HubSpot Marketing Hub Onboarding: A Simple Guide for Startups With FREE TOOLS and RESOURCES!

You’ve just made a big move by choosing HubSpot Marketing Hub – congratulations! Now comes the important part: getting started and setting it up right. Onboarding might seem like a hurdle, but it’s the key to making sure you get the most out of this powerful tool. As a startup, you have specific goals and budgets, so let’s make sure your onboarding plan is tailored perfectly to fit your needs.

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Step 1: Get Familiar with HubSpot Marketing Hub

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HubSpot’s onboarding is mandatory for customers with Professional and Enterprise plans, but don’t worry, you’ve got two options. You can either onboard directly through HubSpot or partner with a HubSpot Agency. No matter which route you take, the goal is to make sure your HubSpot account is set up just right, aligned with what your business needs, without going over budget.

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Here’s what you’ll want to set up during onboarding:

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Lead Capture & Management: Use forms, live chat, and CRM integration to gather and manage leads.

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Having trouble capturing and managing your leads? Here’s a FREE, comprehensive guide to help you overcome it!

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1. 5 Tweaks For Getting MORE Social Media Leads - Aside from getting actionable tips to help you attract effortless leads, you’ll also be getting FREE Canva Templates on how to advertise your services, highlight completed projects, broadcast special promotions, gather more audience feedback, and highlight satisfied customers to help you grow faster!

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Email Marketing: Create personalized email campaigns, automate them, and track how they perform.

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Having trouble personalizing, automating, and tracking your email campaigns? Use the FREE guides and tools below to help you jumpstart the process with ease!

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1. The Beginners Guide to Email Marketing - You’ll be taught how to execute and measure successful email marketing campaigns! This guide includes lessons and actionable tips such as: growing email list, email automation tips, targeted content delivery, CAN-SPAM compliance guide, audience segmentation tactics, and DIY email program!

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2. FREE Email Marketing Template - Join thousands of professionals who have used this template to strategically organize their email marketing. Available for Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. It includes three sections: planning, results, A/B testing, automated email performance rate calculations, customizable rows, columns, and monthly tabs, and comprehensive tracking with explanatory descriptions.

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3. FREE Email Marketing Kit for Startups and Entrepreneurs - A free kit of templates, guides, and inspiration curated for startups and entrepreneurs looking to kickstart their email marketing strategy. What’s included? It includes tons of juicy and delicious resources such as how to write the perfect email checklist, email templates for marketing and sales, how to create email newsletters that don’t stuck (guide), email newsletter inspiration lookbook, guide to A/B testing your emails, and subject line inspiration for your emails.

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4. FREE Email Marketing Certification Course by HubSpot Academy - Want to take email marketing a little bit advanced? Check out this free certification course where you’ll discover personalization and automation tactics for effective email campaigns, create compelling email copy, content, and design for increased audience attention and conversions, analyze email metrics and conduct A/B testing for data-driven decision making.

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Marketing Automation: Save time by automating repetitive tasks and nurturing your leads. Automation really helps you lessen down your workload, ensuring that all your business systems work efficiently for you. Not the other way around.

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Here are some FREE resources and templates for personal tweaking, so you would no longer have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to automation!

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1. The Ultimate Marketing Automation Guide - Includes a 5-step guide detailing how to set up your marketing customers, a template to assist you in planning, designing, and implementing workflows throughout the buyer’s journey, a simple significance calculator to lead scoring, a simple template for A/B testing, a comprehensive model for creating buyer personas, workflow and trigger examples that are easy to understand, and how to automate lead generation by the process of lead nurturing through personalized workflows.

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Content Management: Take control of your content with HubSpot’s built-in CMS.

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To grab the FREE Content Management Template that helps aid any individual with social media content, managing unshaped content ideas, and collaboration with ideas, access the Notion template link here and adjust it to your liking!

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However, if you want it to be specifically targeted within the HubSpot site and you’re still struggling when it comes to navigating HubSpot’s very own CMS, access the FREE template here. It helps you consult with stakeholders and key users, identify your goals, assess your tech stack, compare critical features and capabilities, consider costs and ROI, and many more!

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Social Media Management: Schedule, publish, and keep an eye on your social media from one place.

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Struggling to elevate your social media strategy? 

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Access the Social Media Resource Vault with a curation of HubSpot’s most loved templates, guides, and expert tutorials! All the best Social Media Guides, Resources, Kits, and Tools of HubSpot, are all kept in this one, free, accessible vault.

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Analytics & Reporting: Use easy-to-read dashboards to see how everything’s working and make smarter decisions. This also serves as your foundation to track the current condition for your business and identify areas needed for improvement!

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Leverage the guides listed below:

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1. FREE Sales Performance Review Template - Consists of a  metric-based template for tracking achievement to goal for revenue, deals, and etc., a manager-evaluation and self-evaluation for essential soft skills on the job, and an action items section to outline areas needed for improvement for each quarter.

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2. Monthly Marketing Reporting Templates - Excel, Powerpoint, and Google Drive Templates to make your monthly reporting faster and easier. With these reporting templates, you’ll be able to track monthly growth of your visits, leads, and customers, measure your website’s visit-to-lead conversion rate, accurately track which channels are performing best, and seamlessly plug your metrics into a PowerPoint or Google Slides deck to present to your boss.

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Step 2: Set Your Goals Before You Start

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Before diving in, take a step back and think about what you want to achieve with HubSpot. Are you focusing on generating leads? Or maybe you want to ramp up customer engagement? By knowing what’s most important, you’ll make sure you’re setting up the tools and features that will have the biggest impact for your business.

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Here are some 9 FREE MARKETING PLANS, TEMPLATES, AND EXAMPLES that would really help you define your mission and sell your vision! Includes different resources such as Weekly Schedule Templates, Action Plan, Business Case, Market Analysis, One-Page Business Plan, Simple Business Plan Template, Startup Business Plan Template, and Strategic Business Plan Template.

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Step 3: Choose Your Onboarding Route

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You’ve got two options for onboarding:

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1. HubSpot Direct: They’ll guide you through a standard setup and give you training to get up to speed.

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2. HubSpot Agency Partner: If you want something a bit more custom-made for your industry, a HubSpot agency partner might be the way to go. They offer specialized setups and often take care of everything for you.

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To find the right HubSpot Agency Partner for you, book a meeting with us and see if we’re fit to help you achieve your business goals!

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Step 4: Set a Realistic Timeline

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Onboarding isn’t something you rush. It typically takes between 6 weeks and 3 months, depending on how complex your setup is. Here’s what it usually looks like:

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Initial Setup (1-2 weeks): This is where you’ll do things like basic account setup and get your team familiar with HubSpot.

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Full Implementation (4-6 weeks): This is the bulk of the work – integrating your systems, customizing features, and training your team.

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Ongoing Optimization: Even after you’re set up, there will be continuous tweaks and improvements as your business grows.

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Step 5: Plan Your Budget

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Costs can vary depending on how big your business is and what kind of help you need. If you go with HubSpot’s direct onboarding, expect to pay around $3,000 for the Professional plan and $7,000 for the Enterprise plan. If you choose a HubSpot partner, costs start around $3,000 for collaborative setups and can go up to $15,000 or more for a full-service setup.

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Example HubSpot Onboarding Plan (Based on Lean Labs Approach):

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Phase 1: Initial Assessment (1 week) – Define your goals, audit the platform, and map out integrations.

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Phase 2: Data Setup (2 weeks) – Import contacts, set up stages, and build your forms.

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Phase 3: Process Automation (2 weeks) – Create custom workflows and email templates.

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Phase 4: Training & Success Planning (1 week) – Make sure your team is comfortable with the platform and set up for long-term success.

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Lessons to learn

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Onboarding might seem like a lot, but it’s what sets you up for success with HubSpot. Whether you do it with HubSpot directly or with a partner, a well-planned onboarding process ensures you’re getting the most out of your investment. Take your time, follow these steps, and you’ll be ready to grow your business with confidence.

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Want someone to help you out with your HubSpot Marketing Hub Onboarding? 

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Book a call with us!

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Your entire business could change in just one, single click.