ABM - Know Your Customers.
Account Based Marketing has become the most effective way to realize your strategic business objectives for growth efficiently and effectively. In fact, over 96% of B2B marketers leveraging ABM indicate a positive impact on marketing’s success in driving revenue and growth.
In any well thought out ABM strategy there are typically 5 Steps to success:
Step 1: Discover & Define Your High-Value Accounts
Step 2: Define Personalized & Effective Messaging
Step 3: Determine Optimal Channels
Step 4: Execute Targeted Campaigns
Step 5: Measure, Adjust, Optimize, Repeat
Not I am not going to go into all 5 of these in this ... I want to focus on the one step I consistently see organizations struggle with. And that is "Step 1: Discover & Define Your High-Value Accounts".
So often I see organizations lack a true understanding of what a High-Value Account. They will either create a list of their "Top" accounts or their "Dream" accounts. These are not necessarily your HIGH-VALUE accounts. It all begins with data. You need to dig further into your data to discover exactly which attributes should determine your target accounts. I typically tell clients to analyze their account data in 4 categories to create an optimal account profile. It is important not to confuse "optimal" with "average" and determine targets that fit these categories that provide you the greatest chance of success.
- Company Data (revenue, employee size, industry, location).
- Sales Data (sales history, deal size, sales cycle length, length of term).
- Behaviors (product interests, how they buy, how they engage,)
- Strategic Need (sometimes a prospect may not satisfy all or any of the above 3 criteria, but they meet a certain strategic need ... maybe get you into a new marker, or a new region. You MUST NOT discount strategic needs.)
By studying your customer base continually using a ranking system for each of these four categories, you can identify, define and refine your Ideal Customer Profile and position your ABM strategy for continued success.