Likely as not you’ve heard of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). Equally likely, you have a vague idea what it is but are not clear about the practical details.
Don’t blame yourself, there is an army of people out there who have a vested interest in making the simple complex and the straightforward convoluted.
Fortunately I am not one of them. So let’s talk about ABM and how to get started.
What Is Account-Based Marketing?
ABM is marketing targeted at specific named accounts. It’s that simple. In fact the only reason that ABM is something new is because, other than in certain limited circumstances, it wasn’t possible until recently. It has always been the case that many marketers would prefer to only expose individuals within specific organisations to their campaigns. Now they can.
As always, it helps to break ‘marketing’ down and demystify the process. Marketing is about communicating specific messages to a target audience. The more tightly defined that audience is, the more relevant and thus impactful the message can be. Even better, for the same budget we can greatly increase the amount of bandwidth we buy as we’re no longer spending money talking to people we can’t sell to.
So if you are selling to large or even mid size organisations, doesn’t it make sense to list who those organisations are and ensure only those people employed by them and in them see your message?
As a rule, yes. Yes it does.
And when we remember that introducing some form of ABM doesn’t stop us from continuing to use other, broader channels if we wish to, it’s something of a no-brainer. Certainly for B2B businesses, it really should be part of everything you do.
How To Implement Account-Based Marketing
If we wish to build out an Account-based marketing program, we first need to understand which accounts we are focused on.
That’s where creating an Ideal Customer Profile comes in. An ICP is a clear and detailed description of the kind of business we’re looking to sell to (if you want the longer version - follow the link). When we have that ICP documented and we’re in agreement that the targeting feels right, we can start to put real company names into a document.
This is where the magic really happens. Where once we might have stopped at “European High Street Retailers as a category, we now list the actual named businesses we are targeting.
Even the simple act of doing so makes some wonderful things happen in most B2B organisations. Sales reps have to think long and hard about how many key accounts they can really target in a meaningful way. Marketing has to consider who to include and who to leave out. Each named account prompts the questions “can we really sell to these people? Why? What challenges do they have that we solve?” The answers educate the entire business.
Building out this list is vital. Take your time. Use as many sources as you can and always leave the final call to a human being. Although bought in lists can be helpful, never import wholesale but rather exercise judgement and common sense. When you’re happy with the final result, we can start some tactical marketing campaigns….
Getting Tactical
When we have a list of accounts, two things happen (or should happen):
The sales organisation begins to map out the account and the outbound team start working to develop that knowledge and find ways in
The marketing organisation looks to provide targeted aircover and lead generation that supports the effort above but also brings new inbound contacts to the party
The first stage in that marketing process is the creation of content. Initially relevant to the industry as a whole, but in time personalised to the specific account and indeed to specific roles and even individuals within the account.
Particularly as you “get to know” target organisations, this tailoring of content becomes very important. Try to ensure a functioning feedback loop so that as you learn, you adapt content and deliver personalised (in the deep sense) material into the account.
The second stage is getting that material in front of our target, named accounts. One way to do that is directly, usually via the individual relationships built up by the sales force. But whilst that happens, the marketing function can provide ‘air cover’ through carefully targeted digital campaigns.
I realise that most people writing about marketing hate to get too specific about marketing communications tactics but in this particular instance I don’t believe that is helpful. There is no point beating around the bush: as a channel for paid media spend LinkedIn is pretty much the only game in town.
That doesn’t mean you should try different approaches, but LinkedIn remains pretty much the only channel that allows the marketer to target audiences:
Working for specific organisations
With a specific individual profile
Within a ‘work and business’ context, and
Based on largely up-to-date information
It’s worth noting that second bullet in particular. Many channels enable the targeting of everyone in an organisation. But how many people work for HSBC or Telefonica? That’s a rhetorical question: the answer is hundreds of thousands, of which only a couple of dozen might be of interest to most marketers.
This is a fast moving area however and things change quickly. Terminus, for example, is an ABM display advertising channel that does support the targeting of specific profiles within named organisations - and others will surely emerge over the coming months and years.
Of course these types of digital marketing programs are not the sum total of ABM activity. They exist within an integrated matrix of sales and marketing communications that deliver a consistent experience right down to the individual level.
At the heart of ABM is the constant nurturing and development of the specific named account. And to help illustrate that point, I want to talk a little about measurement.
Rethinking Measurement
In conventional digital marketing, and particularly in the B2B space, we tend to get very focused on inbound leads. That’s natural. They are important, easy to measure, and provide our sales organisation with something to get their teeth into.
But when we switch to ABM, are inbound leads still important? Not in the same way. After all, if I have 100 target accounts I can get a decent proportion of the relevant contacts within those organisations into my database just through online research. In a sense we are putting content and advertising in front of people we already know.
That reminds us that in many ways the purpose of ABM is not to introduce accounts to our business, but to keep known individuals ‘warm’ and provide them with relevant and compelling interactions that are built on our previous experience with those individuals.
How would we measure that?
We don’t have to completely abandon inbound leads, but it might be better to think of them as ‘initial online engagement’ - a definition which sidesteps the question of whether they were already in the database.
And in addition, it may be wise to look at measuring and reporting ‘total interactions with target accounts’ within the week - with an interaction being any form of engagement on the part of the target audience with our marketing and content (viewed a webinar, downloaded a whitepaper, viewed a relevant webpage etc).
However you measure it, ABM should almost certainly be part of your future marketing strategy. I hope this helps get you started!
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