Optimizing inbound marketing with HubSpot involves a strategic approach to attract, engage, and convert leads effectively. Here’s a streamlined guide to optimize your inbound marketing efforts using HubSpot:
- Targeted Content Creation: Utilize HubSpot’s tools to understand your audience’s needs and preferences. Create high-quality, targeted content such as blog posts, ebooks, webinars, and videos tailored to your buyer personas.
- SEO Optimization: Leverage HubSpot’s SEO tools to optimize your content for search engines. Conduct keyword research, optimize meta tags, and create valuable, shareable content to improve your website’s visibility and organic traffic.
- Lead Generation Forms and CTAs: Implement lead capture forms, pop-ups, and compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) across your website and content. Use HubSpot’s forms and CTA tools to capture visitor information and convert them into leads.
- Email Marketing Automation: Set up automated email workflows to nurture leads and guide them through the buyer’s journey. Use HubSpot’s email marketing tools to send personalized, targeted emails based on user behavior and preferences.
- Social Media Management: Manage and schedule social media posts, monitor conversations, and engage with your audience across various platforms using HubSpot’s social media tools. Analyze performance metrics to optimize your social media strategy.
- Marketing Automation Workflows: Create automated workflows to streamline repetitive marketing tasks and nurture leads efficiently. Use HubSpot’s workflow automation tools to automate lead scoring, email sends, and other marketing actions.
- CRM Integration: Integrate HubSpot’s CRM with your marketing efforts to track leads, manage customer relationships, and align sales and marketing teams. Use CRM data to personalize marketing campaigns and improve lead nurturing.
- Analytics and Reporting: Monitor and analyze the performance of your inbound marketing efforts using HubSpot’s analytics and reporting tools. Track key metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, and ROI to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.
- Continuous Optimization: Continuously optimize your inbound marketing strategy based on data-driven insights and feedback. Experiment with different tactics, conduct A/B tests, and refine your approach to improve results over time.
- Training and Support: Take advantage of HubSpot’s training resources, certifications, and support services to maximize your use of the platform. Stay updated on new features and best practices to keep your inbound marketing efforts effective and competitive.
By following these steps and leveraging HubSpot’s features and tools, you can optimize your inbound marketing strategy to attract, engage, and convert leads more effectively.
HubSpot Inbound Marketing Optimization Certification Exam Answers
Question 1: Fill in the blank: When enticing visitors with pop-ups in the ______ stage, you may want to promote offers, sales, or discount codes.
- Attract
- Engage
- Delight
- Trick question! Pop-ups aren’t inbound.
Question 2: Nauto, a data platform for self-driving cars, helps make autonomous driving safer for companies managing fleets of self-driving vehicles. Naturally, its customers would need all kinds of information, and Nauto has this information packaged into a super-simple e-book. Their landing page gives you both a brief contact form, and some preview statistics to prove why this resource is so important. Reflecting on the landing page’s best practices, which area could Nauto optimize on this page?
- Simplicity
- Product Comparisons
- Graphics
- Social Proof
Question 3: Full disclosure: IMPACT is a HubSpot partner — but that’s not why they’re included here. IMPACT’s landing pages have long been a source of design inspiration. Looking at this landing page, which best practices are the content creators over at IMPACT using to entice visitors to convert? Select all that apply.
- Action-oriented CTA
- Simple Use of Color and Fonts
- Large Headline Copy
- Detailed Featured Image
Question 4: You’ve just successfully run a lead generation campaign, and are tasked with calculating the conversion rate of the email associated with it. You’re currently defining a conversion as a clickthrough. If 100 leads opened the email and 18 clicked, what is your conversion rate percentage for that email?
- 20%
- 18%
- 180%
- 3%
Question 5: Select all that apply. A good conversion rate depends on your ______.
- Industry
- Purchased leads
- Niche
- Traffic Channel
Question 6: AirBnB is always optimizing their homepage to create an exciting and engaging experience for website visitors. Looking below, how is this homepage optimized to entice visitors to book a trip? Select all that apply.
- It has customer testimonials on the homepage that tell real-world stories of why to use the product.
- It includes the destination and date search form that most visitors come looking for up front, guiding visitors to the logical next step.
- It’s easy to consume. The impactful image almost acts like a story.
- The primary call-to-action (“Search”) contrasts with the background and stands out; but the secondary call-to-action for hosts is visible above the fold, too.
Question 7: You work as a marketer at a company that sells mens’ suits. You know from customer research that a large percentage of your customers struggle with selecting the right size for their suit. How could you solve this problem with a pop-up?
- An exit pop-up with a 15% discount.
- A pop-up promoting your latest suit line.
- A pop-up with a survey asking to rate the website experience.
- A pop-up with a sizing guide to help them pick their right size.
Question 8: Fill in the blank: This pop-up from Pixizoo is a great example of using pop-ups in the ______ stage.
- Attract
- Engage
- Delight
- Trick question! Pop-ups are not inbound.
Question 9: You’ve just run a campaign promoting a new line of necklaces at your fine jewelry business. Overall, the campaign generated 2,500 new website visitors, 1,400 of which ended up visiting your necklace landing page. Ultimately, you got 350 new leads and 175 new customers. What is the conversion rate of your form?
- 7%
- 14%
- 25%
- 50%
Question 10: Why is it important for marketers to optimize their mobile experience?
- You want to help consumers find what they want to find, and do what they want to do, quickly and easily.
- Trick question. Mobile optimization was popular in 2015, but due to changes in the Google algorithm, it’s no longer necessary.
- It’s cheaper to buy website themes with responsive design templates included, so you might as well optimize for mobile.
- Device type directly implies location or intent; optimizing and capturing leads on mobile can help you create a better segmentation and lead nurturing strategy.
Question 11: Why is it necessary to obtain consent before sending your audience promotional SMS messages?
- You need to obtain consent before sending your audience promotional SMS messages to your audience, because it’s the right thing to do as an inbound marketer.
- You need to obtain consent before sending your audience promotional SMS messages because it is a legal requirement in many countries.
- You need to obtain consent before sending your audience promotional SMS messages because otherwise, your potential leads will likely block your number.
- You don’t need to obtain consent before sending promotional SMS messages to your audience.
Question 12: Crate & Barrel recently sent out an SMS promotion to its audience that included the following. If they didn’t receive the results they were looking for, what’s one thing they could improve upon with their SMS strategy moving forward?
- Don’t identify themselves up front. Their brand name takes up too much space on the test.
- Use a related image. Based on this photo, it’s difficult to tell what exactly they’re advertising.
- Remove the link. Audience members often think links look spammy.
- Try to use more emojis. The lack of emojis doesn’t match user expectations.
Question 13: Modcloth, a popular online fashion retailer, recently ran a promotion that encourages users to pick a style of fashion based on their unique interests and goals as fashion forward consumers. This showcases that the brand:
- Understand their personas and their consumer preferences.
- Believe that less is more by delivering their content as concisely as possible.
- Associate certain keywords like “catwalk” and “country” with their brand.
- Cater to an exclusive clientele who needs to look fresh off the catwalk.
Question 14: Impulse Creative uses a chatbot to help users navigate through its website and find what they’re looking for with a “choose your own adventure” of sorts. Visitors can select a query from the bot that aligns with their interests. Based on what’s displayed in the chat window, which best practice is Impulse Creative using to qualify leads with their chatbots? Select all that apply.
- Crafting a helpful error message in case the chatbot doesn’t work as expected.
- Adding value before they extract value, and letting the visitor know how they can help.
- Using predefined answers instead of allowing folks to type in their own answers.
- Visualizing the conversation first using a flow chart.
Question 15: Urban Stems is an ecommerce marketplace for flowers and plants. Its website features the chatbot below. Reflecting on chatbot best practices and what you learned in the certification, what are the benefits of using a chatbot in this manner? Select all that apply.
- Common Solutions: The chatbot feature surfaces the answers to FAQs that enable users to quickly find solutions to the most common problems.
- Live Chat Option: The chatbot features a Live Chat button that visitors can click to be transferred to a live agent for more pressing issues.
- Prominent Pop-Up: By automatically popping up on the page, the user will definitely not miss that the chatbot is present to answer any questions.
- Branded Colors: The use of Urban Stem brand colors helps prevent the chatbot from looking spammy or unhelpful.
Question 16: Dollar Shave Club’s chatbot answers simple questions and queries that customers may have. Based on the information available in the chat, what are the benefits for the business to use a chatbot like this? Select all that apply.
- Availability: Offers 24/7 service for simple questions and queries that customers may have, providing global audiences with support options regardless of their timezone.
- Clear Brand Voice: The introduction quickly establishes a tone of voice and personality for the chatbot. This helps establish the customer service persona Dollar Shave Club customers can equate to the brand, and set expectations for future interactions.
- Frictionless Experience: Using a CTA with your chatbots immediately sets the expectation for what your bot can help users accomplish, and drives the purpose of the interaction.
- Case Deflection: Letting customers know what a chatbot can do is a best practice, especially if it can only answer simple questions. Customers will know to look elsewhere for more involved issues, like sending an email or calling an agent.
Question 17: True or false: When building and optimizing chatbots, you will need to work with both qualitative and quantitative data.
- True
- False
Question 18: Optimum has an SMS chatbot for customers with support questions, giving users quick access to 24/7 support. A customer can simply text their issue, and the bot uses language processing to bring the customer the best solution. Looking at their current chat set-up, how might Optimum optimize this chatbot?
- Crafting a helpful error message in case the chatbot doesn’t work as expected.
- Adding value before they extract value and letting the visitor know how they can help.
- Using predefined answers instead of allowing folks to type in their own answers.
- Visualizing the conversation first using a flow chart.
Question 19: When would you NOT want to implement live chat on your website?
- If human bandwidth was a constraint
- If the cost of making a mistake is low
- If you need to collect data or report on conversations
- If you already have a chatbot in place
Question 20: Why is it important to reconcile date ranges on your campaigns’ sources reports?
- If you don’t add date ranges, this page could mess up any custom attribution reporting you have built in your HubSpot account.
- If you don’t add date ranges, all historical data associated with new or influenced contacts could skew the numbers you see on the performance tab.
- If you don’t add date ranges, none of the attribution models can run.
- If you don’t add date ranges, the performance tab will only pull in data from influenced contacts, but not new contacts. This creates a gap in your data story, and HubSpot reporting.
Question 21: When is a session or contact bucketed under Other campaigns in HubSpot?
- When a visitor or contact comes to your site from a paid social post that’s associated with one of your HubSpot campaigns
- When a visitor or contact comes to your site from any asset that’s associated with one of your HubSpot campaigns
- When a contact is imported to HubSpot
- When a visitor or contact comes in from a tracking URL you’ve created in HubSpot
Question 22: How does HubSpot use UTM parameters to categorize traffic to your website?
- Any visitor coming to your website using a URL with UTM parameters is filtered out of your HubSpot analytics.
- Any visitor coming to your website using a URL with UTM parameters will be filtered into their corresponding traffic sources in HubSpot.
- Any visitor coming to your website using a URL with UTM parameters will be attributed to a visit to your site from Google.
- Any visitor coming to your website using a URL with UTM parameters will be converted by HubSpot into a contact record.
Question 23: You notice quite a bit of traffic is coming to your site and being categorized as Direct traffic. Why might these site visitors be categorized in this way? Select all that apply.
- The referring URL of a visit is an identified mail domain or RSS reader.
- The referring URL is HubSpot.
- The referring URL is from a third-party software that you have integrated with HubSpot.
- The referring URL of a visit is empty because a visitor typed your website URL into their browser directly, or the referring information is otherwise lost.
Question 24: When would you use campaign analytics to analyze your data in HubSpot?
- Campaign analytics helps you compare the overall performance of your campaigns against each other, and draw conclusions about how well your campaigns are creating contact or revenue over all.
- Campaign analytics helps you compare the specific assets in each of your campaigns against each other, and draw conclusions on the type of content and distribution strategy that works best for your audience.
- Campaign analytics doesn’t help you analyze your HubSpot data. It’s useless.
- Campaign analytics helps you compare the traffic sources each of your visitors are coming from originally.
Question 25: Why would you see “unknown” or “Unknown SSL” appear in your Organic search traffic in the sources report in HubSpot?
- The search engine is encrypting the user data. This is common on Google.
- The UTM parameters cannot be parsed by HubSpot analytics.
- A contact submitted a HubSpot form on a page without the HubSpot tracking code.
- You have not set up your Sources report with your HubSpot account manager yet.
Question 26: In the 1970s, research suggested that “people have conversations to accomplish some combination of two major goals.” Which two of the following are those goals? Select all that apply.
- Information exchange (learning)
- Impression management (liking)
- Content imitation (copying)
- Social sharing (to distribute something to others)
Question 27: True or False: The inbound methodology is centered around building meaningful, lasting relationships with employees and shareholders.
- True
- False
Question 28: True or False: Only 55% of marketing projects are completed on time.
- True
- False
Question 29: What is a reason you should be kind to your colleagues? Select all that apply.
- Making enemies will make your job harder.
- When people like others they work with, they are more invested in their job.
- Being kind to colleagues will help projects flow more smoothly.
- You’ll feel better about yourself and your job.
Question 30: What is one way we can develop a positive mindset?
- Reframe the situation to consider the positive aspects of the problem
- Talk to a friend and share your frustrations
- Pretend the challenge is already solved
Question 31: What is scope creep?
- An area over which activity, capacity, or influence extends.
- A project’s scope grows — either continuously or at random — as the project progresses.
- The project moves slowly and deliberately to escape the notice of supervisors.
Question 32: Which of the following are important interpersonal communication skills a marketer needs? Choose all that apply.
- Pay attention
- Take great notes
- Practice active listening
- Be empathetic
- Be on time
- Be genuinely curious
Question 33: True or False: 35% of customers are more likely to use a business after reading positive reviews.
- True
- False
Question 34: True or False: 88% of consumers trust online testimonials as much as recommendations from friends or family.
- True
- False
Question 35: True or False: 89% of marketers say video testimonials are the most effective content marketing tactic.
- True
- False
Question 36: True or False: You should never ask your customers for a review of your business.
- True
- False
Question 37: What are some ways that you can get your customers to leave you a review? Choose all that apply.
- Send an email blast
- Optimize your website to make reviews easy to leave
- Only respond to reviews by repeat customers
- Share positive customer reviews you’ve received
- Call your customers on the phone and ask
- Offer an incentive
Question 38: What are the two most popular review sites? Select all that apply.
- Google Reviews
- Foursquare
- Consumer Reports
- Yelp
Question 39: What is social proof?
- Evidence or an argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement
- Being famous and having influence
- When someone sees other people like them doing something they’re more likely to do the same and follow the crowd
Question 40: What three things should testimonials always be? Select all that apply.
- Relatable
- Sincere
- Funny
- Unusual
- Challenging
- Specific
Question 41: “How do you use our app today?” is an example of a _________ question.
- Flexible
- Focused
- Inappropriate
- Quirky
Question 42: What’s the difference between attitudinal and behavioral research?
- Attitudinal research measures what your customers say; behavioral measures what they do.
- Behavioral research measures what your customers say; attitudinal measures what they do.
- Attitudinal research measures quantitative data; behavioral research measures qualitative.
- Behavioral research measures quantitative data; attitudinal research measures qualitative.
Question 43: What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?
- Qualitative studies generate data based on observing a person or thing directly; quantitative data is gathered indirectly.
- Studies that are quantitative in nature generate data based on observing a person or thing directly, whereas qualitative data is gathered indirectly
- Quantitative studies are only done via surveys; qualitative studies can be done a myriad of ways.
- Qualitative studies give you better insights than quantitative studies.
Question 44: You have a goal of redesigning your website, but you first want to know which categories certain links should go under. Which research method should you use?
- Listening labs
- Exploratory interviews
- Card sorts
- Benchmark testing
Question 45: Your team has redesigned your company website. Which study will help you analyze whether or not the changes they’ve made have resulted in an improved customer experience?
- Benchmark study
- Listening labs
- Card sorts
- None of the above
Question 46: Jess is a freelance web designer. Her client has asked her to remove all navigation from their website’s product pages, stating that they want users to focus on the information and convert, rather than navigate away from the page. How should Jess explain why this is not a good idea?
- By including navigation menus on all your site pages, you ensure consistency in design and functionality across your entire website.
- It’s a best practice to provide your website visitors with as many choices as possible, and including navigation menus on all pages helps provide them with further choices.
- Including navigation menus on all pages helps users understand where they are on your site and find the information they need, especially if they entered your website through a page other than your homepage.
- Freelance web designers aren’t able to edit a navigation menu once it’s already been created.
Question 47: Other than the main navigation menu, how else can you include navigation on your website?
- Breadcrumb menu
- Categories
- Footer links
- A & C
Question 48: Rachel works for a marketing agency and is designing a new website for a client. She’s trying to create the site navigation, but is having trouble figuring out which items to include and where to place them. How should Rachel start tackling this problem?
- Perform an open card sort with a group of users.
- Conduct usability testing with a mockup of the website.
- Ask the client how they think the navigation should be structured.
- Copy the navigation menu from a similar website.
Question 49: Which of the following are key principles of information architecture? Choose all that apply.
- Disclosure
- Multiple Classification
- Robust
- Growth
- Understandable
- Front Doors
Question 50: Which of the following is an example of the Principle of Exemplars in action?
- An online clothing store has a detailed navigation menu which includes links to each type of item they offer.
- A movie streaming service’s homepage includes categories such as “Romantic Comedies” with a list of films that fall into this category.
- A marketing agency’s website includes quick links in the footer to reach key pages such as their Services and Pricing.
- A health care provider’s website has the ability to be navigated using a keyboard.
Question 51: You’re browsing for shoes on the Steve Madden website, and notice this pop-up. Which stage of the flywheel does this type of pop-up correspond with?
- Attract
- Engage
- Delight
- Trick question! Pop-ups are not inbound.
Question 52: Which of the following factors directly affects your page speed? Select all that apply.
- How many images, videos, and other media files are contained on the page
- What themes and plug-ins are installed on your site
- The coding and server-side scripts on the page
- How often you link to that page from your other marketing channels
Question 53: Take a look at the recent promotion run by the skincare and bath product company, Nourish. Based on the SMS best practices you’ve learned, what is one area the company could optimize when sending promotions like these in the future?
- Keep it concise. This is quite a lot of text to include in a single promotion.
- Include a discount code. It’s unclear how users will get the sales price from this promotional text.
- Remove the link. Audience members often think links look spammy.
- Remove the last line. Texting END to opt out is intuitive; users wouldn’t need this information.
Question 54: Why would a user be bucketed under Direct traffic in HubSpot? Select all that apply.
- The visitor who submitted the form has opted to not accept cookies from your site, or ignored the banner completely.
- The visitor came from TikTok or Instagram, and HubSpot cannot currently parse traffic from these sites.
- A contact submitted a HubSpot form on a page without the HubSpot tracking code.
- The visitor did not fill out a form on your website.
Question 55: You’re reviewing your organic social data in HubSpot Traffic Analytics and notice the following trend from Facebook. What should be your next steps to investigating this data? Select all that apply.
- Chat with your team to determine your goals surrounding Facebook.
- Investigate the content to determine if it’s optimized for conversion.
- Stop promoting content on Facebook altogether; the data shows it clearly isn’t the right channel for your organization.
- Immediately invest more resources in the channel. The more viewers see the content, the more likely they are to convert.
Question 56: Dale Carnegie’s 1936 bestseller, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’, suggests that you can, “Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.” What’s one way that you can do this in a business setting?
- Tell stories about situations tangential to your topic of conversation.
- Require an explanation when projects go wrong.
- Ask for advice or an opinion.
Question 57: What does the S.M.A.R.T. in S.M.A.R.T. goals stand for? Select all that apply:
- Specific: Work with clear intentions, not broad or vague goals.
- Smart: Think hard about what the project means to the company.
- Meaningful: How this goal will help bring meaning to the organization.
- Measurable: Provide a method to gauge your success by setting benchmarks to meet.
- Acceptable: Objectives that are approved by the leadership team and board of directors.
- Achievable: Sensible objectives that are realistic and able to be achieved.
- Relevant: Cut out unnecessary or irrelevant work that could take away from what’s important.
- Repeatable: Goals that can be reliably achieved over and over.
- Timely: Set a clear beginning and end to adhere to in reaching your goals.
- Transparent: Objectives that everyone on the team understands and knows why they were implemented.
Question 58: Which techniques can help your business receive strong testimonials? Select all that apply.
- Ask immediately
- Pay for the review
- Showcase the complete experience
- Ask again
- Give your product away for free in exchange
- Make it easy
Question 59: During an exploratory interview, your colleagues ask a participant the following: “What do you use our app for, and do you like the experience?” You could improve this question by:
- Adding “and is there anything else you want to tell me?” to the end of your questions.
- Instead of asking them if they liked the experience, make it a leading question by asking “What do you like about the experience?”
- Saying the participants name before each question.
- Only asking one question at a time.
Question 60: You’ve completed a couple exploratory interviews, and you want to validate some of the findings you’ve discovered. Select the appropriate research methods that will help you accomplish this goal.
- Surveys
- Support call shadows
- Card sorts
- Listening Labs
Question 61: Dennis is a content marketer for a web development agency. While researching a blog post about accessibility, he came across some alarming information about companies being sued for lack of accessibility. How should he address this in his blog post?
- Every website on the Internet should fully abide by all recommendations from the WCAG to make their website accessible. Speak with a lawyer to get full details.
- Some industries are legally required to have accessible websites. If you aren’t in those industries, accessibility does not apply to you and you don’t need to worry about it.
- Even if your website isn’t legally required to be accessible, ensure it doesn’t prevent anyone from consuming, navigating, or obtaining information. Speak with a lawyer if you have concerns.
- We cannot advise at all on how to create an accessible website, and you should speak with a lawyer instead of searching this information on the Internet.
Question 62: How can you leverage the Mere-Expsoure effect on your website?
- Include navigation menus in the header and footer of all pages on your website.
- Limit the choices presented to users to only the most necessary and relevant.
- Create consistency across your website’s design, page layouts, fonts, and colors.
- None of the above.
Question 63: Which of the following is the best way to gather data indirectly about how people use your website?
- Google Analytics
- Card sorting
- User interviews
- Heat mapping software
Question 64: You’re reviewing the average bounce rates of your channels, and you encounter the following metrics. Based on this information, which of the following conclusions can you draw about your channels?
- Paid search is working best, because it’s bringing in the most customers.
- Organic social is not working, because it has the highest bounce rate.
- Paid social is not working, because it’s bringing in the least amount of contacts.
- More investigation of the goals of each of these channels and the content they’re directing visitors to is necessary before drawing conclusions.
Question 65: True or False: Only 27% of B2B customers cited testimonials and peer recommendations as the most reliable type of content.
- True
- False
Question 66: After you’ve conducted your thematic analysis, when writing a narrative, you should include all of the following EXCEPT a(n):
- Introduction
- Methodology section
- Conclusion
- Eisenhower box
Question 67: How can you leverage the Mere-Exposure effect on your website?
- Include navigation menus in the header and footer of all pages on your website.
- Limit the choices presented to users to only the most necessary and relevant.
- Create consistency across your website’s design, page layouts, fonts, and colors.
- None of the above.
Question 68: What is the Principle of Growth in information architecture?
- Provide users with multiple ways to browse content on your site.
- Only disclose what’s necessary for the user to understand what they’ll find next and make a decision.
- Limit the amount of choices presented to a user to only the most meaningful and relevant.
- Leave room to add new content within existing sections of your website, and add entirely new sections.
Question 69: Why should you check the HubSpot reporting library before building your own custom report? Select all that apply.
- Checking the reporting library will save you time and effort, so you don’t accidentally build a report that already exists.
- You get discounts on your reporting add-on if you utilize enough reports from the HubSpot reporting library.
- Reports found in the reporting library are built by subject matter experts; so they are the most effective means to answer certain questions.
- Reports found in the reporting library demonstrate the only metrics you’ll ever need to look at as a growing or scaling business.
Question 70: True or False: Mirroring a person’s speaking patterns can help build rapport.
- True
- False
Question 71: The Eisenhower box helps you:
- Research
- Prioritize
- Communicate
- Measure
Question 72: When should you use a thematic analysis?
- After you’ve conducted your research.
- Before you’ve conducted your research.
- While you conduct your research.
- After you’ve analyzed your research.
Question 73: Louis is a marketer for an online shoe store. Each product page includes a series of images and a short video of the shoe. Louis wants to make these pages more accessible. What steps should he take? Choose all that apply.
- Add descriptive alt text for each image.
- Include captions for videos.
- Decrease text size and contrast.
- Ensure users can stop the videos’ autoplay.
- Disable all pop-ups on the pages.