With offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, BrandManager has grown rapidly since its foundation in 2009. CEO and Director of Brand Strategy, Tony Eades, says that one of the big drivers of that success has been its adoption of the inbound methodology.
“I was introduced to inbound marketing in 2013 by a colleague who has an inbound agency of her own and is a HubSpot Partner. She told us that this was the future of marketing, and after doing some investigating, I was inclined to believe her.”
BrandManager researched several different marketing automation platforms and did in-depth evaluations of both Marketo and the HubSpot software.
“We just fell in love with the simplicity of HubSpot software. That user friendliness, which allows anyone to just jump on and start building assets, was like nothing we had seen before."
BrandManager first became a HubSpot customer itself, and it loved how it helped to get all of its marketing activities working together.
“We were able to measure the effectiveness of our marketing for the first time. We had concrete data to work with, and we could see what kind of return we were getting from every action. I knew that this was something that our clients needed just as much as we did!”
The agency decided to go all-in and become an inbound agency, and it joined the HubSpot Partner Program in late 2013.
Helping Clients to Set Up Full-Funnel InboundTony credits the HubSpot team with helping BrandManager to launch into a market that was at the time largely unaware of the inbound methodology.
“Our HubSpot channel consultant helped us to define and pursue a strategy for success, and our channel account manager helped us to position and sell our new services. The HubSpot Academy was an awesome resource as well. We still use it whenever we have a question or if we want to deepen our knowledge on a certain subject.”
Today, BrandManager’s website is a model of inbound in action. It has an active blog and attractive content offers including ebooks, guides and case studies. Visitors are encouraged to connect with the agency through Calls-to-Action and Forms and then entered into Workflows and nurtured through the funnel with automated emails.
“I think the fact that we were a HubSpot customer first really helped us to understand how to do inbound in the right way. Now, as a HubSpot Partner, we are passing that along to our clients.”
The agency wants its clients to be just as enthusiastic about the methodology as it is, so it helps them to take ownership of the HubSpot software. According to Andrew Levy, BrandManager’s Director of Inbound Operations, the trick is to throw the gates open wide.
“We introduce them to the Academy, we give them training on how to use the platform – we want them to build the HubSpot DNA into the fabric of their organisation. We’re also very open about showing them how to use Marketing Analytics and Reports, so they can see the ROI that our work produces. With the HubSpot software, you can’t hide behind your figures, and our customers appreciate that transparency.”
BrandManager is constantly evolving and innovating it's service offering. Their in-house development team has recently introduced messenger chat bots and interactive offers to the product mix.
BrandManager has also started offering sales enablement services, and it has just gotten its first customer on the full growth stack – the combination of the HubSpot Marketing, CRM and Sales software.
“It gives us more control over the outcomes of our work. For example, we can get our clients sales-qualified leads, but if they don’t follow up in the right way, those leads won’t convert. With the growth stack, we can take control of the whole process and deliver the sales that our customers want,” explains Tony.
Tapping into New Markets as a HubSpot Partner