We went from page 13 to page 1 of Google for an important industry search term. And within six months, the new business we could attribute to organic search was enough to cover my annual salary.
I’m Carrie Gallagher, an independent HubSpot consultant and certified HubSpot Solutions Partner. I’ve been using HubSpot since 2012 and have been a Solutions Partner since 2014.
But my career in marketing started long before HubSpot.
My career in marketing started by accident
I didn’t grow up dreaming about becoming a marketer.
My career started in the semiconductor industry, where I eventually found myself doing traditional marketing: trade shows, print advertising, direct mail, and all the other things companies did before we could easily see who clicked what and whether any of it actually resulted in revenue.
And that was the part that drove me crazy.
I wanted to know what was working. I wanted to know where our leads were coming from, what happened after someone responded to a campaign, and whether the money we were spending on marketing was actually making the company money.
Eventually, that curiosity led me to HubSpot.
Finding HubSpot
In New York, I found myself working as a one-person marketing department, responsible for the website, email, content, social media, lead generation, reporting, and proving that all of it was actually doing something for the business.
In 2012, I discovered HubSpot and ran our website through its Marketing Grader.
We scored 23 out of 100.
Ouch.
So I started experimenting with inbound marketing, SEO, content, lead generation, and conversion optimization.
Our Marketing Grader score climbed from 23 to 85. We went from page 13 to page 1 of Google for an important industry search term. And within six months, the new business we could attribute to organic search was enough to cover my annual salary.
I was hooked.
Becoming a HubSpot consultant
After 16 years in corporate and startup marketing, I left to start my own consulting business and became a certified HubSpot Solutions Partner in 2014.
I’ve been doing it ever since.
Over the years, I’ve provided HubSpot consulting for businesses across SaaS, telecommunications, edtech and education services, biotech, finance, retail, luxury architectural materials, and other B2B and B2C industries.
That experience has given me hundreds of HubSpot use cases to draw from when a client brings me a new problem.
I’m a strategist who likes doing the work
My background is in marketing strategy, but I’m happiest when I can take an idea from “Could HubSpot do this?” all the way through to actually building it.
My HubSpot consulting work includes CRM architecture, workflows, automation, pipelines, integrations, reporting, data cleanup, custom properties, custom objects, marketing automation, sales processes, and plenty of projects that don’t fit neatly into a service list.
On a typical week, I might be building workflows, cleaning up CRM data, improving lifecycle stages or pipelines, troubleshooting automation, creating reports, setting up campaigns, training users, reviewing email performance, helping sales and marketing teams improve their processes, or figuring out how to connect HubSpot with another system. I also spend a lot of time advising clients on what they should do next, not just how to configure the software.
My work spans Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CRM administration, reporting, automation, integrations, and the strategy that connects them.
But I always start with the business problem.
What are we trying to accomplish? Who needs this information? What happens before and after this step? Can we automate it? Can we make it easier? Can we measure it?
Then I figure out what HubSpot needs to do.
Why I keep my consulting practice small
I intentionally work with no more than three ongoing HubSpot consulting clients at a time.
When you hire me, you work directly with me. I’m the person on the calls, answering the emails, thinking through the strategy, and actually working inside HubSpot.
Keeping my client roster small also gives me time to really understand how each business works.
I want to remember why we built that workflow six months ago. I want to understand what sales is struggling with, what marketing is trying to accomplish, where the data comes from, and what leadership needs to measure.
Why my clients tend to stick around
Many of my client relationships start with one HubSpot project.
But once I understand the business, we tend to find other opportunities.
Could we automate this? Could we track that? Why are we doing this manually? Could sales see this information directly in HubSpot? Could we restructure the data so marketing can finally segment the way it needs to?
Some of my HubSpot consulting relationships have lasted for years for exactly this reason.
I’m not interested in configuring HubSpot in a vacuum. I want to understand what your business is trying to accomplish and keep finding ways HubSpot can help.
More than a decade later
My work has expanded far beyond inbound marketing since I discovered HubSpot in 2012, but the idea that hooked me hasn’t really changed.
Marketing and sales technology should help you understand what’s working. Your CRM should make it easier to run your business, not create more work. And the systems you invest in should produce something you can actually point to and say, “This made a difference.”
More than a decade after becoming a HubSpot Solutions Partner, that’s still what I love doing:
Learning how a business works, finding the problem, and figuring out how HubSpot can help solve it.
Want to work together?
There are a few ways we can do that.
If you have one specific HubSpot problem to solve, I offer one-off HubSpot projects starting at $500.
If you’re new to HubSpot, I offer customized HubSpot onboarding starting at $1,500.
And if you’re looking for someone who can become your ongoing HubSpot expert, my HubSpot consulting retainers start at $3,000/month.
Not sure which one you need?
That’s completely fine.
Wondering whether my approach is right for your business? Learn more about what it’s like to work with me and who tends to be the best fit.