What is Account Based Marketing?
Account Based Marketing is a B2B strategy used by sales and marketing teams that allows a business to personalize its marketing efforts in order to expand the largest and most important deals. These deals often have a longer sales cycles of 6 to 12 months or more. An ABM strategy recognizes that your target customers aren’t just leads, or even a single person, but rather accounts that have internal departments and teams making decisions.
How Do I Implement an ABM Campaign?
1. Find Your Preferred Client
Because your efforts will be focused on a relatively small number of clients, focus your campaign on accounts that have the greatest revenue potential.
Your past success may be with companies within certain industries, or companies with a certain number of employees, departments, or locations. Use sales statistics to determine what has worked in the past, and which types of accounts have been the most profitable.
Armed with this information, you can utilize publicly available annual reports, LinkedIn, and other sources to learn more about the organization.
2. Determine Your ABM Budget
Plan your budget around an estimate of the necessary time and research needed in finding the target clients. Also include costs of giveaways, executive door openers (EDOs), or direct mailers that will appeal to your target prospects.
If your budget allows for it, the more you personalize your direct mailer or EDO, the better the chance of obtaining their interest.
3. Research, Research, Research!
It is important to rigorously research your target prospects and their respective organizations before launching your ABM campaign. Within each organization, determine who their key decision makers are, their roles within the organization, and where they are located.
From your list of preferred clients, telemarketing can be a useful way to determine your prospects pain points. By contacting different people within a single organization, your sales team can also determine pain points within key departments.
Finally, use intent data to determine whether a target company is in the market for your company’s solutions. This data could be found in forums or through other third-party software that focuses on user intent. IT companies selling complex solutions and services often turn to install base vendors such as HG Data and DiscoverOrg to target the right accounts. For example, if companies who use Microsoft Office 365 are more apt to purchase your product, why not zero in on the accounts where O365 is installed?
This collective information will enable you to craft a targeted marketing message.
4. Create a Customized Campaign
Once you know the details of a target client’s organization and pain points, your team will be armed with the information required to develop a customized campaign. Choose two to three people to market to within each organization. At this point, your research will have allowed you to determine the primary decision makers and departments that would be interested in your company’s services.
Depending on the size of your team, attempt to target 25-50 per month in order to ensure your sales team has the proper amount of time for follow-up each month.
5. Follow-Up, and Don’t Give Up!
Prior to launching your campaign, determine how your organization will be following up with prospects. This could be through an:
- Email nurturing campaign
- Telemarketing appointment setting campaign
- Social media outreach approach, or
- A combination of the above tactics
An ABM strategy takes time. Be prepared to coach your sales team through lulls where prospects are taking longer to respond.
To ensure the best possible success of your ABM campaign, ensure you have created a plan that takes into account everything from detailed research about prospects to the best way to follow-up after marketing materials have been delivered.
The GamePlan Marketing team can assist your organization in developing an integrated marketing plan to ensure you are making the most of your marketing budget. Request a free marketing consultation today and find out how we can help you implement a successful ABM strategy.
