In Search of a Secure, Flexible System to Empower the Marketing Team
Before HubSpot, Giant Swarm's website was created and managed on GitHub. As their sales and marketing teams expanded, administering the site became more challenging. Every update or test, no matter how small, needed to be implemented by a developer. This friction was hindering productivity levels and slowed down their growth.
Giant Swarm's Inbound Marketing Manager, Tommy Hobin, says, "The developers on our team are vital to our business. Without them, we don't have a product — it has to be their main focus. When we ask them to make a change to a landing page so we can run tests, it used to take them a couple of days. We might then notice that the test shows the previous version worked better and have to revert the changes. It became a massive point of friction."
Without a way to easily edit their website, Giant Swarm risked having an outdated website that lacked alignment with their customer needs. One thing was clear: they needed a new CMS (Content Management System) solution. To evaluate their options, Tommy built a grid that outlined their top priorities from a marketing and development perspective. He then compared these priorities against options like WordPress, HubSpot, Umbraco and a couple of others.
Giant Swarm's Marketing team's priorities centered around flexibility and ease of use, but the real challenge came from developers. High-quality security was non-negotiable. A requirement like this brought the options down to only two, and HubSpot won. "We looked into the powerful campaigns we can run as a marketing team, and we knew our security was in HubSpot's best interest. We were already long-time users of Marketing Hub and Sales Hub, so we knew the transition to the CMS Hub would be seamless, and we could jump right in," Tommy explained.
Tracking Campaigns From Start to Finish for Better Results
Giant Swarm's move to CMS Hub was incredibly quick. They've created the website content internally and sought the help of a top-tier HubSpot Solutions Partner, Media Junction, for implementation. The website was live in less than three months. "Working with Media Junction was fantastic. We provided a hard and aggressive timeline for the website project. They've exceeded all our expectations," explains Tommy. A referral for a trusted vendor that knows HubSpot inside out made all the difference.
Agility is a top priority for Giant Swarm's marketing team. Instead of waiting for weeks to make changes and create campaigns, Tommy now builds high-performing campaigns in no time. "Our graphic designer builds an email template, makes sure it works on mobile and in most email clients and gives me the skeleton. I then work with our writer, and we fit the copy into the design. From there, I build the entire automation with multiple lists, email templates, landing pages, and webinars for our top three personas."
On top of this, the advantages of having Marketing Hub connected with CMS Hub are endless. For Giant Swarm, speed is the big one, thanks to using one platform for everything. "HubSpot isn't just our platform to get the message out there, but also the place to analyze results", Tommy adds. "The ability to recognize how each piece of content contributed to results is invaluable. We can look at our leads, sort them into MQLs and SQLs, see exactly where they came from, and make better decisions — all from a single report."
As Giant Swarm operate in the DACH market (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), GDPR is another crucial issue. "We run all types of digital marketing campaigns and want to respect the users preferences. The GDPR tool in HubSpot is key for this", Tommy added. Alternative CMS options required adding and updating plug-ins, creating a non-secure plug-in jungle with inconsistent data. For Giant Swarm, this wasn't an acceptable option.
HubSpot has also created opportunities that Giant Swarm otherwise wouldn't have. "With the insights they can generate, the marketing team can help their sales team close better deals. Sales reps don't have to sift through thousands of leads. Instead, they focus on the highest quality opportunities and work more efficiently." Tommy added.
Implementing Best Practices For Personalised Buyer Journeys and Higher Conversions
The most significant result Giant Swarm saw with the CMS Hub is the considerable jump in their conversion rate from website visitors to leads. Their downloadable guides on the cloud-native stack went from a 16% conversion rate to a 25% conversion rate. For Giant Swarm, lead-generating tools like this one are their company's lifeline. As a three-member marketing team, this is the exact impact they wanted to be able to make.
The ease of getting work done without a developer changed everything, as Tommy explained. "Our designer can now come in and use best practices. Before CMS Hub, we didn't have the opportunity to do that. If a page was live, we were happy with that and didn't do a lot of testing. Now, we can easily create and test any idea we have, no matter how complicated".
Giant Swarm's ultimate goal is to gain more clients and serve them better. They want to do this by creating a tailored buyer journey where the customer experience makes sense for each persona. Continuing to leverage HubSpot as their platform is enabling better segmentation and personalization. Tommy added, "We know that engineers are paramount for us moving forward. We want to ensure that every contact we have gets a personalized experience, whether it’s an email, a social media post, or an ad. If it resonates specifically with them, they will be inclined to interact with it. We know HubSpot will help us achieve this next milestone."
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