by:
MandyDROS
There are a million and one platforms you can choose from to run your account-based marketing (ABM) and account-based sales (ABS) motions. Each one of those platforms will tout that they are the best option. While you might be able to find all of the features listed below in a combination of other tools, you will not find them all in one tool and you definitely won’t find them in such a beautiful, easy to use interface. So let’s dive in.
You will need Sales Hub Pro to access the Target Account features discussed in this post and Marketing Hub Pro to create the marketing automations.
1 - Target Account Feature
The Target Account feature in HubSpot makes it easy to understand what is going on at the account level rather than viewing an individual contact or company.
This view rolls up data across multiple objects and records allowing you to see things like how many contacts you have at that account, their buying roles, the number of recent interactions, number of team members interacting with the account, page views, emails, calls, deals, meetings, and more.
The target account view can be helpful to your sales team, marketing team, and customer success team. How?
Marketing needs to create sales collateral on the fly when running ABM motions, and the Target Account view can show them which buying roles and job titles are involved in the buying committee and what their content consumption has been on your site so far.
Sales can keep an eye on where their buying committee is at in terms of size, engagement, and behavior and make decisions around when to push forward with the opportunity and when to continue building the committee.
Customer success, renewal, and cross-sale teams can easily view all of the players, all of the deals, and all recent communications in one place to make decisions about the best way to move forward with their customer efforts.
The Target Account feature can be accessed under Contacts>Target Accounts or on the right-hand side of the company record. You can quickly update a target account status on the company record and access the Target Account flyout panel there!
2 - Target Account Properties
HubSpot’s Target Account tools include out-of-the-box properties that will help you identify, segment, and act on your target accounts appropriately. Here’s a run-down of the properties:
Target Account - This is a yes or no property that will determine if your Target Account will show up in the Target Account menu item or not. This will also impact if the account is reported on in your ABM dashboard.
ICP Tier - Out-of-the-box this offers tiers 1-3, but this property can be customized so you can adjust the ICP tiers to meet your needs. ICP tiers can be used to segment, filter, trigger workflows, and are reported on in your ABM dashboard.
Number of Contacts with a Buying Role - This property automatically counts how many contacts at a company have a buying role set. You can use this property to trigger or condition workflows. For example, you may want to notify the account owner when you have 3+ people with a buying role who have visited the website in the past week.
Number of Blockers - This is the number of people with a buying role label of “Blocker” and is automatically set by HubSpot based on the number of contacts associated with an account that has this selection for the Buying Role property.
Number of Decision Makers - This is the number of people with a buying role label of “Decision Maker” and is automatically set by HubSpot based on the number of contacts associated with an account that has this selection for the Buying Role property.
You can use these properties to score your target accounts, adjust ICP Tiers, notify reps when they need to address their buying committee based on these properties’ values, shift marketing activity, and much more.
Of course, HubSpot allows you to make customer properties to your heart’s content and all of those properties are actionable in workflows, list building, and most tools. So if you want to get more granular with your Target Account properties, the sky is truly the limit.
3 - Smart Content & Personalization
Smart Content can be used in HubSpot CTAs, pop-ups, email, blogs, landing pages, and chatbots.
Smart Content & personalization allows you to customize an experience for your buying committee based on a seemingly endless number of conditions, such as:
- Deal stage
- Buying Role
- Content Consumption
- Account Activity
- Job Role
- Industry
- ICP Tier
- Target Account Status
- Company the Contact Works At
- Ad Interactions
- Email Interactions
And the list goes on…
Smart Content allows you to change the text on a page, the header image in an email, an image or graphic on a page, the fields on a form, the text or color of a CTA, a chatbot message (or whether to have the chatbot open at all), the content offer on a popup, and more.
ABM and ABS are all about relevance, and with Smart Content, you can ensure that your users’ experience is just that.
4 - Sales Navigator Integration
We all love using Sales Navigator to build our buying committees, discover how we can get introduced to a key stakeholder, and find relevant content to use to break the ice.
With the HubSpot + LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration, you can do all of this without leaving the HubSpot interface.
Here are some things you can do:
- Research a contact or company
- Associate the contact or company to the HubSpot record
- Send a connection request
- Send an InMail
- Place LinkedIn actions into sequences
Your team will thank you for making it easy for them to plan and build within one tool!
If you want to gain more account building functionality check out this tool and this one!
5 - Thousands of Integrations
HubSpot integrates with many other tools, making it easier than ever to run all of the ABM activity you wish from one platform. Here are some integrations that can enhance what you can do within HubSpot:
Postal.io
Gifting and offline marketing is a part of any good ABM strategy. Everyone wants to make an impression on accounts and to stand out from the crowd.
Want to automatically send a gift to each member of the buying committee? Done.
Want to determine gift type and size based on deal size, ICP tier, or buying role? Easy.
Want to send a gift as soon as a deal closes to celebrate, like a bottle of champagne or beautiful chocolate? You can do that, too.
Have some worthwhile swag you want to send new clients to welcome them to your community or to reward your evangelists? Sure thing.
Offline marketing automation to the rescue!
You will need a postal.io membership (they have a free trial!) to use this functionality, but it is 100% worth the investment, in my opinion!
Zoom
Want to make Zoom webinar landing pages and forms that meet your brand standards?
Want to segment and score your target accounts based on their webinar registrations?
Need accurate data on the number of meetings that your target accounts not only book, but actually attend?
Want to know whether your buying committee stuck it through to the important parts of your webinar or virtual event?
The Zoom integration will give you all of this information and more!
Zoom can be a trigger or an action for workflows in HubSpot, meaning you can trigger a workflow based on any information we collect from Zoom, leverage that information in building workflow conditions, as well as add people to webinars based on any property within HubSpot.
ZoomInfo & Bombora
Do you want to automatically pull companies that match your ICP into HubSpot and label them appropriately as target accounts with the right ICP tier?
Do you want to know when an account is showing intent and automatically alter your marketing plays and sales automations based on that information?
With ZoomInfo or Bombora you can do just that.
Segment based on intent topics and buying roles to provide a timely, relevant, and customized experience for your target accounts that will improve their buying experience.
There are many more integrations that benefit ABM plays in HubSpot, but I personally think that these are the must haves for any AMB motion!
6 - Actionable Ad Integrations
HubSpot is unbelievably precise when it comes to running paid ads for your ABM campaigns.
The way you target an account changes based on a number of factors:
- Buying role
- Job role
- ICP Tier
- Buying Intent
- Lifecycle Stage
- Content Consumed
- Recent Activity
- The list goes on…
Using HubSpot workflows you can change the messaging, frequency, creative, and more for your buying committee based on any of the items listed above.
Want to run aircover when an account is showing high intent? Great!
Want to make a big push to get in front of the budget holder with high-value content as the deal is moving towards the negotiation stage? You got it.
Want to shift all ads to focus on education instead of meeting bookings once an opportunity has been created? No problem.
The options are nearly infinite. Gain relevance and save wasted ad dollars by leveraging automated segmentation and ad audience updates using HubSpot’s ad integrations + workflows.
Note: You will need the individual contacts to be pulled into your HubSpot account for this functionality to work on Facebook and Google Display. LinkedIn allows you to target within their platform at the account level, but Facebook and Google require individual people.
7 - Powerful Workflow Automations
Anyone who has worked with HubSpot’s workflow automation tool knows that it is second-to-none.
Easy-to-use and powerful, you can make your ABM machine run at scale with ease.
Any property within HubSpot, custom or native, can be used to trigger, segment, or be acted upon in a workflow. Additionally, you can condition a property in many ways for triggers and if/then branches and stack or exclude conditions with and/or options.
Let’s explore how we can leverage this tool to make ABM magic:
- Label an account’s ICP Tier based on property value(s)
- Notify sales when a decision maker, budget holder, or other key buying role is engaging with your content
- Suggest content for sales to use based on user behavior
- Score your target accounts
- Label a target account based on your chosen criteria
- Suppress an account from email marketing during the sales process
- Send a gift based on deal size or deal stage
- Notify reps if they are both interacting with the same target account
- Create a deal when a full buying committee is formed
- Notify your reps when there is a delay in signing a quote or contract
Happy automating!
8 - Content Analytics
Content is a big part of any marketing strategy, but content is truly king in ABM. It is important to know how active your buying committee is and what type of content they are consuming.
After all, you are going to respond differently if your buying committee is having repeat visits to your pricing page than if they are reading educational blogs.
In addition to knowing where your target account is in the buying process based on content consumption, you can also gain insight into what problems are most important to your target account based on the articles, ebooks, and other assets they consume.
When you are looking at deals and revenue reports, for example, you can see which pieces of content lead to the most Closed-Won opportunities and evaluate how you might use those pieces more, differently, etc. to drive results.
Content analytics are important, and HubSpot’s are granular and powerful. From multi-touch revenue attribution based on content to analytics showing how long people spend, how far they scroll, and where you lose them - HubSpot’s content analytics are purpose-built to help tune your ABM machine.
9 - 360° Marketing & Sales Touchpoint Visibility
Sales and marketing alignment are crucial for an ABM/ABS motion to succeed. We all know this, but making it a reality can be harder than one may anticipate.
How does marketing know when sales has made contact or booked a meeting with a buying committee member?
How does sales know what marketing is still running on their target account?
Some of the automations I have already mentioned above can offer clarity, but there is still more that HubSpot does for this alignment!
For example, marketing can be notified when a target account books a meeting so that they can get to work seeking out content that will help sales or creating something fresh for a big deal.
A Zoom meeting being booked on a target account can completely change the marketing play.
A response to a sequence can change ad targeting for a contact or target account.
An ebook download that adds to the buying committee can launch an aircover campaign.
Sales reps can view a contact to see what workflows they are enrolled in, what lists the person is on, which pieces of content have been viewed and for how long, and what gifts marketing sent when they were labeled with a buying role.
Any of these touches can be forwarded to a Slack channel that makes it easy for sales and marketing to collaborate on what needs to be done if the action is not able to be automated.
All of this information can be at your team's fingertips and is easy to surface, leverage in workflows, and report upon.
10 - Out-of-the-Box ABM Dashboards
HubSpot sets you up with an out-of-the-box dashboard to keep track of your ABM plays and target accounts.
There are two dashboards that are available without having to do a moment of custom building: Target Account Landscape & Account Based Marketing.
Let’s break down the reports by dashboard and discuss how you can use them in your ABM and ABS efforts:
Target Account Landscape Dashboard:
Buying Roles by Target Account - This report tells you how many contacts with buying roles you have at each account and breaks them down by buying role
Ideal Customer Profile Tiers - This report tells you how many accounts you have by ICP
Target Account by Industry - This breaks down your number of accounts by industry
Target Accounts by Number of Employees - This shows the number of employees per target account
Target Account by Number of Associated Contacts - This tells you how many contacts you have per account
Target Account by Annual Revenue - This shows you the yearly revenue by target account
Target Accounts by Number of Form Submissions - This shows you how many form submission per target account you have
Target Accounts by Page Views - This shows you how many page views per target account you have
You can filter your reports and dashboards by a number of different properties, such as the date, the rep, the deal size, estimated close date, last activity date, etc.
Account Based Marketing Dashboard:
Ideal Customer Profile Tiers - This report tells you how many accounts you have by ICP
Contacts Created at Target Account Monthly - How many contacts you generated within Target Accounts each month
Target Accounts by Page Views - This shows you how many page views per target account you have
Buying Roles by Target Account - This report tells you how many contacts with buying roles you have at each account and breaks them down by buying role
Contact Source Report by Target Account - This shows where your contacts came from by source per target account
Contact Lifecycle Stage by Target Account - How many contacts are in each lifecycle stage per target account
Deal Stage by Target Account - Number of target accounts in each of your deal stages
Target Account by Active Deal Amount - Amount of revenue opportunity per target account
There is so much that can be done to run your ABM and ABS motions seamlessly within HubSpot’s growth suite. This article has only scratched the surface. You now have a taste of how integrated, powerful, actionable and automated HubSpot’s sales and marketing data is, making it the obvious choice for any organization wishing to run ABM and ABS in a personalized way at scale.
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