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The importance of ABM strategy can be gauged from the fact that 75% of practitioners have a strategy in place for about a year now (Source). Multiple studies have shown how a documented ABM playbook has helped marketers win big-ticket accounts.
But account-based marketing is neither quick nor easy. Tools, messaging, research, platforms, data, engagement analytics, ROI… all this, and more go into a strong, actionable ABM strategy. Examples of past success with ABM show that there is nothing like excessive detailing when it comes to ABM.
The below template will serve five purposes for your ABM team:
- The template shows the sequence of activities you need to carry out.
- It will guide you for stepping up relationships with the right content.
- As a playbook, it will help you distill roles and responsibilities.
- It lists you all the questions you should be asking.
- It will act like a checklist.
Here goes!
1.Set clear goals
More marketing programs fail than you’d believe just because marketers failed to set clear, specific goals. Saying ‘We need more visibility’ is far less effective than saying ‘We need 12% more clicks in Q1 this year than last year.’
Here’s what ABM goals could look like:
- Upsell to existing customers and increase revenue by at least 23%.
- Win at least 3 new enterprise customers, each with a ticket size of US $ X.
It’s important to remember that the goals are not set in isolation. Account-based marketing strategy involves lots of detailed research, so every goal is, inter alia, supported by account scoring and research.
2.Establish best fit through account research
Every account-based marketing program starts with a clear premise: you don’t need too many prospects or accounts, you want only a few targeted accounts that are high value.
Your account research will be extremely detailed. So one of the first things you’ll need to be sure about is the channel. What you’ll research and where you’ll research are the two most important pillars of account research.
Early on, you want to make sure the account is a good fit for you. Do your solutions solve a problem that’s significant for them? If that’s not the case, you want to probably move on.
3.Have an overview of the account
Once you’ve identified some best-fit prospects (or customers, if you’re selling to existing customers), it’s time to begin collecting with a little more information.
Some of the things you’ll be required to know include
- Their origins, history and overall mission and objectives
- Their markets
- Number of employees
- Names and contact details of the decision makers
4.Build your ICP framework
Your ICP is the hypothetical ideal customer who’ll benefit the most from buying and using your solution. Spend time constructing a clear ICP.
The ICP is an extremely important element of your account-based marketing template. It carefully describes the customer you’d like to win,and includes:
- Basic account details
- Their geography
- Sales cycle
- Their principal pain points,
- Revenue
5.Articulate the value you create
No matter what you sell, there’s always going to be competition. So why should your target account buy from you?
This is the stage where you begin to map answers to such questions. In particular, you have to articulate:
- What are the existing and upcoming projects of the prospect where your solution will make a huge difference?
- How strongly are you able to position your solution?
- What are the KPIs of your solution that you will highlight when you enter into a conversation with the prospect?
- What are the target account’s expectations that you can meet exceptionally well?
6.Map your relationship at the TAM
The key to getting success with account-based marketing strategy is identifying, understanding, and engaging the key influencers at the account.
List out the below:
- The position in the target account you intend to engage
- The channels these people are active on, and where it’d be best to engage them
- Their role in the buying process
7.Define their scope of influence
Buying has become more complex than ever, with areas like fair trade practices, data privacy, and transaction transparency becoming more important. And this has resulted in an increase in the average number of people involved in the buying process.
While every person in the buying committee has a say in the decision, they all bring different weights. In particular, classify the stakeholders into the below categories:
- Decision makers: They will okay (or gun down) the proposal to buy something. Interestingly, not all of them are actual users, so their involvement is different. A senior executive may not directly use your software but they want to ensure your solution ticks all the right boxes.
- Champions: Are there people at the target companies that would whole-heartedly support you because they trust your solution? Even if they don’t have a direct say, they can guide others to see why your solution makes sense.
- Influencers: While they aren’t the decision-makers, their voice is important to the decision-makers. You want to make sure you engage with them.
8.Showcase how you will help them win
‘If your product doesn’t help cut costs or increase revenue, you’re probably just a vendor, not a solution-provider.’
Being a vendor is generic and your target account can easily forget or ignore you. But if you’re a solution-provider, you’re unique and you’ll be remembered. That’s exactly why you want to closely understand your target account. An important part of your ABM strategy is to figure out how you can best help your prospects. Make their problem yours, and get to the root of things to explain why you’re solving the problem better than others.
9.Prepare for the entire sales cycle
Big sales need time. You can’t just walk into the Tesla headquarters, show them a 8-slide PowerPoint presentation, and walk out with a $3MN deal. Big ticket accounts don’t work that way.
The first thing you need to understand is that you’ll need a different set of engagement assets at different stages of the sales cycle. Also, people with different roles need different kinds of messaging. For example, the legal expert at your target account is more interested in how you’ll protect user data while the head of the IT department is more interested in whether you provide integrations.
10.Analyze your competitors - comprehensively
You don’t want to be caught off-guard when someone at your target accounts sits down and compares you head-to-head with a competitor. Competitor intel is an absolute must on your ABM playbook.
Specifically, you want to know:
- How your competitors are positioning themselves
- How are they pricing their solutions
- What are their weaknesses
- What kind of free trial or free plan they offer
- What’s their after-sales support like
11.Review the barriers and opportunities
ABM, as a marketing approach, is neither fully inbound nor fully outbound. Therefore, you’ll need to make a few changes internally before you go all out for ABM.
You’ll need to critique your internal and external barriers. What are the internal changes you have to make before you go all out into ABM? Pretty much the same way, assess the barriers outside your organization and check what it’d take to keep them well under control.
Similarly, you should be assessing the value of the opportunities ahead of you. ABM is neither snappy nor inexpensive, so it’s important that you have a clear picture of what additional opportunities – especially cross-selling opportunities – might open up.
12.Review the technology tools
Your technology stack will decide the extent to which you can scale personalization. So an important element of this template is technology.
Assess the tools you already have – is it going to be sufficient? Will you need any additional tools?
Right from collecting information about your prospects to the time you reach out to them and of demos, technology will be used everywhere. The question is whether you’re using technology to save time and make the process more efficient.
13.Agree on how you’ll measure processes and outcomes
Even when you refer to the most detailed ABM strategy examples, you might forget a basic question: How will you measure success?
Processes should be enabling, empowering. They shouldn’t turn into red-tape mechanisms that shackle your teams. A process that looks strong and unbeatable on paper can turn into just that – mechanical, counter-productive, and limiting.
Pretty much the same way, marketers can mislead themselves into thinking ‘We’ll know success when we see it; there’s no need to put up specific criteria’. And that can be disastrous.
Which is exactly why you want to measure both your processes and results.
So here’s the few questions on measurements:
- What you will measure – and how frequently?
- How will you define success?
- Is your measurement going to use completely objective attributes (e.g. using numbers and scores) or completely subjective and descriptive attributes (e.g. good interaction, great exercise, effective coordination)?
- How will the measurement results be fed back into the process?
14.Focus on aligning your teams
If there’s one thing virtually every single ABM strategy mentions, it’s the importance of aligning your teams. Even if it sounds like a broken record that plays on to no end, it’s worth repeating: align your sales and marketing teams.
Your marketing teams do all the hard work of building a brand, but it’s your sales teams that know which kind of prospects convert the most. This means that by aligning the two teams, you ensure that the marketing team brings your brand in front of the right people.
Among other things:
- Define the roles for each
- Establish who will do the prospect scoring – and how
- Have the two teams agree upon what kind of prospects the marketing team will hand over to the sales teams – and when
15.Audit your assets
After the research you’ve conducted in identifying and understanding your target accounts, content and events are your biggest levers with which to woo the prospect account. An ABM template is incomplete without the mention of how to sharpen your best artillery. So it’s only natural that you carry out a thorough audit of both.
With content, ask these four basic questions:
- What kind of content is ready, and what is missing?
- Are the account-based marketing email templates personalized?
- How – and how soon – will you be ready with the missing content?
- What are the learnings you are using from your best-performing content?
With events, here are the four important questions:
- What events will suit what stage of the buying process?
- Are we appealing to the correct people with every event? (For example, an event that has the VP legal present needs to cover the legal aspects rather comprehensively).
- What will be the follow-up process after each event?
- How shall we measure the success or impact of each event?
16.Conquer the messages
Once you’ve audited your content assets, you’ll need to ensure the creative content is complete and fully polished from all angles. To that extent, this activity is a subset of the earlier task.
Managing your messages includes the below:
- Message: What will you convey in each message? Is the message fully optimized and appropriately personalized?
- Medium: Are you sure about the channels you’ll be using for each message? Is that decision fully supported by your account research?
- Audience: As you move down the buying process, are you getting more control of the audience? How will your engagement for paid audiences coming through paid ads differ from the audience that you own?
- Cadence: How have you decided the cadence of the messaging? Is the strategy for multi-channel messaging in place?
17.Now get ready for the action plan
If you’ve followed all the steps above, congratulations! Now you’re ready to convert the account-based marketing template into a smoothly executable plan..
First, you want to make sure all the resources, teams, technologies, and templates are properly lined up. Anytime you need something, it should be available without any delay or malfunctioning.
Next, check all the expectations, targets, and roles. Is everything in place? Are all the differences ironed out? Have the teams developed a sense of ownership required for the success of your ABM program?
Finally, are the channels to reach and engage all the stakeholders well oiled and optimized? Is the sequencing of messaging optimized?
Execute your account-based marketing program
Orchestrating extensive marketing activities takes a great deal of planning, research, and personalization; more so if it is account-based marketing. Email templates, ICP research,, personalizing the value proposition, … all of this need to be templatized if you wish to scale efficiently.
While it’s not possible to pack everything about account-based marketing in such a short document, the above ABM playbook would serve as a strong foundation. But like in everything else, the first step is: start with the right questions and assess your ABM-readiness.
Get in touch with us if you’d like to learn what’s the best way for you to get started with ABM. We’ll be happy to help!
