Targeting Less is More: Prepping your ABM Strategy

Imagine casting a net into the ocean looking to catch Bluefin Tuna, but only coming up with a boatload of seaweed. Frustrating, right? And probably a waste of time, resources, and money to sift through a net to find out it’s not what you were looking for. 

Unfortunately, this seems to be the case for many B2B marketing and sales teams. Oftentimes, they spend a ton of money, resources, time, and effort to cast a wide net to bring in customers through a bunch of different tactics, but only get unqualified or low value leads in return. 

This is where ABM can help. By targeting a smaller amount of high-value accounts with personalized content, you can focus more on the BlueFin Tuna and leave the seaweed where it belongs. 

Just like getting ready for a big fishing trip, most of the hard work for ABM is done on the front-end. Preparing to launch your ABM campaign effectively can provide you with the location, boat, gear, bait, and lures you need to catch the big ones. But before the real fun begins, you need to be sure to do your due diligence first to reap the benefits of a successful ABM strategy.

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Make sure your strategy is aligned 

In this blog, we’ll discuss how to get your ducks in a row before launching your account-based marketing campaign (ABM). But even before you do that, you need to make sure your overarching marketing strategy is prepared to handle the heavy lift that ABM can be. 

Things like developing your positioning statement and messaging, identifying your buyer personas in detail, conducting Voice of Customer Research, and building your buyer’s journey map need to happen prior to starting your ABM campaign. Without knowing those items, you’ll have trouble getting your ABM off the ground and have even more trouble getting traction once you do launch.

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A Deep Dive Into ABM Preparation

Determine what you are trying to accomplish 

Your sales and marketing goals should fit into the broader company objectives. Are you trying to expand your current market share? Or are you improving retention? What about getting into new markets? Whatever your company objectives are, it’s important for your ABM strategy to be on the same page to target and prioritize the right accounts. 

Identifying Target Accounts 

Identifying your buyer personas in your overarching marketing strategy equips you to identify the right targets for your ABM campaign. You should create a target list at both the company and contact levels while also identifying the contact’s buying role in the organization. For example, who is the decision-maker, a user, an influencer, etc.? We also recommend building your lists in your CRM to stay organized and consistent. Be prepared to do a little old-fashioned research to uncover contacts and companies you want to chase.

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Performing a Content Audit 

You’ll need A TON of content for your ABM campaign. And to take it a step further, you’ll need a ton of personalized content. The best way to go about this is to conduct a content audit to determine what content you have, what content you need, and what content you can adjust to fit into your ABM strategy. Line the content up with the buyer journey map you created and insights you gained from the voice of the customer research to find gaps and opportunities to help your future buyers in making a decision. 

EXTRA TIP: Your personalization can be as granular as calling the company or contact out by name.

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Aligning Your Sales & Marketing Teams

How often do your sales and marketing teams communicate? We often see these two functions working in silos, separate from one another. Together, they need to agree on:

• The companies and contacts that the ABM campaign is targeting
• The main message you’re trying to convey
• The content that is being served to these prospects
• The process for when a lead comes in
• Defining a lead as a marketing qualified lead (MQL), a sales qualified lead (SQL), and an opportunity
• The hand-off process to sales once marketing brings in leads
• The follow-up process on hot accounts

You want the hand-off from marketing to sales to be as seamless as possible. Communication between sales and marketing allows for consistent feedback so that adjustments can be made. We recommend meeting every 6 weeks (at the least) to discuss the leads that are coming in, opportunities for additional content creation, and the target account list.

Check out our sales and marketing alignment checklist to see if your teams are aligned and what to do if they are not.

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Getting your Martech Stack Right 

Do you use marketing technology? If not, you’re already behind the competition. In fact, according to PRNewswire, the marketing technology market is expected to reach $1.7 trillion by 2032 at 18.5% CAGR. 

What does your current martech stack look like? What existing technology can you leverage in your ABM strategy? What other technologies do you need to integrate to make your ABM campaign successful? There are various different marketing functions that technology can help you with including: 

• CRM - HubSpot
• Social Media - Hootsuite, Sprout, HubSpot
• Email - MailChimp, HubSpot
• Website - Webflow
• Graphic Design - Canva, Adobe Creative Suite
• SEO - SEM Rush, Ahrefs
• ABM - RollWorks

Marketing technology does a great deal in saving your team time. And with the amount of work that ABM takes to execute successfully, your team needs to free up any time that they can.

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Choosing your Channels 

You should try to meet your potential customers wherever they like to hang out. Whether it be social media, direct mail, browsing websites, email, or other news sources, it’s important to get in front of them, speak to their pain points, and fully explain how you can solve their problems. Your really-specific buyer personas, VOC research, and buyer journey map will provide insights into what channels you should choose. Check out our blog on the importance of multi-channel marketing. 

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Creating Compelling Advertising

After you’ve selected your target accounts, generated content, aligned your sales and marketing teams, and selected the best channels, you must now develop any creative that you need. This is a heavier lift for smaller teams, as it will likely be a mix of programmatic ads, paid social ads, direct mail design, social media graphics, and more. 

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Launch! But don’t stop there.

Now, you’re ready to launch, but the work doesn’t stop there. ABM is a marathon, not a sprint. Make sure you’ve identified KPIs to track success and see where you can improve. You should have a list of KPIs for every one of your tactics in your ABM campaign. We recommend creating a scorecard and revisiting it once a week to see where you can make adjustments. In addition, be prepared to create new content based on the performance of your initial efforts.

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