When embarking on an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy, a lot of focus rightly goes into choosing the correct accounts. Less so on the people behind those brands – the decision-makers, influencers and stakeholders who’ll be on the receiving end of the campaigns.
Marketers are relatively confident about choosing the right accounts, but are less self-assured about finding the right people to target. When martech providers Demandbase and Integrate jointly surveyed 500 B2B marketers, they identified this as the number one challenge.
Reaching the right people has only become more onerous in recent years. Previously you might have needed to reach just one or two individuals (probably the most important in the function) to make your sale. However, we’ve seen the number of people now involved in a B2B purchase decision balloon year-on-year. While most estimates put the number in the decision-making unit between five and seven, it can be as high as 15 (when purchasing corporate tech, for example).
This is partly why Sprinklr’s CMO Grad Conn doesn’t like the term ‘ABM’. He prefers the term ‘people-based marketing’, because that’s where he thinks the focus should be.
Get your account selection right
Targeting the right people goes hand-in-hand with selecting the right accounts and account selection is a complex process. There are three main considerations.
- Account value: Assess your existing pipeline and calculate the potential new business.
- Achievability: How realistic is it that you’ll win this business? (This point is especially important with regards to identifying decision-makers, because the complexity of the DMU and whether you already know or engage with them will be factors in whether the account is achievable.)
- Co-operation: You’ll be more successful with accounts that are already engaged than those who don’t know you. The purchase behaviour of existing accounts can be a strong indicator of their potential value. You’ll also need internal support for chasing certain accounts.
ABM isn’t something to attempt on the fly, but getting this step right will certainly save time, money and effort in the long run. “Effective ABM means broadening the scope of influence and engaging the full DMU throughout the buying process. However, you can save time and money by not wasting effort on the wrong accounts,” says B2B Marketing’s ABM senior advisor, Andy Bacon.
The identification process
It can take a lot of hard graft to identify decision-makers. The message from experts is ‘research, research, research’. “There is no substitute for putting the effort in. You have to really ‘live and breathe’ the target account,” says Mike Boogaard, CEO of ABM agency Alias Partners.
There are a few different ways to approach this.
Talk to sales
Sales should be a key source for account insights, and the first port of call on the research journey. This is the case at AI tech business GumGum. Once the target accounts have been finalised, the growth marketing team partners up with the seller or account owner to identify the decision-maker
and influencers, says Som Puangladda, VP of global marketing.
Create a network map of your own organisation
The goal is to highlight connections between members of your own business and the target account. Mike says: “With larger enterprises, there is often a surprising amount of interconnection through previous education and work experience. Identifying your HR director is best buddies with the HR director of a target account that relies on HR as a key influencer, gives you a deeply personal angle that can be a goldmine of information and often directly open doors.”
Trawl your CRM
Desk-based research can be a slog, but collecting the intelligence you already have will still be quicker than starting from scratch with external sources. Long term, ensure the correct information is inputted by all relevant people.
Examine your intent data
You may have used predictive intelligence to assist your account selection, for instance tracking which companies have visited your website. If you collect data from webforms or gated content, this can be used to build a picture of who’s interested in content at different stages of the customer journey.
Check social media
Grad Conn says a social network is often more indicative of a buying committee than an organisation chart. When he was CMO at Microsoft US, his own ‘social matrix’ was mapped. He says this was much more indicative of who he’d bring into buying decisions than the ‘structural matrix’ – the traditional organisational view.
Customer interviews
These are hard to get, says Mike, but if you’re able to, they can provide great insight into who’s actually involved in the buying decision. Win/loss debrief calls are a huge source of insight into existing accounts.
Importantly, the research process needs to be a collective effort. “Too often, many people think that ABM sits on the shoulders of the account executive,” says Rachel Tait, head of account-based marketing, UKI at analytics business SAS. “In identifying your decision-makers, it’s important that you bring together everyone who touches an account.
“Getting everyone in a room together for a half-day’s research and insight session enables you to identify the key decision-makers and those who may be influencers, advocates or detractors. If you depend on one view, you will only get part of the story.”
What should you do with all this research once you’ve collected it? As well as the process of mapping the account, Alias creates contact profile cards. These specify the role of the individual in the buying process, and their reporting line.
At SAS, contacts are categorised into a traffic light system – advocates, neutrals and detractors. Once mapped out, this information is uploaded into its account-planning software.
If they can’t find you, don’t expect to find other peopleAccording to Grad Conn, if you want to find new contacts you need to open yourself up to being contacted. He likens it to the moment in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when the archaeologist has to step out over a chasm, trusting there’ll be an invisible bridge beneath him. Grad’s experience of opening up (primarily through LinkedIn) has been a positive one, introducing him to a new set of contacts.
Personalisation and creativity at its heart
With targets locked in, it’s now time to work out how you’re actually going to get your message in front of them. The two most important aspects are personalisation and creativity.
Personalisation is at the heart of ABM. Having identified the individuals, you need to put the insight gleaned during the research phase to work. This manifests itself in the pain-points you address, the language you use and the channels you select.
No particular tactic or channel will be effective for every prospect, and that’s why creativity is critical. Nadja Gram, COO at McDonald Butler, says: “The right concept can be personalised with minimal effort and provide the target audience with the perception that the collateral has been produced exclusively for them.”
This is a tactic tech services business DXC has used. Adapting content that already existed, it created personalised 16-20 page magazines highlighting the messages they were trying to get across. These magazines were handed to targets following meetings, and were combined with retargeted online advertising, sponsored LinkedIn content and even geo-located out-of-home ads.
The advice is to let your creativity run riot. “No idea is too crazy or too small,” says GumGum’s Som. “It must be different from what you have seen before. Blend the creative minds with sales insights – you will not be disappointed when the alignment delivers instant meetings.”
When GumGum wanted to work with T-Mobile, it targeted its US CEO John Legere directly. Legere is very active on social media, where he frequently expresses his love for Batman. GumGum played on this by hiring editors, writers and illustrators to create a personalised comic book, T-Man and Gums, to get across its message. 100 copies of the comic were sent to T-Mobile and its agencies, and within hours John responded on Twitter saying how much he loved it. A meeting was set up, and T-Mobile is now a GumGum client.
Unsurprisingly for a social media management platform, Sprinklr is also a big fan of targeting prospects through social. The firm has 6000 target accounts in its customer experience centre. The DMU has been mapped in each of these organisations – that’s a quarter of a million people to keep track of. Their names have been entered as keywords in Sprinklr’s platform so they can be tracked, and when they post something relevant Sprinklr can respond to it.
An example would be its interaction with Burger King, which Sprinklr wanted to land as a customer. The Burger King CMO announced on Twitter its new crispy pretzel chicken fries were now available. A pair of Sprinklr’s experience team bought the fries and responded to the CMO with a boomerang video of them eating them. The CMO then responded to them saying how funny it was. The conversation continued and led to Sprinklr being invited to an RFP.
Targeting the ‘shadow buyers’
Equally as important as aiming campaigns at decision-makers is to target those people who influence the buying process but don’t have a final say on the decision – the so-called ‘shadow buyers’. For example, according to IDG, 65% of those who influence an IT purchase sit outside the IT function.
These shadow buyers could be within the organisation, in a separate function, or at a more junior level with no decision-making responsibility. Or they could be external influences, such as consultants, influencers or peers.
“It’s essential you not only identify these people, but also highlight how you should interact with them,” says Rachel Tait.
If they’re advocates, can they be used to amplify your voice? If they’re detractors, how can they be educated (or how can we minimise the negative impact)? At GumGum the message aimed at influencers is different. It focuses much more on the success of clients in the same vertical, and is more educational than sales-driven.
A common misconception is only targeting the c-suite or VP level. These people often delegate the workload to their staff. Targeting those a rung or two down the ladder is often a sweet spot for many ABM campaigns. “Target the doers as well as the thinkers,” says Mike Boogaard.
Shadow buyers can also be an easier target to reach when focusing on net-new accounts, says Nadja Gram. Some companies find that targeting influencers can mean higher engagement rates, as they don’t typically have the same barriers as the DMU.
Key takeawaysInvest the time upfront. It’s essential to invest time in collecting information from a variety of individuals and sources, as this guides your next steps and activities in the process. “It is critical not to short circuit this step, even when it can appear time-consuming and expensive to do thoroughly,” says Andy Bacon.Break down the walls between sales and marketing. Sales know who they want to speak to, so ask them. That will at the very least create opportunities they value.Don’t try to boil the ocean. Start small by identifying a key target group of individuals in the target account, and aligning a relevant message to that group.Think big with creative. If they are an obvious target, they’ll probably also be targeted by your rivals. You need to stand out, so ensure your creative makes an impact.
