5 biggest mistakes account based marketers make and how to avoid them

Editor's Notes

• #2: Thank you, Sangram for a nice introduction and welcome everyone to today’s session: 5 Biggest Mistakes, ABM Marketers Make and How to avoid them Before I dive in, let’s get definitions out of the way…
• #3: Before we dive into it, let’s get definitions out of the way… ABM is about focus Focusing Mktg and Sales efforts on the accounts that matter most Why companies do that?
• #4: The primary benefit is that ROI is very high According to SiriusDecisions, 92% of marketers ww consider ABM extremely important And 97% according to Altera group said that ABM had a much higher ROI
• #5: Now, that we definitions out of the door, lets look at 5 biggest ABM mistakes
• #6: The first biggest mistake is running ABM in silos The name Account-Based Marketing is misleading as it puts too much emphasis on “Marketing”, but marketing cannot do it alone
• #7: Well, you are definitely not on an island and neither is your team- even though I’m sure most of us wish we were on that island It’s not strategic, sustainable or scalable to execute ABM all by yourself
• #8: Research has shown that organizational silos can and will hinder ABM success. An initiative like ABM is high cost, high involvement and it requires an alignment across the entire organization Marketing needs to align closely with other functions, including Sales development, operations, sales, even customer success, services and support to make it work
• #9: The first step in developing an ABM strategy is to establish goals for each function and metrics Typically, your goal is to achieve higher revenue with ABM strategy than with traditional broad-based demand gen Have a Hypothesis: Higher ASP Higher close rate Higher velocity Establish a Baseline: What’s my revenue, ASP, sales cycle, close rate, etc. today? It’s also important to outline the rules of engagement between different teams involved in ABM initiative and have clarity around their scope of work, accountability, how they are going to be measured, etc. For example, who’s responsible for Target Account selection? How SDRs will be following up on marketing programs (for target accounts and for non-TA How are you aligning incentives and comp for your Mktg. and Sales teams to ensure that they are focused on the accounts that matter
• #10: And it’s particularly important to ensure that Marketing, Sales Development and Sales organizations work together I love this cartoon … we all know that Sales and Marketing have their differences, but ABM is actually an initiative that can not only bring Marketing and Sales teams closer together but it’s a true pre-requisite of ABM success and requires a lot of collaboration
• #11: True collaborations, not like this…
• #12: So what does a collaborative process look like… First , identify key stakeholders, and get buy in You goals and
• #13: Sales enablement is a very important part of the ABM process At Marketo, we actually created a whole sales enablement playbook including Depending on the complexity of the product you’re selling and sophistication of your sales team, you may need to do more or less of this
• #14: So to recap, look at ABM as company-wide initiative that you are spearheading. It shouldn’t only fall on your marketing shoulders Lastly, foster collaboration in a systematic way with different teams, whether it’s sales, events or product marketing!
• #15: The 2nd biggest mistake is …
• #16: One of the most important elements of a successful ABM program is the actual selection of which accounts you should include. You could develop impressive marketing programs that have high engagement and conversion rates and you could have a dynamic sales team that is actively working each account to the fullest, but if you don’t select the correct accounts, all that effort could be wasted. There are many different strategies when it comes to account selection. All are valid. For example, some companies will rely solely on Sales to select accounts. In others, the CEO may select the accounts. In some industries (like aircraft or nuclear plant manufacturing) all your TAs are known as there is a limited number of them; same applies to ABM efforts targeting your customers for adoption or cross-sell. However, If you are trying to target hundreds or even thousands of accounts, you need a process that is repeatable and unbiased.
• #17: So, as you’re going through Account Selection, here are some factors to consider High Yield: Accounts that are likely to result in larger than average deals and generate substantial revenue over the long term. Product Fit: Accounts that have business needs that clearly match your solutions, which increases the likelihood they will purchase. Competitors’ Customers: Accounts that are using your competition’s products or services. Strategic Importance: Accounts that align with your company’s strategy. For example, winning a big logo in a new territory or vertical to help enter those new markets. Another piece not listed here is territories. If you have multiple sales reps that are working different regions or territories, part of your mandate may be to ensure that all reps have a similar number of target accounts so as to not give advantage to one rep over another.
• #18: One way to help the account selection process, is to use a data-driven approach and build out an account scoring model to help you determine which accounts you should include in your ABM program. At Marketo, on the SMB side, we built a sophisticated model leveraging historical data such as win rate and deal size, it looked at firmographic data such as annual revenue and employee size as well as over 4,000 additional signals such as social media activity and funding levels. Each data point had a different weighting on the overall score based on the perceived impact of that data point. For example, if a company is using a specific piece of technology and we know there is a high correlation to using Marketo with that technology, that data point would have a higher weighting to the overall score than something more innocuous. On the ENT side, we leverage a slightly different model as the factors that make up a good ENT account are different from a good SMB account. Additionally, on the ENT side, we rely more heavily on our sales reps for input as they are working with fewer overall accounts and know those accounts very well.
• #19: So once your account scoring model is built and you have a way of prioritizing accounts, you need to create an ideal customer profile and different account tiers So in this example, our broad universe consists of non-icp accounts, account that are not a good fit for marketo and therefore should not be pro-actively targeted Then, we have an ICP accounts – those that meet ICP creat Target accounts – ICP accounts that are being targeted by marketing with specific investments; we typically segment these by industry The cream of the crop is a set of named accounts
• #20: So to recap,
• #21: Mistake #3 is not engaging across channels, which means that you’re NOT setting a scalable ABM strategy.
• #22: It’s important to meet your customers and prospects where they are… on all channels, not just email
• #23: At a very high level, when you are developing your ABM strategy, consider all the channels you have at your disposal. You can use many of the same channels you have been using for broad based marketing- whether it’s email, display advertising, events or video.  The key is to take a systematic approach to make sure you can replicate your success over and over again It’s also important to coordinate your story across channels and make sure your marketing program is integrated Lastly, don’t forget about Sales. Beyond just enabling and supporting your sales team, look at them as an effective channel as well. Remember that Sales can reach out to leads and contacts in your database that you can’t touch as they are not opted in or subscribed to your communications.
• #24: In the previous section, I outlined our tiered approach to accounts; you can also practice a tiered approach for programs If you look at this visual, starting from the middle, these are programs that are dedicated just to named accounts. Some examples are high value direct mail, appointment setting or highly targeted paid ads In the middle circle are programs where target accounts are prioritized. These are not just for Tas but Tas get more love. An example is calling campaigns and inbound follow ups- getting the sales team to prioritize following up with target accounts before they reach out to other accounts At the outer circle, is programs where target accounts are included and tracked, like regular database sends and nurture programs.
• #25: Of course, to run a scalable, multi-channel operation, you need the right technologies. You can go with point solutions for each channel or phase of the ABM program, or you can leverage an engagement platform like Marketo, which enables you to target accounts, engage them across channels and measure the results, all in one platform, plus since it’s an open platform, you can easily enhance it with plug-and play partner solutions Here’s a snapshot of Marketo’s tech stack for different parts of the ABM process I mentioned leadspace who we use for account scoring and predictive For multi-channels campaigns we work with LinkedIn, Cvent, vidyardm PFL and other vendors I’ll go through specific examples in the next section
• #26: To recap, ABM doesn’t have to be a 1:1 approach. To scale it, as we showed you, you need to run 1:few and 1:many programs strategically Firstly, utilize all channels that make sense to really darken the skies of your TAs and reach them where they are Develop a tiered approach whether it’s for accounts or programs, to scale ABM while meeting your budget and resource constraints Lastly, get the right technology to truly scale!
• #27: Mistake #4! Use generic messaging without personalization
• #28: Part of being engaging with your target account is to communicate with them on their terms – which means being relevant to their needs, interest and behavior And you do that by creating relevant and personalized experiences Find the overlap b/w what you want to say and what they are interested in
• #29: You can personalize across all these different channels
• #30: Okay, here’s a laundry list of segmentation variables that you can select from when building personalized experiences for your target accounts Some of these are more commonly used than others- esp industry. At Marketo, we segment and message by verticals most of the time. Geo segmentation is great when you have an event in a city Another interesting one that we leverage is Tech stack. As you know, Marketo integrates with a bunch of technologies, like the SFDC CRM system. So we are able to target companies using Salesforce and talk about our integrations. Engagement level and behavior are also great attributes to segment leads and contacts by. Let’s look at some program examples where we used personalization to engage key decision makers in TAs
• #31: Here’s an example of web personalization. These banners were taken from our homepage sliders
• #32: As you can see in the top example, we are calling our manufacturing firms as many target accounts were in this vertical. At the bottom, we wanted to target some car companies, so we launched these personalization campaigns We saw increased engagement from these segments compared to default.
• #33: Here’s another example where we used web personalization for the launch of our Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing to target web visitors from Financial services companies; you see highlighted copy in yellow on the right addressing the specific needs and pain points of that vertical Results were …
• #34: Here’s an example of a customized email using dynamic content. Here we went beyond just personalizing first name and last name of the contact, but actually personalizing the company name. We also featured some unique challenges, solutions and a relevant case study. This email had a 45% open rate and more importantly, a meeting was set with an executive in this company and an opportunity was created shortly after the meeting
• #35: In this example, we created a personalized direct mail piece Marketo branded cookies were hand delivered by AEs to key contacts in Tas along with a personalized letter and an invite to Summit Results..
• #36: Finally, in this example, we are using LinkedIn in-mail to drive exec. from our target accounts to register for our Executive Forum Experience at Marketing Nation Summit event We created a personalized invitation from Chandar, Marketo CEO and we’re inviting them to register for a free exec. VIP experience at the exec. forum
• #37: To summarize, it is very important to provide a personalized experience to your target accounts
• #38: Okay, so let’s look at the last mistake. If you thought it was about metrics, you were right. Measuring the wrong metrics is quite common as it is challenging to isolate and track performance of your target accounts http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnellett/2017/01/10/account-based-marketing-abm-hype-or-hope-for-b2b-marketers-in-2017/#45fab8591e34
• #39: In broad-based marketing, conventional metrics such as leads, conversions, and MQLs are used to determine program, channel, and campaign performance. Because ABM is a very targeted approach, only tracking these metrics will not give you a complete and accurate picture.
• #40: You need to shift your mindset Accounts matter more than leads
• #41: We also changed our lead scoring model from MQLs to MQLAs by overlaying account score to demographics and behavioral signals Now we’re looking at each lead from the point of whether they have the right demographics (VP of marketing v. student); behavior (are they engaging?) and account fit (do they come from the right account?
• #42: Another way we’re shifting the mindset is how we look at opportunities The old way was to look at the opp source and give credit to either mktg., sales or partners The new way, the ABM way is to ignore the source, but jointly go after opportunities, focusing mtkg, sales and partner teams on the accounts that matter
• #43: it’s not all about first touch, a program that brings in a new contact or new account Since we already have target accounts identified and have those accounts in our d/base, the game is to engage them, so we look at multi-touch attribution – all programs and all touches throughout the entire sales process, not just to opportunity
• #44: Consider your audience Always measure against your own historical performance, not industry benchmarks Timeline depends on your selling cycle Here are some key metrics, which can be found in your engagement platform or CRM system, that are instrumental in determining the success of ABM. The key is to know what to measure when. At the early stage, it’s important to track the new names, target and leads from target accounts who opt in to your communications Mid stage- track call connects, number of meetings and MQLs generated from target accounts. Make sure your sales team is inputting data in a timely manner into your CRM system so you can track the touches made. Late stage- this is when your ABM program has been running for a while so you can track opps, pipeline as well as revenue won depending how long your sales cycle is. In each of these stages, don’t forget to gather sales feedback on programs, content, challenges etc.
• #45: Ultimately what you want from your ABM program is to show that a focused approach on the right accounts is going to yield greater success. To break it down, you want The deal sizes of target accounts to be higher than non target accounts. Not just ASPs, but the opp size before they have closed Win rates also should be higher. So there should be a greater proportion of opps that are won for TAs than non target accounts Essentially you also want greater pipeline to come from TAs- and if the first 2 are taken care of, then this follows naturally.
• #46: To further illustrate the point, Here are the actual 2016 results from our ABM for SMB initiative. We saw:
• #47: So to recap, even though a lot of metrics can be similar, the success of ABM is measured differently from broad based marketing. Essentially, you want to engage the right people at the right accounts based on the stage they are in Some pointers of success are- higher deal sizes, higher win rate and higher pipeline
• #49: Alright, that’s all we have for you. I’d like to remind you that we will be sending a recording out shortly. Also, there is a brief survey after this webinar. Please take 30 seconds to complete it to let us know how we can make these better for you in the future. Feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn and thank you very much for attending!