Professional Certifications

Top of Page

Lesson 1: Fundamentals of a Data-Driven Business

Description:

Inbound is a constant balancing act between adapting to the needs of your customers and innovating to grow and scale your business. How do you know if you're being proactive enough? Is your personalization really resonating with leads, prospects, and customers? The answers lie in your data. In this lesson, learn how to plan and implement a data strategy that ensures your business goals and decisions are data-driven.

Business intelligence initiatives help businesses make good decisions. To do this, businesses need to set goals and use data to make those decisions. Data-driven decision-making uses information from customers and other sources to figure out what is the best way for a business to move forward. Goal setting frameworks help businesses decide what their main goals are so that they can work towards them using data. Additionally, data can be used to track a business’s progress over time and ensure that its goals are being met. Organizations should also use data to differentiate themselves from the competition and find ways to remain competitive in their industry. By utilizing data-driven decision making techniques, businesses can make informed decisions quickly and effectively, giving them the edge they need to stay ahead of the competition.

Ultimately, BI offers organizations an efficient way to make strategic decisions about how best to allocate resources for maximum profitability. When combined with sound goal setting frameworks, it enables companies to make smarter decisions that lead towards greater success. With the appropriate tools in place, companies can analyze their past performance while looking ahead into the future – allowing them to adjust their strategies accordingly.

Videos:

• A case for data driven decision making (11 minutes)
• Using data to define your purpose in business (12 minutes)
• Data-driven goal setting for your business (10 minutes)

Topics:

• Business intelligence
• Goal setting frameworks
• Data-driven decision making

Discussion Questions:

1. What is data-driven decision-making?
2. Why is having a strong sense of purpose important for a business?
3. What are the components of data literacy?

Top of Page

Lesson 2: Collecting Meaningful Business Data

Description:

Integrations solve and simplify your need for new software as your business grows and evolves, and your needs change. You can power your business to achieve a wider range of tasks on your software as you enhance its functionality by leveraging integrations. The HubSpot app ecosystem is your resource to discover and install the best software in the world to run your business. In this lesson, learn when and how to use integrations, the benefits of connecting your apps to HubSpot, and how this solves for your data needs down the line.

Business intelligence is an essential tool that helps organizations make informed decisions and reach their goals. It enables them to analyze data, build dashboards, and create reports which allow for insights into customer behavior. To maximize the effectiveness of a BI strategy, it is important to establish best practices for collecting and managing meaningful data as well as leverage integrations with other software applications. This includes organizing and storing data in a way that makes it easy to access when needed, creating custom properties in reports that show the most important information, and utilizing various software tools to get the fullest range of functions from the business’s technology.

Integrations are powerful in helping businesses achieve a wider range of tasks using their software, as they can enhance its functionality by connecting different applications together. Additionally, integrations help users solve their need for new programs or data sources by providing them with access to varied types of software applications. When combined with goal setting frameworks and data-driven decision-making techniques companies can make informed decisions quickly and effectively. By using integrations to integrate different software solutions into one platform, businesses can ensure that they are leveraging all valuable resources in order to meet objectives in the most efficient manner possible.

Videos:

• Unpacking the power of integrations (7 minutes)
• Auditing your tech stack (7 minutes)
• Using the HubSpot Marketplace (6 minutes)
• Navigating the App Marketplace (1 minutes)

Topics:

• Integrations
• APIs
• Auditing your technology stack
• HubSpot Marketplace

Discussion Questions:

1. What are integrations?
2. What is an API?
3. What is a iPaaS solution?

Top of Page

Lesson 3: Managing Business Data in HubSpot

Description:

In today's world, it is easier than ever to start a company, but harder than ever to scale a company. As your business becomes more complex, so does the integrated stack of software you use. The sooner you think critically about how to manage your data, the easier it becomes to manage complexity down the road. In the lesson, learn how to clean and organize your data in HubSpot and how to build custom properties that scale with your reporting needs.

Videos:

• Unpacking CRMs and object data (10 minutes)
• Preparing your HubSpot CRM for reporting (11 minutes)
• How to Create Custom Properties (2 minutes)
• Auditing and cleaning your data (11 minutes)

Topics:

• Objects
• Events
• Auditing your tech stack
• Custom properties

Discussion Questions:

1. What are objects?
2. What are events?
3. What is data cleansing?

Top of Page

Lesson 4 : Driving Growth with Attract Stage Reporting

Description:

The best marketing teams explore new ideas and experiment on a regular basis. The impact of this data driven mindset gets diluted, however, when teams start looking for shortcuts to success. In this lesson, learn how to create impactful marketing experiments and use your data to not only reach your customers, but optimize your content and connect with your sales team.

To accomplish this, consider growth hacking. Growth hacking is a process of using innovative and data-driven techniques to rapidly increase the growth trajectory of an organization. It involves experimentation with strategies such as product development, digital marketing, sales operations, customer retention, and pricing. It requires both creativity and analytical skills in order to create campaigns that are able to generate maximum returns on investment. At its core, growth hacking requires experimentation with different strategies in order to gain insights on what works best. Through trial and error, growth hackers are able to identify new opportunities for product improvement and marketing optimization. In addition, they also use data-driven metrics that measure user engagement and conversions in order to optimize their campaigns for higher efficiency. By combining creative problem solving and rapid iteration cycles, teams are able to come up with ideas that can help drive business growth at an accelerated rate. These include creating viral campaigns that leverage word-of-mouth or optimizing content for better SEO visibility.

Experimentation techniques can be incredibly powerful tools for creating more impactful attract campaigns. With experimentation, companies can test different strategies and tactics to see which ones yield the best results. This can include experimenting with different ad formats, content types, target audience segments, or even using different channels to reach potential customers. One of the most important factors in a successful attract campaign is understanding the audience’s needs and motivations. Experimentation sheds light on how different messages or visuals may resonate more with certain audiences than others. For instance, targeting different age groups with specific copy or imagery may deliver better conversion rates as compared to a generic message that tries to appeal to everyone at once.

In addition, experimentation allows continual refinement of messaging based on customer feedback and behaviors. A/B testing compares two versions of the same message or creative asset in order to determine which one resonates more with customers. A/B testing allows experimenting with different calls-to-action (CTAs) such as “Sign Up Now” versus “Learn More” in order to see which one drives higher user engagement rates. By continually running experiments over time, companies will be able to create an ever-evolving messaging strategy that is tailored precisely towards their target audience interests and needs.

Overall, experimentation is an integral part of creating more impactful attract campaigns that drive growth for businesses today. By taking advantage of data-driven metrics, understanding customer needs and motivations, as well as optimizing budgets across multiple channels, companies will be able to maximize the effectiveness of their attract efforts.

Videos:

• Using data in the Attract Stage (19 minutes)
• How to access and customize your traffic analytics reports  (2 minutes)

Topics:

• Flywheel (attract stage)
• Attribution Reporting
• Website data
• Source data
• Engagement data
• UTM parameters
• Tracking URLs
• Sales enablement

Discussion Questions:

1. What is growth hacking?
2. What is the scientific method?
3. What is A/B testing?
4. What is a sales enablement strategy?
5. What is a SLA?

Top of Page

Lesson 5 : Unlocking the Power of Engage Stage Reporting

Description:

As the age-old saying state, when you measure something, all elements of it will be managed. Nevertheless, how can you take charge of what is being measured? Business leaders regard more than 300 metrics as necessary for accurate management. This is an overwhelming number especially if the team is just starting to become data-driven.

Managing what you measure is an essential part of running a successful business. Lagging indicators and leading indicators are two key measurements for tracking progress and making sure that the organization is on track. Lagging indicators are used to measure outcomes or results after the fact. These metrics provide insights into how well the business has been performing over a certain period of time, allowing management to adjust their strategy as needed. Examples of lagging indicators include total sales, customer churn rate, return on investment (ROI), customer lifetime value (CLV), average customer acquisition cost (CAC) and more. By understanding these indicators, businesses can understand their current performance and make adjustments accordingly.

Leading indicators are used to measure future performance or forecast trends before they become reality. These types of metrics allow managers to stay ahead of the curve by predicting incoming changes and preparing for them in advance. Examples of leading indicators include customer satisfaction scores, customer feedback surveys, customer lifetime value (CLV), website traffic and more. By understanding these metrics and using them to inform decision making, companies can prepare and anticipate upcoming changes in order to remain competitive in their industry.

Thus, lagging indicators and leading indicators are both vital for managing measurements in order to ensure the success of the business. Understanding these metrics allows companies to monitor their current performance, predict future changes, adjust their strategy accordingly and remain competitive in the market.

Videos:

• Engage Stage Metrics to Consider (10 minutes)
• Forecasting and Analytics in Sales Hub (7 minutes)

Topics:

• Engage Stage

Discussion Questions:

1. How do you manage what you are measuring?
2. What is a sales metric?
3. What is a lagging indicator?
4. What is a leading indicator?
5. What is a quota aattainment?

Top of Page

Lesson 6 : Creating Momentum with Delight Stage Reporting

Description:

Most of today's most successful emerging and growing companies are already heavily investing in customer success. To make your customers happy, you need to understand what customers expect of you. You need to understand the current state of your customer experience. In this lesson, learn how to connect with your customers, optimize your processes, and align with your marketing team using HubSpot reporting.

Keeping customers happy with their experience will help ensure that they remain loyal and continue to do business with the company. Tools such as NPS (Net Promoter Score), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Survey) and CES (Customer Effort Score) can help businesses measure the customer experience, identify areas for improvement, and make adjustments to increase customer satisfaction levels.

Thus, the primary benefit of focusing on keeping existing customers happy is increased customer loyalty. If a customer is satisfied with their experience, they are more likely to remain loyal to the company and do business in the future, resulting in increased long-term revenue and profitability. Furthermore, happy customers are more likely to provide positive reviews and recommend the company to others. This helps boost brand reputation and create additional opportunities.

NPS surveys allow businesses to understand how likely it is that a customer would recommend their product or service to others, while CSAT surveys enable companies to gauge how satisfied a customer is with the product or service they have received. This data can be used to measure overall customer allowing you to pinpoint areas for improvement quickly and easily.

CES surveys are used to measure how much effort a customer has had put in when engaging with your product or service. This information can be used to identify points of friction in the process which could be causing difficulty or dissatisfaction for customers. Once identified, these points can then be addressed by making adjustments such as simplifying processes, automating tasks or providing better support resources where needed.

Overall, focusing on keeping existing customers happy through tools such as NPS, CSAT and CES provides an array of benefits for businesses including increased customer loyalty, improved brand reputation, and valuable insights into areas for improvement. Investing time into understanding what current customers think about your products/services can help ensure that you're consistently delivering excellent experiences which will have a positive effect on long-term success.

Videos:

• Data Driven Decision Making in Customer Service (15 minutes)

Topics:

• Delight Stage
• NPS
• CSAT
• CES
• CLV

Discussion Questions:

1. Why focus on keeping existing customer happy?
2. What are the benefits of focusing on your customers?
3. What is NPS?
4. What is CSAT?
5. What is CES?
6. What is Customer lifetime value?
7. What is Customer retention cost?
8. What is renewal rate?
9. What is monthly recurring revenue?

Top of Page

Lesson 7 : Creating Custom Reports in HubSpot

Description:

Your data is only as good as your ability to understand and communicate it. In this lesson, you’ll learn the basics of the reports builder, how the organization of data in HubSpot affects the reports you build, and some tips and tricks for determining the right report to fit your needs. 

To truly benefit from data, you must be able to comprehend and articulate it. Understanding how information is arranged in relevant systems as well as some helpful tips on choosing the right report are vital components on this journey. Thus, communicating data can be done by building custom reports and using pictures and graphs to show the data. This way, you can understand the information better and use it to help you make decisions. Yet, what would be a good research question to investigate for a custom report?

A good research question for a custom report could be: “What are the key factors impacting customer loyalty in the XYZ industry, and how can businesses leverage those factors to increase customer loyalty?” This question is expansive enough to cover a wide range of topics related to customer loyalty and provide ample opportunity for exploration. In order to answer this question, we would need to look at data from various sources such as customer surveys, market research reports, competitor intelligence, and industry reports. We would also need to consider external factors such as economic conditions, competitive landscape, consumer trends, and regulatory environment. Furthermore, we could evaluate the impact of marketing strategies on customer loyalty. Finally, by analyzing the collected data we could determine how businesses can use those key factors to boost their customers’ loyalty.

Videos:

• Creating Custom Reports (3 minutes)
• Steps to Create a Custom Report (26 minutes)
• Best Practices for Data Visualization (12 minutes)

Topics:

• Trustworthy Data
• Relevant Data
• Reliable Data
• Understand Factors
• Data Visualization

Discussion Questions:

1. What makes a good research question?
2. What is an independent variable?
3. What is an dependent variable?
4. What is a data source?
5. What are data tables?
6. What are pivot tables?

Top of Page

Lesson 8 : Designing Compelling HubSpot Dashboards

Description:

A business dashboard is an information management tool for tracking KPIs, metrics, and other key data points relevant to a business, department, or specific process. Dashboards simplify complex data sets to provide users with at-a-glance awareness of current performance through the use of visualization. In this lesson, learn how to effectively communicate to your key stakeholders through the creation and customization of your HubSpot dashboards.

Designing an effective dashboard is a key element in successful data visualization. The goal of a dashboard should be to provide users with as much meaningful information as possible without overwhelming them or making the data difficult to interpret. A compelling dashboard design should include visual elements that enable users to quickly and easily understand the data, as well as providing clear indicators of performance and actionable insights.

One important aspect of designing a compelling dashboard is the use of eye-tracking studies such as the F-shaped and Z-shaped reading patterns. These studies focus on how people scan webpages and other visuals in order to get information quickly and accurately. By understanding these patterns, designers can optimize their visuals for efficient user consumption of data. The F-shaped pattern suggests that most readers start by scanning down the left side of a page before moving left-to-right across the top, then continuing downwards into columns or other structural elements like tables while focusing on headlines and subheadings along the way. The Z-shaped pattern is similar, but after scanning from left to right at the top, readers will usually go directly down and then back up from where they started, focusing on more detailed content within each section before continuing onto another area.

These patterns can be used to design visually appealing dashboards that guide users’ eyes through the data in an intuitive way. Utilizing color coding schemes or highlighting important metrics with bold font or larger typeface sizes can draw attention to key areas of interest while maintaining legibility throughout all sections of a dashboard. Additionally, when possible, providing interactive elements such as graphs that allow users to manipulate variables or create their own filters allows them greater control over what they are viewing and provides further insight into trends within the data set being referenced.

In conclusion, designing an effective business dashboard requires understanding user behavior along with aesthetic considerations such as color schemes, spacing between elements, font size and weight. All these factors taken together must create a visual layout that efficiently guides users through complex sets of figures without overwhelming them and remains visually pleasing throughout its different stages of use.

Videos:

• The Basics of Dashboard Design (10 minutes)
• Designing Visually Compelling Dashboards (7 minutes)
• Resizing Reports on Your Dashboard (1 minutes)

Topics:

• Eye-Tracking Studies
  • F-Shaped Reading
  • Z-Shaped Reading
• Audit your toolset
• Visual Hierarchy
• Visualize for impact

Discussion Questions:

1. What is a dashboard?
2. What is cadence?
3. What is a cognitive load theory?
4. What is gold panning?
5. What is a blink test?

Top of Page