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So you are eager to start with account-based marketing to be more accountable for pipeline and revenue generation.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a marketing technique that encourages businesses to strengthen their relationships with the decision makers at companies that are most likely to buy from them and focuses on increasing their future lifetime value.
To be truly successful at ABM, you would need to follow those seven steps. Especially, if you have been doing more traditional marketing and lead generation campaigns delivering volume of leads to Sales and scoring their behaviour through the funnel.
Step one: Establish whether ABM is right for you – You are a B2B organisation selling high value solutions with lengthy consideration-to-purchase cycle. Your company’s stakeholders are accustomed and likely to adopt the account-based sales model and keen to understand the buyer’s individual challenges and reach out to them.
Step Two: Align with Sales and get their buy-in – Meet with Sales, explain the steps and collaborate with them to understand what kinds of accounts you should be targeting and which roles at those accounts are going to be the best for them to speak to.
Step Three: Select Accounts – Firstly, ask Sales to name their target and strategic accounts as well as their account wish list. Secondly, look into your CRM for most profitable customers with likelihood to purchase repeatedly from you. Thirdly, use data from your marketing automation (MA) and/or CRM to identify best fit (by industry vertical, size, engagement rate from your campaigns).
Step Four: Identify the critical persona within accounts – Again, continue conversation with Sales to establish different buyer personas within accounts including decision makers, influencers, users and any other stakeholder who might influence the purchase decision.
Step Five: Understand your target accounts – Involve Sales to take a close look at key business issues facing their target accounts, their industry and their segment.
Step Six: Engage the buyer and develop relevant and personalised campaigns – Map the above findings to individuals at the accounts and tailor campaigns to address those issues. Just to name some campaigns used in ABM approach including retargeting to keep your brand in front of your target account as employees access online content, personalised content, landing pages and offers as well as personalised the account’s website visit.
Step Seven: Measure and optimise the impact at the account level such as opportunities created or influenced and deals closed. This will also include reporting on engagement with target accounts such as generated web visits, meetings and any other campaign responses.
In the next post, we will deep dive into effective tactics to use with your account-based marketing strategy. Tune in again!