ABM could deliver big rewards for your business, but is it suitable for your company? And are you in the right position to achieve success? If you’re keen to begin then you need the knowledge to tailor and scale the marketing strategy around your company. Here are the questions you need to be asking to establish a playbook for your company’s ABM.
How well aligned is your sales and marketing?
ABM requires a perfectly aligned sales and marketing team, which means creating correlating objectives and KPIs. It’s imperative you select the right people from both sales and marketing to ensure they will drive the strategy to work at its full potential.
“Make sure you have executive representation from both sales and marketing to give your project the profile and gravitas it will need to stay the course,” advises Daley Robinson, managing director at digital marketing agency Inflowing. “Getting your team together early is important as you will need the right kind of input from sales and marketing right from the beginning.”
Paul Everett, head of marketing at The Marketing Practice, takes a blunter approach. “If you’re not asking this, then you haven’t read any piece of advice about ABM. If sales don’t want it, understand it, or need the results then it’s not going to work.”
Leanne Chescoe, senior manager field marketing EMEA at Demandbase, also warns without alignment ABM will fail. “ABM is about helping companies focus their marketing and sales efforts on the accounts that matter the most. To do this, these teams need to align on the target account list and then coordinate their activities against these accounts. If ABM is something that the marketing team does in isolation, it will fail.”
Who should you target?
This is the most important question with regards to ABM. The strategy’s focus is a far throw from sending out a splurge of mass emails and seeing what you get back. This means adopting a specified selective approach to identify who your targets are.
“Your ABM strategy should be on the accounts that will bring the most long-term value – both in revenue and relationships,” explains Judy Wilks, client director at Momentum ABM. “Once you’ve chosen your high value accounts, you need to find the specific individuals within those organisations to target.”
In fact, for some companies 80% of revenue is derived from 20% of top-tier accounts, so it’s vital to have determined who this group are to experience the benefits.
Daley agrees, outlining the whole premise of ABM is ultra-segmented marketing to a small number of companies. “These companies should be a great fit for you, whether that’s a prospect that shares loads in common with some of your key customers, or retaining that must-win contract renewal.”
What should you use technology for?
Technology will play a part in your ABM by assisting you to find the most lucrative accounts to target. If you’re working on a small number of accounts, technology isn’t so necessary. But as you begin to upscale, tech will aid in proliferating the successes you’ve already seen.
Both Judy and Daley see the merits of technology when used within reason. “There is technology that makes it simple and affordable for B2B organisations of all sizes to analyse, promote and personalise at scale while still giving their ABM accounts the VIP treatment,” explains Daley.
“Technology can tell a great deal about your audience, but to influence to specific people, you need to correctly identify and understand them as individuals,” elaborates Judy. “While technology has a role to play in the research and communication to an account, marketers shouldn’t forget this is primarily a human, rather than a technology-led, approach.”
As you progress, technology will become more critical to your ABM efforts. Leanne, explains at some stage a lack of tech will hinder your account numbers. “Look for technologies that enable transparency among stakeholders, integrate across teams and tools, provide consistent and accurate account data and connect programs across the customer lifecycle.”
However Paul warns making a tech-first decision will result in scaling something that doesn’t deliver. “You probably shouldn’t ask about technology until you’ve already got a working model for how ABM’s going to operate. It’s difficult though because if you’re not aware of what technology is out there then you’ll probably miss out on an interesting topic.”
"While technology has a role to play in the research and communication to an account, marketers shouldn’t forget this is primarily a human, rather than a technology-led, approach"
What marketing content should you use?
Marketers can feel overwhelmed by such a shift in focus when ABM is first implemented. They can expect a complete change but when it comes to marketing content, the hurdle isn’t so high as it may have first seemed. Marketing always needs to be appealing whether you’re targeting to two or two million. Research from IDG also revealed the carrot in this scenario, with 40% of prospects more likely to buy from a supplier whose content is tailored to a specific need.
“The key to great ABM, indeed all marketing, is the ability to make your content as relevant as possible to each audience,” reveals Leanne. “ABM succeeds by your ability to customise your content across the buyer’s journey. This includes advertising, website content and sales follow up.”
Judy seconds this: “The goal of any ABM campaign is to build narratives that lead to conversations with your key accounts, and this should be reflected in your marketing messages and collateral.”
How will you measure its success?
So you’ve implemented ABM, you’ve had a response but how can you ascertain whether you’re on track. Metrics you’ve used in the past for measuring impact may not be the most suitable and you may need to research better methods.
Judy recommends focusing on measuring business impact. “Rather than being distracted by meaningless campaign metrics such as site visitors or click-through rates, focus on revenue performance metrics such as pipeline contribution, close rates, funnel velocity and opportunities with target accounts.”
However if you want to focus on ripening relationships with clients, consider metrics such as how many interactions you’re gaining with senior decision-makers and determine the level of engagement. “Reputation is measured by increased awareness of your wider product portfolio, an understanding of your ability to solve their specific business problems, and the associated uplift in RFPs and proactive bids. Finally, revenue metrics should examine how many new opportunities (and how much value) the campaign has created,” she says.
But Paul foresees some businesses will have short-term expectations of ABM, and deem it to be a failure if there is no new revenue in the first two months. “Others will invest in it because they believe it’s the right thing to do – ‘not everything that counts, can be counted’. There’s a Goldilocks answer somewhere between the two extremes.”
