Update your directory profile with new services offering options and industry filters to increase your findability.

HubSpot’s Agency Directory is the online presence of our partner community. The goal of the directory is to become the platform that connects businesses with qualified service providers who can help with their inbound needs. An important aspect of any useful directory is its filters, which is the mechanism visitors use to narrow in on the provider best suited to help with their specific needs.

In order to make the directory more useful for visitors, you will see two updates to filters in the industry and services categories that are now live.

Updates to Service Offerings

We heard from partners and visitors that the services you offer don’t always align with the service offering options in your directory profile.

As of today, some service offerings have been renamed, and new service options were added. We mapped your previous selections to the newly updated options, but you can log in to make additional changes or select new service offerings

Old options: 

New options as of December 11, 2018:

 Limits to Industry Selections

We heard from visitors to the directory that the industry filter isn’t very helpful when trying to find agencies that specialize in a given industry. This is because many agencies checked off all or most of the industry options, which makes the filter less useful.

Moving forward, listings will be required to have five or fewer industries selected. We recognize you may work with clients across more than five industries, but by choosing the five or fewer that you specialize in most, the filter will become a more meaningful way for a visitor to narrow their search. We hope this is a helpful short term solution that makes the industry filter more meaningful. With every filter, we think about whether we need a mechanism of validation. With this change we will gather data to understand if this limitation is sufficient, or if we need to invest in further validation of industry expertise.

Now you might be thinking, wait a minute, I specialize in more than five industries, or I serve all industries, how can I show that in my profile? We found through user feedback that when visitors come to the directory and choose to filter to a specific industry, they are looking for agencies that truly understand the industry and have worked in it with several previous clients. If industry expertise is not a major factor in a visitors selection process, they will use other filters in their search. We recommend you choose the five industries in which you’ve had the most success with your clients. In the About Us section of your profile, feel free to list the other industries you work with.

Haven’t set up your directory profile yet? Log into your portal and click on the Partner drop down in the navigation bar, then Directory Info, or click here. Fill out your profile and take it live! Please note that changes and new profiles will take up to 24 hours to be recognized in the directory.

Any questions? Feel free to comment on this blog post or email agencydirectory@hubspot.com. 

Want to learn more about what’s on the roadmap for the directory? Check out the vision for the directory here.