A Guide to Launching Your HubSpot Template

For many creators, building a theme or module for the HubSpot Template Marketplace can seem like the simple part. But launching one? That’s another story. A little creative foresight can go a long way toward a successful launch. And you don’t need a marketing team – or a big marketing budget – to do it.

In this article, you’ll hear from HubSpot Marketing and SEO experts, who’ve compiled a few helpful tips to help you get your theme, module, or future template ready for its big debut.

Optimizing Your Marketplace Listing for Search

Whether you’re designing, building, or listing your template, SEO should be top of mind for every stage of the development lifecycle. Read on for best practices to increase organic traffic and boost rankings.

• Do some research. Keyword research is a crucial step in optimizing your listing on HubSpot’s Template Marketplace. Identify relevant words and phrases that potential customers might use to search for your templates and modules. Already have customers? Use the top words your customers use to describe your listing.

• Optimize listing content. Your title and description should be compelling. Does your title accurately describe your theme or module? Are you incorporating relevant keywords to improve search visibility? Your template features should be prominently displayed in your listing, allowing potential customers to quickly and easily understand what your template can do and how it’s unique.

• Use high-quality images. HubSpot’s Template Marketplace allows for image and video content within your listing. Ensure these are of high quality and truly showcase the value and uniqueness of your themes and modules.

• Tag and categorize thoughtfully. Use relevant tags and categories to make discovery as easy as possible for potential customers. This will also help HubSpot’s algorithm to accurately categorize your listing, improving relevant search visibility, and ultimately lead to happier reviewers getting relevant themes.

• Solve for the customer. Create a positive user experience by making sure your templates have clear instructions, are easy to use, and reflect your listing description. Focusing on the end user is essential to improving your listing’s visibility and conversion rate.
• Encourage user feedback. Positive reviews from satisfied customers can help improve your listing’s credibility and visibility. Respond to any feedback, both positive and negative, and use it to improve your template and customer experience. Be sure to respond promptly to any questions or concerns raised in the reviews section.

Marketing Your Template

When planning your marketing campaign, there are a few key components to consider – a communication plan, education strategy, and community engagement.

A robust communication plan requires a high-quality email list. Be sure to include all existing users, relevant titles within the same company, and any potential customers who’ve expressed interest in your product or services. Break down your email into a multi-part drip campaign to deliver bite-sized pieces of information that focus on one specific call-to-action at a time.

Consider other channels beyond email. Does your company publish a customer changelog or newsletter? How about a public-facing product roadmap? If so, don’t forget to share your news there. Depending on your audience, cross-posting on social media may also be effective, including paid ad campaigns on sites like Linkedin.

Driving awareness of your listing is one thing, but it’s important that customers understand how to use your new theme or module. This is your user education strategy.

Consider every place where customers go for information and the different ways they consume it. Does your company have a help center or a place to publish how-to articles? What about video tutorials or on-demand webinars? Can you share your announcement on a company news blog? What about publishing supplemental content that focuses on best practices or customer testimonials? Would you consider inviting happy customers to write a guest post on your company blog?

Whatever your strategy is, be sure to find a way to spotlight your new theme or module with a compelling story, interactive content, strong value proposition, and popular use cases that are backed by data and research. Engage your customers throughout the user journey.

And finally, don’t forget about community engagement. Create forums for feedback, give customers a dedicated space for support, host AMAs and office hours. Make sure you’re visible and accessible! Foster human-to-human connection, too. Empower peer-to-peer troubleshooting, connect your customers with each other, build a sense of community, and ultimately create advocates who multiply the network effect of your efforts.

How to Shine in the Template Marketplace

The Template Marketplace is ideal for anyone seeking new ways to showcase their web design and development expertise by listing themes, modules, and future templates – but how do you stand out from all the rest?

• Adopt new features early and often. Early adopters are typically rewarded for implementing our latest features. Stay ahead of the pack! Also, be sure to participate in optional programs when offered by HubSpot.

• Stay up to date. HubSpot is constantly seeking to elevate template quality, so be sure to make required (and unrequired) changes to your themes, modules, or future templates. Better yet, build above and beyond our base requirements to create best-of-breed, feature-rich templates.

• Be a thought leader. Get involved in the future of the Template Marketplace. See a gap in our documentation? Let us know! Have product feedback? We want to hear it! Want to connect with other developers? Check out our Dev Slack.

These tips offer a place to start, but if you need more guidance or have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Happy building!