In any successful sales team, several different marketing strategies will be at-play at once, focusing on different clients, markets, products, and mediums. One of these is account-based marketing, which is an important term that describes the practices of directing significant resources to specific, high-value accounts, in order to appeal directly to their needs and prioritize those most likely to make a purchase. Read on to find out everything you need to know about account-based marketing tactics and how you can implement them in your team today.

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What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

Account-based marketing is the practice of using tailored marketing strategies for specific accounts, often prioritizing the largest clients that are likely to generate the most revenue for your company. But let’s dive into what account-based marketing actually means in practice, and why it is so important that your team has a solid understanding of it.

ABM involves identifying the customers and accounts that are worthy of this level of prioritization, often by looking at previous sales history and the needs of that specific account. It is a way of getting the most value from the accounts that matter the most and often describes processes of upselling and cross-selling to existing customers.

It is much more targeted and resource-intensive than simple lead generation, which simply describes the process of sourcing any and all potential customers. It is the opposite of a marketing approach that consists of simply casting as wide of a net as possible in the hope of capturing the attention of a broad potential customer base.

ABM frequently targets already existing accounts that your marketing team will already know have a need that can be filled by your company. Given that a small number of larger accounts are often a majority source of revenue for a seller company, engaging in ABM can be a vital way to boost overall sales and drive long-term growth.

When teams pour their efforts into their most valuable customers rather than in casting a wide, impersonal net over many low-quality prospects, they see a better ROI. In a survey from ITSMA, 87% of B2B marketers reported that their account-based marketing tactics received a higher ROI than all other activities! ABM is the smartest way to focus on the people and strategies that matter to grow your business and not waste precious time.

Why is Account-Based Marketing Important?

Account-based marketing can drive higher revenue when your marketing is focused on high-value accounts, instead of wasting time, money, and talent on every prospect. An account-based marketing strategy also allows your marketing and sales teams to collaborate better. When marketing collateral reaches several decision-makers at once, it speeds up the sales cycle by nurturing multiple leads and cuts down the wait to get decision-makers’ approval.

Creating an ideal account profile is the most important step in ABM.

 

What Are Account-Based Marketing Tactics and Best Practices?

There are many account-based marketing tactics that have a proven track record of success within a wide variety of industries. The first step is always to identify high-value accounts so that you know exactly who you should be targeting with your account-based marketing strategy.

You can work with your sales team to narrow down your list of high-value accounts by looking at clients that you have a strong track record of success with already, as these are the most likely to be receptive to future marketing campaigns.

You can also look at existing engagement with your marketing materials, including newsletters, CTA buttons, and social media campaigns. Once you have identified your high-value accounts, it is time to start using tactics.

Personalization and one-to-one engagement are cornerstones of any ABM strategy, so make sure that you are prioritizing specialized, bespoke, and meaningful forms of engagement. This could include direct messaging in the form of emails and direct mail that contains carefully-crafted messages that are specific to the needs of the account you are targeting.

It could include one-off events or webinars that make the client feel special and that can be tailor-made to be especially timely for the account that you are targeting. It can also involve adding personalization features to your website so that the target account will see exactly how you can meet their requirements any time that they choose to visit it.

All of these tactics will boost engagement with the accounts that have the highest potential.

The 3 most powerful account-based marketing tactics

ABM tactic #1: Find your high-value accounts and rank them

There’s a scene in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise (playing a sports agent) is not pulling in enough dough for his client. They’re talking over the phone and the client shouts the iconic line “SHOW ME THE MONEY!” and asks him to scream the phrase back. What was the reason? The client wanted his agent to get fired up and focus on the only important thing – the money.

In account-based marketing, you shift gears from marketing and selling to everyone to looking for where the money is—with your high-value accounts. If you’re unsure, here are a few characteristics of a high-value account:

  • They bring in the most revenue 
  • They match your ideal customer profile (ICP)
  • They have an immediate need to buy your product or service
  • They have a longer, more complex sales cycle
  • They have a lower customer acquisition cost 
  • They have decision-makers who are easily accessible
  • They respond well to your inbound and outbound marketing/sales messages

You can find your most valuable players by looking through your CRM database. 

First, download Lusha API, a tool that you can use to bulk enrich your entire CRM database. It updates the contact details and firmographics for company profiles. It’s a smart idea to refresh your system to stay on top of your accounts’ every move. A decision-maker may have left the company, or a company may have recently grown in revenue or employee size, and this is important information for you to know when targeting accounts. You’ll maintain a better understanding of how your customers have changed over the years, ensure they match your ICP, and increase the visibility of your high-value customers in minutes!

Next, take a peek at your marketing data. Email campaign metrics, social media views, and website analytics will determine who may have an immediate need to purchase and who engages with your marketing and sales team the most. 

Now that your account list is organized into a hierarchy, your marketing and sales teams can begin mapping out their account-based marketing tactics for each individual company.

ABM tactic #2: Personalize every stage of the buyer’s journey

Personalization isn’t easy. It’s an account-based marketing tactic that tends to be talked about as if it’s as quick as tying your shoelaces. In actuality, it is time consuming and labor-intensive to make every touchpoint personalized and squeeze every dollar out of your accounts. Data can be gathered from customer demographics, previous purchasing patterns, and by using technology to track your account’s online behavior. You will use this information to create content, messages, and sales pitches for each stage of their buyer’s journey and make sure to send it at the perfect moment.

Here are a few examples:

  • Awareness stage: A free e-book or checklist that answers a specific question your prospect was recently searching for an answer to. 
  • Consideration stage: A product demo or sales presentation after your prospect has signaled that they’re interested, but need more info.
  • Decision stage: A relevant case study that shows them exactly how they’ll overcome their problem with your help.

Next, you should continue to personalize the experience across channels. You can turn an e-book topic into a podcast episode or a case study into an infographic. The best way to do this is to know what your customers want to see and make sure you have the right software to execute your account-based marketing tactics. 

Consider using one of these tools:

  • Account engagement software that watches your accounts’ every move and gathers insights to secret buying behaviors so you can make the right move at the right time.
  • Personality assessment software that analyzes the social media accounts of your targeted decision makers to give you insights into their personality and tips about their communication style.
  • A pipeline management system that helps grow your account pipelines, send ABM campaigns, and more.

As you can see, personalization isn’t just about knowing what your customer’s favorite snack at Trader Joe’s is, it’s about knowing where they are located in their buyer’s journey, sending the right content and messages, and speaking their lingo.

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ABM tactic #3: Host and attend in-person, online, and hybrid events

According to Bizzabo, 97% of B2B marketers believe that in-person events have a major impact on achieving business outcomes, 80.2% of event organizers were able to reach a larger audience with virtual events, and over half of B2B marketers within the Professional Services industry host VIP events! A live event can be a conference or workshop. These events can be hosted online in a webinar or other virtual medium, or transformed into a hybrid event with the option for attendants to view via a live stream online. All three variations of an event are account-based marketing tactics that have a high ROI.

Out of the three, in-person events have the potential to make the biggest impact. Jonathan Taylor, senior psychologist at Pearn Kandola business psychology firm says, “In a typical 10 minute conversation, studies show we can give away up to 150 micro-behaviours, which can be positive or negative. When we’re building trust with someone, the ‘micro-affirmations’ that we give away are really important – eye contact, open body language, building on what we hear. Our body language reinforces our words and our intent,” he notes.

We need face to face interaction to build rapport, trust, and authority quickly in sales. In most cases, in-person events should be used to network with high-value accounts first and as often as possible. If you want to use this account-based marketing tactic, here are a few ways to win over stakeholders:

  • Find an in-person event and purchase tickets, flight plans, hotels, and other amenities for your chosen decision makers to attend.
  • Create a virtual event, where your decision maker can shine as a thought leader and promote their personal projects.
  • Host hybrid events for key people that may not have the option to travel and need flexibility.

With this account-based marketing tactic, you’ll want to start planning your events early, select a list of target companies, determine which of the three formats they’d prefer and be most likely to attend, develop a relationship with stakeholders, and create personalized messages, campaigns, and offers to get them to come.

5 Account-Based Marketing Must-Have Strategies for Sales

1. Create your ideal account profile and target list

What makes an account “high-value” for your organization? Build a list of target accounts to market to. Consider whether your lead is willing and ready to buy and if they’ll bring in consistent revenue over time. Instead of using an ideal customer profile (ICP), you’ll need to create an ideal account profile (IAP). You’ll need to take a deep dive and analyze your marketing, sales, and customer service data in order to determine what your most valuable accounts currently have in common. If your ideal accounts are New York-based insurance companies, then the location will be a priority. 

Common data search fields:

  • Title
  • Company
  • Geography/Location
  • Industry
  • Email 
  • Phone

Your marketing team can gather this data from their research and sales reps can dig deep into their database with Lusha for Salesforce. It allows you to automatically bulk enrich multiple leads in your CRM. This streamlines the whole scoring and routing process and allows you to isolate common attributes that make an account high-value for your organization and choose new accounts that fit your IAP. 

These new accounts will form the core of your transition to ABM. With this information, your marketing and sales teams will also know exactly how to create targeted campaigns and perform personalized outreach.

Once you have your target account list, it’s time to start grouping them. Although each account is qualified and has the possibility to be profitable, you should have a scoring system in place to rank and prioritize accounts. 

Example:

When accounts are in ranked groups, it guides your account-based marketing strategy even further. It becomes immediately clear which accounts to reach out to first, and where to prioritize budget spending to maximize ROI.

The 3 Most Important Steps In ABM

2. Learn who the big kahuna is amongst the stakeholders

As mentioned earlier, ABM requires a more focused and personalized strategy. With other marketing methods, you are learning how a lead thinks, behaves, and operates at a time. With ABM you are looking at several key leads within an organization, plus, how they work with each other, how the company is structured, and what role they each play in the decision process. To find key people in an organization, you could sift through dozens of profiles, often fruitlessly – or you could use Lusha Extension. As soon as you plug in, you’ll instantly get access to your target contact’s details. 

Examples:

The promoter: this is someone who is a fan of your product or service and shares it with the team

The influencer: they are usually experts and will sway the opinions of others

The buyer: this person signs off on the final purchase or project

Identifying the internal hierarchy can help your marketing team create the right content. Marketing collateral that proves your company’s expertise to the influencer gets other key players on board. Also, make note of how their individual timeline looks when making a decision.

3. Connect smarter at every stage  

Here comes the fun part – speaking to your prospects! With an account-based marketing strategy, creating collateral and campaigns becomes easier than ever before. You will need the budget to go all out, get creative, and write more personal messages. The top five ABM tactics are sales development outreach, digital advertising, direct mail, email marketing, and events.

Here’s how both your marketing and sales teams can personalize each tactic

Digital advertising

Two places you can post digital advertisements are on LinkedIn and Facebook. 

LinkedIn is the first place B2B professionals go to connect with their peers and exchange information. It’s the prime spot to post an advertisement for your case study and have it seen by the right people. Dynamic ads is a LinkedIn feature that allows your target list to receive personalized ads that display their name, profile pic, and job title. This is an efficient tool to create and send hundreds of advertisements that are unique.

Next, you can place ads on Facebook. The platform allows your ads to be seen in the format your target prefers (i.e. banner, carousel, collection, etc) with their personalization features. It automatically adjusts the format, description, and placement on the site based on what they’re most likely to respond to. 

Sales development outreach

Reps can write a LinkedIn cold outreach message that is customized by mentioning something specific to them in the message. If you’re using Sales Navigator, you will receive notifications when your contacts post, and you can reference the topic they mentioned, or simply read their profile thoroughly to get to know them. Sales reps can also craft their cold calls around the same information. Make sure to add personal info to the first 30 seconds of the call to grab the attention of the contact.

Direct mail 

In an account-based marketing strategy, direct mail is the perfect way to get noticed. Some ideas include sending wine, tech gadgets, chocolates, a handwritten note, VIP access to online conferences, or a gift card. You can create tiered packages depending on which stage in the buyer’s journey your account is in. Once the direct mail has been sent, follow up with a phone call or meeting.

Email marketing

Once your target group is fixed, you can send email campaigns that are relevant to each decision-maker. Personalized emails have a higher click-through rate, so it is crucial to customize a template by making the subject line relevant, mentioning something they have posted on social media, and sending behavior-based emails that automatically get sent whenever a prospect interacts with your content. 

Online events

Online events and one-to-one Zoom meetings are an intimate way to execute an account-based marketing strategy. There is nothing like forming a humane digital connection. You can educate, nurture, and build a meaningful relationship with your prospects in person, online, and make an impact. Personally inviting them to an online event your team is attending, or hosting your own online event are major steps towards a great business relationship. 

4. Market to a small portion of your list

Since ABM takes more talent, money, time, and technology to get right, marketing to all your accounts at once may overburden your team. Most organizations intentionally pursue only 38% of their target accounts at one time. This strategy benefits teams who have hundreds of accounts and need to create personalized campaigns at scale.

It digs to the analytics to identify triggers of response from decision-makers, and monitor their behaviors, motives, and personality traits to help build out your IAP and optimize your next campaign.

One ABM tactic is to market to a few accounts at a time.

5. Measure IAP and account engagement in every account

You should be able to measure the results of your account-based marketing strategy to identify weak spots and opportunities to increase revenue. 

IAP: A complete ideal account profile is something that develops and evolves over time, especially as you interact with key decision-makers. You should measure the accuracy of your data points, the depth of knowledge you have about each contact, and how complete the profile is.

Account engagement: Here you can calculate how many hours are spent on a call and how many content assets are downloaded to determine the level of interest your prospect has shown over the course of their journey. Knowing which accounts have high engagement allows you to prioritize the account you need to engage with first.

How to build an account-based marketing strategy with Lusha

How to Implement Account-Based Marketing?

To implement a successful account-based marketing strategy, there are several actionable steps that you can take:

  • Establish your ABM team: The first step is to put together a killer ABM team that can cover every aspect of your account-based marketing tactics. You will need to appoint a head of ABM to coordinate any and all ABM activities. You will need a campaign manager to oversee individual campaigns, and a marketing manager to curate all relevant materials. Field marketers will be needed to conduct the on-the-ground activity, and sales team members will need to be present to avoid mixed messaging or overlap.
  • Identify your high-value accounts: Once you have your account-based marketing team, it’s time to get to work identifying the right accounts. Focus on sales volume, interest, market need, and timing. Prioritize specific accounts that are closer to completing a sale with you than others. Be reactive and adjust the list as needed.
  • Agree on messaging: It is vital that you, your marketing team, and your sales team all agree on the messaging and tone of your ABM campaigns. Consistency with each specific account is key, especially if multiple people are targeting a single account. Ideally, there should be an accessible marketing campaign guide that is tailored to the account you are targeting, that everyone in your ABM team can consult.
  • Select your strategy: Finally, you will need to decide on and coordinate your ABM strategy. Actionable goals and timelines are a vital part of this process, so don’t be afraid to take charge and set deadlines. You will need to decisively allocate the appropriate amount of resources to the ABM campaign, and ensure that they are used the right way.

What Are Accounted-Based Sales?

In account-based sales, actually completing the sale with those identified accounts is the goal. This is different than account-based marketing because ABM is focused entirely on marketing, while ABS is focused on the sales aspect. In ABM, the goal is to use the data to generate high-value and hyper-targeted leads, using tailored marketing tactics. In order to avoid overlap and risk losing high-value accounts, it is vital that ABM and ABS teams work together, with as little ‘siloization’ as possible.

Now that you know everything there is to know about account-based marketing, it is time to put it into action. Once you’ve pulled it off, your marketing team will be able to secure genuinely valuable customers for the long-term.

3 inspiring account-based marketing examples

Case Study #1: Three traits of high-value accounts that brought SAP $27 million in opportunities 

SAP is an enterprise resource planning software that helps multinational corporations run their HR, inventory management, and supply chain. 

Here’s their challenge: They noticed the top 10% of their accounts brought in over a third of their revenue in the U.S., but SAP failed to deliver personalized marketing experiences to them. In fact, they found out that many decision-makers didn’t even know what products were being used at their company. Major fail!

How they fixed it: To cater to the top 10% of their accounts and keep them informed about their products, SAP created three criteria to prioritize high-value accounts:

  • Accounts with long-term growth potential, not only accounts who had a profitable calendar year.
  • Accounts with decision makers who would be easy to introduce to their sales team.
  • Accounts that were receptive to ongoing, long-term meetings, discussions, and engagement.

SAP selected just 5 accounts to begin their ABM program and eased their way up to 55 over two years. They began implementing account-based marketing tactics such as creating custom marketing plans for their top accounts, finding out where they were in their buying cycle, and initiating regular communication to help them execute plans. 

The results: SAP created 27 million dollars in new pipeline opportunities and progressed $57 million down the pipeline!

Case Study #2: How Genesys’ personalized campaigns created a  400% increased in revenue

Genesys is a call center and customer experience technology for mid to large businesses. In this account-based marketing example, you’ll see how they used personalization to explode their engagement and opportunities.

Here’s their challenge: They had fierce competitors who were destroying them in the marketing department and Genesys, unfortunately, had not done enough research on their prospects. They had no idea who the stakeholders were, what their pain points were, or how to get their foot in the door. 

How they fixed it: In order to engage each key person and make every touchpoint personalized, they needed deep insights and the right technology to communicate one on one.

Here are the steps Genesys took:

  • Hosted a series of marketing and sales workshops to flesh out profiles for 5 key executives, and establish their preferred tone of voice, communication style, and conversation starters.
  • Wrote viral thought-leadership content which was distributed through email, direct mail, and social media by sales teams. Then, audience respondents were mapped, segmented, and entered into the ABM program.
  • Used a predictive marketing tool that produced intent data about buying signals, helped target accounts more precisely, and automated account-based marketing tactics.

The result: Hyper-relevant messaging and content was created for each account and Genesys received 74% engagement with priority contacts and a 400% increase on target pipeline, which equaled millions of dollars.

ABM tactics to master

Case study #3: Thomson Reuters’ event marketing strategy that achieved a 95% win rate

Thomson Reuters is a media company for legal professionals and business owners, and provides content, software, and services.

Here is their challenge: They needed help scaling an ABM program with accounts that had a longer sales cycle, accounts that were newly acquired and not engaging with the sales team, and accounts that were at risk of leaving before closing the deal. 

How they fixed it: Thomson Reuters took 500 accounts that matched their ideal customer profile and placed them into three tiers. Each tier had an event marketing component offered to help scale the program.

Their tactics included:

  • For accounts with longer cycles: accounts are invited to any number of 700 in-market events which the company hosted throughout the country.
  • For accounts that are new and not engaging: decision makers are invited to high profile events like the White House Correspondents dinner and sporting events, and they’re also set up with exclusive suites for them to stay in.
  • For accounts that were at risk of leaving: hosted exclusive events, published content within the industry, and worked with decision makers to give them opportunities to be mentioned in blogs, white papers, and other media for publicity.

The results: The Thomson Reuters team was able to build a scalable program which resulted in a 95% win rate.

Lusha Extension’s quick solution for connecting with any stakeholder

If you look at the above account-based marketing examples, there’s one recurring problem: marketing and sales teams had trouble reaching decision makers and having a deep understanding of who they are. Without this critical information any ABM program attempt will fail.

Lusha Extension offers a quick solution. It’s a LinkedIn email finder Chrome extension that delivers accurate email addresses, phone numbers, and firmographics like company revenue, industry verticals, employee headcount, and so much more. Sales teams can use it to extract this information from their prospects’ LinkedIn and other social media, have it sent straight to their CRM, and updated in real time. 

Aircall, a call center software, found themselves wasting time and company resources searching for prospects’ contact info. In order to gather accurate contact and business info on prospects, they used Lusha Extension to enrich their database which gave them a 95% accuracy rate when receiving data. Aircall gained a 30% increase in sales demos and increased their sales.

ABM tactics your customers will love

Key takeaways

  • Create a hierarchy of your accounts: There are many factors that make an account high value, so decide what that means for your company and make sure they’ll deliver the most long-term revenue.
  • Personalize the buyer’s journey: Nurture accounts during the awareness, consideration, and decision phases at the right time and on the best channel for them.
  • Create and attend events: Events are a great way to build authority and trust with prospects. It’s also a time to go all out and spoil your decision makers with opportunities to share their knowledge or enjoy a fun experience!

Finally, every account-based marketing tactic begins with that initial conversation. To get your foot in the door, grab Lusha Extension, a B2B lead enrichment tool that delivers contact information and firmographics to help you qualify your prospect and gives a list of key personnel at the company so you always know who’s a head honcho.

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