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 It's possible to strengthen the viability of your business by merging the concepts of inbound marketing automation from Hubspot and the Lean Start-up method introduced by Eric Ries.

Hubspot's Marketing Automation environment can be used to automate the lean start up concept, which is a philosophy based on scaling and streamlining a business according to customer needs to avoid investing in wasteful products. Here are ways for using Hubspot to ensure a lean start-up is testing appropriate products that generate positive customer reaction.

Measuring Customer Reactivity

Hubspot provides a wide array of tools for measuring how customers react to products. The first stage of product testing is to find out if a product meets the requirements for suitable buyers. A minimum viable product (MVP) is a lean (initial) version of a product that shall be good enough for an initial launch in the market. Its viability can be tested with customers to arrive at conclusions that can help streamline a product and to modify it throughout short revision cycles.

An example of this validated learning process is testing the features of a product in blogs to find out how readers react e.g., through feedback from blog discussions and social media or through a general attractiveness of these blog publications. In such a pre-launch testing, first optimization of the product through market feedback can be realized even before the product is readily developed.

By such a market-testing of the features of a minimum viable product it's possible to speed up product development cycles from the beginning. In HubSpot, split-testing, also known as A/B testing, can be used to test different versions of a product concept to measure the reception by the target customers.

Putting the Minimum Viable Product in the Context of the Buyer's Journey

The online purchasing process goes through three basic stages: In the awareness stage, the customer finds himself with a problem and searches for answers. The consideration stage brings the buyer into a state of mind that involves commitment to researching the different possible solutions to a problem. The decision stage encompasses evaluation of available data through analyzing pros and cons, benchmarks, comparisons and reviews.

The attractiveness of blogs as described above would be a good means to evaluate the general concept and idea of an MVP. The reception of datasheets in the decision stage can be used to validate the product hypothesis. The ideal product that meets the needs of customers will begin to emerge driven by customer questions and feedback, but also by quantity of users reading it in an A/B testing. The decision stage can be enhanced with brand comparisons, case studies and trial downloads.

Tools for Gathering Metrics

Hubspot provides multiple tools for gauging customer behavior. The key to integrating the Hubspot - Lean Start-up solution is to maximize market testing and get a better understanding of customer needs by studying a dashboard full of intelligence tools that collect metrics on user actions. In addition to validating product features, the software can help you decide which type of layouts and marketing campaigns work best to present your product. It can be used to gauge how competitive a market is, which can help you decide how much inbound marketing is necessary to make the Hubspot - Lean Start-up combination work.

Conclusion

Hubspot-based inbound marketing can optimize the Lean startup process and reduce costs by pre-filtering valid product options or options for product optimization. The automation features within the tool suite are suitable to conduct these actions. The all-in-one approach to building and testing a product is what makes Hubspot a top inbound marketing platform for today's entrepreneurs.

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References

Image: courtesy of Betsy Weber, Flickr, License: CC BY-SA 2.0 , we added the title of the article.

 

Topics: Venture Management, Lean Startup,, Inbound, Start-Up,