HubSpot Target Accounts is the built-in account-based marketing (ABM) tool that lets sales and marketing teams agree on a list of high-priority companies, then coordinate outreach around each one. This guide walks through how to enable it and use it to run a focused ABM programme in your HubSpot portal.
Target Accounts requires Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise, or Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise. Check Settings > Account Defaults > Sales to confirm the features are active on your portal before you start.
Open the Companies index and use Bulk Actions to mark prioritised accounts as Target Accounts. You can also toggle the Target Account switch directly on any individual company record.
HubSpot supports three ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) tiers ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 3. Assign Tier 1 to your highest-priority accounts. Tier 3 covers accounts that fit your profile but rank lower. This lets reps filter by tier and prioritise outreach without maintaining a separate list.
For each contact associated with a target account, fill in the Buying Role property. HubSpot provides preset roles such as Decision Maker or Champion. Pick the one that best describes this contact’s influence in the buying process.
The HubSpot Prospecting Workspace shows your target account list alongside recent engagement signals. Reps can log calls and enrol contacts into sequences from a single view without switching between tools.
In Marketing Hub, sync your Target Accounts list to LinkedIn Ads to serve content specifically to people at those companies. This keeps your brand visible to the buying team while sales works the relationship directly.
What is HubSpot Target Accounts?
Target Accounts is HubSpot’s built-in ABM module. It sits inside the Companies object and gives sales and marketing a shared view of which organisations to focus on. ABM starts with a list of companies already deemed worth concentrated effort. The approach then works backwards to identify contacts at those companies and coordinate outreach across channels.
For B2B teams in Southeast Asia that sell into mid-market or enterprise accounts, this is particularly useful. Long sales cycles typically involve several stakeholders. Without a shared account list in the CRM, different team members may unknowingly duplicate effort.
Who should use Target Accounts?
Target Accounts is most effective for B2B companies with higher average deal sizes that justify high-touch outreach. If you sell to named accounts with a sales cycle of several weeks or more, the feature gives you the structure to stay organised. It also suits teams that want to align LinkedIn or Google ad spend with sales prospecting rather than running those activities independently.
If your team mostly handles inbound volume at lower deal values, the standard contacts pipeline will likely serve you without the extra overhead of maintaining an account-tier structure.
How do you keep a target account list from going stale?
A common mistake is adding accounts once and never revisiting them. A quarterly review works well: add new accounts that fit your ICP and remove companies where engagement has been flat for two quarters. Update ICP tiers as deals progress. If every company in your CRM ends up flagged as a target account, the designation loses its meaning. The value of ABM comes from focus, not from the size of the list.
Can you run sequences directly from Target Accounts?
Yes. Once a contact at a target account is in your CRM with a buying role assigned, you can enrol them into a HubSpot sequence directly from the Prospecting Workspace. This is one of the practical advantages of running ABM inside HubSpot: the prospecting tool and the outreach tool sit on the same platform, so reps do not need to move data between systems to act on their account list.
A common approach is to create a short, personalised Tier 1 sequence with four to six touch points and a lighter Tier 2 sequence for accounts that rank lower on the priority list.
How does HubSpot surface account engagement signals?
HubSpot shows engagement signals per account based on website visits (if tracking is installed), email opens, and LinkedIn ad interactions synced through the ads tool. You can build a custom report filtered by the Is Target Account property and sorted by a calculated engagement score to rank accounts by activity over any rolling period.
For teams that want more structure, setting up a custom numeric property called Account Engagement Score and populating it with a workflow that increments on specific actions gives you a sortable prioritisation tool that does not require manual review each week.
How do you report on target account performance?
HubSpot includes pre-built ABM reports under Reports > Reports Library > Account-Based Marketing. These cover account engagement by tier and contact coverage (how many contacts you have identified at each account), alongside the proportion of accounts with an open deal. Add these to a dashboard alongside your standard pipeline view for a complete picture of how your ABM effort is progressing.
What is the difference between ICP tier and lead score?
ICP tier is a company-level property that rates how well an account fits your ideal customer profile before you have established a relationship. It is set manually or by workflow based on firmographic criteria like industry or company size. Lead score tracks individual contact behaviour over time and rises as a person engages with your content. The two work together: ICP tier tells you which companies to focus on, while lead score tells you which contacts at those companies are warming up. See the HubSpot lead scoring guide for how to set this up.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need both Sales Hub and Marketing Hub?
No. You need at least one hub at Professional or Enterprise tier: either Sales Hub or Marketing Hub. Having both unlocks the full feature set including ad synchronisation, but either hub alone covers the core account list and buying role functionality.
Can I import target accounts from a spreadsheet?
Yes. Import via Contacts > Import, mapping rows to the Companies object. Once companies are in HubSpot, bulk-set the Is Target Account property using a list view action or a workflow trigger.
Does this work with LINE-based outreach in Southeast Asia?
The account list and buying role features work independently of your outreach channel. If you are using HubSpot with a LINE integration, you can still log LINE conversations against the relevant company and contact records. The account list remains your central prioritisation tool regardless of which channel you use for outreach.
How many target accounts is a reasonable starting point?
Most teams start with 50 to 150 Tier 1 accounts, adjusted for headcount and deal volume. Starting smaller and curating carefully tends to produce better results than importing a large list and letting it grow without review.
An independent informational resource produced by a HubSpot Platinum Partner. HubSpot is a trademark of HubSpot, Inc.
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