HubSpot launched an ABM solution – let’s talk ABM
About the Author: Noa Eshed
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Last week HubSpot launched a new Account Based Marketing (ABM) solution, it’s a natural step that ties down all aspects of inbound sales. This should be used in addition to the sales pipeline to help organize and better manage communication with key accounts.
This release is a good reason to stop and evaluate ABM, as well as get the basics on how to get started on HubSpot.
First things first, who is ABM relevant to?
You should consider an ABM approach if:
- Your product/service is expensive
- Purchasing from you requires multiple decision-makers
- You have a finite number of prospects – if your target audience is either a very specific niche or only tier-1 companies
Where should you start?
Identify target accounts: What companies out there would you like to be doing business with?
- Map out specific companies you’d like to attract and engage.
- Within those companies map out specific people – these should be the position holders who are part of the “buying committee” deciding whether or not to proceed and make a deal with you. Detail their role within the “committee”:
- Decision maker
- Champion
- Budget holder
- Influencer
- Blocker
- Legal and compliance
- Executive sponsor
- End user
- Make a list of how you’re going to get under their radar both via outbound and inbound methods
- what content will you need? This could be:
- Repurposed content from your inbound efforts
- Personalized web pages
- An industry event
- Swag
- Where do they hang out online
- What platforms should you directly connect with them on
- what content will you need? This could be:
Make sure your company has a solid representation where your target accounts are present. This could be:
- Conferences
- Industry newsletters
- Review sites and indexes such as product hunt, clutch, capterra, appsumo
- Industry influencers
- Sponsored Ads
- And of course – social media (LI, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, Slack and more)
Once you have an understanding of who you want to target, and how, use HubSpot to execute your ABM strategy. Basically the new dashboard will enable an easier way to manage those relationships and efforts. It’s important to note – this doesn’t replace the regular sales pipeline – it goes hand in hand with it. I know many companies who use the sales pipeline for managing communications with companies who are not yet deals because it answers a need of having all the info in one place.
So deal stages such as “first outreach” “second outreach” etc start emerging on the pipeline and it’s just wrong. While the AMB dashboard isn’t aimed at covering all outreach efforts, it’s a good middle ground. Instead of adding companies who aren’t yet deals to the pipeline – use the ABM dashboard and maybe even manage an excel file for the rest of your cold outreach efforts who arent target accounts. Or – add all cold outreach efforts to your ABM dashboard but mark as low priorty companies who aren’t target accounts (why are you reaching out to none target accounts in the first place?)
How to get started on HubSpot?
First, add contacts and companies that you’ve mapped out when strategizing as new contacts and companies on HubSpot
Activate the ABM features in your HubSpot account by navigating to:
- Contacts > Target Accounts.
- Click Get started.
Next, select companies you’d like to focus on as target accounts.
The dashboard will then be uncovered – it’s your central command. It will provide you with an overview of each of your accounts, you’ll be able to see the contacts within those accounts, your engagement with them, how they’re engaging with your content and the overall status. In addition, you’ll be able to create ABM lists and reports that will help you slice, dice and make data-based decisions. .
Update the contact property: buying role
Edit this property to identify the role of the contacts associated with the target account. A contact can have more than one role (for example a decision maker and an influencer). By the way. the target accounts dashboard will detail accounts that don’t have buying roles associated with them.
Viewing account overviews can be done in your target accounts home in the right panel of a company record;
The overview displays:
- activities associated with the company
- contacts associated with the company
- internal stakeholders (HubSpot users who have created or been part of activities associated with the company)
- deals associated with the company
- tracked page views from associated contacts.
Lists
After activating ABM, HubSpot automatically creates contact lists based on ABM contact and company properties. This is helpful for segmenting contacts for smart content, newsletters, marketing emails, and ad audiences.
Workflows
You can create workflows to automatically assign a tier to target accounts (referring you back to the point I made earlier about managing priorities outside the sales pipeline). HubSpot provide a default template but I strongly advise customizing it based on your own criteria. Here’s how to find it:
- navigate to Automation > Workflows.
- Create workflow.
- click the Templates tab.
- In the Type dropdown menu select Companies.
- Select “Sort companies by ideal customer profile fit template”
Reports
HubSpot added a new set of helpful ABM reports. Here’s how to set them up:
- navigate to Reports > Dashboards.
- click Create dashboard.
- Choose Target accounts
- Select a dashboard and set it up
That just about wraps up the basics, if you’d like to learn more I recommend HubSpot’s guide to ABM, If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out to me! Happy selling!
Noa Eshed
Noa is the co-author of the Amazon no.1 Bestseller "The Smart Marketer's Guide to Google AdWords" and co-host of the podcast "Real Life Superpowers". She's a content lover, certified journalist & lawyer (Hebrew U). She practices martial arts & yoga. She's been consulting and helping businesses create a significant presence online since 2010.
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Noa is the co-author of the Amazon no.1 Bestseller "The Smart Marketer's Guide to Google AdWords" and co-host of the podcast "Real Life Superpowers". She's a content lover, certified journalist & lawyer (Hebrew U). She practices martial arts & yoga. She's been consulting and helping businesses create a significant presence online since 2010.
