ABM perfectly complements sales and marketing strategies, says Tim Kopp, CEO at Terminus

ABM empowers marketers to truly understand their customers’ journeys — knowing what they need, providing a solution, and increasing loyalty.

MEDIA 7: With a decade in leadership roles within the marketing landscape, how does this influence your approach towards the B2B and software space?
TIM KOPP: When I first ventured into B2B marketing, it was all about leads — demand generation with a side of product marketing and brand. At the time, I believed that these were three separate disciplines operating independent of each other, but it turns out they’re inextricably linked. Simply put, the magic happens when all three gears are clicking together. Relationships become the underpinning for this, it creates a flywheel between employees, customers, and the market. A powerful movement that others want to be part of.

So how does this impact leadership? As a marketer, I thankfully learned that it wasn’t about being the smartest person in the room. Building relationships is about knowing what questions to ask and leading with "humble confidence." You’re confident in your own capabilities, but you’re also humble enough to know that you don’t know everything. You’re willing to reach out to others, make connections, ask questions and learn from those people. Getting the right people in place to align the best team — and then maintain that alignment — is the hard part.

I think my approach has evolved along with MarTech’s evolution. B2B is now becoming very much like B2B (it’s all Business to Human).  ABM allows you to humanize marketing, build relationships while still collecting and using data. We talk about having lots of data, and there’s value in data. Leveraging that data in real-time is now the key.


M7: From being an up-and-coming startup in 2015 to an industry disruptor, Terminus is now recognized as a leader among Customer Data Platforms (CDP) by Forrester, has ranked on the 2021 Inc. 5,000, and more, under your leadership. What were the key aspects of your strategy that drove this growth?
TK: Eighty-eight percent of marketers don’t have confidence in their data. Crazy, right? And, if we don’t trust the data we use to influence our marketing decisions — that’s a huge problem. Terminus CDP solves this issue. With the acquisition of Zylotech and the launch of Terminus CDP, we’re enabling marketers to continuously clean and enrich their account and contact data.

A standalone CDP collects, tracks, and updates data on everyone within target accounts. Our key strategies include evolving our platform to: 

• Automatically discover new contact and account data to help scale ABM efforts.
• Connect powerful engagement channels with the first-party data to execute multi-channel ABM to generate higher ROI and bigger impact.
• Generate a trustworthy, unified view into customer insight.
• Increase efficiency and accuracy of marketers’ and salespeople’s unified outreach.

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Eighty-eight percent of marketers don’t have confidence in their data.

M7: What’s your view on the relationship between ABM and sales? How do you think these departments should integrate?
TK: It’s simple: marketing and sales have to be in alignment for the success of ABM. Alignment matters because ABM flips the traditional approach of generating leads on its head. It doesn’t adhere to the idea that a full sales funnel will create a trickle-down effect leading to high conversion rates. Instead, ABM enables marketers to refine the criteria by which they identify buyers. While marketers might not have the same amount of leads, each lead is targeted and relevant — and thus more likely to convert.

ABM provides the perfect complement to support a range of sales and marketing strategies like account nurturing, personalization, and retargeting. But it requires collaboration to identify the best accounts to target, build buyer profiles, create strategic content, launch campaigns that incorporate ABM, and measure and monitor the data, adjusting as needed. Ideally, companies should champion a partnership between ABM and sales. This collaboration will lead to more accurate account targeting, increased conversions, and long-term, sustainable revenue outcomes.


M7: According to you, what does it mean to be ‘customer-centric’ in the context of ABM?
TK: A multi-channel ABM approach generates deep customer insight for all accounts, which in turn, allows marketers to develop a customized approach for every customer. The questions marketers ask through ABM naturally builds that customer-centric focus by:

• Facilitating deeper, richer conversations with customers.
• Identifying opportunities within existing accounts.
• Increasing account penetration via margin, revenue and wallet share.

ABM empowers marketers to truly understand their customers’ journeys — knowing what they need, providing a solution, and increasing loyalty. The data insights marketers can gather from ABM makes it much easier to focus on the customer.

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ABM enables marketers to refine the criteria by which they identify buyers.

M7: What should be a company’s key areas of focus when selecting the right accounts to target?
TK: When refining your focus to choose the right accounts for an ABM campaign, you need to first identify your campaign goals. Once the marketing and sales teams agree on the objective, it’s easier to identify those accounts. Target accounts should:

• Add credibility to your brand since their logos and testimonials create legitimacy and social proof.
• Fit within your ideal customer profile (ICP). The Terminus CDP, for example, has a marketing automation tool that can automatically flag best-fit or right-fit companies. A range of intelligence tools helps you find companies that fit your ICP.
• Increase the likelihood of closed-won.
• Share commonalities. Examine the highest-value accounts to start, and analyze their data to see what they have in common. Use that analysis to inform your ABM campaigns.

M7: If you had to advise our readers on tackling ABM in the present market landscape, what are some of the top 3 priorities they should focus on?
TK: With new analytics and technologies popping up every day, B2B marketers have a heap of tools to identify buyers. ABM complements a multi-channel marketing strategy, but to use it effectively requires a new approach to target, retain and expand accounts.

Top priorities for ABM marketers include:

• Moving quickly to combat the loss of third-party cookies. We’re moving to a first-party world faster than most marketers realize. To fully benefit from ABM, marketers should cultivate first-party, account-based audiences and opt for IP-based display advertising and direct connections with walled gardens.
• Taking advantage of ABM platforms’ abilities to serve multiple functions. Marketers can use these platforms to target specific accounts and audiences via multiple channels like email, programmatic display ads, website personalization and more.
• Not viewing ABM as an “all or nothing” affair. Demand generation and ABM can — and should — complement each other. Companies should consider integrated solutions incorporating a mix of ABM and marketing automation to interact with prospects and customers.