The Beginner’s Blueprint to Account-Based Marketing

Contents

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………..3

What is Account-Based Marketing …….……………………………..................5

Four Major Benefits of Account-Based Marketing ….……………..................9

Aligning Sales and Marketing Through Account-Based Marketing………..14

Five Must-Try Account-Based Marketing Strategies ..……………………..…20

Measuring and Optimizing Your Account Based Marketing Campaigns ....24

Recap ………………………………………………………………………………….28

Introduction

Account-based marketing has its roots in the

1990s, when B2C and B2B companies alike

began to realize the need for more

personalized marketing. In 1993, Don

Peppers and Martha Rogers published their

landmark The One-to-One Future, which

forecasted the movement from mass

marketing to the more 1:1 marketing that we

know today.

As consumers’ began to crave more

personalized buying experiences, many

marketers turned to account-based

marketing to meet those needs.

The phrase “account-based marketing” was

coined in 2004 by ITSMA, though many B2B

companies had been implementing ABM

strategies for years, whether they knew it or

not. However, it wasn’t until recent years that

ABM really began to catch on in the B2B

industry due to the shifting emphasis on

demand generation and inbound marketing —

and the increasing number of vendors offering

more robust ABM solutions. In fact, according

to Matt Senatore, Research Director at

SiriusDecisions, account-based marketing

generated enough global search traffic in

2013 to appear on Google Trends.

So what exactly is account-based marketing,

and how does it work? This Blueprint to

Account-based Marketing aims to answer those

questions and more by providing an

introduction to ABM, covering everything from

the benefits of an ABM strategy to

measurement and optimization. Let’s get

started!

3

Chapter 1

What Is

Account-Based Marketing?

Account-based marketing focuses on

marketing at the account level, rather than at

the lead level. The traditional sales funnel

starts by looking at all of the channels that

your customers may be engaging on, and

then attempts to target customers at the top

of the funnel.

Account-based marketing, on the other

hand, flips the funnel on its head. Instead

of starting with channels, an ABM

strategy begins with identifying and

targeting your key customer accounts.

Marketers can then reach out using targeted

advertising via the channels that their buyers

are actively using, such as mobile, social,

display, and video.

Think of it this way: how many stakeholders

are typically involved in your average B2B

purchasing decision? The answer isn’t just

one.

The length of the sales cycle is growing

longer as more and more decision makers

are becoming involved in B2B purchases,

which is why single-lead marketing is no

longer the most effective or the fastest

method to reach a sale.

Instead, companies are turning to account-

based marketing to place their marketing

messages in front of all of the decision makers

within an account.

Every company is unique, which is why

account-based marketing treats each account

as if it is its own marketing opportunity.

5

How Does It Work?

Account-based advertising uses digital (IP or cookie-based) targeting to reach specific

accounts. You can integrate an account-based platform with your CRM or marketing

automation tool to run campaigns targeted toward the accounts already in your database.

This gives you the ability to run multi-channel campaigns by choosing the ads you want to

show your target audience across mobile, social, display, and video — then engage your

prospects on their terms.

Not only that, but you can now finally understand which message resonates the most with your

target audience — and get the data to back it up — with A/B testing on your creative in near

real-time.

Account-based technologies have seen great success for two primary reasons:

1. ABM can help you engage your customers on their terms, i.e. using more digital channels

than email and phone calls.

2. AMB makes it possible to engage not only the lead but the entire account, which means you

can now do account-based marketing at scale.

6

Today’s account-based marketing technologies allow you to market across personas, sales

stages, campaigns, or statuses in your CRM, and go from one-channel marketing to multi-

channel nurturing, instantly.

As the one-size-fits-all approach to marketing continues to go out of style, account-based

marketing has become a reliable, must-try strategy to personalize the buying experience with

highly-targeted messaging. We’ll take a closer look at these benefits in the following chapter.

7

Chapter 2

Four Major Benefits of

Account-Based Marketing

Even if you understand what account-based

marketing is and how it works, there’s one

critical question that marketers should ask

before adopting any new marketing strategy:

why is implementing an ABM strategy

beneficial to your business?

The major benefits of account-based

marketing can be boiled down to four main

categories:

• a more focused sales and marketing

strategy

• a better customer experience

• an improved sales-marketing relationship

• more revenue

1. A Focused Sales and Marketing

Strategy

As we discussed in chapter one, an account-

based marketing strategy starts by

identifying a set of target accounts that

your sales team would like to penetrate, and

developing personalized messaging and

creative to reach them.

Instead of starting with a list of channels to

run your marketing campaigns on — which

may or may not reach your target audience

— an account-based marketing strategy

allows you to focus in on the precise

accounts that you would like to target.

This hyper-targeting increases the

effectiveness of your marketing messages

without increasing the resources needed

to run more targeted campaigns.

9

2. A More Tightly Aligned Sales and

Marketing Team

Before you can begin targeting your

account-based marketing campaigns, a

conversation needs to occur between sales

and marketing to identify those key

accounts (more on this in chapter three).

This allows marketing to have a better

understanding of sales’ goals, and

reinforces marketing’s position as an

important part of the selling process in

the eyes of the sales team.

When marketing is running programs on the

account level, sales sees that marketing

can deliver on their target accounts. This

can help patch up tensions that the two

teams may have experienced over lead

quality, while simultaneously bolstering

marketing and sales effectiveness.

10

3. A Better Customer Experience

Account-based marketing is all about the

customer. In a time when B2B buyers are

craving more personalized selling

experiences, ABM has risen to the forefront

of marketing strategies as a way to improve

the relevancy of sales and marketing

messages.

Buyers are no longer looking for a sales call or

a marketing email to kick of their research

process. What they do want is relevant

outreach that’s personalized to meet their

needs — which is exactly what ABM offers.

Using targeted advertising, marketers can

reach their buyers in an unobtrusive way

on the channels that their buyers are

already using, so that buyers can choose to

engage with marketing messaging on their

terms, not on the companies’.

60% of marketers struggle to personalize

content in real time, yet 77% believe real-time

personalization is crucial. (CMO.com)

11

4. More Revenue

By using account-based marketing and

advertising to reach target sales accounts,

marketing is setting sales up for more

successful conversations with their buyers

down the line. By the time sales reps reach out

to target accounts, buyers have already been

exposed to their company’s messaging.

This speeds up the sales process by cutting

down on unnecessary sales introductions and

sets the stage for a more personalized buying

experience, increasing the likelihood that a lead

will turn into a closed deal.

Not only that, but ABM ensures that you’re

focusing on the right leads from the start, so

time and money aren’t wasted chasing down

dead-ends.

12

Ready to start putting account-based marketing

into action? The next chapter will discuss how

sales and marketing can put a process in place

to start targeting key accounts.

Chapter 3

Aligning Sales and

Marketing Through

Account-Based Marketing

Maximize ROI On Your Next Event

One of the most critical components of a successful account-based marketing strategy (and

one of the primary benefits, as discussed in the previous chapter) is sales and marketing

alignment.

Why Is Sales-Marketing Alignment Important? Let’s start by looking at the following

stat:

Only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment. (LeapJob)

Yikes. While traditional outreach tactics like cold calling and emailing do have their merits,

they also have significant limitations. Your buyers are busy, which means they’re only going to

respond to marketing messages that really resonate with them — and generally, cold calls

and mass emails don’t fall into this category. What buyers are looking for is personalized,

targeted marketing that really caters to their needs and pain points.

In other words, they’re looking for a relationship.

But how can companies be expected to build these relationships when their buyers won’t pick

up the phone or respond to emails? The answer is account-based marketing. When key

accounts are being targeted with personalized advertising, buyers will already be

familiar with your product or service by the time sales reaches out to make an

introduction, meaning that the relationship-building process is already under way.

Let’s take a closer look at how marketing and sales can work together to achieve success

with ABM:

14

Step 1: Flip The Funnel

At many organizations, sales reps and

marketers are struggling to make contact

with their buyers via traditional outlets like

email and phone.

That’s because they’re focusing too much

on channels. Instead, flip the funnel on its

head and start thinking about the

customers first.

Who are your target buyers?

What would you consider your

“best fit” criteria?

In an ideal world, which companies

would you like to penetrate?

This sets the stage for hyper-targeted

marketing messaging down the line.

15

Step 2: Identify Key Accounts

Once you’ve flipped the funnel and started approaching your marketing with a customer-first

attitude, it’s time for marketing and sales to have a conversation about target accounts. Find

out which accounts your sales team is trying to penetrate, and make those accounts the

primary focus of your ABM strategy. This is a conversation that should happen on a regular

basis so that both teams are always aligned behind the same objectives.

To assist in this identification process, marketers can use any number of technologies—

including Terminus, SalesLoft, Data.com, RingLead, LinkedIn Navigator, and a few others —

to help pinpoint the companies that match their best-fit criteria.

16

Step 3: Determine Your Channels And Messaging

Using the digital (IP- or cookie-based) targeting discussed in our previous post, marketers can

target these key accounts with specific messaging on the channels that buyers are

engaging on, whether that’s display, mobile, video, or social.

Having a number of options for creative and/or messaging that you can personalize to each

account will greatly increase the effectiveness of these campaigns.

And voilà — with no heavy-lifting from sales, you’ve set up targeted multi-channel advertising

that reaches your audience on their terms, not yours.

Step 4: Begin Active Outreach

Once your messaging is in market, it’s time for your sales reps to begin outreach using more

traditional channels.

Marketing has created significant coverage for sales using account-based marketing, so

when a sales rep makes a call or sends an email, your buyers (and many of their decision

makers, too) are already familiar with your offering.

This increases the effectiveness of sales outreach and gives sales reps more confidence in their

marketing counterparts.

17

Step 5: Measure and Optimize

As always, no marketing strategy is complete without a process in place to measure results.

Keep tabs on the performance of your ABM strategy and swap out the creative and the

messaging if you’re not seeing results (with a platform like Terminus, you can optimize your

campaigns in real time).

Make sure that sales and marketing are constantly communicating about new target

accounts, changing goals, buyer personas, and the most successful messaging and

channels. We’ll discuss this in more detail in chapter five.

To be successful with account-based marketing, marketing and sales teams need to take a

collaborative approach.

Not only will input from sales increase the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns, but

marketing can then enable sales by putting targeted programs into market, helping sales

to create a more powerful dialogue with their buyers.

18

Chapter 4

Five Must-Try

Account-Based

Marketing Strategies

By now, you’ve learned all about the basics of ABM, how it works, and how it can help align

your sales and marketing teams — but understanding the underlying principles of ABM is only

half of the battle.

What situations are best suited for an account-based marketing strategy?

How are companies employing ABM to find success?

We’ve compiled some of the most effective account-based marketing strategies here. Learn

how ABM can be used to acquire new customers, revive inactive leads in your database,

follow up with event-sourced leads, nurture leads to sales-readiness, and more.

1. Acquiring New Customers

One of the most common uses for ABM is to acquire new customers. By working with your

sales team to create a targeted list of companies and developing personalized marketing

messaging, you can drive greater engagement among your target accounts — and not just

with a single lead, but with all key decision makers in an account.

If your goal is to acquire new customers, consider developing personalized messaging and

creative for each potential new customer to increase the effectiveness of your marketing

.

20

2. Nurturing Leads

Because of the nature of today’s B2B sales

cycle, many of the leads that you’re

marketing to aren’t going to be ready to

make a purchasing decision.

Don’t make the mistake of letting these

leads go to waste just because they’re not

going to turn into an immediate sale.

Instead, use account-based nurturing to

continue to present your marketing

message over time via targeted ads,

keeping your company top of mind until

your leads are ready to reenter the sales

cycle.

3. Following up after Events

When it comes to events, it can be tricky to

make sure you’re following up with all of

your hot leads and giving your colder leads

the attention they deserve.

While your sales team will likely be following

up with the most promising leads via phone,

less sales-ready leads may get neglected

without an appropriate account-based

strategy in place.

In order to create awareness and further

penetrate the accounts that you spoke to at an

event, run advertising campaigns targeted

toward these accounts.

Not only will this keep your brand in front of your

leads after the event, it will also put your

messaging in front of decision makers who

may not have attended the event at all, but

who still have a stake in the final purchasing

decision.

If you’re looking for more information about

using account-based advertising to boost your

event marketing efforts and maximize your

investment, check out this blog post.

21

4. Reviving Inactive Leads

At any given time, your database is full of

leads who aren’t actively participating in the

sales cycle. In fact, these leads may have

been “dead” for six months or more.

Despite their inactivity, they aren’t necessarily

useless. To bring these inactive leads back

to life, you can run ABM campaigns

targeted toward unresponsive accounts.

Not only does this remind your leads about

your solution, it also allows you to reach

additional contacts within each account —

contacts that may be more receptive to your

messaging and more likely to engage with

your brand.

See how Kevy used account-based

advertising to wake the dead in this recent

Terminus blog post.

5. Expanding within Enterprise Accounts

Selling into enterprise accounts can be

tricky, especially when enterprise companies

are divided into smaller divisions that

operate independently (and often have

different points of contact for sales).

If you’ve sold into an enterprise

company before, but are hoping to

expand to other divisions, you can use

ABM’s IP- and cookie-based targeting to

present ads to key decision makers and

stakeholders within those other

divisions.

These ads can be personalized so that they

feature the benefits and testimonies that

your leads’ coworkers are already seeing

from your solution.

22

Chapter 5

Measuring and Optimizing

Your Account-Based

Marketing Campaigns

Even if you’re sold on account-based marketing, it’s important to have an understanding of

whether or not your account-based marketing efforts are successful. Let’s take a look at

one of the most important parts of account-based marketing and advertising:

measurement and optimization.

Step 1: Optimization

While many traditional marketing strategies don’t allow you to optimize until after a

campaign has run its course, advertising at the account level gives you the ability to

optimize your campaigns on the fly using A/B testing. See which advertising creative and

marketing messages are falling flat with your target audience as the campaign runs, and

swap out copy or ads that aren’t performing in real time.

An important part of the optimization process is gathering feedback from your sales team,

which should happen continuously as you run your ABM campaigns. Ask your sales

team if they have had better success penetrating key accounts, and see if there’s

anything you could be doing to better support their goals.

Pro Tip: In order to make sure switches happen seamlessly, have alternate messaging

and creative ready to go.

24

Step 2: Measurement

Measuring the success of your account-based marketing campaigns is a lot like measuring the

success of any other marketing campaign, except this time, you’re restricting your

measurements to key accounts.

Your metrics will depend on your business goals and the type of campaign you’re running, but

the list below provides a number of measures to start with:

1. Interactions with Ads

Is your target audience clicking on your ads?

Keep an eye on your engagement stats to see how well your advertising is resonating across

devices, personas, sales stages, and the different campaigns you may be running. Keep in

mind that the goal here is to see how your ads are performing within your target audience.

25

2. Conversion Metrics

Is your target audience taking the desired

action, i.e clicking through your ad and filling

out a form, requesting a product demo, or

visiting your website?

Your conversion metrics can help pinpoint

important areas for optimization.

For instance, if your conversion rates are

low, your messaging may not accurately

reflect the offer presented on your

landing page or on your website.

Note that these metrics may change

depending on the type of campaign you’re

running. While website engagement may be

a significant measurement for an ABM

campaign aimed at engaging leads after an

event, a campaign that aims to “reawaken

the dead” will be looking

more at the number of leads who take an

action, period — even if that just means

clicking on an ad.

3. Overall Engagement

The goal of an account-based marketing

campaign is to increase engagement with

your brand (and ultimately, with your sales

team) within target accounts. Measuring

prospect activity levels and engagement

with your website can help determine

whether or not your campaigns are really

reaching their mark.

4. Reach

Account-based marketing can be an

important awareness-generating tool within

your key accounts. Better understand your

success by tracking new contacts

reached and generated from your ABM

campaigns.

26

5. Return on Investment

Like with any marketing campaign, you want

to see a positive impact on your bottom line.

Are you getting more out of your ABM

campaigns that what you’re putting in?

Be sure to constantly optimize your

campaigns in order to ensure the highest

return on investment possible.

6. Sales Cycle Length

By exposing your target audience to

personalized messages that are targeted by

account, you can shorten the awareness and

research phase of the buyer’s journey,

thereby reducing the length of the sales

cycle.

Keep an eye on your sales cycle length to

gauge the impact of your ABM

campaigns.

7. Customer Retention

Account-based marketing isn’t only for

generating new business. It can also be an

important tool for customer retention (and even

for upsells and cross-sells).

Monitor retention rates among the accounts

that are being targeted with account-based

messaging to see if there are any significant

changes in customer churn.

Using any combination of the above metrics —

and optimizing based on your results — will help

you build the most impactful ABM campaigns

possible.

27

Recap

LAUNCH AUTOMATED

ACCOUNT-BASED

MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

IN LESS THAN 30 MINUTES.

Terminus makes it easy to target key

decision-makers on the account level

across mobile, social, display, and

video.

Launch A Campaign Now

Megan Heuer, Vice President and Group

Director at SiriusDecisions, has touted

account-based marketing as the next big

thing:

“ABM has been around for a long time as a

B2B marketing approach. ABM is rooted in

the basic idea that marketing works better

when it starts by focusing on the needs

and specific opportunity within a single

account or a group of named accounts.

This was the original promise of customer

relationship management and one-to-one

marketing. It’s still a great idea.”

As buyers continue to clamor for personalized

marketing, ABM will soon become a

necessary part of every B2B marketer’s

strategy — and with the rise in account-based

technologies, it’s already becoming more and

more accessible for the everyday marketer,

too. The question is: will you be joining the

account-based marketing revolution?