Defining your Account-based Marketing process

At Strategic, we have defined four-tiers of ABM to outline the different starting points that an organisation may need.

This framework covers a range of ABM maturities, from those who lack in depth account insight and are simply conducting inbound marketing (or another 'traditional' lead gen approach), to those moving from inbound to ABM activity, to those with a clearer perspective of the high-value, high-propensity accounts that their campaign needs to target.

Starting from the top of the framework:

ABM 1 to 1

The top of the framework outlines an ABM 1 to 1 approach; which selects specific individual contacts and accounts who are highly engaged / with high propensity to buy. Organisations who suit this tier already have insights at an account and contact level, so the campaign itself will highlight value by addressing the specific account/individual's challenges in specifically personalised content.

ABM Lite

The further down the framework we move, the broader the targeting focus and starting point. At an ABM Lite level, activities are still quite personalised; organisations who suit this tier will target using a defined account list and vertical focus - but may not yet have clarity on specific target individuals. The content and messaging in an ABM Lite campaign will address challenges at a vertical or industry level, but also incorporate specific account business drivers where possible.

Inbound to ABM

An Inbound to ABM campaign is almost a transitional stage, where inbound activity works to generate relevant leads and creates a nurture pool of opportunities, from which to identify high-value, high propensity accounts for ABM Lite, or ABM 1 to 1 activity. At the Inbound to ABM stage, campaigns will target at a persona challenge level, with the potential to personalise further as good-fit accounts are identified.

Inbound

At the inbound level, campaigns market to unknown accounts via organic and paid channels, without any specific account filter. Campaign content and messaging is again targeted at a persona level, using any existing customer data to inform content and messaging.

So, do you need a clearly defined list of target accounts are in order to begin ABM? No; it simply means that your ABM plan will need to start on one of the lower maturity tiers and gather the insight needed to expand into more account-targeted activity.

How to approach Account-based Marketing

Set clear campaign goals

What goals and KPIs should you set for an account-based marketing campaign? They may differ to the metrics you'd expect in a more traditional marketing strategy. For example, in other strategies, you may monitor progress by reviewing pageviews, engagement, clickthrough etc, top level KPIs etc. But for account-based marketing, measurement usually come down to quality account generation, account DMU contact increase and revenue expansion within accounts.

To succeed with ABM, you need to ensure campaigns are focussed towards securing quality account relationships, and that you are closely monitoring how effectively your team progresses with, and converts those ABM relationships - to see results. It's also crucial that your campaign sets clear success criteria. What will success look like for your campaign; quality engagement, awareness with X key accounts or otherwise? Make sure these criteria and other goals align with the overall objectives of the business.

Select the right approach

Not every organisation will be ready to jump into ABM with a clear idea of who their high propensity accounts are, or know who the individual decision makers within those accounts are.

So, it's important to spend time identifying your organisation's ABM maturity level in order to select the right programme approach. Your ABM maturity level (and best-fit go-to-market approach) can be defined by assessing:

• If your organisation has a defined ABM strategy
• Whether your marketing KPIs measure across the whole of the customer lifecycle
• How you select the right accounts for ABM (if you currently have a process)
• Whether your marketing and sales teams are aligned regarding the opportunity and approach to your most important accounts
• How well your organisation understands the specific challenges you help solve for your customers
• Whether your content conveys your organisation's unique value to your customers
• Whether you personalise content for specific customers
• Your understanding of ABM metrics to monitor

Run a pilot campaign to ensure executive buy-in, and manage expectations

If you're considering an ABM campaign, running a pilot is an ideal way to showcase potential results, build support internally, and develop the initial foundation and resources required for a full ABM programme.

A pilot is crucial to test how ABM may work for you at a resources/results level. However, if you are a marketer charged with evaluating ABM as a go-to-market strategy in conjunction with traditional demand gen, you shouldn't say yes to a campaign unless you can first secure internal buy-in. A pilot is a great way to do this and manage those internal expectations.

Securing the support of sales teams - as well as other executive buy-in is crucial for ABM; your organisation must be able to commit to supporting the campaign at every stage of the customer lifecycle, and must be willing to allow realistic timescales and objectives if a pilot (or later on, a full blown ABM campaign) is to gain traction.

Align marketing & sales

In line with managing expectations, when planning and implementing an ABM campaign, make sure everyone involved has a clear idea of their unique ABM role and responsibilities. Your sales and marketing teams need to have an aligned perspective on the goals of the campaign, on what content is being created, what promotional and follow up activities are being executed, and much more in order to ensure combined effort and progress in the right direction.

To keep track, hold regular sales/marketing catch-ups to review tasks, monitor how accounts are progressing and brainstorm new ideas.

As it's unlikely that your teams will win every account targeted, it's wise to use these meetings to review and learn from any lost deals. It's the best way for all sides to learn, stay aligned and progress your ABM approach.

Account-based Marketing techniques to use in all ABM programmes

Regardless of your selected ABM programme ('ABM 1 to 1', 'ABM Lite', 'Inbound to ABM', Inbound), all campaigns will need to include this activity:

Identifying good-fit target accounts, and the DMU

ABM centres all activity around precise key customer accounts (or verticals/ clusters). Unlike traditional lead gen focussed strategies, which focus on lead volume, the goal with ABM is to progress awareness and relationships with decision makers in your target account list.

So to run a successful campaign, you must first have a clearly defined view of your target accounts (dependent on your ABM targeting criteria; accounts, verticals, clusters etc), their attributes (ideal revenue, size, location etc) and their key challenges (at the appropriate account, cluster or vertical level) that your solution addresses.

Once you have a clear view of the attributes you're looking for, you can create a shortlist of good-fit targets who fit those parameters, and use them to qualify any current database contacts you already have. Ideally, when you know which accounts you want to target, your campaign should work to identify the best contacts within those accounts to connect with - those decision makers and stakeholders who make up the Decision-Making Unit (DMU), and work to raise awareness/engagement with them.

Developing insight and profiling accounts

A strong foundation of data-driven insight is integral to the success of any marketing campaign. Account-based marketing is no different; data insight must be used to develop bespoke propositions and messaging for each customer and stakeholder group.

Put simply, data insight is integral to steer your campaign.

Use your own customer/campaign data, account level data from social listening and even 3rd party intent data to identify accounts with the highest propensity to buy. This insight will also highlight where you should focus sales and marketing effort, and how to tailor campaign messaging for the best return.

Aligning sales and marketing

Increasing leads, improving retention and driving revenue are increasingly, a marketing goal. This means sales and marketing integration must be more cooperative, clear and comprehensive than either team may be used to.

Today, instead of marketing working to generate leads before handing them off to sales, both teams must align on campaign goals and activities as a whole, to ensure seamless support and campaign decisions through every stage of a prospect's journey. In any ABM campaign, both sides of the business must have clarity on precise account focus, campaign goals, responsibilities and more - and feedback frequently - if campaigns are to run successfully.

Reviewing your ABM toolkit

Before any activity can be considered, you need to have the right infrastructure in place to support your campaign. For seamless execution, campaigns will use a CRM, Marketing Automation platform, CMS, ABM content promotion tools, and social promotion channels - all of which should integrate for best tracking and reporting.

Creating ABM focussed messaging and content

ABM is about highly personalised, targeted marketing, that resonates with a specific account's challenges. So if you're not creating messaging and content that reflects that, you're not making the most of your strategy.

Once you have appropriate insight into your target accounts, consider the individual, company or vertical challenges (dependent on your programme) they have, that you help to address, and develop messaging accordingly.

From targeted, segmented email marketing, through social selling, to on-page content personalisation (or 'smart content') make sure every interaction your account has with your messaging and content is relevant to them (and personalised when appropriate).

Reporting

As the focus with ABM is not primarily on lead volume, but on developing a relationship with a quality account, a range of other hard and soft metrics should be defined that can be mapped back to specific sales and marketing objectives.

When assessing success, consider: are you effectively moving accounts to opportunities? Are you focussing on successfully developing a relationship with the DMU? Are you on track to achieve your goals and ROI?

Channels to consider for different ABM programmes

Depending on your specific ABM programme, level of maturity and funnel stage focus, ABM execution channels will vary. However, we tend to see a mix of the following execution channels for ABM programmes:

ABM 1 to 1

Execution channels include - Linkedin Sales Navigator, InMail, Email and offline

ABM Lite

Execution channels include - For a small audience size, the same as ABM 1 to 1, channels. If targeting a large single account with large global audience size; LinkedIn Sponsored Updates, InMails, or email if existing contacts are known.

Inbound to ABM

Execution channels include - Linkedin Sponsored Updates, InMails, remarketing, matched audiences (if the audience size is large enough)

Inbound

Execution channels include - organic channels, PPC, remarketing

Keep in mind that every campaign is unique - channel selection will also depend on the environments that your target accounts are active in; which may include offline activity.

Required tech for Account-based Marketing

An ABM toolkit contains multiple components. Before starting a campaign, make sure you have access to the right account-based marketing tools:

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform. Central to effective marketing and sales alignment, a good CRM integrates with other platforms (such as your marketing automation platform) and enables both sides to track progress and insight in real time.

A marketing automation platform - such as HubSpot. Think of a marketing automation platform as the central point, integrating all your marketing and sales activity and collating all interactions and touchpoints to provide complete marketing intelligence. Aligned with your CRM, automation platforms provide a central point to manage your campaign, from lead scoring, to tracking content, email campaigns and much more.

A CMS (content management system). This again, must integrate with your marketing automation platform.

ABM content promotion tools. Content Personalisation Platforms and Contextual Marketing tools allow you to use a mix of IP targeting, domain based targeting, geo fencing, keyword targeting and 3rd party cookie targeting to precisely segment content to exact accounts. Depending on your targeting approach, these tools can recognise when key accounts visit your site, where they are based geographically, keywords searched for etc, and use that insight to display personalised, relevant content to them.

Social media. In an ABM campaign, it's important to promote the right content via the channels key accounts actively use. Social paid promotion can enable an extra level of targeting and relevant social engagement between your sales team and key account individuals. It will result in better nurture, relationship building and trust.

Remember: for best campaign tracking and reporting, every tool and platform used in a campaign should integrate.

ABM success metrics

For example ABM programmes will typically monitor;

Audience growth

This may be shown through the acquisition and engagement of net new contacts; identifying and engaging new buying centres or influential decision-making groups.

Customer perception

For example, ensuring the customer has a deep understanding of your organisation and it's full range of offerings. An example of this can be seen should you move from vendor to strategic partner/trusted advisor status. If your sales team are seeing an increase in interactions back and forth with key contacts this may be a key indicator.

Customer engagement

Are your targets engaging with personalised content and online experiences? Are they attending your events such as webinars? Which of your content assets or site pages are they opening, digesting and viewing - and where in the buyer's journey do they sit?

Value of marketing to sales

Demonstrating marketing's value to sales and the wider business.

Revenue growth

Ultimately, being able to demonstrate that ABM is impacting the movement of opportunity through the funnel to closed revenue is key.

Website engagement, sales cycle length and velocity (conversion of prospects to opportunities and onward), revenue, retention, deal sizes (typically these are larger for ABM) and number of contacts per account are all additional metrics to monitor for success.

Understanding budget requirement

Understanding budget requirement is a key factor when building the ROI case for ABM. Factors that influence ABM campaign investment will typically include:

The level of activity you are already undertaking

Are you already actioning a level of ABM? Or, are you conducting an inbound marketing strategy (which can be used as a foundation for quality lead gen and nurture and work as a pool to identify ABM opportunities)?

The number of accounts the ABM campaign will engage

How many accounts will the campaign focus on? Do you have a process in place to identify ABM opportunities - and are you aware of the resources required to create bespoke campaign assets for each?

Expected ROI

Does your expected target account spend justify 'market of one' ABM investment?

Any required technology investments

Do you need to invest in marketing automation, a CRM, or other platforms and tools?

Any required staff investments

Can you implement ABM activity in-house, or should you outsource to an experienced Account-based Marketing agency? Do you need to invest in your marketing team? Do you need to invest in your sales team?

You also need to factor in the costs - internal or external of running an effective ABM strategy. In the case of partnering with an ABM Agency - here are some of the services you can typically procure and some indicative costs for ABM services. 

Other required resource investments

Have you accounted for the time and budget needed to plan, develop strategy, manage the campaign, create bespoke account-targeted content?