Twenty-odd years ago, a group of marketers gave B2B a constructive kick up the backside. While debating the finer points of how marketing to businesses is very different from marketing to consumers, one of them pointed out that B2B products are bought by groups of people – not a single person.
And the penny dropped.
They recast their view of B2B marketing: people, not personas; accounts, not markets; business, not leads. And in doing so laid the foundations of account-based marketing (ABM) – a strategy that brings together sales and marketing to hook specific accounts with irresistibly personalised programmes.
Today you’ll rarely hear a topic more talked about in the B2B scene. In fact, according to a recent B2B Marketing survey, 73% of you are either already practicing ABM or planning to do so. A further testament to its ingenuity is how it’s multiplied, and subsequently become a topic of contention.
There are now three tiers of the ABM cake:
- Tier one, Strategic ABM: A one-on-one, roll-your-sleeves-up and get-a-haircut approach. The old guard say this is the only authentic way to practice ABM, we’ll explore why later.
- Tier two, ABM-lite: A one-to-few, softer version of ABM that delivers customised programmes to a cluster of accounts that share similar interests.
- Tier three, Programmatic ABM: A one-to-many, technology-fuelled approach to target tens, hundreds, even thousands of named accounts.
What is programmatic ABM?
Programmatic ABM automates a blend of typical marketing processes such as social listening, account-targeted ads, and real-time web personalisation to target specific accounts. It offers to relieve marketers of the resource burden that comes with tier one and two approaches, enabling the enterprise to be scaled. Here’s how it sits alongside other types of ABM and broader marketing programmes, using the retail sector as an example.
Source: ITSMA 2017
One-to-many favours breadth, while its older siblings are all about depth. In practice, this means it’s less about deep research, programme tailoring and sales collaboration, and more about targeting wider horizontal or vertical segments. Something that demands technology, which is when the critics enter the scene.
Why is it contested?
Marketers are often criticised for getting distracted by new trends, technologies, and acronyms. Alisha Lyndon, CEO of Momentum ABM, believes programmatic ABM is an unholy trinity of the lot, with vendors using it as a bid for differentiation in a crowded martech space. She says: “When you pare it back, it’s not really ABM at all, it’s a way of taking content to large audiences with some level of targeting or reference to the customer account.”
On the other side of the argument, B2B tech heavyweights are queuing up to bring detail. They accept that programmatic deploys outbound tactics and lead filtering to cover larger audiences, but put emphasis on the account focus. Bev Burgess, SVP at ITSMA Europe, illustrates this with an example: “Some companies may spend $50,000 or more on customised programmes for each individual account. With programmatic, you might spread the same amount of money across several hundred accounts.”
How is programmatic ABM different to demand generation?
Typically fuelled by MA software, demand generation programmes are lead-based rather than account-based. Programmatic ABM wags its finger at demand gen for casting its net too wide. Instead, when resource is too short for tier one and two programmes, one-to-many combines demand gen tactics (such as paid ads, content syndication and events) with outbound tactics to targets specific accounts.
Founder of ABM tech provider Engagio, Jon Miller, says there are in fact three important differences. “First, programmatic ABM focuses on named accounts, which leads to greater efficiency and effectiveness. Second, demand generation typically relies on inbound where ABM is an outbound-driven initiative. Third, instead of scoring leads as you would in demand gen, you track account-level engagement and wait until the account hits a sufficient threshold to label them a marketing-qualified account (MQA).”
How to run a programmatic ABM programme
The fundamentals of ABM are consistent throughout the tiers. The process is kicked off by sales and marketing collaborating to identify the juiciest accounts using a blend of data. Once this hitlist has been compiled, Bev outlines the seven steps that must be taken.
- Know what’s driving the account.
- Play to the clients’ needs.
- Map and profile stakeholders.
- Develop targeted value propositions.
- Plan integrated sales and marketing campaigns.
- Execute integrated campaigns.
- Evaluate results and update plans.
The main difference for programmatic ABM is the depth with which you can customise each stage of the process. Third tier accounts will likely be backed by basic, firmographic data (company size, location, industry type, growth rate etc), which can be used to qualify them into a programme. At this stage, the challenge is identifying common issues they face, and matching your messages accordingly.
While campaign planning for this scale of ABM is likely to be digital media-heavy, Rob Leavitt, SVP at ITSMA, points out that offline tactics can also be viable. “Many companies implementing programmatic are investing in personalised direct mail, small events, and customer briefings. All of these are typically supported by inside sales or general sales teams, often with tighter collaboration than with more generalised marketing.”
How do I know when to go programmatic?
If you’re in the business of making returns on your investments, you should first figure out how much time, money, and manpower you can afford to put into each account – these are your ‘account entitlements’. This is where the tiers come in, and the floor is handed to Jon Miller again.
“Once you have identified your top accounts and defined your account entitlement, you must then sort them into tier one, tier two, and tier three,” he says. “Your budget and resources will determine how many accounts you have for each tier. Then, based on your account entitlement, you can implement your tier three ABM with the appropriate tactics.”
Without this balancing act, ABM can go bad. Spend all of your ABM budget on hyper-personalised interactions with tier one accounts, for example, and you’ll end up spamming tiers two and three with whatever’s left over.
For this process to be effective, marketers need to evolve their view of ABM from singular tactic to foundational data strategy. In other words, ABM should be a blended approach using all three versions. The table below illustrates a simplified example of how account entitlement could look.
What becomes of the sales department?
For the one-to-many sceptics, the potential separation of sales and marketing is perhaps its biggest drawback. This is true for Alisha, who indicts programmatic ABM for “creating a bigger void between sales and marketing, with marketing busy deploying new tools while losing sight of customer insights”.
For Bev, the solution is to involve sales intrinsically from the outset. “Programmatic ABM should be aligned with the company’s sales coverage model. This alignment should go beyond ABM of course, into your wider go-to-market strategy, covering segment or industry marketing (if this is your approach), as well as mass customised marketing programmes such as your capability or brand initiatives.” The table below illustrates how ABM can be aligned with your sales strategy.
Who is programmatic ABM for?
Programmatic ABM will only be worthwhile if you have a very large list of target accounts. Another good-to-have is a willingness to approach all three tiers simultaneously. A three-pronged programme will help you to align with the sales strategy for growth in each account level – but this comes with a price tag.
As Jon puts it: “If you’re selling to the Fortune 100, then you’ll want to stick with tier one and only tier one. But if you have thousands of companies you can sell to, then programmatic ABM is a great option.”
What should be considered when deploying programmatic ABM?
Before taking the plunge, seriously consider your time and budget as well as the size of the market that you’re going after. If you’re able to tick those boxes, you can start working through the six foundational factors of planning any ABM programme, as outlined by Bev:
- Deciding what you want to achieve with ABM (growth, retention, new name business etc.).
- Positioning ABM as a strategic business initiative, not a marketing campaign.
- Creating the right framework for effective governance, aligned with business and sales leadership, as well as other parts of marketing.
- Making the metrics count with your business stakeholders.
- Devoting sufficient funding and allocating the budget intelligently.
- Selecting the appropriate tools and technologies.
Remember, if it doesn’t make economic sense to reshape your view of ABM from a one– or two-tiered singular approach to a foundational data strategy, programmatic probably isn’t for you.
