So you have begun your Account-based Marketing (ABM) campaigns; what next?
Many organizations have adopted some form of Account-based Marketing by collaborating their Sales and Marketing teams' efforts and working together to tailor campaigns to target accounts. Personalizing the buyer's journey for specific accounts can help to significantly increase customer loyalty and revenue, which is one reason why ABM has grown to be such a well-liked strategy.
The next logical step would be to improve the existing ABM process and make the funnel more volume heavy and cost-effective.
After successfully executing and consulting multiple ABM campaigns, here are our recommendations to make ABM more effective -
Focusing on Empathy and Customer Intimacy
Developing a close relationship with your customers requires understanding what motivates them. When your account interacts with you, they want to know that you are interested in them. In order to customize and make your messaging relevant, try to understand their language, culture, and the tools they use.
Review every Marketing message you've used in your campaigns to see if empathy is at the core of what you do.
“The ability to understand others’ perspectives has always been paramount in Marketing. To get empathetic Marketing right, it needs to be personalized and genuine.” - Christine Alemany, advisor for TGBA
Insights, Intent & Account Selection
Mike Burton, co-founder and head of commercial Sales at intent industry pioneer Bombora, puts it this way:
“Because Sales sit so close to revenue, intent data can galvanize action and increase Sales productivity. This Sales use case has a compound effect making other GTM functions more impactful including demand gen, SDRs and field marketers.”
Without insights, it will be more challenging to develop content and messaging that resonates with the problems and pain points that your accounts are experiencing.
Don't just stop with your digital Marketing data. Make sure to communicate with Sales teams as frequently as you can. You want insights to flow smoothly between departments at all times during an ABM campaign.
Also,make a clear plan for how you will gather data for your ABM campaign. Your goal should be to take away something from each encounter.
Optimize and execute at scale
ABM requires a lot of resources, but you can start to scale it if you start small, find a formula that works, and use the right technology to aid in execution.
What does that suggest? It involves maintaining a close bond with your MOps team, obsessing over data, and seeking out patterns you can use to your advantage.
Continue to optimize while keeping an eye out for inefficiencies.
The biggest piece of advice I have on ABM is to optimize frequently and pivot quickly. We spend so much time identifying and creating these thoughtful personas, but to wait six months or a year to understand the impact is too long. You need a small, nimble team to review regularly, pull levers and make pivots instantaneously. - William Rodriguez, Silvercrest
Expectation Management
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to ABM. It really depends on your company, sector, objectives, and team. ABM is a long-term game.
Be truthful and control the management’s expectations if you pitch an ABM strategy. Don't sell yourself short by expecting 1:1 ABM results from a 1: to many ABM strategy. Make sure that stakeholders understand that ABM success takes time.
Ilse V Rensburg from Cognism says, ABM is all about managing expectations. ABM isn't a short-term cash grab. It's good to get everyone thinking long-term. You have to set realistic expectations around achieving ROI. For example, if your current Sales cycle is 12 months, then you shouldn't come into ABM expecting to win business within the first 6 months. That doesn't mean you won't, though!
Sales Enablement
Marty Mcdonald is of the view the alignment of Marketing and Sales is a no-brainer. It leads to 67% higher conversion rates and 209% greater revenue.
Everybody understands how crucial Sales alignment is. However, marketers must remember to properly communicate the value of their ABM strategy to Sales.
Without Sales enablement, account-based Marketing is incomplete. The Sales and Marketing teams at your company must constantly collaborate for it to work.
To close the sale and increase ROI, both teams exchange important account-related information. And because of this, it's crucial to consider both teams as two sides of the same coin when discussing account-based Marketing.
ABM provides more opportunities to learn
While we did cover a lot of ground with pointers to improve your ABM maturity, don’t stop there. I’m sure there are a lot of questions to be answered. So what’s the next thing about ABM you would like to hear?
Send in your questions here, so that we can curate insights on them. Also if you are looking for a 1-1 ABM consultation, click here.
