Let’s start by defining Account-Based Marketing (ABM). And what anyone employing an ABM strategy hopes to achieve. ABM is a highly personalized and strategic method that blends insight-driven marketing and sales to engage with key people within high-value clients. The main reason we implemented an ABM approach was to market to the proper contacts, because accounts don’t buy… individuals do.
ABM is all about people. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the other end of the phone, behind a computer screen, or the ones signing contracts and making decisions. People respond to people. That is why we must have a solid foundation backed by insight to do all of the heavy liftings throughout the ABM journey.
According to Forrester Research, the primary question you should be asking before venturing into ABM is “What new data will I need to make ABM successful?” Obtaining refined, up-to-date data that is stored in a structured manner would answer the most important question you should be asking before diving into ABM.
Reaching the right contacts with an ABM program
An important element of ABM is to better understand your target accounts so that you can treat every person in a highly personalized way. The first step is to determine which accounts should be targeted. Account selection should not be taken lightly as the results of the ABM program are dependent on account positioning.
Now that you have identified your ABM accounts, it is time to build deeper insight about each account. Are you confident enough that you are reaching the right people with the right message? Reaching the right contact requires careful handpicking of the right decision-makers and decision influencers. This would surely yield higher results if done otherwise, such as a volume-driven approach of spray and pray. Much of ABM effort and budget will be directed towards reaching key personnel at your target account with the right message to gain their attention
As stated by Digital Marketing Expert, Jay Baer:
“If you can deliver something to a prospect that is hyper-relevant, that is about their exact circumstance, which is the right piece of information at the right time, then you’re going to get attention”.
So, how exactly to go ahead and identify the perfect person to direct your marketing energy towards?
Build buyer personas
One of the biggest challenges for the sales and marketing team is inadequate knowledge about the individuals they are going to engage with. Building buyer personas also known as buyer insight helps to foster better relationships within target accounts. You need to ask yourself – what is the persona of the contact of my target account, what are their needs, their interests, their focus areas. If you can answer these questions, it becomes easy to orchestrate meaningful marketing strategies for ABM.
Targeting and engaging with different decision influencers who are the most strategic and best fit for your business has to be a well-thought process. Understanding the different buyer roles within the account, providing unique, tangible value, and building meaningful relationships with them will help in completing this complex marketing puzzle. ABM marketers need to be able to go further than the account and be as personal as possible with the key prospects and influential decision-makers.
Sad, but true. Prospects don’t care about what your product or service does – their only concern is how it can solve their problems. This can only be achieved if you have a deep understanding of their character as well as the priorities and challenges, they are facing. Without understanding the persona of your buyer, you will be losing out on a critical aspect while building a database of ideal customer profiles.
Pinpoint the common designations to identify
There are numerous influencers present at your target account. Using org charts and insight on C-suite can further help in making it easier to build a strong rapport with the buying team. It’s necessary to remember that ABM isn’t just about hitting a single person in the target account – it should incorporate sure targeting and actively marketing to the entire buying committee. As more decision influencers see and respond to your content, the easier it will become to generate consensus among them. Among internal buying committee, word of mouth can accelerate ABM strategy immensely.
Director, VP and C-level executives need to be targeted as they are the decision-makers and the influencers at your target account. Going deeper, the type of designation to target depends upon the solution that you provide. For example, if you are selling software that optimizes the IT budget of enterprises, you should be targeting the owners of the IT budget at your enterprise-level account. Or, if you’re selling Martech solutions, your target group is CMOs or CROs.
Hence, you should be digging deep to collect all the nuggets of information available to map out your target account. This will help you identify other people who may have a say in the decision-making process and will ensure that you will reach out to everyone involved in the decision.
According to SiriusDecisions, an omnichannel approach to engaging buyers can accelerate deals by up to 30%.
What next?
To make it all effective, do some research on the major decision-makers at each of your ABM accounts. Craft personalised messages and build content that adds value to them. Building relationships is an important part of ABM and you need to take time to build, promote and strengthen the relationships between you and your target persona to generate sustainable revenue.
B2B revenue generation leaders need to map buyer journeys, align content to different stages, and engage with buyers on their terms. The value of developing a personal relationship with stakeholders in a company is irrefutable and affects all areas of businesses and aligns sales and marketing teams with individual targets, goals and campaigns. You might want to explore if anyone within your organization knows anyone who can introduce you to the key people. It might be worth doing a desk-based research to learn more about your ABM account.
Also, if you have access to a research team (similar to that of Business Brainz) you might want to have them identify if there are any events that the key executives are going to participate or speak at in near future. It could also be about any personal interests that they have which align with someone in your team, could be golf for example.
Since this article is an outcome of multiple years of experience in helping companies to reach the right contacts, feel free to have a look at our persona insight reports and executive insight reports.