Content Chemistry is Australia's newest HubSpot Gold Solutions Partner and we can't be more excited! 🏆
Learn about our journey to Gold-town and what that means for you.
Our journey to Gold
May 2017
I first came across HubSpot in May 2017 after looking at how I could grow and scale my own freelance marketing consulting business (self-named "Reiche" at the time 😎).
After working with a few clients, I also realised that many businesses weren't using a CRM, and most businesses were not measuring their marketing or sales in a meaningful way.
For example, many clients that I was working with had no way of measuring the ROI from their marketing. They also weren't really tracking the activity of their sales team, in terms of emails, calls, meetings booked, etc. All really super important stuff!
They were basically throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what stuck!
Once I decided that I needed to find a CRM, marketing and sales solution that I could learn and use within my own business but also implement for my clients, the journey began!
I checked out SalesForce, Infusionsoft (now Keap), Zoho, Campaign Monitor, ActiveCampaign and embarked on the overwhelming task of trying to compare each product's features, pricing, pros and cons, to see which would be the best fit for my clients and I.
Once I expressed interest in HubSpot and started preliminary discussions with (the great man — see below👇) Nick Dzienny, Channel Account Manager (CAM) from HubSpot, I quickly realised that HubSpot was going to be the best fit for me and the CLEAR winner by a country mile.
Here's 5 points of difference that got HubSpot over the line for me:
- HubSpot basically wrote the "inbound marketing" playbook back in 2010 and are leaders in inbound marketing. Inbound marketing really resonated with me because it was just a no-brainer and made sense! Lead with value-based content and personalised customer experiences that attract, engage and delight your customers. Thanks to the internet, the world had changed, and traditional marketing and sales just wasn't cutting it any more.
- I loved the user interface (UI), design and ease-of-use of HubSpot. It's SO easy to understand and use. HubSpot is basically the Apple of marketing/sales software (yes I'm an Apple fan 😏)! This was a big deal to me because if I couldn't figure out how to use HubSpot quickly, I knew that my clients would have the same frustration. It doesn't matter how "good" software is, if no one is using it within your business, it's pointless. Kind of like having a Ferrari in the garage but never driving it...
- HubSpot's free education platform — HubSpot Academy — is simply amazing and unparalleled. As at 15 July 2020, the HubSpot Academy offers 60+ free courses, 331+ free lessons and 18+ certifications on all things marketing, sales, customer success and the HubSpot software. The training is mostly video content, so you can pretty much binge-watch Netflix style — it's totally addictive! 🤓 Not only has the Academy been amazing for my own learning and development, but it's also been an invaluable tool to up-skill my clients on the "inbound" methodology and the HubSpot software.
On top the Academy, are the regular HubSpot User Groups (affectionally referred to as HUGs) in each city. Below is a photo from a HUG held in Sydney in 2019.
And then there's the annual HubSpot GROW event (which was unfortunately cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19), which is like a mini-version of its epic INBOUND event which occurs in Boston every year (INBOUND will be held 100% virtually this year!). GROW features international speakers and is truly incredible. Below are a few happy snaps from GROW 2019.
- HubSpot's community is also something pretty special, and I think it's REALLY unique to anything else like it. First of all — everyone at HubSpot are just nice humans! Right from my first phone call with Nick, right through to meeting other HubSpot Partners, other HubSpotters in the Sydney office and even meeting the myth, the legend that is Dan Tyre, Sales Director at HubSpot. HubSpot even set up a free 30-minute call with Dan Tyre (who's based in the US) to discuss some of the roadblocks I was facing as a small agency — another example of how HubSpot goes above-and-beyond for its partners and customers.
This overall "niceness" and helpfulness is backed up by HubSpot's INCREDIBLE Customer Support team, who are based in the US of A, Singapore and Ireland. You can chat, email or request a call back from an expert HubSpotter 24/7, which has saved me many a time! And finally, HubSpot's Facebook Group for HubSpot Solution Partners is just incredible and so engaged! You can literally throw out any question into the Partner community and be flooded with loads of answers, solutions and tips. It's been invaluable. - The final piece of the puzzle for me is that HubSpot is truly an all-in-one platform. CRM, marketing, sales and customer service/success all in the same place. This for me was huge! Multi-tool chaos is not fun and while many businesses choose to "hack" and integrate multiple tools together to save a dollar, I've found this approach to be highly risky, time consuming (in terms of learning each of the tools and working with a multi-tool scenario) and often very costly. Speaking from my experience, having everything (including your website's CMS) in the one place, creates so much efficiency and value.
March 2018
Thanks to the patience and tenacity of Nick, in March 2018 he connected me with the lovely Pete Nicolls from HubDo, a HubSpot Platinum Partner at the time (photo of Pete below at the London HubSpot User Group). To help agencies get started with HubSpot and achieve HubSpot Silver Partner status, Pete put together a course called SILVERPEAK.
It included the best bits from other HubSpot training that Pete had done, including HubSpot's Pipeline Generation Bootcamp.
Joining SILVERPEAK was a real game-changer for me. Weekly 2-hour Zoom calls for six months (plus homework) with Pete and ten other agencies based in Australia who were HubSpot Partners or were looking to become HubSpot Partners.
Like many startups, we were between 1-5 in size and looking to grow and scale — we just needed some help, and a coach like Pete was perfect. He knew HubSpot backwards, he'd grown his agency from 2 to 10+, he'd hit HubSpot Platinum Partner status and was working with businesses around the world.
Doing the SILVERPEAK training really impressed on me how important it is to have a trusted advisor/coach/consultant when you're starting off. It's so easy to get lost "in the weeds" and waste so much time trying to figure out what will move the needle for your business and what won't.
July 2018
Within 3 months of joining SILVERPEAK, I signed on as a HubSpot Agency Partner, parted with some $$$ and started to learn the HubSpot platform.
The same month that I joined, I hit HubSpot Silver Partner tier (which has since been discontinued) and onboarded my first few clients on HubSpot.
HubSpot has an extensive onboarding for new Partners, and over the next 6 months I learned everything about the HubSpot software and the inbound methodology.
Nick was responsible for helping me scale my agency, including building a solid sales process and trying to wrap my head around "selling" or "shelping" as Dan Tyre puts it — basically sales that focuses on helping.
Nick was nicely complemented by Jack Doran, my Channel Consultant (CC). Jack was responsible for helping me onboard new HubSpot clients, and he ensured that I was "practising what I preached" and was actually doing inbound marketing and sales myself!
The scary thing in agency-land, is that many digital marketing agencies aren't actually doing what they're telling their clients to do. For example, many agencies don't have a blog, they aren't investing in SEO, they aren't running an inbound sales funnel and they're not even using HubSpot that much themselves. All the very things they're telling their clients to do!
The onboarding process took 6 months and included completing every HubSpot course and certification I could — over 74+ hours and counting. This was in addition to weekly calls with Nick and Jack to keep me on track.
Seriously, it was such an amazing process, super-professional and totally worth the $$$ investment (as is the HubSpot standard onboarding).
July 2020
Fast-forward to 2020, and we're so excited to be recognised as a HubSpot Gold Solutions Partner which reflects our HubSpot software experience and also the number of clients that we have successfully onboarded onto HubSpot.
As you have read, it's been quite the journey!
Nice words from nice people
Here are some nice words from a couple of people who have been with us from the start.
“It's no surprise to see Content Chemistry be awarded Gold tier status with us here at HubSpot as they're consistently going above and beyond for their customers. Their attention to detail and commitment to data-driven decision making is second to none.
Moreover, their hands-on approach to servicing their clients and focus on building long term relationships with everyone they work with is what truly sets them apart. I'm extremely excited to continue to watch them grow!”
Nick Dzienny, Channel Account Manager, HubSpot
“HubSpot attracts the skilled "good guys" of marketing who deliver impact for their client's businesses every day. I'm very proud to see Nathan's agency Content Chemistry recognised by achieving Gold Solutions Partner status today. Not only does Nathan proactively help his colleagues to do more, he inspires all HubSpot Partners to Grow Better together.”
Pete Nicholls, HubSpot Certified Trainer and Director of HubDo
How can a HubSpot Gold Partner (*cough* like us) help you?
We've been using HubSpot since August 2017, we've completed the extensive 6 month HubSpot Partner onboarding, we've completed over 74 hours of HubSpot training and certification, and we've onboarding lots of happy clients onto HubSpot.
And we ACTUALLY use HubSpot for our own agency (crazy I know) and we ACTUALLY do inbound marketing and sales for Content Chemistry. We know how to push HubSpot to the limits and how to use the tool to drive revenue and ROI, because we do it ourselves.
We also make it our business to stay on top of the latest HubSpot updates and features and test them out on ourselves first, before deploying them for our clients.
So in other words, we walk the talk!
Partnering with HubSpot has been the single best business decision we've made and we know that it's likely to be the best business decision you'll make as well.
If you'd like to learn more about HubSpot and see if it's the right fit for your business, click here to book in a call with me to discuss.
If you're already using HubSpot but aren't really maximising it to the full and need a hand, get in touch and we can book in a free HubSpot portal audit for you to get you back on track.
Super excited to become a HubSpot Gold Partner and looking forward to the future! Thanks again to everyone who has helped us along the journey! 👏
