Inbound Marketing Certification Study Guide

The Inbound Marketing Certification exam will test you on all the best practices and
approaches covered in the course materials. These include, but are not limited to, the
inbound approach to creating content, using social promotion, converting and nurturing
leads, and marketing to customers.

Here's what you need to know before taking this exam:

• There are 60 questions.

• The exam takes about 1 hour to complete.

• You must answer 45 questions correctly to pass.

• You must wait 12 hours between attempts.

• You have 3 hours to complete the exam.

• Check your answers before submitting. You can’t go back and change them after
you click submit.

To help you pass this exam with ease, HubSpot has compiled this study guide to quiz you
and help you keep track of your learning process. Start by reviewing each of the Key
Topics listed. Once you feel comfortable with these concepts, try to answer the Study
Questions. While these aren’t the exact questions you’ll face on the exam, they’ll do a
good job at refreshing your memory.

Let’s get studying!

1
Lesson 1: Inbound Marketing Fundamentals

Lesson Description

Inbound marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable

content and experiences tailored to them. While outbound marketing interrupts your
audience with content they don’t always want, inbound marketing forms connections they are
looking for and solves problems they already have. Learn how easy it can be to adopt this
customer-centric mindset so you can grow and scale your marketing.

Key Topics

• Inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing

• Marketing applications of the inbound methodology
• How inbound marketing can look different across channels and industries
• The importance of a CRM in marketing
• The role of the martech stack
• Initial software recommendations

Study Questions

• What is inbound marketing?

• How does inbound marketing differ from outbound marketing?
• What role does content play in inbound marketing?
• Why is it important to understand your potential leads and customers before
marketing to them?
• What strategies and tactics can you use if you’re trying to convert more leads or
prospects?
• What is a CRM?
• What is a martech stack?
• What are the key components of a martech stack?

2
Lesson 2: Getting to Know Your Customer

Lesson Description

Do you know who your ideal customer is? Do you know how to find out who your ideal
customer is? Studies show that 60-70% of content created by marketing departments sits
unused. To ensure you're creating the content your target audience needs, you need to
create an accurate buyer persona. In this lesson, we'll discuss what buyer personas are
comprised of, how to conduct research to create your buyer persona, and HubSpot tools that
make this process easier.

Key Topics

• Buyer personas are comprised of demographic and buying insights.

• Create as few buyer personas as appropriate.
• Curate a story to humanize your buyer persona.
• Interview customers and potential customers to gain insights into who your buyer
persona is.
• Ensure your entire company is familiar with your buyer persona.

Study Questions

• What is a buyer persona?

• What type of information do you need to curate a buyer persona?
• What are negative personas?
• What are the different ways to conduct buyer persona research?
• What questions should you ask in buyer persona interviews?
• How can buyer personas affect your marketing, sales, and service strategies?

3
Lesson 3: Creating Content for the Buyer’s Journey

Lesson Description

Designing engaging content begins with understanding your buyer's path to purchase.
That's why mapping their buyer's journey is crucial to developing impactful content for your
inbound marketing efforts. In this lesson, you'll learn how to define your buyer's journey,
brainstorm content for each stage of their buyer's journey, develop impactful content that
initiates buyers to act, and develop a content creation framework.

Key Topics

• Defining your buyer’s journey

• Brainstorming impactful content
• Written, visual, audio, and interactive content
• Incorporating CTAs into your content
• Streamlining your content creation process

Study Questions

• What are the stages of the buyer’s journey?

• What questions will help you define each stage of your buyer’s journey?
• What are the most common content formats?
• How do you ensure your written content drives action?
• How do you ensure your visual content drives action?
• How do you ensure your audio content drives action?
• How do you ensure your interactive content drives action?
• How do you create a content creation framework?

4
Lesson 4: Developing a Content Distribution Strategy

Lesson Description

Distribution plays a huge role in your content's success. In this lesson, you'll learn how to
evaluate your content distribution options, set a content distribution goal, identify where your
target audience consumes content, and test new distribution channels.

Key Topics

• Owned, earned, and paid channels

• Setting a content distribution goal
• Researching your audience’s preferred channels
• Testing a new marketing channel
• Outlining your content distribution plan

Study Questions

• What are the differences between owned, earned, and paid channels?
• What are examples of owned channels, earned channels, and paid channels?
• How do you brainstorm an effective content distribution goal?
• How do you balance multiple content goals?
• What are five ways to research your audience’s preferred channels?
• How do you accurately collect feedback about your audiences preferred channels?
• What are the steps to testing a new marketing channel?
• Why is it important to check for statistical significance for marketing tests?

5
Lesson 5: Understanding Behavioral Marketing and Customer
Segmentation

Lesson Description

Marketers are expected to be everywhere with just the right message at the right time, but
how can this be done effectively? In this lesson, you will learn how to utilize behavioral
marketing and customer segmentation to streamline your inbound marketing.

Key Topics

• Definitions of behavioral marketing and customer segmentation

• Multichannel marketing and personalization
• The five fundamental steps for integrating behavioral marketing and customer
segmentation
• Implicit and explicit segmentation

Study Questions

• What’s the definition of behavioral marketing?

• What’s the definition of customer segmentation?
• How should an inbound marketer approach multichannel marketing?
• What are the components to defining the interactions you want to track?
• What should you notice regarding specific behaviors when analyzing how people are
behaving on your website?
• What’s the difference between implicit and explicit segmentation?
• How do implicit and explicit segmentation work together?
• How can you nurture based on segmentation?

6
Lesson 6: Maximizing ROI with Marketing Attribution and
Experimentation

Lesson Description

Marketers have more channels where they can engage with customers than ever before.
Because the buyer's journey is far from linear, consumers engage with brands through
multiple touch points before they ever make a purchase. As a result, marketers need to be
experts in understanding which channels are successfully generating leads, converting
customers, and why. They need to accurately predict the impact of increased or decreased
spend on these channels in order to execute a good marketing strategy. In this lesson, learn
how to use marketing attribution to report on what your business is doing well, and to predict
areas where you can see future success in your marketing strategy.

Key Topics

• Marketing attribution
• Attribution models
• Running successful marketing experiments
• A/B testing

Study Questions

• What is marketing attribution?

• What are marketing attribution models?
• What’s the difference between single-touch and multi-touch attribution models?
• How does the time decay model calculate credit?
• Why is it important to run marketing experiments?
• What is A/B testing?
• What is statistical significance?
• What role does statistical significance play in an A/B test?

7
Lesson 7: Utilizing Marketing Automation and Artificial Intelligence

Lesson Description

Automation and artificial intelligence are essential for growing and scaling your business. In
this lesson, you will learn about the benefits of marketing automation and artificial
intelligence, and some best practices for implementing them in your internal and customer-
facing processes.

Key Topics

• Definitions of marketing automation and artificial intelligence

• The benefits of utilizing automation and AI
• The key components of internal processes that must be addressed when
implementing automation and AI
• The key components of customer-facing processes when implementing automation
and AI

Study Questions

• What’s the definition of marketing automation?

• What’s the definition of artificial intelligence?
• How can automation and AI be used in streamlining productivity and efficiency?
• How do data privacy and data hygiene relate?
• How does data hygiene affect the efficacy of your marketing automation and AI?
• How do you set your cadence and content internally?
• What are the two areas of focus regarding customer-facing processes when using
marketing automation and AI?
• How can strategizing cadence and content directly affect your customers?

8
Once you feel confident with the materials listed above, go
ahead and take your Inbound Marketing Certification exam.
You’ll do great J