DIY HubSpot Hacks: How Small Businesses Can Customise HubSpot Without a Developer

HubSpot is a powerful tool that provides small businesses with a comprehensive platform for managing marketing, sales, and customer service. However, many small businesses assume that customising HubSpot to suit their specific needs requires hiring a developer or advanced technical skills. The good news is that HubSpot offers plenty of options for personalising the platform without needing any coding knowledge.

In this blog, we’ll explore some DIY HubSpot hacks that allow small businesses to customise their platform for improved efficiency, better customer engagement, and more effective marketing—all without needing to hire a developer.

1. Customising Your HubSpot Dashboard

The HubSpot dashboard is your central hub for tracking key metrics, and customising it to reflect your business’s unique needs can help you stay focused on your most important goals.

DIY Customisation Tips:

• Create custom reports: You don’t need a developer to create custom reports. Simply navigate to the reporting dashboard, select "Create Report," and choose the metrics that are most relevant to your business. You can track everything from lead conversion rates to sales rep performance, all with just a few clicks.
• Personalise your dashboard layout: Organise your dashboard by dragging and dropping widgets based on what’s most important to you. Whether you want to prioritise sales performance, email open rates, or website traffic, you can fully customise the layout to suit your daily workflow.

Why it’s effective: Customising your dashboard gives you immediate visibility into the metrics that matter most to your small business, allowing you to track performance without the clutter of irrelevant data.

2. Using Custom Properties to Collect the Right Data

Your CRM is only as good as the data it contains. HubSpot allows you to create custom properties that help you collect the information most relevant to your business, giving you a more complete view of your contacts, leads, and customers.

DIY Customisation Tips:

• Set up custom fields: Navigate to the "Settings" menu, select "Properties," and create custom fields that align with your specific business needs. For example, if you’re a service-based business, you can create fields for "Preferred Service Date" or "Contract Type" to better track client information.
• Track customer behaviour: You can use custom properties to monitor specific customer actions, such as whether they’ve attended a webinar, downloaded a resource, or interacted with your sales team. This helps you segment your contacts more effectively.

Why it’s effective: Custom properties ensure that you’re collecting the right data for your business, allowing you to better segment your contacts and create more personalised marketing campaigns.

3. Building Custom Workflows to Automate Key Tasks

Automation is a huge time-saver for small businesses, and HubSpot’s workflows allow you to automate many tasks without needing a developer to set them up. Whether you’re sending follow-up emails or moving leads through the sales funnel, you can create workflows that streamline your processes.

DIY Customisation Tips:

• Automate lead nurturing: Build automated workflows that trigger based on specific contact actions. For instance, you can set up a workflow that automatically sends a follow-up email when a lead downloads a whitepaper or fills out a form.
• Internal notifications: Set up workflows that notify your sales or customer service teams when a contact reaches a specific stage, such as when a lead becomes sales-ready or when a customer submits a support request.
• Task automation: You can create workflows that automatically assign tasks to team members, ensuring that no follow-up actions are missed. This helps your team stay organised without the need for manual task management.

Why it’s effective: Automating repetitive tasks saves time and ensures that your team stays on top of lead nurturing, follow-ups, and customer support without needing to do everything manually.

4. Creating Custom Email Templates for Personalised Outreach

Email marketing is a key part of many small business strategies, and HubSpot’s email editor makes it easy to create custom email templates that match your branding and messaging without hiring a designer or developer.

DIY Customisation Tips:

• Drag-and-drop editor: Use HubSpot’s drag-and-drop email editor to create professional, branded email templates without needing any design skills. You can customise colours, fonts, and layouts to align with your brand, ensuring that your emails look polished and consistent.
• Dynamic content: Add dynamic content blocks to your emails that change based on the recipient’s behaviour or preferences. For example, you can show different product recommendations based on past purchases or adjust messaging based on the lead’s lifecycle stage.
• Personalisation tokens: Use HubSpot’s personalisation tokens to automatically pull in contact details, such as names, company information, or purchase history. This allows you to create highly personalised emails without having to manually update each message.

Why it’s effective: Custom email templates and personalisation help you deliver more targeted, professional-looking emails that resonate with your audience, driving higher engagement and conversion rates.

5. Customising Your Sales Pipeline

If your business uses HubSpot to manage sales, customising your sales pipeline to match your specific processes is essential for effective lead tracking. Fortunately, HubSpot allows you to fully customise your pipeline stages and properties, ensuring that your CRM reflects your unique sales process.

DIY Customisation Tips:

• Tailor your deal stages: In the "Sales" settings, you can create customised deal stages that align with your sales cycle. For instance, you can add stages like "Initial Discovery," "Proposal Sent," and "Contract Signed" to better reflect your internal processes.
• Add custom properties to deals: You can create custom deal properties to capture important information at each stage of the pipeline, such as budget, expected close date, or decision-maker details. This ensures that your sales team has all the necessary information to move deals forward.

Why it’s effective: Customising your sales pipeline allows you to track deals more accurately and manage your sales process more efficiently, leading to improved close rates and better visibility into your pipeline.

6. Using Custom Lead Scoring to Prioritise Outreach

Lead scoring helps you prioritise your most engaged and high-potential leads by assigning them scores based on their actions. You can easily set up a custom lead scoring system in HubSpot without needing any technical expertise, helping your sales team focus on the leads most likely to convert.

DIY Customisation Tips:

• Set scoring criteria: Navigate to "Lead Scoring" in HubSpot’s settings and assign point values based on actions like email opens, website visits, form submissions, and demo requests. You can also deduct points for negative actions, such as unsubscribing from an email list.
• Create lead thresholds: Once a lead reaches a certain score threshold, you can trigger notifications or workflows to follow up with those leads or send them to the sales team for outreach.

Why it’s effective: Custom lead scoring helps you identify your most promising leads and ensure that your sales team is prioritising their time on prospects who are most likely to convert, increasing efficiency and improving your sales process.

Customising HubSpot Doesn’t Require a Developer

For small businesses, making the most of HubSpot doesn’t have to involve hiring a developer or investing in expensive customisation services. With the platform’s intuitive interface and a wealth of customisation options, you can personalise HubSpot to fit your business’s needs—whether it’s customising your sales pipeline, automating tasks, or creating tailored email templates.

By taking advantage of these DIY HubSpot hacks, you’ll be able to unlock the full potential of the platform, streamline your processes, and improve your overall marketing and sales efforts—all without needing any technical expertise.

Ready to get started? Start customising HubSpot today and see how these small adjustments can make a big impact on your business!