How to Approach Account-Based Marketing Part 1 – Selecting Accounts

How would you approach Account Based Marketing (ABM) at your company? Would you simply buy a marketing technology tool and call that ‘Account-Based Marketing’? Would you work with your sales colleagues, or not? How do you select the target accounts?

I have written this blog to cover two core components for ABM that most marketers need help with: selecting the target accounts, and the variety of technologies that support an ABM strategy. 

ABM isn’t a new idea. Sales professionals have used account selling strategies for at least 30 years. What is new is how marketers have learned the approach thanks in huge part to outstanding content and new marketing technology solution. What is new about ABM is aligning marketing very closely with sales.

ABM requires a lot of planning and multi-team coordination. ABM is NOT about technology and certainly isn’t an email-only approach. In fact, I have seen a lot of marketers get account engagement quickly by using targeted display advertising programs as their entry into ABM. And a marketing manager won’t succeed by unilaterally running ABM campaigns to random accounts. But imagine the kind of targeted reach, engagement, and impact you could have if you combined email, display advertising, and other campaigns together in an integrated approach.

Speaking of integration, marketers should think like salespeople when planning for ABM success. Collaborating with sales is often the most difficult part of ABM for marketers. The bottom line is successful ABM requires sales team – it’s not an option. 

Identifying Target Accounts

Most marketers don’t know their company’s top accounts aside from a few logos on the website. Marketers rarely check their CRM system for account details beyond activity and opportunity reports. Marketers need to get to know their top accounts, let alone the accounts the sales team focuses on. Learning the top accounts is incredibly valuable for identifying target accounts. These details are best captured by working with sales. 

Don’t pick accounts simply because of a high-profile name. Remember, you have to market to the right people in the accounts.

Use the data in CRM and marketing automation systems for current and prospective customers. This information can help identify the profile for the best and most profitable customers. Here is helpful information from current customers that can help identify the accounts to focus on.

• Why did the top accounts select your company’s solutions?
• What were the compelling events driving the selection?
• Do we have opportunities to expand sales with these existing accounts?
• Who were the people involved in the purchase?
• What were the roles of stakeholder?
• How long did it take to win the business?
• How many campaigns did the personas engage with?
• What were the most impactful content assets?
• Who were the competitors?

Additional details help build the target profiles further:

• Propensity to buy – What types of companies are your specific solutions best suited for?
• Vertical industry – is the offering a strong fit for healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace or others?
• Regulatory requirements that drive compliance – government regulations are powerful drivers for companies to purchase solutions.
• Revenue and number of employees – what size of company is the best fit?
• Current infrastructure – Companies that use certain products or tools may be a better fit than others.
• Using or not using competitive products – Can you unseat competitors?
• Market events (hiring, IPO, RFPs, M&A) – What companies are on a hiring binge? Do expanded operations create opportunities? What about an IPO?

Account targeting is not easy. It requires prioritization from both marketing and sales—and often requires several review passes to get to the right list for your organization. However, invest the time into it. You will use this process and data to help drive your email, display advertising, webinar, and other campaigns. Identifying target accounts is one of the first areas to build alignment and trust between sales and marketing.

If you are not comfortable analyzing your corporate data or building target account lists, you can use predictive solutions to identify the target accounts. Predictive tools use many of the data points listed above, and more, to identify the companies with the most potential. However, predictive tools are not required to conduct this research. In fact, I would encourage the sales and marketing teams to identify the target accounts together first.

ABM will fail without planning. Choosing the right accounts is critical for success – random logo selection isn’t recommended. Choosing a technology by itself isn’t ABM. Neither is running campaigns to a random set of companies without any selection criteria. Selecting the accounts with sales helps build teamwork to execute a full funnel ABM process which will ultimately to greater sales success. While you will probably need to make adjustments to your campaigns as they evolve, you want to start with the best chance of success and that falls on planning.



About Brian Hansford

Brian Hansford is vice president of client services with Heinz Marketing in Redmond, WA. He is a passionate B2B marketer and marketing tech enthusiast who frequently writes and speaks on data, content, workflow, and revenue performance. You can follow Brian on Twitter @RemarkMarketing or on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/brianhansford/