So, You Want to Do Great ABM...

I'm back folks! With a new role in Account Based Marketing, and my MBA graduation on the docket for July, that means time to build community with new content.

If you are like me, your family & friends tend to always ask "What the heck do you do for work?" Well...in my eyes it is simple: I work collaboratively across the business to understand our customers in order to help our sales teams sell better. BUT, how exactly can you do this at a high-level to garner tangible results?

Below are a few quick thoughts from my first month on the job and some areas I see as emerging needs to truly do great ABM.

1. Truly Understand The Product: When I was in Talent, I always told people "if you can't get excited about the product...how do you expect to market it?" Enterprise Software is a complex space with many moving pieces. Partners, Sales, Consulting, Customer Success, Engineering, you name it...they are involved. To gain buy-in, understanding the product as a marketer can make for more productive conversations when developing tactics to bring to market.
2. Have a Sellers Mindset: Having sold services in the past, understanding the entire sales cycle can have massive benefits for an Account Based Marketer. From Leads, to Qualified Opportunities, to stale pipeline--a different approach is required in each area. For some, content will just be re-tooled and sent back out in hopes of getting engagement, but is it resonating? The goal of ABM is to effectively move the pipeline, build long lasting relationships, and win bigger deals at a faster pace. This can't be done without marketing buying-in to the sales process.
3. Admit What You Don't Know, Then Learn It: In the Software space, over-selling and under-delivering can kill your brand. The same goes for the internal marketing function. The beauty of marketing is that the process in unique nearly every time. With layered functions across an organization, finding tactics / content that can solve a unique sales dilemma is a must. More so, entrenching yourself in all aspects of the account is hugely important. In larger accounts often supported by ABM, there are numerous stakeholder relationships--many of which can be leveraged into more effective marketing.

What I just laid out is no easy task, it requires patience, inquisitiveness, an entrepreneurial mindset, and a true passion for solving customers' needs with clarity. So, what's next? Well, with sometimes ambiguous KPIs, there are a few areas that ABM can bring higher-level value to the entire GTM ecosystem.

• Increased Automation of ABM in Target Accounts to Generate Longer-Term relationships with the brand
• Closer alignment into all avenues of the sales cycle
• Defined analytics across tactics to identify a repeatable "toolkit" to bring to market

Personally, Great ABM to me is generated by being excited about People, Product, Customers, and Outcomes. As all marketers know, things can change on a dime and in order to be best equipped to pivot tactics--we have to be involved heavily at all levels of the process.

Stay tuned as my marketing journey continues!