Meet a Member: Anna Clyburn

JUST THE FACTS

• Name: Anna Clyburn
• Title: Digital Marketing Specialist
• Years of Experience: 16
• College: California University of Pennsylvania (now called PennWest), B.S. Graphic Communications Technology
• Firm: Brown Edwards
• Firm Locations: Roanoke, Virginia (headquarters), 13 locations in VA, WV, and TN
• Firm Size: 500+ employees (475 accounting professionals)
• Email: [email protected]
• Professional Memberships: AAM, BDO
• Community Involvement: Through my church, I’m involved in several community initiatives, including stockings for veterans, bags of love, and organizing kid-centered events for Halloween, Easter, and throughout the fall and summer.
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-clyburn/

 

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

What is the structure of your marketing department?

Our Chief Growth Officer oversees the Marketing & Practice Development Department. Within the department, there are five of us: Digital Marketing Specialist, Marketing Specialist, Proposal Writer, Practice Development Specialist, and Marketing Assistant.

 

This month’s issue is all about digital marketing and CRM. What digital marketing strategies have been most effective for your firm recently?

The term digital can be so broadly used in today’s world. We’ve had great success with Google digital ad campaigns to target businesses in specific industries in states where we’re looking to expand, and we’ve revamped our content marketing plan over the last two years to an omnichannel approach.

HubSpot and AI have been important tools in making this a success. Our content strategy includes more than 15 webinars per year and four industry-specific podcasts. We take this content, use AI to generate a written blog, and then use HubSpot Content Hub to create multiple pieces of content specific to our audience from that initial piece—distributed through our website, email marketing, and social media channels.

SEO isn’t dead, but it certainly isn’t what it used to be. We’ve put more emphasis on building our authority in our geographic regions and industry communities through unique content, sponsorships, editorial features, and interviews rather than simply optimizing webpages. We’ve had several leads come from AI-powered search outside our geographic footprint, which is reinforcing our efforts in that space—including a new financial institution client from Louisiana!

 

What trends in digital marketing for accounting firms do you think will matter most in 2026?

I believe that the focus for 2026 will be on AI. Whether it’s integrating it into our marketing efforts for hyper-personalized, value-driven content (especially video), evolving SEO for conversational search intent, or leveraging UGC and omnichannel experiences.

Marketers (and leaders) need to evolve beyond the standard KPIs and move towards metrics that reflect engagement and are revenue-focused.

 

How does your firm use CRM/HubSpot within its marketing and BD efforts?

HubSpot is our firm’s primary tool for marketing and BD efforts. Our marketing team utilizes it for email marketing, landing pages, blogs, podcasts, omnichannel content creation, social media scheduling/management, content calendars, and event management.

Our BD efforts include lead management, deals (proposals and deals outside of the formal RFP), and our client onboarding process. The CRM allows us to easily track all services we provide to each client, quickly develop cross-sell plans, and provide easy communication tools for our users. We also have Commerce Hub, another recent addition to our tech stack. We’re building custom templates for RFPs that don’t require heavy customization.

Our client onboarding process is new, launched at the beginning of 2026. This process ties in seamlessly with our leads and deals pipelines, ensuring our team members can quickly onboard new clients. Phase two of this project will focus on improving our CX.

 

Which HubSpot tools or automations have made the biggest difference for your team?

It’s not a specific tool or automation—it’s HubSpot’s customization capabilities combined with quality data. You can’t effectively segment lists, identify cross-sell opportunities, or develop targeted campaigns without clean, comprehensive data. I know data cleanup is time-consuming and unsexy work, but it’s foundational. My advice: go slow, write it down on paper, and have those RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) conversations before importing anything. Once your data is solid, HubSpot’s customization capabilities and automation tools become truly powerful. You go from sending one generic email blast to delivering hyper-personalized messages based on industry, service history, engagement level, and client lifecycle stage.

 

What HubSpot metrics or dashboards do you monitor most frequently?

I’ve been building several new dashboards recently to showcase what our team has been doing and the powerful insights we can provide to the firm. We monitor several things across each of the dashboards, such as website and phone lead win/loss rate by industry line, overall new revenue from website and phone leads, time in each stage of a pipeline, win/loss rates of RFPs, social media engagement, email engagement, activities by partner/team member, and new client revenue.

 

You’re speaking at the AAM Summit in May about HubSpot. What’s one insight you hope attendees will walk away with?

I’m very excited to be speaking at the AAM Summit this year. I’m very passionate about HubSpot, and I honestly think it can address 75% of the marketing/BD challenges firms face. I hope attendees walk away knowing that HubSpot is highly customizable and can become whatever you need it to be. I’m the daughter of two engineers, so I wasn’t raised to think inside the box – I was raised to disassemble the box and put it back together better than how I found it or find a new purpose for it. That’s how I see HubSpot.

 

What was the first digital tool or platform you ever used in a marketing role?

My first role in marketing was as a one-year contract as a marketing coordinator for an independent jeweler in Pittsburgh, PA. I was hired to photograph the jewelry and post the photos on the website. However, a few months into the role, my position was made permanent after I made a few marketing suggestions, and the owner realized he needed more than a photographer. My first digital tool was Constant Contact, the premier email marketing tool of the day. I began creating monthly emails to our clients that included information on that month’s birthstone, new designers we brought in, events we were hosting, and things we had on sale.

 

If HubSpot suddenly disappeared tomorrow, what tool would you run to first?

That’s a fantastic question! I’d probably need a couple of weeks to vet more tools, because I don’t think I know of one that can replace everything we use HubSpot for. It would likely require multiple tools to replace all of the features.

 

What’s one digital marketing habit you think every accounting marketer should build into their week?

The habit that I get the most value from is my weekly check-in. I check on my workflows, digital campaigns, dashboards, social media, leads, deals, and contact metrics from a high-level overview to ensure two things:

1. Things are running smoothly without errors.
2. Identify anomalies or opportunities. Examples of things I look for are an increase in deals lost in a certain industry, hang-ups in a pipeline stage, increased engagement on a social post or piece of content, or adjustments needed to a PPC campaign.

 

What have you learned the hard way?

Go slow. Sometimes when we get a new project, and we’re excited about it, we just want to jump in. I’ve learned over the years to write it out (yes, on paper) and have the RACI conversations (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) to ensure we’re considering all angles before jumping in.

 

What is a “must know” for new accounting marketers?

This industry is unique. Marketing is a new concept for many smaller firms, and you may need to prove your worth before you earn trust to start doing the bigger things. Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things.

 

What are your special skills, or what is something people may not know about you?

I’m not sure it’s a special skill, but I’m highly organized and develop processes for just about everything to help me be more efficient and effective—not just in marketing, but in my personal life as well. I’m a strategic thinker who uses attention to detail and technical expertise to generate new ways of thinking.

 

Share one marketing tip.

You’re not alone. One thing I’ve learned from AAM is that my challenges are the same as your challenges. Take advantage of the learning opportunities AAM provides—whether through conferences, resources, or connecting with peers who’ve already solved the problem you’re facing. If I could share a second tip, it would be this: look at what other firms are doing and tailor it to your own situation. Great marketing doesn’t happen inside a box.

 

What do you feel is the biggest issue facing accounting marketers today?

Differentiation in an increasingly saturated market. We all offer the same basic services—tax, A&A and advisory services—and standing out against a sea of other firms is tough. We need to focus on tactics that help us stand out and attract the right clients to grow.

 

What would you be doing if you had not become a marketer?

I had varied career inspirations growing up. In my freshman year of college, I was a social work major (that didn’t last more than one semester). I’ve always been fascinated by sociology, psychology and helping people. If I consider those factors and add in my highly organized lifestyle, I’d say I’d be in UX design or project management/operations. I don’t think those would be as fun as marketing is, though.

 

What is the biggest project you are working on right now?

My biggest project right now is customizing HubSpot to accommodate our new processes and help new users in the firm adopt it. This includes three major initiatives. First, we just launched our new client onboarding process, which we’re refining as more users come online. Second, I’m building customized RFP templates in Commerce Hub that will allow us to turn around proposals in significantly less time. Third, I’m developing our omnichannel content strategy using Content Hub to hyper-personalize content based on individual contact segments.

On the business development side, I’m managing a formal lead process where we provide MQLs to our partners and track outcomes, while also developing an ABM strategy for cross-sell opportunities. Supporting all of this is the ongoing work of data cleanup and training. With over 100 users in our HubSpot account, I meet with team members in industry groups and 1:1 sessions to train them on the specific tools that impact their niche so they can focus on what HubSpot can do for them rather than being overwhelmed by everything it can do.

 

If you had an unlimited budget, what is one thing you would implement immediately?

It may sound boring, but I’d hire two or three team members dedicated to business development efforts. This would remove a large amount of work from the partners, so they can focus only on the highest-quality leads, and from my existing team, so they can reallocate their time to other marketing initiatives we simply don’t have the bandwidth to take on currently.

 

What books or blogs have you read recently that you feel would be beneficial to other AAM members?

I’m a busy mom of two, so I don’t have much time for books right now. However, I do make time to read blogs and posts on LinkedIn and listen to podcasts when the topic interests me. Podcasts include: Marketing Against the Grain (HubSpot Media), Marketing School (NP Digital), MarTech Podcast, and The StoryBrand Podcast.

I did read StoryBrand many years ago, before I had kids, and actually attended one of the live workshops. While the process Donald Miller created is fairly basic, what I gained was a framework that non-marketers could understand. It gave me a new perspective on how to pitch my marketing campaign ideas without relying heavily on marketing lingo.

 

What blogs/people/social feeds do you subscribe to that are helpful?

• NP Digital
• HubSpot Admins
• HubSpot Tips and Tricks
• Becky Livingston
• Kyle Jepson
• Joy Youell