Account based marketing is becoming a common term for B2B advertisers. ABM is a great way to reach your targeted audience by first identifying your goal customer, and then identifying targeting methods for said customer. From our experience, there’s some boxes that need to be checked and conversations that need to be had before launching into the ABM world. Many of the conversations involve the sales teams’ processes and some are questions about the client’s internal processes: things that PPC pros are usually not a part of. However, the combination of sales + marketing teams can equal big successes for everyone involved.
If you’re ready to get started in the ABM world, but you’re not sure where to begin, here’s some questions you should ask:
What’s the Normal Sales Cycle?
Sometimes this is a question that is answered quickly after beginning to work with a new client. However, if you’re working with a person in a new role or a startup, it’s likely that the client themselves are still working this cycle out themselves. This is an important metric for reviewing your ABM strategies on-going levels of success.
You can also keep this knowledge in your back pocket for ABM remarketing strategies.
How Can Sales and Marketing Unify for Success?
“With ABM programs, Sales and Marketing share goals, create cross-departmental assets, and execute against a unified strategy. Companies that already have a strong alignment between Sales and Marketing have an advantage when implementing successful ABM programs,” according to MarTech Today columnist Kristie Colby in her post about effective account-based marketing strategies.
By adopting shared success metrics between the sales and marketing teams, often with engagement-focused metrics, these two teams are able to work even better together. By agreeing on KPIs that are goals for each team, your ABM strategy can be even more successful.
What’s the Process for a New Lead?
Different companies have different ways of following up and maintaining communication with new leads. At larger companies, there’s often multiple sales teams that have different targets and goals, and therefore, their processes may vary as well. It’s useful for marketing and sales to understand each other’s processes on a basic level. Regular reporting of the lead cycle can keep everything running smoothly and allows you to roll with the punches.
What Tracking is Required for the Client’s Internal Purposes?
Tracking can be a big, big mess, y’all. Sure, there’s fancy ways of utilizing auto and dynamic tracking features, but unfortunately not every client is on that level. Different CRMs have different ways of utilizing information and if PPC efforts don’t jive, it can result in many headaches. By getting everyone on the same page, you can avoid lost data in the future.
What Are the Client’s Priority Targeted Accounts?
Some clients could have an infinite number of new accounts they’d love to acquire, but having a list of 200-500 priority accounts can help you to narrow your scope and start your ABM strategies off with a bang. It’s important to note that sometimes not every desired company will have a presence on Facebook and LinkedIn, so that can also narrow your audience a bit.
What Kind of Segmentation Can Help Us Divide and Conquer?
A key element of ABM success is segmentation. Large lists are not only overwhelming but it’s almost always less effective to be more broad when you could be more specific in digital marketing.
Here’s a couple of suggestions on breaking your lists out into manageable sizes:
- Industry Type
- Location
- Company Size/Revenue Level/Number of Employees
- Job Title
- Job Function
- Channel Used
- Lead Lifestage
What is the Plan of Attack?
AKA: What channels are you going to use to reach these desired customers?
There’s been a large number of ABM technologies emerging, so finding a tech stack to meet your goals isn’t as hard as it used to be (a large budget always helps as well). However, it’s important to note that new channels aren’t necessary if your client wants to keep it simple.
What suggestions do you have for a successful ABM launch? Let us know in the comments below!
