5 ABM Problems Solved by HubSpot's New Software

Whether you’re looking at ABM to improve your leads or feeling pressure to implement an ABM tool from outside forces, putting ABM strategies into place is easier said than done. Too often, account based marketing is siloed, hard to measure, and extremely time consuming. 

Recently, HubSpot released a new ABM tool that addresses those key problems and makes it easier than ever for sales and marketing to collaborate and run better campaigns informed by data. Before we get into that, though, let’s review ABM and how it can function complementarity to Inbound Marketing.

ABM & Inbound Marketing

Account-based marketing is a sales and marketing strategy designed to provide hyper-personalized buying experiences for companies that have been pre-identified as high-value targets. It lets marketers focus efforts on the best possible prospects.

But turning to ABM strategies does not mean the abandonment of Inbound Marketing. Instead, they function to support each other.  

Inbound marketing lays the foundation for a strong ABM strategy — ABM builds off of inbound by allowing for targeted and efficient resource allocation of high-value accounts.” - HubSpot

While the idea has been around for a while, ABM tools have struggled to meet the expectations of their users. Too often, marketing KPIs and sales themselves are being negatively impacted because ABM tools fail to give us the insight, data and collaboration functionality we need to be successful.

HubSpot’s new Account-based marketing tools offer solutions to five of the biggest problems with ABM tools today.

Problem #1. Platforms were Siloed 

We’ve all seen the Marketing Technology Supergraphic - there are A LOT of marketing technologies available. Too many of them, though, act like unitaskers - tools that function REALLY well at doing one thing but are otherwise useless and take up space (I’m looking at you, quesadilla maker, banana slicer, and yes, the beloved garlic press). My day does not have any more room for clutter than my kitchen does and I expect my marketing technologies to do more than one thing at a time. 

Until now, though, Account-based Marketing campaigns had to be run in different channels - and in some organizations, by different teams! This siloed technology not only takes up unnecessary budgetary resources, but it creates redundancies and loss of data insight when information isn’t connected into one source of truth. 

HubSpot’s new ABM tools offer a holistic, comprehensive platform from which you can plan, execute and evaluate your ABM strategy. Workflows and automation make it easier than ever to identify and target key accounts and by using one platform, sales and marketing will have the same information at their fingertips at all times. 

Problem #2: Targeting Was Time-Consuming

The most important part of your ABM strategy is targeting. It is what differentiates ABM from other marketing strategies and it is the source of its value. The problem is, targeting is hard. And time consuming. Manually researching prospects on LinkedIn is not scalable - you simply cannot hire enough sales interns to do that work. 

With the new HubSpot ABM tools, you can quickly identify all of your best prospects: create an ideal customer profile and use a workflow to automatically tag those prospects for ABM targeting. If your sales team has targets already in mind, those lists can be uploaded and targeted specifically and directly. 

The HubSpot ABM tool also lets you assign different buying roles - decision makers, blockers etc. Each of these unique personas can be targeted with tailored messaging informed by their unique problems. 

HubSpot’s targeting offers default lists for target accounts and tiered accounts. 

The platform’s integration with LinkedIn, already so valuable for social posting and paid ads, offers another easy way to find your ABM targets where they are.

Problem #3: Collaboration was Difficult

Account-based marketing, in particular, requires close collaboration between marketing and sales. The information needs to flow in both directions - marketing needs to know who to target and sales needs to know what they’ve seen. 

Within HubSpot, there are unique views for Sales and Marketing. The data is the same but the individual views allow for the most relevant information to percolate to the surface for the right person at the right time. HubSpot’s ABM software allows sales to see how and when marketing is targeting their identified accounts. It also allows marketers to leverage AI-powered recommendations of target accounts to ensure sales never misses an opportunity. 

Problem #4: It was Hard to Track at the Company Level

Most of us are already doing lead scoring. Lead scoring offers us fantastic insight into the level of engagement a prospect has with our content and when they are warming up to buy. But often, lead scoring stops short of ABM-level insights. Now, instead of just scoring at the individual level, you can quickly and easily evaluate prospective customer companies as well. 

With HubSpot scoring at the company level, you can automatically score companies based on their percentage fit to your target accounts. Using positive and negative attributes, you can create an automatic system to identify just how closely each company resembles your ideal customer. 

Critical to this step: neither sales nor marketing should create this scoring in a vacuum. Collaboration is critical when establishing both individual and company-level scoring.

Hubspot offers a holistic, comprehensive platform in which you can do it all. 

Problem #5: Analytics was a Mess 

Cross-channel analytics are always difficult but now sales and marketing can view results in one platform. Key milestones of an account’s journey can be tracked and measured, ensuring that your ABM strategy can be analyzed and adapted based on what’s working. 

Finally ABM can be data driven! With three new dashboards and 12 new reports, actionable ABM insights are a click away.

Interested in learning how to integrate ABM into your Inbound Strategy? Looking for help with your account-based marketing strategies? We can help! Click here to be in touch.