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Alltake B2B Intelligence
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Account-based marketing
Account-based marketing efforts is on the rise, and we are best at it. 90% of our assignments revolves around ABM campaigns which plays a major role in our client success factors. This is more result driven more profitable and more niche to the target audience. Marketers and salespersons who successfully merge data and insights with specific use-cases of individual prospects will succeed more than those reliant on lead qualification criteria in the sales funnel. This adds a layer of complexity to the traditional sales funnel in which the roles of marketing and sales become increasingly blurred, with marketers becoming more involved in the after-purchase experience of customers.
There are several goals associated with account-based marketing. These include:
- Increasing account relevance. Engaging an account on a contextual level - considering their goals, plans, challenges and urgency - opens up opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. This is also the foundation for an ongoing client relationship, which requires less marketing resources than acquiring new accounts and ensures steady revenue. Therefore, each account becomes more relevant to your company goals.
- Engaging deals earlier at a higher level. As the internet, social media and inbound marketing make many B2B sellers commoditized, the importance of engaging opportunities at a high level early on with a smart, contextual approach cannot be understated. It can make the difference between closing the deal or getting edged out by a rival who made their impression first.
- Maximizing marketing ROI. Aligning marketing resources with individual account strategies generates clear justification for every dollar spent. Prioritizing allocation of marketing resources by account also allows for clearer attribution, which provides a basis for strategy adjustments to maximize marketing ROI.
- Inspiring customers with predictive solutions. An important part of modern account-based marketing is building brand distinction by anticipating client needs before they ask for them. Predictive analytics that account for client history, industry trends, seasonality and market shortages can impress clients and promote brand evangelism. This attracts new leads and reinforces the existing client relationship.
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Implementation of an account-based marketing strategy requires an organized process through which your team’s resources and efforts are aligned and complementary rather than redundant, disjointed or tangential. A list of procedures can guide the development of your framework.
Create a methodology for selecting accounts
This might be done in several ways. Your marketing team can build out criteria similar to what’s used for lead qualification - industry, revenue, location, tech use, number of employees, customer base, use of competing products. Like with lead scoring, weigh each criterion accordingly and segment prospects within each criterion according to sub-criteria - for example, you prioritize accounts that originate from the U.S. northeast with between ten to fifty employees, but you can engage accounts anywhere within the continental U.S. under more restrictive parameters.
Build a list of prospective accounts
Using your criteria, build a list of accounts from your CRM database or prospects obtained through digital marketing. Evaluate accounts you’ve lost to see if there’s an opportunity to win back their business. Tap your salespeople for their own target accounts prospects - they may have prospects for intangible reasons not listed in the CRM.
Vet accounts through joint marketing and sales sessions
Organize stakeholders from each team to build consensus on key accounts. You might segment accounts according to potential deal size, your current contact person, their existing role in your sales funnel. Clients with whom you have a relationship are better candidates than top-of-funnel prospects, but the latter can provide an opportunity to test highly-specific account engagement methods.
Research activity of target organizations along with relevant industry trends
Build an understanding of company pain points, recent industry trends and forecasts for industry developments. Also learn about the key people in your target accounts - there is an average of 5.4 stakeholders involved in any one B2B deal. Supplement your CRM data with lists of key executives at target companies. The process of gaining intelligence on target accounts is ongoing; while it begins after accounts have been vetted, it should continue throughout your relationship with the account.
Dedicate resources toward target account engagement
Set up a system of alerts (Google Alerts, for example) to notify the related personnel of any changes or key events affecting the target account. Target a few pieces of high quality content tailored to the account’s needs during different stages of the buyer’s journey. Plan touchpoints - including offline events or outreach - and incorporate them, along with the content, into the overall plan. A letter or postcard can stand out, especially in conjunction with outreach through typical digital channels like email, social media or curated blog content.
Review
You will likely roll out your account-based marketing strategy piecemeal. Review your progress with your initial accounts and compare it to results from your typical marketing efforts. Compare budgets (your ABM budget includes cost of developing content, research, contact discovery, advertising), milestones, closed won deals over a period of time. If your ABM strategy is underperforming, consider where you found shortcomings and revise your framework so contacts, accounts, research and team alignment produce the high-level relationships this type of marketing requires for success.
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Account-based marketing
Account-based marketing builds upon relationships with high-level contacts within an organization - ones with decision-making authority - to cross-sell, up-sell or gain incremental business through brand advocacy. Rather than casting a wide net, you seek out and target the most likely prospects. Therefore, in order to distinguish yourself among competitors in an era where the internet and digital tech commoditizes B2B sellers, you’ll need to make those relationships meaningful and productive. You need to impress the prospect with your knowledge of their business, your commitment to their success, while also discerning their specific pain points by which to contextualize potential contributions of your products or services.
While we can’t always determine our initial contacts within the organization, we can frame our engagement in terms that demonstrate clear room for added value, so that we can further the conversation to include contacts with buying authority or they are brought in by our initial contact.
Building a sense of the target account’s business context requires understanding some general criteria which is circumstantial and peculiar to their industry, company and pains. These data points include the following:
Goals
Find out what your prospect is aspiring to do within a timeframe (quarter, year, multi-year period). This might include their top priorities, such as product rollouts, revenue goals, expansion into a region or product space. You can build rapport on a personal level but in the early stages it’s best to keep the subject matter pertinent to the business relationship.
Plans
Get a sense of how they intend to pursue their goal, and how your company factors into whatever strategy they will implement. If their business pain has existed for some time, inquire what their previous plans were to address it, how the source of the pain arose, why the old plan wouldn’t succeed now or how they think your solution is a better, longer-term fix. Learn what makes them think their plan will succeed, whether they have a backup plan, and listen for red flags that sound like they’re displacing blame for past failures on foreseeable circumstances. You don’t need to poke holes in their plan anywhere you can, but add value to the conversation by asking if they accounted for certain externalities, whether they have enough resources to implement the plan, and if they’re open, share experiences about past clients who faced similar challenges or implemented similar strategies, if you have them. Obviously don’t breach any NDAs!
Challenges
Identify the chief hurdles your prospect faces or will face in implementing their plan. If there’s a challenge they’ve been unable to overcome for some time (most likely related to their pain point) this will allow you to privately evaluate whether their plan and your solution would be able to resolve it. Again, feel free to offer your recommendations if you feel the prospect is open to hearing them. Ask them how they would adapt their plan if they felt it wasn’t yielding the results they desired in the timeframe they needed.
Stakes
Learn what’s to be gained or lost if the prospect succeeds or fails to reach their main goals. Is this an existential issue for the company? How would either outcome affect them personally and professionally, e.g. would they gain more resources or a promotion for success, could they face demotion or termination for failure? Of course, tread carefully on these issues, but getting the answers would give you a sense of their own buy-in.
Timeline
You remember this one from BANT. Re-evaluate their timeframe in context of what you learned. Learn how soon your prospect is interested in choosing a solution. Beyond that, the timeline by which the prospect needs to see results, their milestones for plan implementation, where other priorities fall within this timeframe, and so forth.
Evaluating these criteria is an essential element of account-based marketing. A talented marketer or sales rep - or both, working in close alignment - can obtain a complete picture of a prospect’s circumstances, goals, intentions and chances of success. This doesn’t merely set the groundwork for a closed sale - rather, it builds the foundation for a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship.