When it comes to account-based marketing, Robert Norum is somewhat traditionalist and doesn’t use software to aid his ABM, he divulged to his audience at InTech.
It’s clear he aims for ABM in its purest form – individual one-to-one engagement – regarded as the most lucrative, though most expensive approaches. But at the same time Robert is a realist. “Unless you’re a very big organisation with significant resources and a very big budget, you’re probably not going to do more than 10 one-to-one accounts per year. You might want to focus on fewer, and you certainly might want to do some pilots before you scale,” he says.
Funnelling resources into one account over a lengthy period of time – usually anywhere from around 12-18 months – can throw the sales targets askew. But Robert notes this can be resolved by adjusting KPIs as well as attitudes when starting out. “It’s not necessarily going to work in terms of hitting quarterly sales targets. It needs to be something that the sales team and the organisation sign up to and understand that this is probably going to be a 12 month programme,” he explains. “Set KPIs that everyone signs up to, starting with the business goals. For example, say what kind of revenue you’re expecting to see from an account or industry.”
The prospect of widening the wallet share of existing and new clients is bound to turn heads to marketing’s direction. “ABM really does give the opportunity to sit at the top table. You’re right at the forefront of what’s going on in the organisation,” Robert explains.
Here Robert gives his five key pieces of advice for those wanting to begin the strategy. To help you even further, we’ve paired Robert’s advice with B2B Marketing’s ABM Maturity Model, a key resource to help ABMers map their progress and determine their next steps.
1. Plan for the long haul
“Don’t start ABM by accident,” Robert says. Of course account-based marketing is a long-term commitment, demonstrated in our model’s five key stages. If you want to migrate from stage 1 (ABM aware) of B2B Marketing’s ABM Maturity Model to stage 5 (Advanced ABM) you need to allocate the right resource and plenty of dedication. Fail to plan for the long haul and you’ll begin to make it up as you go along. “Start by scoping out your ABM programme with all the key staples that you want on board, that could be head of sales, head of marketing, anybody who’s going to help you get this thing off the ground in a year,” Robert explains. He believes the main programme objectives you should consider are:
- Which ABM model you’re going to use (one to one, one to few or one to many).
- How you’re going to choose the right accounts.
- How you’re going to define the success criteria.
2. Identify key contacts
As your programme edges towards stage 3 (early-stage ABM), you should be identifying and building a strong portfolio of key prospects, complete with contact details. “You need an in depth account profile and to understand the organisation, its financial drivers, strategic drivers and creative IT strategy . You’ll need to look at all the key people in the organisation and find out what they’re saying,” says Robert. “You want to create opportunity analysis that says ‘based on this company and its needs, we have these products or services we’ll market to them.”
3. Get to know relationship structures
The premise of ABM is that you’re creating a closer and more personal relationship between your business and the client you’re prospecting. But there’s no point funnelling all your resources into someone who has absolutely no influence in the decision-making process. It’s important to pinpoint your in-roads. This is an exercise you should perform with the sales team, Robert says. “You need to look at the stakeholders and work out who you know, who you don’t know, what kind of relationship you have, who you need to get in front of and why,” he explains.
4. Decide where the lucrative opportunities lie
Communication is imperative and once you’ve accumulated your in-depth account research, you’ll need to discuss with the team and decipher where to target in order to strike gold. “You should map opportunities based on what they’re trying to achieve with their account client. From there you can create an EMEA marketing programme.” This phase of your efforts will take you to stage 4 of the ABM Maturity Model (Adept ABM) at which point you should begin to see the process in full swing.
5. Create your messaging with sales
There’s sometimes a conflict between sales and marketing regarding which know best when it comes to talking to the customer. Sales should be involved when determining content output. “You need a sales leader in the room co-creating that messaging with you,” he says. “This isn’t marketing coming back to sales and saying look ‘what we’ve created’; this is actually sales and marketing co-creating a go-to market plan. You need to decide how the message should be based around the strategy (ABM),” Robert explains. There’s a huge reliance on content in account-based marketing, landing quality content from the start will help secure your trajectory towards stage 5 (advanced ABM) of The ABM Maturity Model.
But one-to-one requires too large a budget for some. What then?
Companies without a big budget may feel it’s just not feasible to invest in ABM for over a year or more before seeking returns, but long sales cycles are something that has to stop you from using the ABM method. Blending ABM strategies to produce a uniquely fitted solution can solve your budget woes.“A company may have 260 accounts,” Robert begins. “Ten of those account would be one-to-one. You could take another 50 accounts across five verticals for a one-to-few programme. But the problem here is that you’ve still got another 200 accounts that need to have a relationship with.”
This is the opportunity to create content that is both personalised but can be sent out in a less concentrated basis than the uniquely-tailored content in one-to-one and one-to-few. But, as Robert suggests this doesn’t have to be anything too intricate. “This could just be a LinkedIn campaign, where you’re actually serving tailored content to a particular vertical market across those 260 organisations.
Although a blended approach may seem to stray slightly from the original roots of ABM, Robert believes this Cinderella fit – a uniquely perfect size of ABM for your business – is the most sensible approach. “It allows you to have a structure for your ABM programme, where you can be inclusive rather than exclusive, and it means rather than starting with a pilot of half a dozen one-to-one accounts and keeping six sales people happy, it engages the whole organisation in a connected ABM strategy.”
How about trying to fund your ABM with someone else?
Conducting an account-based marketing programme in conjunction with a rival business may seem like a crazy idea but according to Robert the concept is building real momentum and has potential. “It might be you’re a technology vendor and you know Accenture, KPMG and Capgemini have the keys to the castle, in terms of accounts,” he begins to explain to a slightly shocked InTech audience. “You could get their attention by creating some very tailored bespoke messaging for them – so doing ABM to the partner company.”
If the personalised marketing works this could see you in collaboration with a leading brand in your market, under which you would conduct co-branded ABM. “Now you’re not only benefitting from their brand, their relationships and their knowledge of the sector but you’re potentially co-funding this thing – although it may mean doubling your budget to match your partner.”
