- Select the right ABM strategy for your organization and create complete alignment between the Sales and Marketing teams.
- Clear the clutter and jumpstart your ABM implementation with a solid foundation.
- Build a targeted account list with optimized data.
- Engage buying account committees and create personalized content that helps buyers educate themselves.
- Understand the necessary platforms and tools required to be successful with the selected ABM strategy.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
The success of each level of ABM maturity is closely tied to available resources, business needs, and having foundational elements in place to support your ABM strategy. Marketers should keep their initial ABM strategy simple to deliver a successful program. The goal is not to employ a complex program or include all levels of ABM strategy but rather to select the most feasible for your organization.
Impact and Result
With a strong set of marketing capabilities, tight team alignment with Sales, and a content personalization strategy, you will:
- Create a solid foundation for a best-fit ABM strategy for your Marketing and Sales organization.
- Target and build relationships with high-opportunity accounts.
- Design experiences that will guide the buying committee through their buyer’s journey.
- Develop a process for your team to continue to build on their maturity.
Workshop: Build Your Account-Based Marketing Strategy
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Drive Aligned Vision for Your ABM Programmatic
The Purpose
Align Marketing and Sales teams, conduct a foundational assessment of your ABM capabilities, review your tech stack, and define your ICP tiers.
Key Benefits Achieved
Create a comprehensive plan for ABM strategy implementation, with a focus on defining your ideal customer profile (ICP).
Activities
Outputs
Assess your foundational capabilities of ABM and conduct a gap analysis. Create a plan to address gaps.
- Align Sales and Marketing teams.
- Gap analysis and plan to address foundational capabilities.
Review your tech stack integration requirements.
- Tech stack assessment to support ABM strategy.
Define your ideal customer profile (ICP).
- Establish ICP, define tiers 1-3.
Module 2: Define Your Targeting Strategy
The Purpose
Identify and focus on the accounts and individuals that are most likely to become your high-value customers.
Key Benefits Achieved
Develop a focused targeting and performance-tracking plan.
Activities
Outputs
Document your buyer persona and journey.
- Buyer persona and journey map (Optional).
Create your target account list (TAL) and segmentation strategy. Review predictive modeling and behavior-based targeting options.
- Target account list and segmentation strategy.
Evaluate marketing performance and streamline your reporting process.
- Executive performance metrics dashboard outlined.
Module 3: Develop your Content Strategy and Account-Based Scoring.
The Purpose
Develop a comprehensive plan for engaging and nurturing those targets to drive measurable business results.
Key Benefits Achieved
Develop a content strategy to guide target accounts through the buyer's journey and measure progress.
Activities
Outputs
Optimize your lead generation engine.
- Lead gen engine optimized across owned properties. (Optional)
Develop your content strategy: pillars, clusters, personalization strategy, and taxonomy.
- Content and personalization strategy with documented taxonomy—key elements for tracking and attribution activities.
Implement your account-based scoring model and behavioral tracking.
- Account-based scoring model.
Module 4: Plan Your ABM Programmatic Pilot Strategy.
The Purpose
Select the right tactics and channels to engage with your target accounts in a personalized and effective way.
Key Benefits Achieved
Develop an ABM Programmatic pilot.
Activities
Outputs
Develop an actionable Programmatic pilot / discuss other ABM strategies.
- Strategy, execution and analysis plan for your ABM programmatic pilot.
Establish a process for continuous improvement and refinement.
- Apply ABM Best practices.
Module 5: Present Your ABM Programmatic Pilot Strategy, Next Steps
The Purpose
Finalize the pilot strategy and review the implementation plan and next steps to ensure a successful outcome.
Key Benefits Achieved
Finalized ABM Programmatic pilot and best practices.
Activities
Outputs
Finalize pilot strategy plan.
- Finalized pilot strategy.
Establish a process for continuous improvement and refinement.
- Review implementation plan, next steps and ABM best practices.
Build Your Account-Based Marketing Strategy
ABM success requires a strong set of marketing capabilities, tight alignment with Sales, and a content personalization strategy targeting high-opportunity buyers.
Analyst Perspective
Our methodology prepares marketers to mature their practice and focus on growing relationships with high-value accounts.
A successful account-based marketing (ABM) strategy begins with aligning Sales and Marketing efforts to create an ideal customer profile (ICP) and develop personalized programs with high-value accounts. ABM is typically used in businesses that are ready to mature their inbound marketing programs, looking to enhance their cross-sell and upsell efforts, and needing to alleviate strain on their Sales team.
Many companies feel that ABM requires a high level of complexity and the use of AI platforms to achieve measurable success; however, this is just one approach. The beauty of ABM is that it is a scalable strategy, and if you have a solid enterprise inbound program in place, you should not encounter significant barriers to employing an ABM strategy. Using our methodology, you will understand the steps to building a sound foundation to launch your ABM strategy and support future growth.
Julie Geller
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Executive Summary
Your Challenge
Many marketers struggle to build their ABM strategy because they have not yet developed their core capabilities for a successful inbound marketing strategy. Once you can work through 70% or more of the foundational elements of each strategy, you will:
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Common Obstacles
Although ABM is considered an advanced strategy, organizations of all sizes struggle with implementation due to:
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SoftwareReviews’ Approach
With a strong set of marketing capabilities, tight team alignment with Sales, and a content personalization strategy, you will:
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SoftwareReviews Insight
The success of each level of ABM maturity is closely tied to available resources, business needs, and having foundational elements in place to support your strategy. Marketers should keep their initial ABM strategy simple to deliver a successful program. The goal is not to employ a complex program or include all levels of ABM strategy but rather to select the most feasible for your organization.
Why is an ABM strategy important?
Create an edge in your marketing practice that fortifies relationships
Employing an ABM strategy allows marketers to build on their inbound marketing programs by personalizing the buying experience for high-value prospects and customers. In addition, Sales and Marketing teams work closely within this framework to shorten the sales process.
ABM provides Sales and Marketing teams with the unique opportunity to:
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80% of marketers say ABM improves customer lifetime values, while 86% say it improves win rates. (Source: TOPO, 2019) |
The B2B buying committee
An effective ABM strategy can be your greatest weapon in managing complex customer relationships
Working with Sales, Marketing teams need to think about how they can design a strategy to identify intent signals and progress the conversation with buying committees. As marketers, aiding sellers who are dealing with buying committees is our sole focus. We need to help key decision makers do their research and engage with sellers on their company key initiatives when they’re ready to buy. To have success with your ABM strategy, you need to develop a program that addresses the buying committees’ needs for:
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Buying Committees Are Expanding
The average number of people involved in B2B solutions purchases climbed from 5.4 to 6.8 in just two years. (Source: HBR, 2017) |