How we helped a cybersecurity startup close their data gap and gain full-funnel visibility through automated reporting to drive data driven decisions.
The Challenge
Our client, a CRO, lacked visibility into key marketing metrics, which made it difficult to understand and justify their marketing team's impact. Key questions couldn’t be answered with confidence:
- Which channels were generating qualified pipeline?
- What content was influencing conversion?
- Where should budget be increased or reduced?
The issue was their CRM infrastructure wasn't set up properly. In HubSpot, most leads were grouped broadly under “Marketing” as a source, meaning there was no meaningful separation between direct channels, partners, or regions. Additionally, Lifecycle stages were using HubSpot defaults and didn’t reflect how the business actually qualified and progressed deals.
As a result, marketing performance couldn’t be measured accurately and budget decisions lacked data-backed clarity. To get close to answering basic questions, the team was exporting data and manually manipulating spreadsheets for 40+ hours each month... and still didn’t fully trust the output.
The Solution
It's pretty common for teams working at startups to find themselves wrangling data in spreadsheets when the infrastructure and data capture hasn't been set up properly. When you have limited resources and money, you have to prioritize, and HubSpot instances are often set up quickly to support early growth, where speed feels like it matters more than structure (& often it does). However, what worked initially creates inefficiencies, tech debt, and manual workarounds down the line. In this case, the foundation was not built to scale, here's how we fixed that:
Audit the Infrastructure
- We ran a full audit to understand why marketing performance wasn’t visible.
- The audit surfaced three core infrastructure issues: lifecycle stages were misconfigured, reporting hadn’t been built to answer the CRO’s key questions, and attribution wasn’t properly set up.
Lifecycle Stage Restructuring
HubSpot’s default stages were being used without alignment to how the company actually defined qualification and progression. To address this we made the following adjustments:
- Replaced HubSpot’s default lifecycle stages with custom, business-aligned stages
- Automated lead progression between lifecycle stages based on real sales activities
- Ensured clear definitions between MQL, SQL, and opportunity
Channel & Attribution Clarity
Previously, nearly everything was grouped under “Marketing” as a single source, making it impossible to see what was truly driving pipeline. To fix this, we restructured attribution in HubSpot:
- Built the required fields to properly capture source data
- Implemented attribution tracking logic across channels
- Separated direct marketing leads from partner-sourced deals
- Introduced clear channel-level visibility
Fix the Data Before Building Reporting
Once the data infrastructure was reliable, we built reporting that the CRO could actually trust. We created:
- Conversion tracking across lifecycle stages
- Visibility into contact-to-MQL conversion rates
- Content and campaign performance reporting
- Regional breakdowns across Australia, US, and Rest of World
- Clear views of conversion paths
The Results
Our client now has complete visibility from lead generation to closed revenue, enabling them to identify which channels, personas, and regions drive the most effective conversions, saving around 40 hours per month previously spent on manual reporting.
Most importantly, accurate data = better decision making. Our client is now able to accurately understand where to invest in marketing channels, improve conversion rates, reduce customer acquisition costs, and drive more predictable revenue growth.
Request a free consultation to see how we can help you gain full-visibility into your pipeline!
