What is Account-Based Marketing?

Account-based marketing, or ABM as it’s also called, is a B2B marketing strategy that targets key businesses through a variety of channels. It’s similar to marketing in that you’ll go after specific audiences, but instead of focusing on the many, you’ll put your personalized, strategic marketing efforts into fewer, larger ticket accounts.

When account-based marketing is done well, it positively impacts your bottom line. To reach your goals, your sales and marketing team must work collaboratively, localizing the beneficial accounts that will have the greatest ROI.

If your manufacturing company is targeting those Fortune 500s, having an ABM strategy in place will allow you to more effectively be seen and heard by your target audience.

The world of advertising has changed a lot over the years. Early advertisers could choose publications or television shows that their target audiences may enjoy, but that's about as far as targeting went. The rise of digital ads and big data, fueled by the massive growth of companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, now allows advertisers to make hyper-specific targeting decisions about exactly who they want to reach. It's now cheaper than ever to get your ad in front of the exact type of person you'd like as a customer. The problem is, ads are everywhere. They are background noise at best and annoyances at worst. In order to cut through the clutter, you must do things differently. You must stop viewing advertising as a way to bring in money and start viewing it as a way to build relationships. Because, ultimately, relationships are how you make money. One of the best ways to do this is through journey-based advertising.

CRM Advertising is quickly becoming the best approach for marketers who aren't just focused on customer acquisition alone, but on customer retention as well. If you've ever fished, you probably understand the amount of sitting, wishing, and waiting involved in the entire process. But you also realize that some strategies can increase your chances of carrying home a few catches. For instance, you know that a larger, more populated pond offers better chances, so you can't waste your time in the wrong pond. Appealing bait is also crucial, so you'll always ensure you cast the reel with a little twitchy snack. If there's no bite after some time, you'll move to a different location to entice new fish or retarget the ones that weren't tempted by your offering the first time around. 

This is the exact mentality that marketers should consider when engaging and re-engaging prospects through targeted, CRM-powered ads as they spend time in the digital sea.

This detailed guide offers an overview of CRM advertising, features, and how far the HubSpot ad management tool can reach in terms of generating leads and increasing conversions.

Much has been written about admonishing leadership teams of the need and steps for creating vision and mission statements. There are volumes, even books on the subject. This article won’t duplicate or match the conventional wisdom found on the web or in print. But it will endeavor to highlight the best thinking on B2B vision and mission statements. It will also serve to assist company founders, CEOs, and leaders in sound ways to think about them and inspire meaningful creation and use of them in the B2B space.

Are you in the process of updating your B2B digital marketing plan for the upcoming year? Now’s a good time to perform a checkup of your company’s vision and mission statements. Even if you’re not in the budgeting and planning season, gaining more clarity on long-term company direction and near-term focus will pay big dividends towards achieving more significant results.

Or maybe you haven’t created them yet because you’ve been too busy running the business; you’re not sure how they differ; you don’t know how to get started, and you’re not too sure what to do with a vision and mission statement once you have them nailed down.

No worries. This article will help serve as a practical guide for setting or touching up your B2B vision and mission statements. It will cover the following:

• The big picture of B2B vision and mission statements
• Working definitions of each and how they differ
• Characteristics of great vision and mission statements
• Examples of B2B vision and mission statements
• A proven approach for creating them without any brainstorming
• Putting your vision and mission statements to work 

Chances are your organization’s sales and marketing strategy changed dramatically in 2020. COVID-19 forced many non-essential B2B companies to work-from-home, and nearly all business trips got grounded and in-person events like trade shows and business seminars came to a screeching halt.

[Updated for 2021]

SEO remains top-of-mind as marketers plan their content marketing strategy for 2021. For advanced marketers it looks something like this: you have an SEO plan and best practices in place, you have your list of keywords, you’re actively blogging and your website is optimized. You have an on-page and off-page SEO plan. Your monitors are covered with dashboards from Google Analytics, an SEO ranking tool like ahrefs, Moz or SEMrush, reports from your CMS or marketing automation tool, and a few Google sheets or an advanced Databox analytics dashboard to keep your results organized to monitor your search engine rank positions.

Industry research studies can serve as a barometer to measure the change in key metrics over time. They are useful for pointing out trends, progress, and challenges among similarly situated companies. They help you compare your own experience and performance to others.

Guest Blog by Todd Hockenberry, of Top Line Results and co-author of Inbound Organization

Guest Blog by Todd Hockenberry, of Top Line Results and co-author of Inbound Organization

Guest Blog by Todd Hockenberry, of Top Line Results and co-author of Inbound Organization