Prior to HubSpot, Santiago faced several challenges internally and externally. Having been in business for 200 years in the U.S., and for 50 years in Australia, PACCAR’s focus was very much on face-to-face interactions and production. The company had no digital infrastructure in place and because they were market leader in Australia, nobody felt there was a need to change. However, Santiago knew that to maintain their position, digital would have to play a part sooner or later. “Online customers didn’t know the difference between our production plant in Melbourne and our overseas competitors, and as market leader, we needed to be just as good online as we were offline. Our customers simply just expected it.”
New competitors entering the truck import market were making considerable strides in the digital space. Meanwhile, PACCAR were still focused on just production. “80% of our company focus was placed on production, whereas our competitors had 80% of their focus on digital. We had no mindset on digital marketing and we needed to show the business how valuable it could be.”
To give PACCAR an edge online, Santiago envisioned a scenario where they didn’t need to keep chasing customers, but had customers actually come to them instead - something he knew an inbound marketing approach could achieve. He just needed to find an all-encompassing tool that could automate and streamline this inbound approach at the scale required by a company of PACCAR’s considerable size.
With a path to success identified, Santiago explored a number of solutions with two critical factors to consider in his decision-making process. The first was price, as key stakeholders wouldn’t want to invest in a tool they knew nothing about, or had no established, proven value to work with. The second was a simple user interface - as PACCAR focused on traditional methods for so long, any complexity would only act as another barrier to adoption. Santiago first tested the Adobe Marketing Cloud, as he had previously been an avid user. He also trialled Salesforce and was close to proposing this to stakeholders. That was until he discovered the HubSpot Growth Stack. He felt that the simple HubSpot user interface, combined with the all-in-one functionality, would allow for smoother implementation and training. It was also significantly more budget-friendly than Adobe and Salesforce, which, ultimately, made it easier to get across the line with the decision-makers.
Once the entire business was aligned to the HubSpot Growth Stack, the initial implementation process was made much easier by HubSpot’s extensive library of helpful content, including the HubSpot Academy, where the team completed their Inbound Certification. With the team up to speed, Santiago set about building and crystallising PACCAR’s online customer journey.
He used the HubSpot Heatmap feature to identify how customers were interacting with the website and determine what products they were interested in, then used this data to alert the sales team of any potential leads. HubSpot also helped Santiago to shorten what can be a lengthy sales cycle, sometimes taking up to a year to close a sale. He did this through the use of interconnected emails, landing pages and CTAs to speed up the conversion of a visitor into a qualified lead. “The nature of our business means our sales cycle is very long. It may take up to a year to close the loop from initial online research to product delivery. Inbound marketing and HubSpot have helped us dramatically shorten the time from initial online research to dealership inquiry. We’ll never go back to outbound.”
Speed is extremely important for PACCAR, where competitors can quickly seize upon unclaimed opportunities. But, equally, Santiago acknowledged that actions must be taken in the non-intrusive way that only inbound marketing can offer. “Everything we do is designed to sell more, but in the right way. Only inbound marketing can offer these advantages.”
Santiago also commended the ongoing service provided by his Customer Success Manager, who is always on hand to solve any problems or to give advice. With only a small marketing team at his disposal and time at a premium, this support is invaluable and he often reaches out for assistance with website developments and organising further training for the team. “Time is a big priority for me, so I have used additional HubSpot services to build things like landing pages. Everything is always created to my exact specifications, so this has been really worthwhile as it saves me so much time and money.”
For Santiago, the results from working with HubSpot have been outstanding. To date, he estimates that the HubSpot Growth Stack has saved PACCAR an amazing 80% in operational costs by removing manual processes, and allowing them to focus on more value-adding tasks. Santiago and his team have also been able to build a cohesive and clear customer journey, backed by impactful insights gleaned from website data. This alone has resulted in a 9x increase in leads generated. “We’re now generating 9x more leads than we used to. Before HubSpot, we weren’t tracking our MQLs and SQLs. Now, we know when someone is potentially ready to buy from us, so we send the lead to the dealership for further nurturing. All of these processes are recorded in HubSpot.”
To top it all off, six websites across the PACCAR brand portfolio are now ranking organically in Google, with Kenworth’s inbound strategy positioning them as industry leaders in content creation. Santiago has also noticed a positive motivational change in his team, with even the non-believers being won over by the HubSpot Growth Stack. “The entire team is much more motivated. Everyone is feeling great about us having HubSpot, even traditional marketers see the value of having technology to automate processes, without sacrificing the user experience.”