If you've yet to adopt account-based marketing (ABM), worry not. While this versatile, profitable channel is often misunderstood, underused, and undervalued, the potential for success can be significant, and depends on the strategic resources marketing and sales leaders are willing to invest to make it work.
1. Align sales and marketing on shared goals.
Successful ABM is executed by sales and marketing departments working together to establish a cross-functional team and conducting joint go-to-market planning to identify common success metrics and goals. This process can start by drafting an initial set of high-value target accounts, a key-account identification process, and a rich library of market-ready content to be used in personalized campaigns. It is also critical to establish clear handoffs between marketing and sales for ABM campaigns to deliver a seamless customer experience.
2. Develop a library of thoughtful content suited to your high-value accounts.
It is important to understand your buying group’s needs at both the macro and individual level. Leveraging customized content and messaging that is worth their sparce free time and that delivers value is key to successful campaign execution. Any ABM program should first develop a high volume of thoughtful content that can be easily personalized or adapted for each account, and that allows for agile program execution in timely campaigns.
3. Ensure that your organization’s tech can scale to demands.
Effective account-based marketing requires a foundation of data and automation to bridge marketing and sales efforts. An alignment of systems that support both teams (CRM, CDP, and analytics platforms, for example) is critical to successfully identifying targeted accounts, executing campaigns, and measuring the impact of your ABM approach. If the technologies and data needed to support ABM efforts are not connected to your broader marketing and sales platforms, you risk a disjointed customer experience and suboptimal results.
4. Start with a small ABM pilot.
When initiating your ABM strategy, it is best practice to walk before you run. Impactful ABM programs have clear goals, start with a small handful of pilot accounts, and quickly learn from early program challenges. This helps the teams achieve a feedback loop to continuously calibrate processes, data, campaigns, and measurements. Account-based marketing strategies that prioritize adaptation while simultaneously scaling can help establish a culture of growth and improve business outcomes and your bottom line.
It is important to note that ABM is not a replacement for demand generation and lead capture—it is a complementary strategy that works in concert with demand generation. Integrated go-to-market planning means combining several of these strategies for maximum impact, and collaboration across marketing and sales teams is key. A top-down alignment within your organization is perhaps the most important factor of a successful ABM campaign, leading to greater success of the campaigns via conversions and revenue, and—most importantly—elevating the experience of each customer to create lasting connections.
About the authors:
Paul Vinogradov is a principal at Deloitte Digital in Sales Transformation and leads Deloitte’s Future of B2B Sales Research.
Dennis Startsev is is a principal leading Deloitte Digital’s Marketing Services in the High Tech sector.
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