Get your HubSpot account properly set up from day one. Configure teams, users, domain, tracking, brand assets, and essential integrations so your marketing and sales data flows correctly from the start.
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I've onboarded dozens of companies onto HubSpot, and I can tell you this: how you set up your account in the first week determines whether HubSpot becomes your growth engine or just another tool nobody uses properly.
This playbook walks you through the foundational setup that every HubSpot account needs, regardless of whether you're using Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or both. We're talking teams, users, permissions, domain connection, tracking code, brand assets, and the integrations that actually matter.
These are the exact steps I take my clients through during onboarding. If you're reading this as a client, we're going to work through these chapters together. If you're doing this yourself, I've documented everything so you don't miss the critical bits that come back to bite you three months later.
The goal here isn't to use every feature HubSpot offers. It's to configure the essentials properly so that when you start building campaigns and pipelines, your data is clean, your team has the right access, and nothing breaks.
Let's get your account set up properly.
Set up the foundational structure of your HubSpot account: configure timezone and currency, create teams that match your business, invite users with appropriate permissions, and connect essential tools like Slack and Zapier that keep everyone aligned.
Connect your website to HubSpot by verifying your domain, install the tracking code to start collecting visitor data, configure UTM parameters to track campaign performance, and connect your advertising platforms so everything reports in one place.
Upload your logo, define brand colours and fonts, configure email footer settings to maintain brand consistency, and create document templates that ensure every customer-facing asset matches your visual identity.
Clean and prepare your existing contact, company, and deal data, import it into HubSpot without creating duplicates, bring in historical activity data to maintain context, and set up ongoing syncs with tools you're keeping alongside HubSpot.
Connect your email inbox to send and track emails directly from HubSpot, sync your calendar for seamless meeting scheduling, link your social media accounts for unified publishing, and integrate essential third-party tools your team already uses.
Get a grip on what's actually working and what needs course correction. Use data and experiments to make decisions instead of opinions. See how changes in one part of the system affect everything else. Random tactics don't compound, coordinated ones do.
Use HubSpot to manage your team, track performance, and report to leadership with confidence. Set goals, build forecasts, create dashboards, and coach your team using data instead of guesswork.
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Identify repetitive tasks draining time and build workflows that run without you. Use HubSpot and Zapier to automate lead routing, follow-ups, notifications, and data entry.
Set up and run the weekly 12-metric review across all four growth engines. Structure the meeting, assign ownership, use traffic lights, and escalate issues that need attention.
Build a reporting dashboard that tracks the 12 growth metrics across all four engines. Choose the right tool, structure views correctly, and make data actionable weekly.
