It is almost as good as cracking a labyrinth if you have been able to manoeuvre through multiple layers of hierarchy to bring an internal buy-in of account-based marketing to your organization.
Achieving an internal buy-in for ABM in larger organizations is more complex than the smaller ones.
To make this happen, your focus needs to stitch content and communication together. It also requires you to convince the C-suite to decide between average vs awesome marketing. And, when you collectively agree to choose the latter, that is when you will start pursuing the direction of ABM.
Data you need to get started
Bringing everyone onto the same page and driving consensus while showing value to each function’s objective is quite tedious. You may find it overwhelming to lead this exercise. However using a structured direction to educate and communicate the advantages of ABM, would make your attempt easy.
Some aspects that you need to be prepared with and touch upon are:
Step 1: No.of people in the hierarchy
This is an easy data point that you can derive and everything begins with this first step. Gather the hierarchical structure from the human resource team to understand who you should be targeting for the internal buy-in.
Step 2: Chart what exactly each one is looking for
Each person in the hierarchy would be working towards achieving the goals of their respective functions of the organization. For instance, non-marketing functions like finance, M&A, human resources, strategic partnerships and operations would want to understand how ABM would benefit them.
Finance can see a reduction in resources invested and average costs, operations would be able to free up a lot of resources and experience ease as the accounts will be larger and tasks could be focused. Similarly, human resources can work towards managing focused recruitment, training and retention activities as ABM will bring more predictability.
Sales and marketing would see a direct advantage that will aid them with better demand generation, field marketing strategies and alignment between the two functions.
Step 3: Justify budget
Account-based Marketing services are designed to reduce the average number of resources used towards delivering the promise to one account. Also, the pre-qualified customer profiling approach reduces a lot of time in converting leads to sales for the business. Finally, there are ways to increase your ROI with ABM. These need to be quantified using your internal business numbers. This will be a good beginning to start drawing the attention of other stakeholders within the organization. You can access our detailed guide that will help you in presenting a budget for account-based marketing.
Step 4: Create individual agenda of ABM and its benefits
As mentioned in step 2, create an individual agenda for each of the stakeholders that you identified in step 1. Include details that pertain to the following:
- How does ABM promote individual objectives?
- Metrics that matter to each stakeholder
- How should they contribute towards implementing this strategy?
- What will be the changes that they will experience?
Step 5: How important and easy is ABM?
Helping stakeholders understand the importance and ease of executing ABM would reduce your effort of repeated rounds of convincing them to implement ABM. ABM lets you focus on a limited number of customers who will contribute to 80% of your revenues. It is an analytical approach that is goal-oriented and focuses on speed scaling.
Especially if your organization is on the route to going up-market, then ABM helps you find high-value customers.
Step 6: Use case studies of ABM success among similar industry players and competitors
You can find many such stories to inspire the team on the internet. We have collated a few stories that you can pocket right away.
- ABM led by Kristen at VersionOne achieved 88% more engagement with target accounts and saw a 66% increase in the value of target accounts.
- Localytics achieved 100% ROI with ABM.
- Procore achieved sales and marketing alignment with ABM.
- Create another martech company has reaped great results with the implementation of ABM.
What type of content is required?
To gain buy-ins for ABM, you need to use a different type of content that provides enough validation to adopt the strategy effortlessly. Combine quantitative and qualitative content.
Some quantitative content would include statistics of ABM success, metrics and market projections. We have collated some of them for you which could be used in handy.
- 92 per cent of companies recognize the value in ABM, going as far as calling it a B2B marketing must-have.
- 85 per cent of marketers who measure ROI describe ABM as delivering higher returns than any other marketing approach.
- B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24% faster three-year revenue growth and 27% faster three-year profit growth.
Qualitative content needs to be created to break the noise. This includes case studies, technology round-ups, and success stories. Use some of the following resources that could be shared with different stakeholders.
- Blog Post: What is Account-Based Marketing? An Inside Look at How to Get High-Ticket Clients
- Tool Guide: Account-Based Marketing by Hubspot
- Blog Post: How to Choose the Right Tools for Account-Based Marketing
- Whitepaper: Guide To Removing Obstacles For Account-Based Marketing
- Webinar: Data-Driven Account-Based Marketing Activates Revenue
- Video: Account-Based marketing
- Blog Post: How to Create a Realistic ABM Content Marketing Plan
Important metrics required to convince
Some projected metrics would help a great deal in convincing the stakeholders about Account-Based Marketing.
Return on Investment (ROI): Not only marketers but the entire company looks up to this metric. If there is a single metric that all stakeholders would be concerned about, it would be ROI. Showcase numbers and instances that translate into better ROI.
Lifetime Value of Customer (LTV): With ABM you target highly specific customers. This means you are looking for customers who are likely to buy your product and use it for a long time. The recurring revenue would increase the LTV of each customer who is converted using ABM.
Cost per acquisition (CPA): Use of ABM as a strategy within the marketing mix is to move up-market and win a home run with high-value clients. This brings down the cost per customer acquisition drastically.
What Else?
Don’t stop with this. On a continuous basis use any information and help the stakeholders with such inputs that would help orient them with how to use ABM for your organization to see more customer success.
Read More: 31 Expert Tips For B2B companies Starting Out On Account-Based Marketing
We have delivered support to multiple clients to implement ABM and also use it for our marketing needs. We would be always excited to hear how we can drive ABM efforts with your team for your organization. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
