Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a go-to-market strategy that aligns marketing, sales, and customer success to land and expand high-value accounts with personalised campaigns.
Account-Based Marketing has exploded in the last decade, with 96% of 500 marketers surveyed by IDG confirming that they have a documented ABM strategy in 2022.
The popularity of ABM can be attributed to many benefits, such as:
While Account-Based Marketing has advantages, planning and executing it can be a very daunting task. Furthermore, if your organisation has been using a demand-generation approach, ABM adoption can be an uphill journey.
We here at xGrowth have produced this comprehensive guide to account-based marketing to help you get started or re-calibrate your existing ABM program in 2023!
It uses highly personalised campaigns to engage with each account based on what is strategically relevant and of interest to them.
ITSMA first coined the concept of ABM in 2004. Their goal was to help marketers achieve better results by stopping them from drafting a sales pitch for a very general target audience and instead pushing them to create personalised campaigns and messaging for multiple stakeholders within high-value target accounts.
So, by ITSMA's definition: Account-Based Marketing is "treating individual accounts as markets in their own right."
Since then, Account-Based Marketing strategies have developed even further.
Broader definitions have gained traction due to technology players moving into this space. We like how Engagio (who have been acquired by Demandbase) defines ABM as: "a go-to-market strategy that coordinates personalised marketing and sales efforts to land and expand into target accounts and boost revenue".
This means that the emphasis is on the quality of the accounts rather than the quantity of the prospects.
Marketing and sales teams work to deliver personalised content and campaigns that speak to decision-makers in a specific account rather than an entire market. These campaigns are tailored to address the client's business problems.
However, the technology and capabilities developed in the past few years changed the game and has made it more accessible.
If you want to know whether an account is a good fit to implement an ABM strategy, you should look for two deciding factors:
A Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) of larger than $10k and up to millions of dollars
Organisations with complex sales environments where multiple decision-makers and influencers need to be on board to get the contract signed.
Usually, ABM is beneficial when your company is facing the following challenges:
Not enough highly qualified leads or too many leads from small companies that are not a good fit for the solution you are offering
The marketing and the sales team have trouble collaborating.
Your organisation usually has long sales cycles
Difficulty to show a return of investment (ROI) from your marketing campaigns
An ABM strategy can help with all of the above.
However, the technology and capabilities developed in the past few years changed the game and has made it more accessible.
If you want to know whether an account is a good fit to implement an ABM strategy, you should look for two deciding factors:
Usually, ABM is beneficial when your company is facing the following challenges:
An ABM strategy can help with all of the above.
Target 100 companies, running a project for 4 months
Turning $1 into $8
With your account list ready, you will be able to tier the accounts you have identified.
We will talk about tiering in-depth in the next section, but for now, let's just say that you can categorise potential customers depending on the size of the opportunity and the likelihood of success in three tiers:
By now, you have a good understanding of the accounts you are going after and the people important to you in those accounts. You have also placed those accounts in tiers. You are in decent shape to start developing the messaging for your target accounts.
We've talked about how Account-Based Marketing provides a personalised experience for customers. At this stage, you can personalise content and messaging and develop specific actions that are relevant to the needs of your potential target accounts.
So, how are you going to reach out to these people specifically? You need to decide how you will deliver your message at the right time to these organisations.
Some common marketing channels used in ABM are:
An Account-Based Marketing play is a sequence of activities that are coordinated and implemented to reach and engage target accounts.
You need to execute time-bound tasks and actions during the sales lifecycle.
You need to design a plan that specifies the sequence of work that's going to be done to reach a decision-maker or to close a target account. It is paramount to design a play that is both multi-touch and multi-channel.
You've done your homework; now it's time to have some fun and execute your plan!
While you step into action, you must keep an eye on how you will measure your results.
These questions can help you identify indicators to track your progress:
You will learn a lot as you measure your work. This information will help you adjust your process and see where you need to improve.
With all those learnings, you will be able to take your ABM strategy to the next level and scale for bigger campaigns.
These metrics aim to gauge the quality of your relationships with customers in both current and potential accounts.
They provide information on how the engagement level of your primary contacts has changed after your ABM efforts.
The below is not an exhaustive list of metrics, but they are an excellent starting point:
Next, we will go into reputation metrics.
Reputation metrics help evaluate the impact of your ABM program on how your target accounts perceive your organisation. There could be multiple forms of KPIs that you can use to track how your account-based marketing programs are adding to your reputation, but the below two encompass a considerable majority of them.
After reputation, let’s move to revenue.
When it comes to tying your marketing efforts to business growth and sales numbers, revenue metrics are of utmost importance and do not require any explanation.
Tracking certain revenue metrics can prove to be highly valuable for any marketer in the ABM space. Below are some that we feel are the most significant ones.
While the three Rs framework is a good approach to looking at ABM metrics, an important thing to note is that the final list of metrics you choose also depends on the end objective you are trying to achieve with your ABM strategy.
For more details on this topic, read the detailed piece we wrote about Account-Based Marketing metrics.
ABM is usually divided into three different tiers depending on the level of personalisation. As you move up from Programmatic ABM to Strategic ABM, you should see a change in three areas:
Let's analyse each tier in detail:
It is used for the most important accounts and is executed on a one-to-one basis. This means that it is a very personalised campaign.
The idea is that the team focuses on building and nurturing relationships with the most valued stakeholders in your target accounts. To do this, you need to demonstrate a great understanding of the customer's goals and craft your messaging around those.
This tier is mainly used for target account expansion. Because a huge investment goes into this type of strategy, it is implemented in situations where the chances of winning a deal are high. Both the likelihood of success and the size of the success need to be significant for the account to be positioned in the strategic tier of Account-Based Marketing.
Sometimes referred to as ABM Lite, this tier is about creating marketing programs for clusters of accounts with similar business attributes, challenges and opportunities.
The level of customisation is lighter compared to the one-to-one tier (Strategic ABM) since it is used for small groups of accounts instead of individual ones.
The programs are designed in ways to be lightly customised for each account within the cluster. The primary customisation efforts focus on the business issues that apply to all accounts within a cluster.
In this tier, the focus is shifted to positioning accounts into much larger clusters and tailoring campaigns for those specific accounts at scale.
The accounts are selected from across one market and need to be aligned with the company's sales coverage model. The key to Programmatic ABM is to find the right balance between customisation and scale.
Compared to the other tiers, this one-to-many approach is more reliant on technology. This is because a one-to-many campaign can require targeting and delivering a personalised message to a large number of accounts, sometimes in the thousands. We here at xGrowth also got together with some industry leaders in APAC to discuss some best practices for programmatic ABM. Check it out to level up on your ABM game
So, how can you choose the right approach for our organisation? Well, you don't have to choose one. A blended approach is best: the top-performing ABM teams employ two or even all three tiers.
By now, you are probably thinking about all the wonderful results that you will get from an account-based marketing strategy. But before we continue, let's take a moment to talk about some common mistakes that companies make with ABM.
We have mentioned this before, but we can't stress it enough: ABM is a coordinated effort between sales and marketing. It will only work if both departments work as one team.
Sales and marketing need to be aligned. Both teams should have common goals and messaging while reaching out to the target accounts.
This one is a classic. It is easy to say, 'let's run an ABM campaign,' but this is not the case. Account-Based Marketing is, by definition, a strategy.
If you try to run a three-month ABM campaign, it's not going to work. Your team needs to embrace ABM as a strategy and focus on it from a long-term perspective.
There are a lot of great tools and platforms out there to help your team with your ABM strategy. However, if you think that just one tool will do all the work and solve all your problems, you will be disappointed. It does not work like that.
It's important to remember that tools are there to assist your team's efforts, not replace them. You need to do your homework, analyse which accounts you should go after, and understand the goals of your prospects and customers. Before investing in tools, you need to lay the foundations and design your strategy. Success will come with the right balance of human work and the right tools.
Many companies try to make a switch from their existing marketing strategy and go full ABM overnight. It's a guaranteed road to failure.
To truly become ABM-centred, it is crucial to run a pilot project as a starting point. Account-Based Marketing is a complex strategy. You should first run a pilot, build the practice, optimise, and gradually scale your efforts. Taking baby steps will allow you to iterate and learn what is working and what is not.
If you are new to the ABM space, running a pilot will be a good starting point.
A pilot will serve as proof of concept for your executive leadership.
While you are trying to convince your leadership to run your first ABM campaign, have some successful Account-Based Marketing examples handy. These can be used to get their buy-in before making it an organisation-wide practice.
With that said, let’s go into a step-by-step process for launching and executing your ABM pilot.
We have been talking non-stop about how marketing and sales teams should work together. So, as a marketer, you need to reach out to sales and partner with someone.
You and your internal champion from the sales team will both need to decide how far you can go with this campaign.
The key is to run your pilot in a way that it is small enough to be safe but large enough to show results. You need to maximise learning while minimising risk.
Take some time to plan and estimate. You must have clear objectives and manage expectations for your campaign. Analyse what you are going to measure and why.
Ask yourself questions like:
As you design your ABM campaign, the team should be aligned in terms of:
Here, you would want to work with your sales champion to produce a target account list. This list should be a reasonable one. For instance, there’s no point in selecting accounts from an industry where your organisation has had no success.
For the purposes of the pilot, go for accounts from the industry that your sales team is confident about!
Based upon the agreed-upon objectives, account list and research done, this step is all about developing a single GTM messaging that your marketing and sales team will use across the buyer journey.
This step is self-explanatory. If you haven’t heard it before, execution is key. If you are running a creative direct mail campaign, ensure you have the right mailing partners. Work with all the stakeholders involved closely, be it your graphic designers, content creators, or copywriters. A best practice is to share your campaign theme and context with all the players involved.
Lastly, remember to measure and report on the results of your campaigns as frequently as possible. A weekly report on the meetings booked or accounts reached should be broadcasted to the senior leadership. Driving the ROI of your ABM pilot will ensure that ABM persists in your organisation for the long term.
Share your success and failures with your team and make improvements to your strategy accordingly. The results of your pilot should be identifying what works best for you in terms of audiences, channels, actions and tools. This will be the foundation to scale.
This one is an easy decision; personalising content marketing efforts is the lowest-hanging fruit in ABM.
By creating offers and content that are built specifically to address the pain point of each target account stakeholder, you're able to engage with your audience on their level and build a stronger relationship from it!
Here is an example scenario.
Your organisation sells solutions in the cybersecurity space, and your research shows that cyber-attacks on financial services firms are a key industry pain point. It keeps CIOs, CISOs and CEOs up at night.
You also find out that a big bank in your geography is looking for a new security vendor because they had some of their core systems hacked.
The tactic of personalising content for your account could be done by launching LinkedIn Ads targeting the C-level of that specific bank. The ad could take them to a blog article on your website about “5 things to look for while evaluating a security vendor”.
This is just one very simple example of what we mean by personalising content.
Keep in mind; it’s not just about personalising content; personalisation could mean creating a completely custom website experience or creating very personalised SOW, proposals and offers.
Strong market research capabilities are key to identifying your target accounts’ pain points.
The easiest way to get a clear idea about what's going on at your target company is by subscribing to and monitoring public information services like Google Alerts.
There are also other tactics that you can use, such as surveillance of social media activity for hidden insights into the happenings within the companies. LinkedIn and other similar third-party tools can help you in getting all the information you need.
The right contacts can be hard to come by. That's why there are vendors who specialise in creating lists based on role or responsibility. They'll also guarantee that the person you're looking for is still active!
Leaning on professional list builders such as Reachforce (acquired by Leadspace) & Televerde for your Account-Based Marketing campaigns can be a game-changer sometimes.
Retargeting is another brilliant tactic to engage your customers and make them feel like you're always there for the taking. While more common in B2C, retargeting has found applications in the B2B and ABM world as well.
Retargeting means showing ads to people who have already visited your website or seen your ad. This works by storing small pieces of data called cookies in people's web browsers. Then, when these people visit other websites, they will see ads for your product. This is an effective way to remind potential customers about what you're selling and increase brand awareness.
In an ABM campaign, retargeting ensures you are always in front of your accounts!
You may think that marketing efforts today are all about social media and online content, but you would be surprised to know that there is an under-utilised strategy out there.
Direct mail. Yes! Direct mail campaigns can return up to 20 times what is invested in them. Read about the awesome direct mail campaign that we ran for one of our clients here at xGrowth.
The connections other employees have within your target accounts could be a potential source of information and insight. Tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator allow you to see which team members are connected with people at these targets.
The Demandbase ABX Cloud is a comprehensive platform for running advanced and personalised account-based marketing campaigns.
The platform’s capabilities include audience management, intent data capture on how customers behave on different channels and campaign activation through native and non-native channels. There’s also account measurement, so you know what works best when the time comes to make decisions about your future marketing strategy.
As a part of its product roadmap, Demandbase plans to launch predictive intelligence capabilities for forecasting a potential “product purchase” action from the buyer and making recommendations on what marketers should do with that information.
Terminus’ Account-Based Marketing software has native channel support with advertising, website chat and personalisation features such as dynamic email signatures.
In the last couple of years, it has grown inorganically to advance its vision and add new functionalities, the most recent being an integrated customer data platform (CDP).
The company’s ABM tool can also create psychographic account profiles that can be used by marketers to gain detailed insights about their target audience and understand what messages resonated best with them.
From a future roadmap perspective, Terminus is working on creating better analytics and utilisation dashboards for its end users.
The 6sense Account Engagement Platform is a powerful tool for managing ABM programs across sales, marketing and operations teams.
With its strong partner ecosystem and native capabilities, the 6Sense platform helps deliver relevant content & messaging to target account stakeholders across multiple social channels. This is just one of their core offerings, and more details about them can be accessed here.
6Sense plans to expand its predictive models for pipeline reporting. Their platform will also start leveraging goals-based AI to increase web engagement and identify new account opportunities.
RollWorks is definitely a company to watch out for! They have a unique and advanced Account-Based Marketing platform that is highly intuitive and user-friendly. Marketers can use RollWorks for account identification, multi-channel audience engagement and ABM's impact measurement.
The company is also investing heavily in enhancing its current account scoring models and audience engagement capabilities. With all these amazing features, the organisation is on the path to becoming a leading player in the ABM space.
While we shared some information about the four major ABM platforms, there are others in the market that should also be on your radar. Some of them are Mutiny, Hubspot ABM, Salesforce (Pardot) ABM & Triblio.
Apart from the core ABM platforms that we talked about in the previous section; you can also think of including the following tools in your ABM tech stack.
We will again re-emphasise our disclaimer here that you don’t necessarily need these platforms to launch your ABM program. These tools, however, will make your journey smoother, easier, faster and scalable.
For acquiring high-quality intent data on your accounts, you may consider the following two platforms:
For contact enrichment, i.e. getting information on account stakeholder list and other account happenings, the following platforms can be leveraged.
Chatbots for your ABM strategy! Yes, chatbots can play a part in your ABM campaigns as well. Below is a platform that can help you in your ABM journey!
Finally, you can consider the below organisations for your ABM content delivery.
This template will be used to capture the key data points on each of your target accounts.
So, if you have ten target accounts, you will ideally want 10 of these
The following items will be captured for each account.
DOWNLOAD YOUR TEMPLATEThis template will help you structure your thoughts around different buying centres and departments you would target within your accounts.
The figure below shows sample departments that might be involved in the decision-making process. For us to develop custom campaigns for stakeholders in each of these departments, we would want to know their pain points and motivations. We would also like to know the metrics they care about and by whom they are influenced.
For instance, a CRM company would want to ensure they are at par with the best-of-breed solution because that’s what the marketing team might be looking for; they also need to ensure that they are competitively priced to remove any objections from procurement.
The CRM should also be easily deployed because that’s the motivation for the technology team. The “ABM Buying Centres Identification” template forces you to explore and dig into all this information!
DOWNLOAD YOUR TEMPLATEThis is a simple dashboard template to capture the performance of your ABM campaigns.
While the below image is exhaustive in terms of the kind of metrics you should be tracking, it is essential to look at them with some context and dive deeper.
For instance, if you are tracking “Targeted Ad Impressions, it's not just about hitting a certain number of impressions for the campaign overall; instead, it's more along the lines of how many of those impressions were from the specific accounts in your target list!
Furthermore, if most of your impressions come from just one target account and you have 15 accounts in your list, then you need to look at the “impressions” number with that added consideration.
The above would be true for “Clicks” and “Engagements” as well!
Remember, your metrics will only make sense if they are being captured for your target account list!
If you want to know more about ABM metrics, check out our detailed blog here!
DOWNLOAD YOUR TEMPLATEThis template is a simple Gantt chart where you can lay out the timelines and key milestones of your ABM campaigns. The snapshot below shows some standard components, such as creating relevant content, running ads, direct mail deliveries, and SDR reach-out. Ideally, your campaign project plan should align with the buyer's journey.
DOWNLOAD YOUR TEMPLATELinkedIn can be used as a tool for Account-Based Marketing for
Lead generation involves generating a lot of interest at the top of the funnel. Then you work with them until only a few leads are left. These are the people who are most likely to buy what you're selling.
ABM inverts the marketing funnel in a way, where you start with an already decided list of accounts and try to convert them.
To identify if the ABM strategy is applicable to your target account, see if the following two criteria are met.
3 key objectives of account-based marketing are
Account-Based Marketing can be used by organisations selling to companies in both B2B and B2C space.
ABM is a B2B marketing approach for an enterprise-level organisation having more than 1,000 employees trying to sell their products and services in similar B2B or B2C companies.
3 key objectives of account-based marketing are
Depending on the type of ABM strategy, you should set an expectation to your senior leadership that they would be able to see some tangible results in 6-9 months.
No, ABM is not inbound or outbound marketing, but they can be used as sub-strategies or tactics in a larger ABM program.
