ABM best practices promise to deliver high ROI. Every organization sees ABM through its own lens, it is important to closely monitor the process and keep improving along the journey which in turn helps to achieve the business goals.
ABM is booming these days because of its approach to converting high-value target accounts, engaging the accounts at each level effectively, building strong relationships, and understanding the perception of the accounts to build a reputation that helps in revenue generation.
The process of Account-Based Marketing requires a deep understanding and research on the target accounts. ABM best practices is slowly moving towards becoming a key pillar of marketing and sales for B2B organizations.
According to the SiriusDecisions study results, “of the 53 percent of organizations able to report on ABM ROI, 89 percent indicated that ABM accounts achieved higher ROI compared to a control group of accounts that did not receive ABM support”
1. Budgeting:
we recommend you take an account-first approach. This helps in allocating a specific amount of spend on the high priority account vs the low priority ones.
Here’s a list of where to fund the resources:
- Technology
- Human Resources
- Events and experience
- Media spend
- Direct mail
2. Set the right goals:
- Qualitative data is very important to target potential accounts.
- Sales and marketing alignment for improving the ROI and helps them both to understand each other’s perceptions.
- Identify and reach your target accounts that meet your persona criteria.
- Increase the engagement of the account with relevant content/personalized content.
- Measure the results with a clear process.
- The team should share a common goal of growing the revenue for your company.
3. KPIs:(Key Performance indicators):
Data:
- Accurate data is important for Account-Based Marketing’s success and it helps you in segmentation and personalization.
Content:
- Content marketing helps in building certain characteristics of a client-vendor relationship even before making a purchase and engaging with the salesperson. It further helps in upselling and cross-selling.
Buying Team:
- Keep in mind that you are not just targeting the person but the team, so you should strategize your content targeting the team without deviating from the subject.
Industry Knowledge/Account intelligence:
- Never assume that your client understands their need for your service. You need to ask the right questions to find out your target account needs. Do your research, set realistic achievable goals, and stand out with the right information and communication. Customize your value proposition.
Progression of target accounts:
- You need to align your Smarketing team with the ultimate goal of converting accounts into customers.
CRM reports:
- Maintain weekly reports it will help you track your progress and target account to the next stages.it should include inbound marketing activity and downloads.
Campaigns:
- Impressions and clicks are important to measure the success of your campaign.
Velocity = distance/time:
- It measures how quickly you have closed the account.
MQAs & SQAs:
- You can measure MQAs&SQAs with scoring. It also helps in understanding the engagement.
4. Track every step and adjust the process:
Once all the goals and KPIs are in place use software to determine the ROI and monitor it in real-time. Pay close attention to the numbers and look for patterns and falling-off points. If certain content pieces are failing to bring in the numbers, adjust, and test the results until you find the strategies that work best.
- Measure the success with dashboards:
Dashboards will give a complete understanding of the process and what’s happening at each level which gives you an opportunity to visualize the impact on revenue and brings your Smarketing team together.
Build a dashboard so that your team can compare the initiatives of marketing and sales. It also helps to quickly figure out the gaps and issues. Add the relevant information and keep it simple.
5. Experimentation and personalization
Assist in producing the right content to get audiences engaged.
- It helps in finding the perfect mix.
- It drives meaningful engagement.
- Better conversion rates and revenue.
By personalizing ABM, marketers can re-engineer the engagement strategy, reach key decision-makers, and recommend/implement corrective actions in a timely manner.
Final thoughts:
Hiring the right skill and knowledge is very important to track the top-line impact of ABM investments. Best investment decisions come from aligning marketing, sales, and account management.
Position your ABM strategy as a company-wide relationship-building initiative. Correct positioning of ABM links directly with high ROI. Scoring is an infinite learning loop, by assigning values to each interaction helps you with identifying where to focus your efforts. Create metrics that help you with interim success.
According to ITSMA(ABM Survey) – ABM delivers a high ROI over time. Over 80% of marketers that measure ROI say that ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments and half of those say that the difference is significant.
