The Complete Account-Based Marketing

Account Based Data

Article | August 19, 2022

ABM is Agent3’s heartland. It’s what we do best. And if you’re a regular reader of our website, you’ll be in no doubt about how strongly we feel about our commitment to ‘true’ ABM, ie, an approach that treats key accounts as markets of one. Why? Because it works: according to ITSMA, almost 85% of marketers measuring ROI say that ABM outperforms other marketing investments and research by Alterra Group backs this statistic, revealing ABM had higher ROI than other marketing activities. So when marketers come to us asking for pilot ABM programs on, say, 8-10 accounts it’s little wonder that the results we achieve soon means they’re asking us to ramp up that ABM activity to 50-100 accounts as interest in ABM within their organization is suddenly piqued. And therein lies the challenge for many. To scale a ‘true’ ABM program effectively without compromising on the key fundamentals it encompasses involves the alignment of many moveable parts: technology and resourcing are fundamental considerations, but then there’s also the decision about which accounts to include and why, and establishing clear objectives for the program. It’s not straightforward, but if this is a challenge you’re grappling with currently, be reassured by the multiple survey results available online that you’re certainly not alone. And it’s for this reason we chose to discuss the topic at last week’s B2B Marketing Ignite USA event with a panel of esteemed marketers: Carrie Feord – Global Head of ABM Industry Clusters, Servicenow, Giovanni Di Natale, senior manager, enterprise and ABM Marketing, Pure Storage and Vera Tatro, strategic account-based marketing, AMER, Splunk. It was great to sit down with these ABM leaders to explore some of these challenges and provide some perspective on how best to successfully navigate them. In the session, we covered: 1) How people define ABM at scale and where the line is drawn in terms of defining the difference between 1:few/1:many ‘ABM’ and good account-centric demand generation from Product, Solutions and Industry Marketing teams. We also discussed whether certain compromises need to be made as you pursue scale. 2) How to enable teams in the field to scale with ABM: the panel shared successes they have had as well as highlighting ‘banana skins’ teams need to avoid in terms of developing ABM resources/playbooks/templates/toolkits which can then be activated by a growing team of ABMers and Field Marketers. We also discussed ways to embed a ‘build once, use again’ mindset while still being true to the ideals of ABM. 3) Clarification of roles within ABM organisations across marketing when it comes to scaling and succeeding within ABM – the panel discussed what skillsets and roles they see as being important as organizations shift from being small-scale ABM pilots to broader programs. As you can probably imagine, it was a lively session and audience feedback would suggest we hit upon some very real challenges, so it was great to hear first-hand from the panel about their own experiences, successes and learnings. If you missed it, I highly recommend carving 30 minutes out of your day to watch, and if you have any feedback or comments, we’d love to hear!

Buyer Intent Data

Article | March 6, 2023

Some companies are wasting a significant portion of their B2B advertising dollars because they lack the audience insights of larger, more seasoned B2B firms. Some are still using outdated strategies while understanding the nuances of digital marketing. Check out these five steps to optimize your B2B ad campaigns: Survey the Audience to Determine Brand Preferences Regularly survey your audience to see how open they are about confessing their brand preferences and ad campaign responses. In one of Forrester’s surveys, 91% of B2B buyers said they became aware of a previously unknown company due to advertising. Make Behavior Insights the Prime Metric Most B2B buyers may respond to the ads without clicking on them, so their behavior insights are crucial to know their response to the campaign. According to a Forrester report, 92% of buyers searched for the company featured in an ad, and 86% visited the advertised website without clicking on the ad. Base Ad Creative & Copy on Ad Preferences B2B buyers prefer ads relevant to their needs and interests. Irrelevant ads without any personalization can waste your ad budget. “Avoid promoting too much gated content and opt for higher-value advertising creative to reduce waste if form-fill efficacy is too low,”says John Arnold, Forrester Principal Analyst. Identify Preferred Media and Channels for Effective Outreach Marketers like you should go beyond using Google Search and LinkedIn for your outreach. Map your omnichannel approach to ensure maximum exposure across channels to get maximum impressions. Doing this can help you distribute your costs over multiple modalities. Access Media Time Spent to Allocate Ad Budget Track media time spent on the B2B buyer level and target buyers who spend media time on B2B products or services. Instead of spending money on account-based marketing vendors and having them figure out everything for you, be thoughtful about where you want to place your ads. Conclusion: Don’t Wait for Buying Cycles to Develop for Your Ads to Work B2B buyers need to develop a stronger preference for your company or solution through your ads to enter your sales funnel. So, invest in ads and get them placed where they can get you the response and conversions you expect.

Account Based Data

Article | June 29, 2023

Personalization is an essential component of an ABM strategy. Without content personalization, it is difficult to target decision makers and influence their purchase decisions. Within this content personalization, ABM landing pages play an important role in offering your target account just what they are looking for. However, without proper personalization, your ABM landing pages will not perform as expected and remain industry-specific pages that are too generic to create any impact. With the help of technology, it is easy to create hyper-personalized ABM landing pages. Here is how you can build your landing page strategy: Categorize Your Accounts Break your accounts into clusters, map patterns and choose relevant, effective content for each landing page. Use industry or firmographic details in the beginning and then switch to using account-specific pain points that each segment might face. Based on this data, you can build account personas. If you can, make a separate persona profile for each job role for certain accounts. This will make things run more smoothly. Create Value-added and Relevant Content for Each Cluster Your deep research into your target accounts will help you understand what kind of content will be valuable for each account. With your buyers in mind, create content that empowers them and facilitates their purchasing journey. Avoid creating fluffy content that raves about your brand. Instead, give the visitor something that can help them solve their business problems. Offer Personalized Offers for Each ABM Landing Page In a 2019 study conducted by Hanover Research for PROS, 69% of buyers said that personalized offers helped them purchase a product and that they were willing to pay more if a specially tailored price was quoted. Having relevant promotions and offers for a landing page that targets an account can get you the conversions you desire. Every visitor that arrives on the page should know that you have created specific content for them that can add value to their business. Delegate a Dedicated Sales Representative Your visitors may be used to chatbot automation, but they might still want to interact with a sales representative to get their queries cleared or to make special demands. Assign one sales representative to handle an account. This representative’s information should be available on the landing page so the visitors know who to get in touch with. Design a Personalized ABM Landing Page Layout Your landing page should follow a layout that aligns with the customized content. It should have a nice flow and should guide the visitor towards the call to action. It should influence the visitor through content they might find resourceful. Elements like a custom logo and the company’s banner will enrich the page with branding. The most important part of the page will be relevant content pieces like the visitors’ pain points, their industry highlights, product comparisons, and case studies. These are lucrative resources that the visitors might find useful. Using a landing page builder tool that is up-to-date, you can easily make campaigns for different campaigns. Focus on Your Call to Action Don’t hesitate to offer your visitors multiple calls to action. Offer them lead magnet downloads, specially tailored resources, tools, app downloads, upsells/cross-sells, etc. to entice them. Think about all the possible ways that could help your target accounts throughout the buying process and post-conversion. Multiple CTAs can be your way of showing how much you care about the visitors’ needs and experience. What’s the Bottomline? The pressure to bring in new customers is higher than ever before. Marketers need to get creative, revamp their acquisition strategy, and start talking to their target prospects directly through relevant content. Only then can ABM deliver the results you are looking for.

Article | April 12, 2020

There is a New Marketing Landscape and it is critical for companies to rethink their marketing and sales strategy. This is a world of financial uncertainty for your prospects and customers, resulting in decreased budgets, longer sales cycles, and higher churn. It’s also a world of competing priorities. Key influencers and decision makers are drowning in priority issues, making it challenging to earn their attention. Given these new realities, Account Based Marketing/Sales/Customer Success (ABX) is top of mind for marketing and sales leaders given its proven efficiency and effectiveness in engaging and converting priority accounts.