B2B marketers have developed three distinct types of ABM and companies are working to develop programs and competencies in all three types. Ideally, the different types align directly to growth potential and sales coverage for different types and tiers of existing customers and prospects.
A dedicated, senior-level marketer works in full partnership with the account team to create a highly customized marketing programs for “markets of one.”
Takes the research-based principles of One-to-One and applies them to larger target audiences made up of groups of accounts. This approach typically brings together clusters of 5-15 accounts with similar business issues, often in the same industry.
Emphasizes personalization at scale. This approach typically addresses a strategically curated target account list of several hundred (or more) named accounts. In order to achieve this level of scale, technology needs to play an important role.
The good news? You don’t have to choose. The highest-performing companies implement a blended approach—and benefit from an optimal balance between breadth and depth.
Few, if any, companies can afford to provide true One-to-One ABM to even a fraction of their individual accounts. But most companies have at least a handful of absolutely critical high-value accounts. Relying on a One-to-Few or One-to-Many approach, without doing One-to-One for those key accounts, could mean missing a great deal of opportunity or risking future revenue, by failing to deliver an appropriately customized experience.
Read more about blended ABM in Raising the Game in B2B Marketing: 2018 ABM Benchmarking Study >
“Driving an account-first approach to marketing has been a fundamental game changer with Sales. My team is able to show tangible marketing impact in the accounts that matter to Sales and provide actionable insights on where to dial up marketing investment. It’s no longer a question of “what has marketing done for me lately?” but more “how can marketing do even more of these things to help my sales team exceed their quota?”
Most marketers understand the importance of focusing on accounts but struggle to implement and get buy-in for their program. Sound familiar? We recommend starting with the fundamentals and then moving forward from there.
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Been doing Account-Based Marketing for a bit and have a formalized plan in place where you’re executing against a target account list for your outbound and inbound marketing efforts? Take your marketing strategy to the next level by investing in new technology to automate and scale your ABM efforts.
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The fast way to dive deep into Account-Based Marketing. Get the hands-on knowledge to really make ABM work for you, your team, and your organization– whether you’re a novice or an experienced ABM practitioner. If you’re looking to get up-to-speed on best practices in ABM quickly, this is where you’ll get what you need.
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Account-Based Marketing is a collaborative endeavor between Sales and Marketing. Shifting the focus to customer accounts, rather than individuals, bridges the gap by focusing everyone on a list of target companies.
While “spray and pray” campaigns may work for B2C, they aren’t as effective for B2B’s limited number of potential Buyers. With ABM, you spend your time, and money, on the key accounts and decision makers that matter most.
Implementing an ABM program requires shifting away from traditional lead generation metrics and focusing on account-specific data. Measuring by accounts makes you an active owner of the revenue chain, moving from inquiries and click-through rates to pipeline and close rates.
With an ABM approach, you can identify the company an unknown visitor is coming from. With this investment in the right tech, you can focus on the visitors that matter the most.
ABM campaigns let you be hyper-targeted towards your account list, which ensures that the leads generated are of the highest quality.
With ABM, you speak directly to stakeholders at specific companies, giving them relevant messages at the right moment to keep them moving through the funnel. Account-Based Marketing also plays an integral role in customer retention and cross-sell and upsell.
Account-Based Marketing efforts looks different from company-to-company (and from person-to-person). Watch as the Demandbase team shares their real experiences with ABM.
With account-based identification technology, you can identify the high-value accounts most likely to buy based on a variety of signals that go beyond traditional firmographic data such as product usage, business fit, culture, budget, interests, investments and a network of business relationships.
Reach your target accounts and the right internal stakeholders wherever they are online. Drive interest with personalized messages and focused advertising that speaks to their specific pain points and solution needs.
Personalize content and calls-to-action with relevant messaging and imagery for your target segments.
Execute an ABM strategy directly in your Marketing Automation System to run account-based marketing campaigns, all while driving better quality leads with shortened forms.
Discover the right individuals to contact within your target accounts and gather insights to personalize outreach and maximize the quality of your conversations.
Discover the right individuals to contact within your target accounts and gather insights to personalize outreach and maximize the quality of your conversations.
ABM can be applied to every part of your marketing mix. The result? More efficient and higher performing channels.
Display advertising is often thought of as a top-of-the-funnel tactic, focused on driving awareness and generating a large number of leads. Under an ABM umbrella, campaigns become more strategic, zeroing in on specific accounts to increase impact and reduce spend.
ABM the channel by purchasing ads just for your target account segments with personalized messaging. Measure whether each campaign resulted in lift to your website and engagement from those key accounts. Consider measuring “cost per engaged account” to determine the effectiveness of your ABM ad budget.
Your website is one of your most important channels. Delivering a one-size-fits-all experience means you’re missing out on some of your biggest potential sales. In an ABM world, you can identify the accounts visiting your site and tailor the site—nearly every single word, if you choose to—to their needs.
ABM the channel by incorporating your target segments for analytics and user experience. Add them to your analytics to isolate high-value visitors and study their behavior, engagement, and conversion patterns. Optimize their experience with segment-based personalization driving quickly to relevant content. Start by tweaking existing content and messaging while you build out a library of custom-made assets.
These channels cast a wide net and fill your funnel, but adopting an account-based strategy has gets more high-quality leads to your sales team faster. The end result: fewer, higher-value events and increased ROI.
ABM the channel by evaluating events and webinar opportunities which have a high crossover of attendees from your target accounts. (TIP: If you’re evaluating something new, ask for a previous event’s attendee list.) Make sure Sales has event leads as soon as you get them and create CRM reports showing registration of their target accounts—30% of webinar opportunities can come before the event even happens!
Just because Field Marketing is aligned with Sales doesn’t mean it’s account-focused. Plans are often derived based on Sales or regional requests rather than focusing on overall ABM strategy.
ABM the channel by mapping the locations of your target account list and using this as a way of proactively creating your strategy. Create a list of cities you can reasonably cover based on your budget and headcount and tier the list based on account density. Build programs in conjunction with Sales to help establish a consistent presence within your key cities, run programs that provide momentum and satisfy pipeline generation.
“All parts of the marketing organization have changed with our shift to ABM. The biggest has to be demand generation / growth team. They’ve gone from scale to impact, have a whole new set of stakeholders weighing in on their work, and measurement models have changed (though still based on revenue).”
Step 1: Make sure Sales understands what you’re trying to do with Account-Based Marketing. Matt Heinz, President, Heinz Marketing, provides ways you can sell-in your idea.
“Know why you’re doing it and think about the vested interest for each of the people in the organization that have to say yes to that…And start small.”
Now that everyone knows what you’re planning, it’s time to go beyond personal relationships and formalize your alignment.
“We committed to these numbers. Who’s going to do it? And where is the money going to come from? And who’s got content for this?”
Marketing and Sales go out for a beer… No, that doesn’t mean the teams are aligned. Matt reminds us that alignment must go deeper than personal relationships and shared strategies.
“It’s more than just strategic alignment on what are our objectives and who are we targeting together. You’ve got to move from a strategic alignment to operational alignment.”
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