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Account-Based Marketing Doesn't Have To Be Hard

Forbes Communications Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Caroline Japic

There’s a great scene in the 2017 TV show Big Little Lies where a teenage girl, worried about her mother, asks her father, “You haven’t noticed she’s been a little agitated lately?” Her dad’s reply: “Honey, agitation is her preferred state.”

I sometimes think the same is true of marketers whenever we push forward into new methodologies, as we constantly do. It can be demanding, even stressful -- but we like it that way. For many of us, the latest source of preferred agitation is account-based marketing, an approach that treats each targeted account -- a customer or prospect -- as its own individualized market opportunity.

ABM has its roots in the IT sector and enterprise B2B vendors, but these days it’s attracting attention across most industries and from companies of all sizes. That’s where unnecessary angst can creep in. For those new to ABM, the whole thing can seem monumentally complex, requiring a huge stack of technology before you can even get started.

As I know from experience, that’s simply not the case. ABM doesn’t have to be hard and you don’t need every popular tool. You just need to structure your initiative carefully before starting. Instead of investing in a huge stack of expensive marketing technology, start with a clear strategy.

At my company, we launched an ABM project that tripled prospect engagement within a quarter, and we did it without a massive investment in technology. Based on that experience, here are the five steps I’d recommend for those diving into the ABM deep end:

1. Focus on the right targets.

As with any other marketing project, knowing your audience is key. ABM is, by definition, a company-level approach; you’re constructing detailed strategies and campaigns around individual organizations, treating each one as a market unto itself. You can probably reel off the names of your most important accounts, and those might be a great place to start. Buyers often feel underserved by their vendors on the information front. ABM can help you increase deal size and strengthen ties for future deals by keeping established buyers informed and up to date. That said, most practitioners will want to look beyond current customers to identify adjacent opportunities in their industry.

Once you’ve selected a key account, it’s time to start thinking about the people in that organization. This starts in familiar territory for most marketers: persona research. What are the job titles? What do people do in those roles? How do they spend their days? It’s not necessary to descend into demographics or to construct the imaginary profiles that many marketers like to use (“Peter is a CTO aged around 55 …”). A little creative imagination can’t hurt, but the key is to know in detail the pressures, concerns and business challenges that confront these people and, as far as possible, the people in this particular company. Understanding your customer’s pain is the best approach to defining the value your company can bring a certain persona.

With your targeted accounts and personas lined up, you’re ready to research high-value contacts at the account. Tech tools are available to help with this, but doing the research manually works fine. It’s time intensive, but it ensures that your contact data is correct and you are hitting your targets.

2. Build creative that targets your personas and accounts.

Again, marketers can leverage the familiar strategies of persona-based inbound marketing and content marketing. The goal is to attract interested buyers to your site with instructive, informative, thought-provoking materials that help them solve business problems or see them in a new light. You’ll want to avoid an overly promotional tone -- but give a lot of thought to the calls to action in the materials and make sure they move the prospective buyer along to the next stage of the journey. We offered persona-based blogs, e-papers, whitepapers and webinars, as well as collateral targeting specific industries.

3. Digitally surround your accounts and personas.

Go where your high-value prospects are. Join and participate in the professional online forums where they hang out. What are their preferred communication channels? Where are they active in social media?

This is one area where the judicious application of third-party services or technologies can be worthwhile. Some ABM marketing software packages, for example, can serve account-based advertising to your targets across web, mobile, video and social channels. ABM allows companies to target and engage specific personas within their top accounts, which leads to higher conversion rates throughout the funnel.

4. When engagement happens, start emailing and calling high-value contacts.

One big advantage of ABM is that people who are already engaged are more willing to talk to you. Once the program swings into action, things can happen fast. It’s essential that your sales teams are closely aligned from the start so they know what’s coming. They’ll need to be ready to mobilize all the traditional outbound marketing tools and practices, from emails to targeted offers to follow-up calls.

5. Optimize and improve.

Another advantage of ABM is that, because it’s tightly focused on a market of one, it’s relatively easy to adapt it as you go along. Watch your results closely. Tweak your creative and adjust your spend mix based on what you see, and look for opportunities to iterate.

At my company, we liked what we saw. Our click-through rate on emails increased by 600%. Digital ads are currently performing at 180% above industry standards. All while using a few key digital ABM tools that make a difference.

That’s the kind of outcome that’s well worth a bit of targeted agitation.

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