Account Based Marketing

If you're a B2B company that has ...

• high value/complex solutions offerings and a sizeable lifetime customer value (LTV)
• targeting/wants to target large clients or larger deals
• longer sales cycles
• the need to influence several influencers, decision-makers and stakeholders in buying groups and buying committees

If the above describes you, your organisation is a good fit for ABM and should seriously consider ABM. IT and Software companies, Systems Integrators, Enterprise SaaS companies and Consulting are some of the examples of B2B organisations that use ABM successfully.  Any B2B organisation that needs to influence multiple stakeholders in their sales process, should consider ABM.

ABM is about 'flipping the funnel' to treat each client or future client as a ‘market of one’ as opposed to targeting a wider demographic, as inbound marketing and other demand generation strategies do.

ABM is also referred as 'fishing with spears' as opposed to 'fishing with nets', since it starts with

• targeting the who (your best fit/ideal future client accounts, all key decision makers/influencers) you want to target first
• what offer will you target them with (customised content offer) and
• how will you target them (across channels and multiple touch points),

...which is a very different paradigm as opposed to the typical lead generation process of

• having an offer (like a persona based ebook or content)
• deciding which channels will you use (that are used by the persona) and
• see who comes through your net (prospect becoming a lead).

Thus, in ABM, a campaign will start with a selection of target company accounts (or industry verticals), then work to expand relationships and buy-in with key stakeholders and decision makers within that account or industry.

With the potential to drive stronger, more valuable customer relationships and enhance retention, Account-Based Marketing is a hugely valuable strategy for B2B marketers.

• One set of Goals for Sales & Marketing: The key benefit of Account Based Marketing for B2B is that you converge energies towards the accounts that are key to your organisation's growth. The sales and marketing teams start working as one team. The sales team starts to learn that the marketing team can deliver phenomenal value in enabling them to close deals. The marketing team starts to appreciate the challenges in the field faced by sales. And they work with the same goals, so it becomes imperative for them to behave as one, tight-knit team.
• Efficient sales and marketing processes: This translates into far more efficient sales and marketing resources. There is less wastage as the focus from activities that do not contribute to the common goals is taken away.

• Higher Marketing ROI : 80% of B2B marketers globally say ABM outperforms all other B2B marketing tactics (Source: ITSMA).

What does this mean for sales?

• Shorter sales cycles: With the right campaigns and touch points, and with the right messages delivered to the right personas and stakeholders across an account, your sales team can drive many more conversations in an account simultaneously. This means ABM has the power to reduce the sales cycle. As more people from the buying committee get engaged with your pitch via ads, emailers, meetings and offline offerings, you save time having to go from one person to another. Since all key people in the buying committee have engaged with you, they are more likely to be receptive to your message.

• Personalise and win: ABM can start with a broad brand awareness level campaign. But as various personas engage with your ads and content, you get a sense of which offerings (or messages) are of interest to them. This means now you can personalise the next set of messages to them and show them exactly what they might be looking for, and build further engagement and aim to close faster. With the measurement and tracking of engagement with your various ads and content pieces, you are able to identify which accounts are in need of your offering, and focus on them. Instead of having to treat your entire target account list as the same across the board, you get clarity on which accounts to pursue. This translates to better ROI.

• Sell more into an account: ABM is not simply a strategy to land new accounts. You can use it to build more and stronger relationships within an account, and get more business. Using regular tools such a landing pages, emails, events and turning them into highly customised and personalised properties, you can build trust within an account and stay top of mind for new opportunities.

Grow Digitally offers a range of ABM services that propels your team to do their best. Right from owning an ABM program to delivering specific services, you can pick the set of services that make sense to your business. Our services as an account based marketing agency are -

• ABM & Content Strategy: After gaining a deep understanding of your business, the various personas and your ideal customer profile, and the competition landscape, we work with you to develop the ABM strategy and the content needed to fulfil it. We also do a content audit to learn what already exists, and what needs to be repurposed or created afresh. With this offering, your business gains a complete plan on how we will run the campaigns for the accounts with broad timelines. The plan covers ads, content, emails, social media, events and offline offerings.
• ABM accounts research and profiling: We conduct secondary research to gain understanding of the accounts and identify areas where your offerings could be a possible fit for them. These research reports can be as research intensive as you would like them to be, from quick view of the business to detailed documentation of the challenges they face (in line with your offerings) and the organisation structure that impacts the buying decision. These can be delivered as spreadsheets or decks.
• Target database building for ABM: We can create the databases of the right people within an account, so your team can simply focus on the relationship building rather than the grunt work.
• Content creation for ABM: We work with you to build out the content assets needed for the ABM plan. Since a lot of this would be consideration and decision making content, we work with your subject matter experts and practice heads to identify and create relevant content, backed by our secondary research.
• Social listening for ABM: Some of the best triggers for sales conversations come from social media. Listening in to what is happening at the account — events, awards, discussions — reveal possible openings for conversations. Grow Digitally sets up a social listening program for you and delivers insights as per the frequency you are comfortable with.
• ABM ad campaigns : ABM ads are different from running your regular SEM and social media campaigns. They could start off similarly, but as you get more and more insights into an account, you need to be personalising more and more, and for more personas. The number of ads being run increase significantly, and it requires you to work with more resources and implement automation. You will also use ad targeting tools, so you are able to target personas precisely. Grow Digitally works out the ad strategy, spends and then works on implementing them across channels with the right tracking and KPIs set up for you to view.
• Email & marketing automation for ABM: For each of the personas, not only do we identify the content pieces to be served, but also set up the nurturing workflows via your marketing automation tool. This ensures that accounts that are not interested to buy right now can be nurtured over time, and your brand stays in their mindspace.
• ABM reporting setup: Each company's ABM journey is different depending on their existing maturity and their goals. We create custom reporting dashboards for various stakeholders within your company, so everyone gets to see the progress, as well as specifics of their domain. These dashboards can be created as spreadsheets, decks or within your sales and marketing automation platform.

The execution process in an ABM campaign will depend on your overall campaign KPIs, campaign goals, channels determined, targeting criteria and maturity level of ABM in your organisation.

The key steps in the ABM process will include the following:

Here are some of the ABM tools we use to enable our ABM services. It is not an exhaustive list of ABM tools, and we do work with a long list of other ABM tools , however this list provides you an idea of key tools that we use.