the first month. Keep in mind that your agency will only know what you choose to share with them about your company. They’ll need to meet with your team to gather insights into your process, access to your assets, logins for social accounts, and other necessary information that they will then leverage to set up a personalized HubSpot ecosystem.

Certain complex projects (like a full Salesforce integration, or a migration off of Pardot) can sometimes take a while longer for the partner agency to complete, depending on how many total assets have to move or properties need to be changed.