ABM Prerequisits

Heeey there,

So for 2 weeks now, we’ve discussed the ‘how to’s of setting up a podcast. We talked about technical aspects, the secret that all of our guests praise and the strategy.

Now we are building an outreach strategy for a select few with a podcast, that is an Account Based Marketing play (as mentioned well taught by Fullfunnel.io).

ABM just like Growth Marketing is a rather popular buzz term. Something our prospects often ask about and want to know how they may start.

So this week I thought we could talk about ABM and its prerequisites and we’ll also cover Growth Marketing in the near future.

But first » did you know how many people underestimate the effort and difficulty that goes into creating high-quality content?

We just finished up creating 1 week of video shooting for a client and boyyyyyyy, what a week. Here is a behind-the-scenes snippet👇.

Actually, making content is pretty easy.

Making content that looks simple and easy to consume is freaking hard.

That’s the key difference. If it looks simple and easy to consume, it’s probably because the creators spend a lot of time designing it like this.

I mean, think about this: Mister Beast, the most famous Youtuber in the world spends around 5-10k for a freaking thumbnail.

That’s the level we’ll be playing at in the future.

Now back to current marketing stuff 👇

[Stick around until the end for insights from an ABM expert.]

Topic Overview:

• Account Based Marketing 🔤

• Alignment instead of Silos 👷‍♀️

• Prerequisites for running ABM 🧱

• ABM done with or by professionals 👩‍🏭

• ABM should be a Business Wide Motion 🌐

Account Based Marketing 🔤

Let’s cut to the chase.

Account Marketing is a model where a business targets a list of selected accounts with highly personalised outreach sequences as well as specifically created content.

The idea is rooted in the discrepancies between Marketing and Sales teams and the changing behaviours in B2B buying journeys.

Specifically, the all too common issues that relate to:

• Marketing is being treated as a coin-based Lead Machine 🤖

and

• Sales doing the heavy lifting on converting “leads” into customers 😖

With the spread of more and more accurate data and the emergence of new, more personalised channels of communication, B2B buying processes have gone through a change.

Casting a wide net and hoping that there will be some valuable catches is unreasonably expensive and worryingly ineffective.

ABM is a response to these changes.

Instead of trying to talk to as many people as possible (while still maintaining a lower level of targeting) with the hope that the less specific message will be able to attract more potential leads to filter through »

ABM approaches the equation the other way around.

It prefilters the people that the business specifically wants to talk to, and targets those selectively, with a high level of personalisation.

That way the messaging, the product/service development and customer care become more specific, and in turn, the business will:

• Have an easier job at creating lasting relationships

• Have a higher chance of identifying leaks in their sales and marketing processes.

This strategy is especially effective when a business operates with a long sales cycle for a high-ticket product or service.

Alignment Of Silos👷‍♀️

Coming back to the discrepancies between sales and marketing, in this model (similar to Growth Marketing) a key aspect is the high level of alignment between these and other departments.

Whereas in a traditional model, you’ll often see marketing, sales, product and customer success pointing at one another after an unsuccessful campaign…

One of the crucial necessities of running successful ABM campaigns is the rewiring of internal processes in a way that supports high-level communication and collaboration between these departments.

Specifically the alignment of sales and marketing.

In a traditional, sales-led model, marketing is often treated as an arts and crafts department, taking orders from other departments.

The issue with that is not simply the negligence and waste of marketing’s true strength but also that -as mentioned above- it leaves all the heavy lifting to sales.

While, when we first introduce more alignment into traditional setups, it is sometimes met with doubt and anxiety -especially- from sales »

as the campaigns start producing better numbers and their job becomes easier and more rewarding, it quickly becomes the norm and preferred form of operation.

How does it lead to better numbers and an easier job for sales?

By involving insight from multiple departments when it comes to forming your messaging as well as covering more (ideally all) levels of the buying process.

Now instead of

• a buyer seeing a (at best) moderately relevant piece of content/ad

• then being bombarded by generic sales messaging that focuses on the greatness of the solution

…by the time the buyer talks to sales, they’ll likely understand their problems better, know more about the solution »

thus sales can focus on their specific challenges and hit the nail on the head.

Prerequisites For ABM 🧱

Ok, so I promised that this would be a shorter one…

so let’s close today’s newsletter by listing some of the key things you need before you can and frankly should start running ABM.

1. A Clear Definition of Target Accounts
2. High-Quality Data
3. Personalised Assets/Content
4. Sales and Marketing Alignment
5. Measurement and Optimization
+1. Account-Based Advertising

1. A Clear Definition of Target Accounts:
The first step in ABM is to identify the target accounts that you want to focus on. This requires a clear understanding of your ideal customer profile and the key attributes of the companies that are most likely to become your customers.

2. High-Quality Data:
To effectively target and engage with your target accounts, you need high-quality data that includes firmographic, technographic, and behavioural information.

This data can come from a variety of sources, including internal databases (i.e. conversations from your sales and customer success teams » this is the most valuable part), third-party data providers, and intent data providers.

3. Personalised Assets/Content:
To engage with your target accounts effectively, you need to create personalised content that speaks to the specific needs and challenges of each account.

This requires a deep understanding of the account's pain points and the ability to create content that resonates with them. Also, the ability to measure the success of these assets.

4. Sales and Marketing Alignment:
Successful ABM campaigns require close collaboration between sales and marketing teams.

Sales teams need to be involved in the planning process to ensure that the campaign aligns with their goals, and marketing teams need to work closely with sales teams to ensure that they have the support they need to effectively engage with target accounts.

If there are Customer Success (/Customer Care) teams they too should be involved in the creation of the Offers and Messaging.

5. Measurement and Optimization:
To ensure that your ABM campaigns are delivering results, you need to measure and optimise your campaigns on an ongoing basis.

This requires the use of analytics tools that can track key metrics such as engagement rates, conversion rates, and revenue generated from target accounts.

The easiest solution to start with is measuring leading performance metrics and the use of Content Hubs.

+1. Account-Based Advertising:
A somewhat less essential part of ABM is the delivery of personalised ads to individual accounts within your target audience.
This can be done with the use of an account-based advertising platform that can deliver targeted ads across multiple channels.

Done With Or By Professionals 👩‍🏭

Looking at that list, one might get the feeling that although ABM sounds good…

setting up all of the necessary prerequisites and facilitating the changes inside of the organisation might take too much time & effort.

If that is indeed the case, one can easily cooperate with an external expert/agency to assist with setting up a new, more efficient model.

There are however certain things that you should consider before your start.

To work effectively with an agency, there are a few key setups & roles that you'll want to have in place within your business:

A. Sales and Marketing Alignment:
I know, we’ve talked about this, just a quick reminder.

This is a crucial aspect both as a preliminary requirement and as an ongoing cooperation. To execute a successful ABM campaign, your sales and marketing teams will need to work closely together.

You'll want to designate someone within your enterprise to act as a connection between these teams and to ensure that they're aligned on the goals and objectives of the campaign. Sales need to be involved in both direct implementation & ongoing optimisation.

B. Data Analyst (or at least Business Intelligence):
While the agency may be responsible for collecting and analysing data related to your ABM campaign, it's important to have someone within your enterprise who can interpret this data and provide insights into campaign performance.

This person should be able to work closely with the agency to identify opportunities for optimisation and improvement.

C. Project Manager:
This may be your Rev. Lead, Mark. Lead, Sales Lead » but it has to be someone who is able to allocate enough time to the cooperation: To ensure that your ABM campaign stays on track and on budget, it's important to have a project manager who can oversee the campaign and work closely with the agency to manage timelines, budgets, and deliverables.

Once you have the above covered, you are ready to build a more rewarding model with higher efficiency from your marketing and sales teams.

ABM Is A Business Wide Motion 🌐

As you can probably tell from the prerequisites listed above, if you want to implement ABM successfully, your organisation needs to adopt an Account-Based Strategy.

It is great if your Marketing is able to construct Account Based Campaigns, but without leadership commitment to focus on a set number of accounts (and thus disqualifying others), it’ll stay a mere afterthought.

As Hillary Carpio (Snowflake’s Head of ABM) put it »

Only when there is leadership-level alignment, will you be able to allocate the necessary budget and human resources (from Marketing, Sales, CC etc.) for Account Based Plays.

You have to build a program, that suits the needs of your business.

Identify a specific challenge where the Account Approach makes sense and set up a motion accordingly [e.g. sales rep designated to work on the highest revenue accounts].

“Determine what the problem you are trying to solve is for your specific business… and develop your program accordingly.”

Keep in mind that ABM is not traditional marketing on an account level.

Your marketing campaigns, sales touch-points, and SDR sequences all need to be tailored to the specific problem the account is facing.

You need to align these so that every touchpoint the account receives is around the topic you suspect they are interested in so they’ll be going through a cohesive experience.
You can however prepare outreach sequences for particular buying committee members (titles) in particular industries.

The touchpoints and campaigns should still be highly personalised and boutique, but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time you build up your outreach messaging

LinkedIn posts worth reading this week:


1. A Marketing leader experiencing the other side of the B2B buyer's journey

Sam Kuehnle, VP of Marketing at Loxo details his 6-week journey in evaluating software and service for their company, and how those learnings may be applied to building good experiences.

2. How To Waste $1M On Personas

Matt Lerner -an ex-PayPal Marketing Leader- explains why personas are not it, and what he uses instead.

3. How To Burnout

we've all seen endless advice on how not to burn out...it is time to know how to do just that!