HubSpot Academy training courses represent one of the best ways and the best values on the planet if you want to upskill in marketing, sales, service, website design, website development, or revenue operations (RevOps).
The online training and certification programs from HubSpot Academy also provide a very powerful way to align your team members on best practices. In recent years, through its innovative Education Partner Program, HubSpot Academy has even made it possible for college students worldwide to earn college credit for taking HubSpot Academy courses -- while gaining incredibly marketable skills.
Why am I such a fan of HubSpot Academy? Because I’ve had a front-row seat since the beginning, back before it was even called HubSpot Academy (Content Camp, Inbound Marketing University, and one-to-many were just some of the earlier amazingly impactful experiments that HubSpot ran to move the needle on changing how companies market, sell, and service).
I’ve been a HubSpot customer since 2010, an active member of its agency/Solutions Partner Program since 2013, led one of the most active HubSpot User Groups (HUGs) in the United States from 2013-2017 and planned and hosted events and podcasts with 10+ HubSpot Academy Professors and other HubSpotters, and currently hold and maintain 30+ individual HubSpot Academy certifications.
Over the past 10+ years, I’ve sent thousands of students to HubSpot Academy through direct and indirect recommendations.
More recently, I’ve been getting a specialized question from some of our consulting and advisory clients: (Our client base is primarily B2B tech startups -- in software/SaaS, infrastructure, or FinTech -- with 1-50 employees.)
“How can I train our virtual assistant (VA) on HubSpot?”
In this video, you’ll learn which HubSpot Academy training courses are best for training general virtual assistants (VAs), more specialized outsourced contractors (sales development reps/SDRs and website developers), and internal team members.
For a virtual assistant new to HubSpot, the Marketing Software course from HubSpot Academy is a great place to start.
The only downside is to temper what's realistic with implementation.
Once the Marketing Software course is completed, along with completing the practical exercises and passing the certification exam, you'll likely want to ease your virtual assistant into HubSpot Marketing Hub-related responsibilities by starting with some of the more basic, lower-risk tasks.
Even with an empty portal, I'd recommend starting with blogging and social scheduling (the least amount of risk/potential damage if something goes wrong).
At the other extreme, workflows and emails carry more risk for beginners and should be eased a few months after mastering conversion paths (landing pages, CTAs, and forms).
Data imports also carry many inherent risks because they often trigger workflow automation.
If your virtual assistant is new to marketing SaaS (never used anything like Mailchimp, Hootsuite, or WordPress), there's a learning curve, even on the basic mechanics. Minimum 6-12 months. You can mitigate some of the risks by using granular permissions in the portal.
Again, with a brand new empty portal, you could allow a complete beginner more latitude than you'd likely want to with a HubSpot portal loaded up with leads, sales opportunities, and customers.
As far as other courses go on the marketing side, your virtual assistant should plan to take these courses and their included certification exams:
In addition to the more basic HubSpot-specific and HubSpot product-agnostic courses and certifications above, tech startups are almost always led by one or more founders from technical backgrounds.
For CTO types that want to be more advanced tactical in managing the virtual assistant handling more routine tasks, projects, and campaigns supporting content, social media, blogging, and the basics of HubSpot Marketing Hub, consider these more intermediate-leaning courses from HubSpot Academy:
At tech startups, virtual assistants often lend administrative support in pre-sales-related activities. Whether it’s building and enriching lists, researching and encircling inbound leads, scheduling meetings, managing live chat activity, and responding to other inbound inquires from prospects, consider requiring your virtual assistant to complete these HubSpot Academy courses and certification exams:
Finally, beyond some great HubSpot Academy training courses for your virtual assistant and technical cofounders, most tech startups outsource website development (and strategy).
For those individual contractors that build and maintain your HubSpot CMS-hosted website, these are two great HubSpot Academy courses that focus on website development and conversion rate optimization ICRO):
What’s your favorite HubSpot Academy training course for virtual assistants who are new to HubSpot and relatively light on digital marketing experience? Let me know in the comments section below.