17 of the Most Creative 'Meet the Team' Pages We've Ever Seen

To a prospect seeking out a new service provider, it can all be a little overwhelming. It's easy to wonder: Who are the real people behind all the smoke and mirrors?

Adding a "Meet the Team" page or section to your website is an easy, effective way to give your business a accessible face. It gives prospects an idea of who exactly they'll be working with, and shows potential employees that you're proud of the people on your team.

For some inspiration, see how these companies introduce visitors to their most important creative assets: their people.

1. Yokel Local

Yokel Local is a Platinum HubSpot Agency Partner who positions themselves as an extension of their clients' marketing teams. For that reason, they showcase the people on their staff to highlight the humans behind the brand.

What's pleasing about this particular 'meet the team' page is the matching blue backgrounds and cool palette. The grid design provides a modern feel, and if you click on one of the faces, a box will open with more information about the team member, including their bio, credentials, and social profiles.

2. Digital Marmelade

Since most employee bios read a lot like a list of stats ("10 years in the industry ... 4 years at the company ... Managed 80 website redesign projects ... ") the folks at Digital Marmelade decided to have a little fun with the format.

Each employee at the London-based marketing agency has a trading card-style profile detailing their actual marketing accomplishments and personal facts, as well as their fictional superhero abilities.

It's a quirky twist that gives visitors a colorful snapshot of the agency's team, highlighting both their impressive experience and friendly culture.

3. CloudHorizon

CloudHorizon is a mobile product development company. On their about page, they say, "Some of the more rewarding projects we have had the honour to be involved in, started with simple ideas and grew profitable businesses from the ground up."

With this in mind, their 'meet our team' section is a great way to illustrate that idea. When you hover over an image of a team member, their thumbnail flips over to reveal a photo from their childhood with a small caption of what they wanted to be when they grew up. The idea being that it takes time and innovation to become great things.

4. Bolden

Bolden's team bios are more conventional than some of the others on this list, but what they lack in invention they more than make up for with style.

Hovering over each team member's picture produces a colorful stacked card effect, revealing brief employee bios in coordinated fonts. This is a great example of a minimal, accessible "Meet the Team" page that manages to look cool and introduce the faces behind the agency without going over the top.

5. Rock Kitchen Harris

Rock Kitchen Harris, a full-service agency, decided to skip the photos altogether and showcase the cartoon versions of their employees instead.

Each employee at the English agency had a custom caricature drawn up, and every single one has a different personality. While some employees opted for representations reminiscent of LinkedIn profile pictures, others got a little creative with it, dressing their cartoon selves up as Ewoks and other characters.

6. FCINQ

FCINQ, a creative studio, introduces us to their team with a collage of colorful bubbles.

Hovering over an employee's individual circle produces a zoomed-in effect, and clicking expands their headshot with their name and social profiles. The splashy set up is a stylish alternative to the expected rows of team photos and names.

7. Zulu Alpha Kilo

This Canadian agency presents their founding team with refreshing comedic flair. While many agency leaders choose to represent themselves with stoic business portraits, the three leaders of Zulu Alpha Kilo opted for playful photos and cheeky bios.

Here's an excerpt from the bio of Marcus Alpha -- the agency's "Ultra Chief Creative Director Officer":

Marcus has a reputation for pushing his creative teams further than any other creative director. He makes them work late nights, weekends and through holidays in pursuit of that one truly breakthrough creative idea. And when they’ve finally cracked it after weeks of gruelling and thankless work, Marcus will triumphantly stand in front of the client and present it as an idea he had in the shower that morning instead.

8. Stink Digital

We love this expertly color-coordinated slideshow of team members form Stink Digital.

This creative agency has offices in five major cities around the world -- including New York, Paris, and Berlin -- but having a personable "Meet the Team" section helps give their business an accessible edge. They don't call themselves "a global company with a local feel" for nothing.

9. Drexler

This "Meet the Team" section from Drexler is perfect proof that you don't necessarily need a whole page devoted to introducing your employees -- just a small section can do the trick.

This simple but polished team member marquee appears at the bottom of the Baltimore, Maryland-based agency's "About" page, and adds a welcome personal touch to their website.

10. Matchstic

As a branding agency, Matchstic knows the importance of identity, creativity, and individuality.

Not only does their 'who we are' section on their About page provide that identity by highlighting the human element of their brand, but it also shows their creative side. When you hover over each thumbnail, a goofy illustration is overlaid onto the photo.

In addition, the custom cursor, which only shows up on the About page, is a strong callback to the Matchstic brand, implying a kinetic energy that starts with the lighting of a match.

11. LiveChat

LiveChat, an AI customer service and chatbot solution, approached their "meet the team" page in a completely different way. Instead of just listing out each team member's roles and experience, they created a photo for each team member that illustrates who they are in a conceptual, fun, and metaphorical way.

This is extremely effective for showcasing the uniqueness of their team, and it compels the website visitor to take the team to look at each picture and read each bio, which results in longer time on page, an important engagement metric.

12. Etsy

Many large companies forgo the "meet the team" page because there are so many team members that it doesn't make sense to display them all.

At Etsy, though, they acknowledge all the people that make the popular online marketplace possible with a tiled "people board" that scrolls for days.

13. Atlassian

Atlassian, a company behind many of the software solutions used in businesses worldwide, highlights photos of their team on their "people" page, interacting at the office and hard at work.

Below, they showcase their leadership team with colorful headshots that break out of colorful background boxes. When you hover over them, attractive vector graphics appear relating to the individual's unique role. In addition, a popup appears on click with social icons and a bio. What's particularly interesting is that there's also the ability to download their headshot, making the "People" page have extra utility for media professionals.

14. The Correspondent

The Correspondent is an organization that offers news without fear-mongering or financial gain. In true journalistic style, the site features each team member in a beautifully rendered cartoon style, providing an artistic feel to the page.

Clicking on each thumbnail leads the website visitor to a place where they can subscribe to that particular writer and view a feed of their pieces. Best of all, the individual's mission is displayed across the top and contact information in the sidebar.

15. SmartBug Media

SmartBug is a HubSpot Agency Partner with a distributed team across the U.S. They demonstrate their embrace of remote work by including an interactive map with the locations of all their employees.

You can also browse through their team below, clicking on each headshot to get expanded bios that include 2 fun facts about each team member.

16. Bluleadz

What better way to convey the personality of your team than to display their favorite gifs on mouse hover? That's what digital marketing agency Bluleadz does. You can almost imagine these folks in the scenarios their gifs represent.

Another unique feature of this "meet the crew" page is the ability to filter Bluleadz employees by function. Each button at the bottom corresponds to a team and brings up the individuals who "make the magic happen" in that area of the business.

17. Media Junction

Bold blocky pops of color? Yes please. HubSpot Elite Agency Partner Media Junction displays their team thumbnails on solid backgrounds with vector shadows. Each photo is a little silly, and many of them bring their furry friends into the picture with them.

In addition, their leadership team's thumbnails are clickable so that you can read more about them and even send them a message for more information.

"Meet the team" pages resonate because people like to buy from real people, not faceless brands. Best practice is to determine what your brand stands for and create a "meet the team" and About page that conveys that in the strongest possible way.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

17 of the Most Creative 'Meet the Team' Pages We've Ever Seen was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Increase Your Instagram Engagement Rate

Instagram turns 10 in 2020. It was launched in October of 2010, where its app store debut prompted 25,000 downloads in just one day. Two years later, Facebook purchased the app for $1 billion.

In 2020, the app has grown larger than expected, with 500 million daily users. Its popularity has led it to become a source of income for content creators and brands worldwide, many using the app as their sole source of income.

Since the potential to make money, connect with your audience, and build a reputable brand on Instagram is so high, understanding how to use it is essential. While there are various ways to market yourself or your business on Instagram, it’s impossible to do so without first understanding your Instagram engagement rate.

Why does Instagram engagement rate matter?

Instagram engagement rates are significant because they measure an audience’s interest, brand relevance, and social authority.

Audience Interest

If your content appeals to your target audience, your engagement rate will be higher. If you take the time to review your best performing content, i.e., posts with the most likes, shares, saves, and comments, you’ll get a feel for what your users want to see. It’s important to note high impressions may indicate that your content has been viewed a lot, but engagement is typically defined as concrete interactions with your posts.

Relevance

If you have a high engagement rate, it’s likely your audience sees you as a relevant source of information. They may favor your content over competitors because your content sets you apart. However, if you have a high engagement rate now, will it stay the same in three months? Is it higher than it was last year? If you aren’t monitoring your engagement rate and using it as a benchmark for relevance, your score can decline.

Social Authority

While you’ve probably already identified your target instagram audience, it’s never bad to add new followers and fans to the list. These new users will take notice of your engagement — your followers, likes, comments, etc. — to decide whether or not to follow you. They’re likely to move on to your competitors if they notice your brand's engagement, a.k.a. social authority is not strong.

What is the average Instagram engagement rate?

There is no one-size-fits-all definition of a “good” engagement rate. They vary by industry and depending on your strategic goals.

However, Instagram does have higher engagement rates than other social media networks. According to the HubSpot Instagram Engagement Report, posts on the platform generate 23% more engagement than Facebook, even though Facebook has 2x more monthly users.

If you want a numerical value to compare your score to, Rival IQ found that the average engagement rate across all industries is 1.22%. Specific sectors have higher rates, like higher education with 3.57%, sports teams with 2.33%, and influencers with 1.67%.

Because of this, it’s safe to assume that an engagement rate of around 1% is a good engagement rate.

If you’ve already run the numbers and found that your engagement rate is significantly lower than average, don’t fret. There’s room for improvement — but maintain a healthy perspective. Assess how your engagement rate has changed over time and begin devising strategies to raise your score. Start this process by calculating your engagement rate.

How To Calculate Your Engagement Rate On Instagram

There is debate among marketers on the best way to calculate your Instagram engagement rate, as different industries define success in different ways. Your preferred method depends on your goals as a brand or influencer.

Calculating Instagram engagement rate for brands

This formula is best for brands on Instagram because it considers the number of people who have seen a piece of content (impressions) rather than the total number of followers.

 

 

Brands typically convert more leads via exposure first, rather than follower count. When branded advertisements get viewed, engagement rates go up, especially if they follow the advertisements to Instagram profiles and become followers. Note that Instagram accounts need to be public Business Profiles to see impressions.

Calculating Instagram engagement rate for influencers

Since sponsors often recruit influencers on Instagram based on their likes and follower count, their engagement rates incorporate these two factors. Since this metric doesn’t require any personal data, it's possible to compare your engagement rates to competitors.

No matter your engagement rate, there are always steps to be taken to raise your score.

1. Maintain consistent branding.

Maintaining consistency with your content is extremely important, and there are a variety of actions you can take to do so.

Firstly, your username should be similar or the same to your other social media usernames. For example, if your twitter handle is @greenbookworm, your Instagram handle should be the same if it’s available (or something very similar).

You should also make sure that your content is visually consistent as well, and you should have a format that you use for all of your posts. Take a look at Nike’s Instagram, for example. 

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Whenever they post content that includes typography, they use the same backgrounds and font. When they post photos, they’re high quality and use the same filter.

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When your content has a similar look, your profile becomes aesthetically pleasing, and users can recognize your photos as a consistent brand. If they come across your content on another social media site and can realize that it’s yours, they may follow you there as well.

There’s data to back this up — WebDam found that 60% of the best-performing brands on Instagram used the same filter every time they post.

2. Understand your audience.

You can’t begin creating content without knowing your intended audience. Developing Instagram personas is a helpful tool for increasing your engagement rate. If you know who your followers are, creating content that they want makes them more likely to engage with you. Take the time to monitor your audience statistics, and update your personas accordingly.

You can use Instagram insights to get a demographic understanding of your followers. If you have an Instagram business account, navigate to the audience tab from the Insights menu. 

From here, you can see the top locations your users are in, your users’ age ranges, and their gender. All this information will give you an understanding of your users.
If you’re a HubSpot user, you can utilize the Social Reports data to find these same insights.

Regardless of your target audience, your content needs to be accessible. Utilizing Instagram’s accessibility tools is crucial, and you can use it to add image alt text, subtitles, and captions to your content.

3. Post regularly.

Once you know your target audience, post content they’ll enjoy and do it regularly. In 2018, 60% of Instagram users reported visiting the site daily, and 38% of those users visited multiple times a day.

The number of times you post depends on your marketing strategy, but the average brand posts 1.5 times per day. Again, this metric is an average, and it may not work for everyone. Posting too much content can overwhelm your users, and they won’t hesitate to unfollow if their feed is clogged.

It’s also important to know the best times to post for your followers. Instagram insights will also tell you the best days and hours to post.

Do keep in mind that quantity doesn’t equal quality, which brings us to the next engagement raising strategy.

4. Create better captions.

Unless you’re @world_record_egg, who posted a photo of an egg with no caption that has generated over 12 million likes, you need to focus on your captions. Use the brand voice you’ve developed to sound consistent and keep your intended audience in mind. You can create short captions that are serious or light-hearted.

You can also create longer captions that tell stories and take your users on a journey. Take the instagram account @humansofny as an example. They regularly feature the personal stories of people around the world.

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Since engagement metrics factor in the length of time users spend on your posts, consider alternating shorter and longer captions.

Hand-in-hand with writing better captions is using quality hashtags — Instagram was built on them, after all. It’s still the algorithm’s primary method of filtering through content. If you’re unfamiliar with hashtags, here’s a summary.

Captions can hold up to 30 hashtags per post, but there must be a balance. Hashtag dumping, which is similar to keyword stuffing, may make the algorithm think you’re spamming for engagement, and you can be shadowbanned. The goal is to figure out what works for you and stick to it.

Your hashtags should be a mix of popular and specific, long-tailed keywords. For example, if you’re running an Instagram for your hotel, you’ll want to use common hashtags like #hotel and #travel. However, those are also very broad, as a search for the #hotel tag has 31 million posts. Be more specific and targeted towards your needs, and maybe say #hotel, #travel, and #hotel + your hotel name + the name of the city you’re in. So, for example, #hotellisamiami.

You can discover the best hashtags to use by doing keyword research and categorizing those that work best for you and your brand. You may also want to consider coming up with a brand-specific hashtag that users can recognize as yours.

5. Engage with your followers.

After you post, engage with your followers. While Instagram has the ‘Turn off comments’ feature, opt to keep them on.

Reply to comments that your followers make. Maybe they’re asking questions or proclaiming their excitement for your product. Paula’s Choice, a beauty brand, is an excellent example of this.

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They regularly host Instagram Q&A’s, where users ask questions and they answer them on their Instagram stories.

They’re taking actions that they know will entice their audience into interacting with their Instagram content, which factors into engagement rates.

Engaging with your followers also entails sharing their content on your site, known as user-generated content (UGC). Surfing through your brand-specific hashtags can help you find users that are posting about you. You can screenshot their content to share on your story, and even post on your feed.

Your followers will be excited that you interact with them, as engagement may signify a personal relationship with your brand. Here’s an example of Paula's Choice posting UGC.

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6. Engage with similar accounts.

There wouldn’t be a point to using Instagram if you’re not following and interacting with other accounts.

Using the platform to engage with accounts similar to yours is extremely important. If you’re a brand, this can mean partnering with influencers in the same industry. If you share products with them, they’ll post content wearing your brands. If they tag you, their followers will see your account, and many may follow you—all of these metrics factor into your engagement rate.

Emma Chamberlain is a popular YouTuber, holding almost 10.4 million Instagram followers at only 19-years-old. She regularly posts sponsored content, and her sponsors post her. She entices her followers to interact with those brands, and vice versa.

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This establishes trust between brands, influencers, and their followers, which paints a picture of ‘high engagement’ to those browsing Instagram, and they’ll follow you in return.

 

In addition to influencers, simply engaging with brands within your industry is essential as well. Commenting on industry-standard accounts can give you exposure to users in that same comment section, and they may click your profile and become new followers.

7. Create mixed content.

When the app was first launched, all you could do was post photos. Now, there are five types of content posts supported on Instagram: photos, videos, Instagram TV (IGTV), Instagram Reels, and Instagram Stories.

It's no longer enough to just post photos; you need to do all of it.

Videos

Zenith Media estimated that the average person would spend 84 minutes a day watching videos in 2020. That’s a significant amount of time spent watching videos, so use it to your advantage.

There are five video options within Instagram: Reels, IGTV, Story videos, Instagram Live, and video posts. You’ll need to decide which method is best for you, but a well-rounded Instagram strategy will include all. If people are watching content on your page, they’re spending more time on your site, factoring into your impressions rate.

If you’re a sports brand, post enticing videos of recognized athletes using your equipment to practice their sport.

Stories

Instagram Stories are essentially the same as Snapchat stories. HubSpot’s Instagram engagement report found 22% of users watched branded content Stories from a company, business, or brand more than once a week, and 36% liked, commented, or shared branded Stores.

You can take advantage of these numbers and use this feature to draw attention to your new posts by sharing them on your Story or simply posting Story exclusive content.

This feature can also be used to engage with your audience. Post quizzes and questions and make them shareable for other users. Stories can also be used to get feedback from customers, asking them to submit experiences with your products and services.

Circling back to influencer sponsorships, having them go live on your account via Instagram Live is a great strategy. Instagram Live’s can also be saved to your account, so new users can watch them even if they occurred three months before.

8. Use calls-to-action (CTAs).

A CTA is an image, line of text, hashtag, or swipe-up-link that is meant to entice your audience to take action — hence the call-to-action.

The specific action you’re asking users to take should be decided based on your brand, service, or influencers’ needs. This may mean notifying them of a sale by including a swipe up link in your Instagram story, asking them to tag a friend in the comment section, or sharing links to partner-posted content.

While links to other sites don’t directly impact your Instagram engagement rate, they still require users to spend more time on your profile, and you can convert them into leads on other platforms. Here’s an example of National Geographic advertising a new product on their story using a swipe-up CTA.

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9. Track your statistics.

Why would you bother taking action to improve your engagement rate if you’re not taking the time to understand if it’s working? Tracking your progress is extremely important, and it should be something you focus on.

Trial and error is expected, and it should be used to inform your current and future strategies. Use your preferred CRM to find your most effective posts or pieces of content, and use the strategy employed in those for your next content posts.

After you’ve calculated your engagement rate for the first time, you should devise a timeline in which you’ll recalculate it again. Maybe you’ll set a goal of raising your score by .10% in a year, so you may plan to re-calculate the numbers every three months. This can also help you understand what isn’t working — if your numbers haven’t budged, something needs to change.

All in all, Instagram engagement rate is a measure of how your audience interacts with your content. Your rate is an indication of your Instagram profiles’ social authority, relevancy, and audience interest.

If your content is good and your followers are engaging, your engagement rate will demonstrate that. When you spend time working on your engagement rate, you collect valuable data to inform your entire Instagram marketing strategy.

You should see your engagement rate as a benchmark for customer loyalty and satisfaction.

If your users like you, it’ll show.

How to Increase Your Instagram Engagement Rate was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

Account-Based Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing: What's the Difference?

Think about how much easier marketing is when you know exactly what companies to target and what marketing messages would best resonate with them. That's the dream, right?

While we don't live in a perfect world, we do live in a world where inbound marketing and account-based marketing (ABM) exist. And, when these two strategies work together, this dream can become a reality.

You may be pretty familiar with inbound marketing — creating content that attracts, converts, and delights customers.

You may also know a thing or two about account-based marketing: aligning marketing and sales to deliver a consistent, personalized buying experience for prospects. But, because of their definitions, perhaps you think you have to choose between the two.

Fortunately, you don't have to choose. In fact, instead of thinking "ABM versus inbound," you should be thinking "ABM and inbound."

To clarify, let's define the two and offer some tactics around how to work these strategies into your existing marketing campaign.

What is account-based marketing?

Account-based marketing is a highly-targeted, focused growth strategy. It works by aligning marketing and sales functions to create a personalized experience for accounts, rather than an individual buyer.

Instead of treating each of those buyers as an individual entity, ABM is a strategy that says, "Let's make sure we plan how to market and sell to all of those buyers as one account."

This starts with aligning Sales and Marketing to mutually choose a select set of accounts. Then, together they create marketing and sales strategies that target each account. This saves time for marketing and sales and delivers a far more consistent buying experience for the customers within each account.

Businesses that are typically a good fit for using an ABM strategy are those that sell high-value products or services to other businesses, like B2Bs.

The alignment of Sales and Marketing when using an ABM strategy helps you make more streamlined business decisions. It eliminates the time you would spend trying to sort out the best accounts to target, and instead, speeds up the process of delighting those prospects.

ABM treats accounts as if they're individual buyers, and because of this, you'll be able to delight the key decision-makers with a personalized content strategy.

So, ABM is a go-to strategy for shortening sales cycles, increasing ROI, and effectively selling to your highest value accounts in the way they each prefer to buy — but how is it comparable to inbound marketing? Let's talk about that next.

Account-Based Marketing and Inbound Marketing

ABM allows you to delight high-value accounts with a focused approach. Inbound marketing lets you attract customers through the creation of valuable, SEO-optimized content — it provides audiences with the information that's important to them in an organic manner.

But what do they have in common?

Both strategies require a deep understanding of your target buyer to inform what type of content you're creating & how you choose to deliver it. This increases discoverability by that target.

According to HubSpot's ABM Product Marketer, Ryan Batter, "Every growth story begins with the same foundational elements of inbound marketing — building great content, crafting a publishing strategy, optimizing search presence to enable discovery of your brand and generate leads."

You can repurpose content and use the same channels for ABM as you've already put into place with inbound. ABM is often just taking that foundational content and personalizing it even more.

Both inbound and ABM are focused on delivering a great buying experience across the entire flywheel. ABM helps accelerate the flywheel once inbound foundation is in place.

Additionally, the two strategies focus on targeted, personalized content. ABM hones in on delighting the right customers through content that is specifically created to cater to their challenges, an essential function of inbound marketing.

Finally, the two help with the happiness and retention of your customers. Because an ABM strategy focuses on a set of specific accounts, you'll have more opportunity to focus on the happiness and retention of those clients, which is another essential part of the inbound marketing flywheel.

That's not all, though — you can also use the two in a partnership to elevate your entire strategy.

"For some stories, companies benefit immensely by complementing their inbound foundation with account-based strategies that provide more personalized, tailored buying experiences for a subset of high-value leads," Batter says.

Put another way: inbound marketing helps you attract the right customers. Then, account-based marketing uses marketing and sales to speed up the process of the flywheel and provide a valuable customer experience. In the end, both strategies enable you to win those target accounts.

It's critical you approach your account-based marketing, the inbound way: provide valuable content and customer experiences to those high-value accounts.

Using the two together helps you offer a more robust strategy. Plus, software, like the HubSpot CMS, allows you to experiment with the creation of campaigns that align with your businesses' goals.

How to Do Account-Based Marketing

To ensure you keep customers at the center of your account-based marketing strategy, stick to the principles. Make your account-based marketing strategy center around tailoring the way you communicate with your target company.

There are five primary stages to account-based marketing that work hand-in-hand with inbound marketing. Let’s walk through each and detail how you can conduct ABM in a human-friendly way.

1. Identify

Account-based marketing begins with sales and marketing identifying and selecting relevant accounts. When beginning this selection process, data, such as company size, number of employees, location, and annual revenue, can give you an understanding of accounts you may want to target.

Similar to inbound marketing, you can also use buyer personas to understand the day-to-day lives and challenges of your target buyers, then determine content and channels to approach them.

2. Expand

In sales where ABM is typically used, buying decisions are generally made by numerous individuals within a company. ABM helps establish a relationship with each potential buyer and engages them in the purchase decision.

At the expand stage, creating unique, company-specific content that interests each potential buyer within the organization is important. Whether your product is for marketers, operations leaders, or anyone else, ensuring that you identify and engage with everyone in the buying decision is crucial to winning a customer.

Consider the challenges each of your stakeholders faces in order to create compelling content. For example, Finance may be concerned with pricing, while Operations might be focused on user access, ease of use, and security. With this context, you can create targeted content and interactions that match each individual's concerns and challenges.

3. Engage

Here’s where sales and marketing come together and join the party to engage with stakeholders across various channels. For example, if one of your stakeholders prefers email, then equipping salespeople to reach out to that person with a helpful and relevant message can get a conversation started. This stage is largely about developing relationships with and getting to know all the buyers who will make the final decision.

4. Advocate

Next, you want to nurture bonds with a few stakeholders who can serve as advocates within the organization. The modern buyer can tune out information they don’t want to hear. So it’s up to both marketing and sales here to provide value — and talk about the product when and where necessary.

5. Measure

Finally, reporting at the account level can give you data on what's working, what's not, and how to improve over time. With HubSpot ABM software, you can report on company growth, revenue, job titles, engagement levels, and much more — all at the account level.

For more information about how to align ABM with inbound, as well as some tactics for stellar account-based marketing tactics, be sure to check out this ultimate guide.

If you're a company that sells into a smaller addressable market and has its sights on a handful of highly critical accounts, you can learn more about building an ABM strategy without abandoning your inbound philosophy in this webinar.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Account-Based Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing: What's the Difference? was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

The Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Imagine a world where you could start the sales process by selling directly to your best-fit, highest-value accounts. No wasted time working to market and sell to unqualified leads who aren’t the right fit for your business. Meaning, you could move straight into the phases of engaging and delighting your target accounts.

Talk about efficiency, right?

With account-based marketing, all of this is made possible. The process allows you to align your marketing and sales teams from the get-go to promote long-term business growth, delight customers, and boost revenue.

This guide is here to help you make it happen. Let’s dive in.

Account-based marketing allows you to weed out less-valuable companies early on and ensure Marketing and Sales are in complete alignment — in return, your team can leap into the critical processes of engaging and delighting those accounts much faster.

ABM helps your business work and communicate with high-value accounts as if they’re individual markets. By doing this — along with personalizing the buyer’s journey and tailoring all communications, content, and campaigns to those specific accounts — you'll see greater ROI and a boost in customer loyalty.

Before we take a look at additional benefits of account-based marketing and specific tactics you can implement at your company, let’s review its relationship with another important strategy: inbound marketing.

Often, these strategies are thought of as entirely different entities. However, they can be quite complementary.

Account-Based Marketing And Inbound Marketing

Batman and Robin. LeBron and D-Wade. Peanut butter and jelly. Arguably some of the strongest partnerships ever to exist 💪. These dynamic duos are forces to be reckoned with when they work together.

Similarly, when paired, account-based marketing and inbound marketing have the power to make waves (the good ones) for your business.

You might be wondering, “How exactly does this partnership work?”

Well, we just reviewed the definition of account-based marketing — as you learned, ABM is a highly-targeted strategy.

Meanwhile, inbound marketing is more foundational — the methodology and growth strategy allows you to attract customers through the creation of valuable content, SEO, and a delightful customer experience.

Rather than interrupting your target audience and customers (as you would with outbound marketing), inbound marketing allows you to more organically provide your audience with the information they want when they want it. Inbound lays the foundation for a strong ABM strategy by allowing for highly-targeted and efficient resource allocation of high-value accounts.

Here are a few more reasons to implement both ABM and inbound marketing:

• Inbound marketing helps you attract target accounts and ABM then accelerates the flywheel so you can win and delight those target accounts with a remarkable customer experience (and as a result, you’ll grow better).
• 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.
• With this combined approach, you attract a broader group of prospects than you would while using just one method and catch any opportunities the other strategy may have missed.
• Your content has a two-for-one value — you can create and use content that serves both an ABM and inbound strategy (e.g. create a personalized case study for a target account that you also share on your website).
• Software options, like HubSpot’s account-based marketing software, are available and make it easy to implement ABM and inbound strategies in a complementary way.

🧡TLDR: Combine ABM and inbound marketing to grow better.

Next, we’ll take a look at some of the definable benefits of account-based marketing.

There are a number of benefits associated with account-based marketing. We've compiled the following list of commonly-noted results that positively impact (all types of) businesses.

1. Keep Marketing and Sales aligned.

Cross-team collaboration and improved communication across any organization are beneficial to growth. In terms of account-based marketing, this transparency and alignment will ensure your marketing and sales teams are focused on the same goals, stick to the mutually-agreed-upon budget, and understand the specific roles of each internal stakeholder.

This alignment helps ensure all communications, interactions, and content (and more) are consistent for the accounts you work with. Meaning, no matter how long an account works with your company, your team members can pick up where others left off at any point in time without question — this creates a seamless and delightful customer experience.

🧡The easiest way to maintain internal account-based marketing alignment is with the help of software, like HubSpot, which makes connecting your marketing and sales teams exceptionally easy.

2. Maximize your business’s relevance among high-value accounts.

Account-based marketing requires you to personalize everything (e.g. content, product information, communications, and campaigns) for each account you invest your resources in. Through this personalization and customization, your relevance among these accounts is maximized.

That’s because your content and interactions are tailored in a way that shows them how your specific products, services, offerings, and team are what they need to solve their challenges and to grow better. Meaning, ABM allows you to angle your business in a way that makes it the most-relevant and ideal option for your target accounts.

3. Deliver consistent customer experiences.

As mentioned, account-based marketing requires you to deliver consistent experiences for your accounts — this plays a major role in your success. A large part of the reason for this is because ABM is a long process that often lasts several months or years.

So, for your ABM efforts to be remarkable, you must maintain a long-term sense of delight among your accounts. This is how you’ll make each account feel as though they’re your business’s market of one — and why would they ever want to stop doing business with you if that’s their experience?

Delivering these long-term, consistent experiences may seem a bit daunting. Although this is understandable, the good news is that ABM is a process that naturally encourages you to do so.

Think about it this way: We already discussed the way ABM requires Marketing and Sales to be aligned on all things related to each account (e.g. their goals, budget, unique needs, members of their team and buying committee).

When there’s a universal understanding of these factors within your organization, Marketing and Sales (and anyone else involved) will be able to effectively and naturally deliver that feeling of consistency through everything they communicate and share with each account (e.g. personalized content, targeted campaigns, pricing and product information, and more).

4. Measure your return on investment.

With account-based marketing, you can easily measure return on investment (ROI) for each account you invest your resources and time into. This is beneficial because you can confirm whether certain accounts you invested in were ideal for your business.

Then, you can nurture and delight those accounts long term as well as identify and target similar accounts in the future. If your ROI proves your ABM tactics worked, use those results as a motivator to drive your strategy forward as well as one you can count on to continually improve your bottom line.

5. Streamline the sales cycle.

Depending on your business, industry, and resources, the sales cycle typically looks something like this:

1) Prospect → 2) Connect → 3) Research → 4) Present → 5) Close → 6) Delight

With account-based marketing, this cycle is streamlined — by focusing your efforts on specific high-value target accounts, you save time and resources, and spend more time on the stages of the cycle that positively impact your bottom line:

1) Identify Target Accounts → 2) Present to Target Accounts → 3) Close Target Accounts → 4) Delight Accounts

ABM streamlines your sales cycle by helping you stay efficient. Rather than experimenting with different tactics to prospect and qualify a large pool of leads, ABM ensures your target accounts are ideal for your business so you can quickly dive into building relationships.

The sales cycle stage of closing is also streamlined through ABM. That’s because your chances of converting accounts and retaining them long term increase thanks to marketing and sales alignment, consistent customer experiences, and personalization.

6. Expand business through account relationships.

The saying "quality over quantity” applies to account-based marketing. The process requires you to invest significant time and resources in engaging and delighting a group of carefully-chosen, high-value accounts, versus trying to quickly close deals with less-qualified leads who may not be the best fit for your company in the long run.

By taking the time to build these trusting relationships with accounts, you’ll expand business by retaining those valuable customers longer. And considering it costs more to obtain customers than retain them, this will positively impact your bottom line.

Additionally, as a result of personalized, thoughtful, and consistent customer experiences, accounts will become loyal to your business over time — and loyal customers become your best marketers, promoters, and brand advocates.

In other words, your accounts will help you expand your business among their networks (e.g. partners, customers) through referrals, word-of-mouth marketing, testimonials, and more.

Now let’s cover some account-based marketing tactics you can apply to your strategy to improve the likelihood of success.

ABM tactics are the building blocks of your strategy — so, work through the following list to ensure your ABM efforts and investment are successful.

1. Secure organizational ABM alignment.

One of the most important account-based marketing tactics is arguably one of the most straightforward: Secure organizational ABM alignment.

This means getting all internal stakeholders on board with the various factors related to your account-based marketing strategy. In doing so, it’ll be easier for your business to create consistent experiences for accounts and make sure your strategy is as efficient and streamlined as possible.

For example, your VP of Marketing and VP of Sales should secure organizational alignment and spread awareness regarding:

• Marketing and sales team members who are directly involved in the strategy
• Account buying committee members and any other account stakeholders
• Your business’s point-of-difference for each target account
• ABM budget and resources
• ABM goals and KPIs
  
  

2. Build your ABM team.

Similar to the first tactic we reviewed above, VPs of Marketing and Sales will also likely be leaders in the discussion regarding how you’ll build your ABM team.

They, along with managers on their respective teams, will need to identify a minimum of one marketer and one sales rep who will be completely dedicated to the accounts you work with.

These people will create and publish content for accounts as well as work to manage and close business deals with each account’s buying committee. (As a rule of thumb, try to limit your team size to no more than ten sales reps and one marketer.)

In addition to the marketer(s) and sales rep(s), don’t forget to identify any other internal key players — such as customer success reps — who should be aware of and aligned on your ABM strategy.

3. Identify and pick your ideal set of target accounts.

Identify and pick your ideal set of high-value target accounts to invest your time and resources in.

Here are some recommendations on how you can do this:

• Set search alerts for your ideal customer profile on LinkedIn.
• Create a workflow that filters incoming qualified leads based on specific criteria (e.g. company size, industry, etc.) and tags them as an ideal customer type in your CRM.
• Ask, “If we could replicate one deal from last year, what would it be?” Then, use the characteristics of that deal (e.g. industry, company size, value) to help you identify other good-fit customers.
• Pick target accounts based on a particular industry or geographical location.
• Review major companies and leads who are using and engaging with your inbound content but don’t have a deal attached (yet!).
• Identify the lighthouse accounts you could use for reference.
• Stick to no more than 10 accounts per sales rep.
  
  

4. Encourage Marketing and Sales to create account plans together.

Throughout this guide, you’ve probably picked up on the fact account-based marketing is a team effort. That’s why ensuring appropriate marketing and sales team members are involved in account planning is so important.

Make sure Marketing and Sales ask the following questions while they work on account plans:

• Who will we need to know at each account (e.g. buying committee members and account stakeholders)?
• What content will we need to attract and engage account buying committee members (and any other stakeholders)?
• Which channels will we use to share content with the right people at each account?
• How will we (marketers and sales reps) provide the right type of support throughout each stage of the strategy and sales process — in other words, how will sales help at the outset and how will marketing support in the later stages?

🧡Store your account plans as pinned notes in your HubSpot CRM, Google Docs, Asana Boards, pinned messages in Slack, and more to allow for easy access and collaboration.

Here are a few other tips Marketing and Sales can use to make your account plans successful:

• Ensure Marketing and Sales align on your product or service’s value proposition and point-of-difference for every account.
• Create personalized content — or update existing content — so it’s tailored to each unique account.
• Customize your allocated resources and budget for each account.
  
  

5. Attract contacts from high-quality accounts.

Next, you’ll want to attract the buying committee members and stakeholders of your target accounts. Depending on how long you’ve been in business and any previous ABM work you’ve done, you may or may not already have contacts for specific accounts.

The key to successfully attracting high-quality accounts is to personalize content to those accounts — this will help you elevate brand awareness and maximize relevance among audience members.

Here are some GDPR-compliant recommendations for attracting high-quality accounts:

• Engage accounts on social media (e.g. determine which platforms they’re on, join the groups they’re in, contribute to conversations they're a part of, and share helpful and relevant content you’ve created).
• Produce a podcast or video series and invite a leader from the account to be a special guest.
• Sponsor a booth at a target account’s conference or event.
• Send direct messages via social media and direct mail via email or post.
• Communicate through LinkedIn InMail outreach (do this simply and without ever leaving HubSpot with the LinkedIn integration).
• Build custom landing pages tailored to the needs, questions, and concerns of accounts.
• Offer gifts for engagement and interaction (e.g. prizes, swag, and discount codes).
• Distribute content such as blog articles across channels that are relevant to each account (e.g. website, social media, and magazines).
• Create ad campaigns and social ads to target different factors such as location, skill, and job title.
• Ask current contacts, accounts, and customers for referrals.
• Invite contacts to (physical or digital) events and ask attendees to invite their colleagues.
  
  

6. Forge strong relationships with the account’s buying committee.

Once you’ve attracted high-value accounts, it’s time to forge strong relationships with their buying committees. This is something your team will likely work on over an extended period of time — in fact, it often takes months and even years to develop these bonds. Think of this tactic as one tied to delighting your accounts — you never stop the process of delight.

Here are some thoughts on how you can forge strong, long-lasting relationships with an account’s buying committee.

• Provide education around the value your business — and your product/ service — brings accounts through tailored interactions and engagement.
• Create and share personalized content, such as case studies, to prove the ways you’ll exceed expectations and resolve the challenges of each account.
• Communicate one-on-one when possible to make buying committee members feel like they’re your only priority.
• Host events with and for account members (e.g. dinner) so they get to know your brand and team on a personal level.
• Stick to organized, well-timed meetings.
• Use email sequencing to enhance all communication, be professional, and maintain consistency.

🧡HubSpot's ABM Software Target Accounts Home and Account Overview features will help you forge these strong relationships. 

Learn how to showcase your company's success using compelling case studies with a free case study creation kit.

7. Measure and analyze your ABM results (and make necessary iterations).

While working through and upon completion of the tactics above, it’s crucial you monitor your success. By reviewing and analyzing your ABM results, you’ll identify any gaps or parts of your strategy that need to be changed. This will allow you to make your strategy more effective for your business, marketing and sales teams, and accounts.

Here are some examples of common account-based marketing KPIs that provide insight into how you’re doing:

• Deal creation
• Account penetration (net new contacts added to an account)
• Account engagement
• Deal-to-close time
• Net-new revenue
• Percent of deals closed

🧡For support with your analysis, enlist the help of HubSpot's library of 12+ ABM reports and pre-built ABM reporting dashboard to gain valuable insight into how to modify your ABM strategy for greater success.

Grow Better With Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By working through the tactics we’ve listed above and implementing software — such as HubSpot’s ABM software — for your marketing and sales team to use together, you’ll identify valuable accounts more efficiently, reduce any friction impacting your flywheel, and grow better.

The Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM) was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

15 of the Best Account-based Marketing Software for 2020

Are you in the market for your new account-based marketing (ABM) software?

If so, then you've come to the right place.

Account-based marketing means catering your message to the top decision-makers for target accounts with a blend of marketing of sales tactics — it's a strategy that targets companies, rather than individual customers.

As HubSpot's Senior Manager (Accelerated Leadership Program), Ryan Batter states, "The beauty of using an ABM strategy is that it’s customizable to a team’s readiness and budget. Look for a CRM that enables strong integrations to ABM-specific tools to customize your strategy."

With that in mind, let's look at account-based marketing software.

1. HubSpot ABM Software

HubSpot's ABM software lets you carry out a fully-fledged campaign right in your CRM. When using it, you can make an ideal customer profile, or ICP. This ICP will help HubSpot automatically tier prospects based on how good of a match they are to your profile.

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Additionally, you can import a spreadsheet of your target accounts. This can also be done manually.

HubSpot's software helps you identify challenges of prospects so you can personalize specific marketing messages to attract them. You can also use Marketing Hub tools, such as ads, web pages, and social media posts, to market to your customers and make your campaign successful.

2. Terminus

Terminus is a platform that offers full-service ABM software. It helps you build account lists equipped with the data you need to personalize your strategies.

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With Terminus, you can find accounts where they are and run campaigns that target them directly. For instance, you can manage retargeting, automation, and email campaigns within the software and access performance metrics of those campaigns. Analyzing these metrics will give you a better understanding of how to better target accounts.

3. Demandbase

Users of Demandbase's software experience ABM programs throughout the entire customer journey. The platform allows users to scale their efforts with accounts, rather than using a bunch of confusing point solutions.

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Demandbase was built with B2B marketing in mind and offers a user-friendly interface. Within the platform, you will find solutions for engagement and conversion. These help you identify potential accounts, personalize your strategy, and experiment with new ways to close deals.

4. Triblio

Triblio is an ABM platform that specializes in the growth of account pipelines. Users can leverage ads, analytics, web, and sales tools to help them execute a carefully constructed strategy to attract accounts.

Additionally, users can find out when the best time to reach an account is based on the platform's ability to analyze the web behavior of industries — all from their dashboard.

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With the software's one-to-one account marketing setup, you'll be able to target larger accounts and cater to their challenges directly, right from your dashboard. Triblio also offers a guide for ABM — think of it as a crash course — that teaches you how to use the software for your business.

5. 6Sense

This platform focuses on providing its users with the intent of accounts. It provides users with the capabilities needed to engage with customers. With their service, you can collect insights about an account’s challenges and market to them in a way that provides immediate impact.

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With the engagement platform, you can align your sales and marketing strategies together using data. You'll be able to use the data provided about accounts to prioritize your strategy and engage customers based on their unique interests. With this setup, you can deliver consistent experiences that scale with your customer's journey.

6. Engagio

With Engagio, B2B marketers can provide a personalized approach to engagement for accounts. This is done by using the platform's tools for sales insights, multi-channel creation, and analytics that cover the entire buyer's journey.

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Engagio's users are able to unify data from their accounts onto one platform, making easier and more accurate analysis possible. With that data, you can accurately align your sales and marketing strategies, highlight areas to focus on, and execute those strategies.

7. LeanData

LeanData's software is focused on providing its users with the data they need to connect with accounts accurately. You can use the software to align marketing and sales goals, as well as align revenue operations.

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If you want to unify the data and processes you use across your go-to-market (GTM) teams, LeanData is a great software option. You'll be able to build a GTM plan, execute it, and access performance analytics with the software.

8. Bound

This platform is intuitive and is built to provide marketers with the tools needed to personalize account-based strategy. With Bound, you can build audiences, create dynamic content, and measure the success of campaigns.

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Bound lets users analyze the web behavior of accounts and build audience segments based on that data. They can also choose how to target those segments using software offerings like email and copy templates. Finally, users can see how their segments are performing and adjust their personalization strategy as needed to best reach accounts.

9. Zymplify

If you want to find prospective accounts and nurture those leads, Zymplify lets you do that on one platform. It offers automated lead qualification tools, so you can turn prospects into customers.

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Their scale-based services let you cater to customers throughout their entire buyer's journey. Automated services, such as demand generation, prospect identification, sales, and reporting, saves marketers time when creating strategy.

10. MadisonLogic

MadisonLogic is a platform that offers tools for ABM advertising and content syndication. With the software, you can also accelerate your accounts' customer journey, access insights about campaign performance, and offer a formatted content marketing package.

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This software lets you engage with relevant advertising content, and syndicate that content across multiple channels. That way, you can easily find new and relevant contacts. With their content marketing formats, you can engage with your contacts in a highly stylized and compelling fashion.

11. ActiveDemand

If you work for an agency, ActiveDemand is a great option to look into. It offers services specifically for agencies or marketers to execute their ABM campaigns.

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ActiveDemand's software lets you engage accounts by delivering campaigns that are relevant and valuable to the challenges of prospects. It allows agencies and small businesses to execute campaigns by offering a full-service suite of tools. For instance, this software provides email marketing, content creation, reporting, and form building.

12. Vainu

Vainu is a platform that focuses on personalizing the interactions you make with accounts. Users are able to spot who is interacting with your content and why, so you can accurately enrich those leads. So, if conversion is one of your big goals for ABM, this might be a good choice.

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The platform aims to help its users find ideal potential accounts, know when to reach out to them, and how to send the message that will catch their attention. It offers synchronization features, such as company contacts, build customer lists, and provides ROI analytics based on sales functions.

13. Leadiro

Leadiro is a B2B customer data platform that helps businesses connect directly to the key decision makers at companies. The software uses demographic profiles to help its users identify their ideal customers, and it offers segmentation tools to organize those prospects into lists, like what's shown below:

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This platform is extremely helpful for targeting because you can choose specific geographic regions in which to find prospects. If you want to generate more leads globally, this software is a good option. Leadiro also integrates with HubSpot, so customers of both can sync their data.

14. AdDaptive Intelligence

With this service, users can target, engage, analyze, and optimize their account-based marketing campaigns. Its main focus is to provide its users with the tools to connect with high-value decision makers for B2B accounts.

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AdDaptive's software lets you boost your advertising messages to the right business audiences to help you maximize ROI. It also has the capabilities to target customers, analyze advertising analytics, and optimize your future campaigns.

15. RollWorks

RollWorks is a software that helps you drive demand, run digital ad campaigns, and automate sales functions, such as customer outreach. Its software is based around turning target accounts into customers by using machine learning and data. This helps users identify ideal customers and engage them across multiple channels.

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The software lets you create an ideal customer profile so you can begin to find key contacts. You can also run cross-channel campaigns with the platform, and run digital ads through it. From those campaigns, RollWorks will analyze their performance and provide you with key metrics about their impact.

Batter states, "As teams increase commitment and budget to ABM, it likely makes sense to complement a CRM with more focused tools that can provide deeper sophistication in a certain category - ads targeting, company enrichment, intent data, events management."

As your business grows, so will the tools you will need for account-based marketing. So, when you're picking software, make sure it's scalable, and can grow with you.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

15 of the Best Account-based Marketing Software for 2020 was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

36 Account-Based Marketing Stats to Know in 2020

As marketers, we've become experts in our target audiences. We know their typical demographic, what they like, the platforms they spend time on, and what they value in a product.

But unlike sales reps — who talk to and learn from our biggest prospects each day — we don't always know tiny, but crucial, details about the brands or people we most want to sell too. This might be why only 28% of salespeople say marketing is their best source of leads.

So, how do we bridge the gap to better help our sales teams sell to high-priority clients? The answer to this question could be account-based marketing (or ABM).

Rather than just marketing to a broad target audience and hoping someone calls your sales reps, ABM is a strategy where sales and marketing teams align from the start to create campaigns that cater to their most qualified leads and current customers.

For example, as part of an ABM strategy, sales reps might offer marketing teams data from customers, prospects, and those that didn't buy a product so that the marketers can create a targeted campaign that amplifies why their product is valuable and how it can help targets navigate daily pain points.

While inbound marketing is vital for pulling general audiences and demographics to your site, service, or store, account-based marketing can help you to reel in prospects or qualified leads that are most likely to buy your product.

To show you just how beneficial account-based marketing can be, while also informing you of the challenges it comes with, here are 36 stats you should know in 2020.

36 Account-Based Marketing Stats to Know in 2020

General ABM Stats

• 67% of brands leverage account-based marketing. (HubSpot)
• “Researching Accounts” and “Identifying Target Contacts” are the top two tactics used by marketers within an ABM model. (HubSpot)
• Just one year ago, the top five account-based tactics were sales development rep outreach, digital advertising, direct mail, marketing email, and events. (TOPO)
• Additionally, marketers strongly agree that personalized content (56%) and advanced data management (43%) are keys to ABM's success. (Forrester)
• Most organizations intentionally only pursue 38% of their target accounts at one time. (TOPO)
• By 2019, 55% of marketers rated their ABM strategy as “established” compared to just 43% in 2018. (Forrester)
• Companies dedicated 29% of their marketing budgets to ABM in 2019. (Engagio)
• It's estimated that ABM budgets saw an average increase of 41% in 2019. (TOPO)
• 57% of professionals say their companies target 1,000 accounts or under with ABM. (TOPO)

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• At the beginning of 2018, only 18% of adopters had two years of experience in account-based marketing. (TOPO)
• In 2018, 18% of account-based programs were run against current customers (larger organizations with more than $1 billion in revenue ran about 50% of these programs. (TOPO)
• The most common metric marketers use to track ABM is revenue won. (HubSpot)
• Two other metrics marketers most commonly track to measure ABM efforts are the number of pipelines created and account engagement. (Engagio)
• In 2019, 7% of marketers reported a decrease in dedicated headcount for ABM teams, showing that this strategy is going mainstream and being implemented within regular processes. (Forrester)
• In 2019, 40% of the average marketing team was dedicated to ABM. (Engagio)
• 57% of marketers say their organizations have implemented ABM for more than one year. (TOPO)

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Benefits and Challenges of ABM

• Marketing and sales teams that take an ABM approach together can be up to six percent more likely to exceed their revenue goals than teams less ABM-advanced. (Forrester)
• 62% of marketers say they can measure a positive impact since adopting ABM. (Forrester)
• 80% of marketers say ABM improves customer lifetime values, while 86% say it improves win rates. (TOPO)
• 87% of account-based marketers say that ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments. (ITSMA)
• One in five accounts targeted through ABM becomes considered a qualified sales opportunity. (TOPO)
• Organizations with a strong Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) — which is similar to a buyer persona — achieve 68% higher account win rates. (TOPO)
• More than two-thirds (69%) of top-performing account-based organizations now have a dedicated account based leader. (TOPO)
• 70% of companies that started account-based initiatives in the first six months of 2019 have dedicated ABM leaders. (TOPO)
• 42% of companies that missed their account-based objectives don't have dedicated leadership. (TOPO)
• The most common challenge with ABM is delivering a personalized experience. (HubSpot)
• The top three challenges of implementing ABM are creating a scalable strategy for multiple accounts, producing customized content, and coordinating programs across marketing, sales development, and sales teams. (TOPO)

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ABM Technology

• By 2021, over half of all sales phone calls will be analyzed by software. (TOPO)
• The conversational intelligence market was estimated to grow by 3x in 2019. (TOPO)
• Voice assistants will account for at least half of automated data entry by mid-2020. (TOPO)
• An estimated 55% of sales data entry was eliminated by automation by 2020. (TOPO)

Smarketing Benefits and Challenges

• Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing teams experience 36% higher customer retention rates. (MarketingProfs)
• The most common measurement of success for content marketing programs is Total Sales. (HubSpot)
• 85% of marketers with an SLA think their marketing strategy is effective. (HubSpot)
• Only 7% of salespeople said leads they received from marketing were very high quality. (HubSpot)
• Only 28% of salespeople said marketing was their best source of leads (HubSpot)

Create an Effective ABM Strategy

As a marketer, it's important to know what makes ABM techniques successful and how they differ from other target audience marketing tactics.

Additionally, you'll want to learn about the companies you're interested in marketing to, similar to how you learn about a target audience. For example, before creating an ABM campaign, you'll want to learn about the pain points of companies in your industry, company missions, and what their top decision-makers value in a product or service.

Once you discover valuable data about the accounts you'd like to market to and feel ready to create a campaign, check out our Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

36 Account-Based Marketing Stats to Know in 2020 was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns