What is the best way to engage enterprise decision-makers through account-based marketing?

The definition of the ICP has changed over the years; rather than having a broader level of ICP, it is time to narrow it down to firmographics and technographics. Determining what the prospect is looking for is equally essential, and clubbing the intent data in your ICP is the way ahead.

Most ICP definitions are created in a meeting room. They often miss the mark. I recommend creating a list of your ideal customers, enriching that list with information using a service like Clay and then finding commonalities between them. Then check these commonalities with your existing ICP definition to tweak it.

One thing i've found helpful is to have a very clear definition of your "ideal" customer. When you start identifying customers and building your ABM list, it can very quickly become too big to manage. The sharper the definition - the more filters you can apply - the more manageable a list you will create. Also have an ideal list size in mind. An ABM list for a sales team of 50 looks very different from a list for a sales team of 5. While marketing will connect with these accounts through campaigns, your sales team will also try to do so 1-1. So a rough math - (no. of unique outreach attempts / week) * (52 weeks in a year) * (size of the sales team).

Create a tiered list of priority accounts and create tiers on personas that you want to engage with in the P1 list of accounts. Have some rationale on why a particular account and persona merits being included in the list. Look at existing customers to get a sense of what potential customers should look like. Now engage with them through integrated campaigns where in the tactics can range from customized emails , LinkedIn outreach, direct mail, invitation to do a webinar/podcast , or to attend an event you are sponsoring /organizing

With Enterprise decision makers it is super important to be patient, and not try to force product adoption or sales conversation before they are ready. 90% of your content should aim to educate (a) problem-unaware decision makers of the problem you are trying to solve, and (b) problem aware decision makers of your solution and its USPs. Only a small fraction of your content should be looking to instigate an action from the decision maker. While there are many channels available to leverage, research and understand to which channels your audience give extra weightage and attention. Some audiences take their emails seriously and that carries particular weight. Other audiences may give importance to what they read on blogs.

Carrying on from the previous idea, your campaigns need to be clearly segmented into awareness / education vs conversion. Only a fraction of the interactions with Enterprise buyers may lead to a positive product adoption or sales conversation action, and expecting this from all your campaigns will rapidly lead to your ABM RoI looking poor.

Have a relook at the type of content that you want to gate. Gone are the days wherein you ask prospects to fill out detailed forms for downloading an ebook and then put them through SDR's to follow up. Give quality content away free of cost to amplify distribution. Repurpose a lot of content across ebooks, webinars, podcasts, case studies and testimonials. Spend a couple of minutes on the LinkedIn profiles of key stakeholders in target accounts to add the next layer of personalization in your outreach.

Look at anything and everything that can help nurture existing relationships that need not necessarily be part of a marketing playbook but can be helping prospect with warm introductions to other partners that can help them to doing account specific Ask Me Anything or roadshows.

The starting point to build a strong nurture-able relationship is the first sale itself, and particularly on how fast and effectively you can deliver value with your solution, especially in an enterprise setting where long-winded deployments are unfortunately quite common. Deliver value fast and effectively, demonstrate impact early and build good positive equity not just with your product buyer but with the entire buying organization. You then have a wave of positive momentum to initiate conversations to cross-sell and upsell.

Your ABM motion must also factor for other stakeholders in the organization who have an influence in the buying process, even if they are not direct stakeholders / beneficiaries / users of your product. A very common such stakeholder is the CFO. Another is the CISO or equivalent who is accountable for org-wide information security. You not only need to be able to achieve buy-in from these stakeholders, but also empower your decision maker to make your case on your behalf. Very often you will not have direct access to do the talking yourself. Assets such a Guide to Calculate RoI (for the CFO) or an Information Security White Paper (for the CISO) can be excellent supplementary assets to enable the sale.