HubSpot for Account-Based Marketing Success
Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) face a massive task. They have to bring in leads, nurture them, hand them off to sales, and are held accountable for the outcomes of those interactions. With so much going on, prioritizing the most important and most likely to convert prospects is a must.
Not only can good lead management mean less wasted time in pursuing unqualified leads, but it can also speed up your company’s responsiveness to answer questions for qualified prospects and become a part of their initial consideration set.
Learn how account-based marketing for B2B companies using HubSpot can streamline processes, save time, and lead to a higher ROI.
The ABM Advantage
First, let’s define account-based marketing (ABM). This strategy involves focusing efforts on the most lucrative and likely to convert prospects and customers. With an ABM strategy, marketing teams build personalized experiences to improve relationships, close more deals, and ensure long-term business growth.
By building tailored buying journeys for customers, all communication, content, and campaigns speak directly to them, thereby resulting in greater ROI and more likely customer retention.
Some key principles you’ll find in ABM include:
- Targets customers most likely to convert
- Customer-centric approach
- Focused on helping the buyer solve problems
- Tailored campaigns that are customized using account insights to drive engagement
- Relies on close collaboration between sales and marketing
When you engage these principles effectively, you’ll experience these benefits.
- Better marketing and sales alignment: when you team up to determine the best growth areas, you’ll have shared goals and criteria to close more deals and experience greater success.
- Maximize high-value accounts: by personalizing all interactions, you build stronger relationships, which helps maximize accounts.
- Consistent customer experiences: each customer should feel like your only customer when you use ABM effectively. When teams collaborate well, it results in better customer experiences.
- ROI measurement: better measure your return on investment for every marketing activity. See which tactics are the most effective with each market segment and grow from there.
- Sales Cycle Streamlining: a traditional sales cycle often has six steps, while an ABM strategy employs four steps. That streamlined process helps save precious resources while still building valuable relationships.
- Focuses on quality over quantity relationships: you’ll need to invest significant time and resources into each customer to maximize your share of that customer. To do so, you’ll focus on quality relationships instead of trying to touch many customers sporadically. That relationship leads to longer-term customers.
Using HubSpot for an Account-based Marketing Strategy
Having the right tools for the job is essential when considering an account-based marketing strategy. HubSpot is one of the leading marketing software options for approaching lead generation and nurturing ongoing customer relationships using account-based marketing.
Here’s how to engage in a HubSpot account-based marketing strategy to begin seeing better results from your efforts.
1. Outline Your Target Audience
To personalize your marketing with the depth ABM requires, you’ll need to outline your audience clearly and get to know them with incredible depth. This exercise can also help you outline what a high-value account looks like and why it’s a good match for your products and services.
HubSpot offers tools for filtering new leads based on criteria such as company size, industry, interactions with your company, completing actions, etc. Perhaps there is an especially successful account you have that you wish you could have several more of. Look for similar characteristics in new prospects to work toward duplicating that success.
2. Build an Outreach Strategy
Now consider what your target audience might need to know to make a purchasing decision. What makes your business stand out from competitors? What social proof can you provide that makes the prospect feel like you are the best solution because you’ve helped others like them?
While building your strategy, consider several factors.
- Campaign duration
- Best mediums for reaching that audience
- The best timeline for handing off the lead to sales
- What sales outreach follows marketing’s communication
- KPIs worth measuring
- Number of accounts you need for growth
3. Transition the Lead from Marketing to Sales
When the customer transitions from your marketing team to your sales team, they shouldn’t see or feel a difference. With a good hand off, sales will know everything marketing knows about the customer and be prepared to continue the experience the customer is used to.
The better your marketing and sales teams are aligned before starting a campaign, the smoother the hand off will be. Sales should spend some time familiarizing themselves with primary marketing materials so they know what a customer has learned by the time they become a sales-qualified lead. And marketing needs to know what sales are looking for in a sales-qualified lead. Documenting all information in HubSpot, where both parties can see the details, is a wise move.
4. Personalize Content
You can’t just set up a buying journey and let it run. Each customer is unique and will have differing needs and interests. Personalization will help make each customer feel special, unique, and heard. Some key personalization areas include the following.
- Building custom landing pages based on audience segment
- Offering unique gifts and swag based on the company’s industry
- Sending helpful information in e-books or other formats when a customer shows interest in social media
- Paid ads with custom language based on audience segment and targeting
5. Measure Success and Adjust Accordingly
HubSpot enables everyone to see how campaigns are performing and where there is room for improvement. Before starting a campaign, outline what success looks like and then review the data regularly to make adjustments and stay on track.
Within HubSpot, you can track these crucial metrics.
- Account engagement
- Account penetration
- Deal creation
- Deal-to-close timeline
- Net-new revenue
You can also customize the metrics you want to follow based on what matters to your sales and marketing teams. Use the data to inform decision-making about organizing campaigns moving forward.
Getting the Most from HubSpot
Building an ABM strategy requires time, expertise, and a deep knowledge of your customers. That strategy alone can consume a lot of your time and attention, leaving little time for setting up HubSpot.
Even when you do have the time to complete the HubSpot setup, it’s complex and challenging to execute if you aren’t a frequent system user.
That’s why working with a HubSpot Platinum Partner can be the key to success. If you don’t see the value of HubSpot, that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong system for you; it just might not be set up to meet your needs adequately.
Diaz & Cooper provides tailored solutions to help CMOs achieve their goals and maximize their resources. To identify marketing improvement areas, complete the Growth Gap Analyzer. Or talk with a Diaz and Cooper team member about data-driven B2B business growth.
