The Clear & Complete Guide to Account Based Marketing
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Clear & Complete Guide to Account Based Marketing Everything you need to know about winning the biggest deals Contents Introduction 3 Part III 88 Seizing the biggest deals Metrics: measuring account progress 1. Coverage 93 Part I 4 From lead-centric to 2. Awareness 94 account-centric marketing 3. Engagement 95 Part II 27 The 6 ABM processes 4. Reach 100 1. Select accounts 29 5. Influence 101 2. Discover contacts and map 43 Part IV 103 to your account Implementing ABM: the road to success 3. Develop account insights 47 4. Generate account-relevant messages 55 Conclusion 119 and content An idea whose time has come 5. Deliver account-specific interactions 62 Thank you 121 6. Orchestrate account-focused plays 78 ABM Experts 122 About Engagio 123 2 Introduction Seizing the biggest deals B2B demand generation has almost completely re-invented itself over the last decade. The collision of inbound, content marketing, lead nurturing, marketing automation, analytics, email, search, social media and native advertising has transformed the discipline from a dark art to an increasingly data-driven science. But there’s a problem. All of these tactics and technologies are optimized The Clear & Complete Guide to Account But ABM doesn’t require you to unplug all that you’re for a specific kind of deal: higher velocity, lower Based Marketing (ABM) is your guide to doing now and start over. Instead, it’s a complementary value deals – the kind that are often driven through solving this problem. strategy that works alongside your existing demand by a single buyer. generation processes – sharing resources, data, It will take you, step-by-step, through this fast- tools and technologies with them. As a result, today’s marketing departments struggle emerging discipline, showing you how to align your to support the most important deals of all: the long, sales and marketing team around a strategy that’s We’ve seen Account Based Marketing in action complex sales that involve many stakeholders, optimized for the biggest, most important deals. across a wide range of companies, and we’re departments and disciplines. The biggest deals. convinced that this is the way virtually all big deals As you’ll see, ABM is not a magic wand. Instead, will be won and grown. Those who don’t practice it When it comes to helping to land and expand it’s a powerful combination of people, process will lose to those who do. these major deals, today’s marketing teams and technology that, deployed intelligently, are seriously handicapped. will out-perform every other demand generation If your company depends on major, complex, initiative in your company. long-cycle deals – landing and expanding them systematically, efficiently and measurably – this could well be the most important guide you’ll ever read. Let’s get to work. 3 Part I From lead-centric to account- centric marketing 4 Part I From lead-centric to account-centric marketing Today’s marketing stacks – and marketing It’s time to recognize that we’re not marketing departments – are built around the ‘lead’, and selling to a lead. We’re marketing and selling the individual buyer who progresses along to an account. your funnel until he or she is ready to buy. Lead-centric marketing isn’t designed But in most cases, the buyer is never a single person. to handle accounts: He or she is almost always part of a buying team. And the bigger the deal, the more people, departments • It wastes time, budget and effort filling the funnel and disciplines get involved. with prospects that aren’t associated with any target account. That’s why so many B2B companies have hit a wall • It can’t connect individual prospects with their with their demand generation efforts. colleagues across the account. • It can’t map the relationships between the decision- makers and influencers within the account. “Salespeople talk about accounts, • It can’t track the state or level of engagement of the entire account at any given time. they talk about customers… • It can’t coordinate or synchronize interactions they don’t talk about leads. to deliver consistent messages to the entire Salespeople think about how account buying team. they’re going to win accounts That’s where Account Based Marketing comes in. in the first place, then how they’re going to keep and grow those accounts.” Megan Heuer SiriusDecisions 5 It’s called ‘business-to-business’ not ‘business-to-lead’ Part I to lead-centric From marketing account-centric In every complex business-to-business deal, there are many buyers involved: the decision- maker, the end user, the influencer, the CFO, the procurement department and so on. Up to 17 people Each of these people has different motivations influence the typical and pain points. Each is rewarded differently and each evaluates your products or services enterprise purchase from a different perspective. (up rom i 011) To support selling into a large account effectively, it’s critical that your team understands how each individual fits into the larger account and has a sense of the relationships, influences and connections that bind them together. That means your marketing team needs to understand the context of the account relationship to decide 2011 2014 how to interact with any new person that comes into the system. You also need to track the aggregate level of engagement across the account and know when that engagement level changes. Because, in B2B, you’re never just selling IDG Enterprise Role & Influence of the Technology to an individual. Decision-Maker survey, 2014. 6 Salespeople never talk about how many leads they’ve closed. They talk about how many accounts they’ve closed. 7 Account Based Marketing defined Part I to lead-centric From marketing account-centric As ABM gains traction, a lot of definitions are starting to emerge – all pretty much describing the same thing. Here’s our definition: Account Based Marketing is a strategic approach that coordinates personalized marketing and sales efforts to open doors and deepen engagement at specific accounts. 8 Account Based Marketing defined Part I to lead-centric From marketing account-centric Strategic: not a simple campaign or tactic; it’s a business strategy; not ‘one and done’; it’s always on for Marketing and sales: Account Based Marketing is a strategic an account. a close collaboration between sales and marketing. approach that coordinates personalized marketing and sales efforts to Personalized: built on account-specific insight, open doors and deepen engagement content, and messages for maximum relevance at specific accounts. and resonance. Open doors and deepen engagement: focus on landing new accounts and expanding within That’s our definition. But we also like some existing accounts. of the other definitions we’ve seen out there… 9 Some more definitions of ABM Part I to lead-centric From marketing account-centric “Treating individual accounts “The strategic approach marketers as a market in their own right. use to support a defined universe A structured approach to developing of accounts, including strategic and implementing highly customized accounts and named accounts.” marketing campaigns to markets SiriusDecisions of one. This approach involves marketing and sales taking a close look at key business issues facing “The coordination of personalized the target account, mapping those marketing and sales efforts to issues to individuals, and tailoring drive engagement at a targeted campaigns to address those issues.” set of accounts.” ITSMA (who coined the term) TOPO One-to-One goes B2B In many ways, ABM parallels the movement in B2C marketing away from mass marketing to 1:1 marketing. Both focus on depth of the relationship and using a deep understanding to personalize each interaction. 10 Things ABM practitioners do Part I to lead-centric From marketing account-centric ABM encompasses everything that B2B marketers do to support sales at target accounts, from selecting accounts to gathering intelligence, creating personalized interactions and: Working with outside Working with sales % agencies or service % to define account 38 providers on ABM 74 goals & plans Gathering % account and/or Working with other 67 contact info % marketing teams to 46 get support for ABM Executing % plans for accounts Building plans 62 % for individual 52 large accounts Selecting ABM % accounts 59 for ABM Creating % content for 56 ABM needs Building plans % for a group of Creating online 59 named accounts % engagement strategies This SiriusDecisions data shows the 56 for accounts top ABM activities being practiced today. 11 “I see ABM as a response to inbound marketing. Inbound is great, but you don’t have control over quantity and quality. You also can’t afford to wait until those named account targets happen to find your content and download something.” Matt Heinz President of Heinz Marketing 12 The benefits of ABM Part I to lead-centric From marketing account-centric Efficiency Close rates 100 ABM focuses time and resources on accounts ABM increases the close rates of your 90 most likely to drive revenue toughest deals It’s a ‘zero waste’ strategy that targets 100% of time, Research shows that this systematic discipline 80 budget and effort on the named accounts your significantly out-performs the more ad hoc or company decides as having the greatest potential. unaligned approaches of the past. Demandbase saw 70 a whopping 285% higher close rate for targeted ABM 60 Big wins enterprise accounts, and a 166% higher close rate ABM deal sizes are bigger for mid-market accounts when ABM was used. 50 An ABM success can outweigh dozens of smaller non-ABM deals sourced through traditional demand generation. Acceleration 40 And ABM deals can be bigger than normal ‘key ABM deals proceed faster 30 account’ selling too: they’re more likely to have Because they actively target all of the buying influencers buy-in from a wider team; to lock out or constrain and decision-makers – instead of leaving hidden 20 competitors; and to reach higher into the account.