In this session we will cover the fundamental steps required to build an ABM strategy for your organization. You will scope the people, resources and marketing programs that need to be considered, along with with the expectations that need to be set with your organization.
Fueling A_B experiments with behavioral insights (1).pdf
ABM Fundamentals
1. ABM FUNDAMENTALS
HIGH PERFORMANCE ABM
Peter Isaacson
CMO | Demandbase
Alex Krawchick
Practice Lead, Analytics & Marketing Sciences | Inverta
2. FRI Metrics, Measurements and KPIs
Keys to Sales & Marketing Alignment SuccessTUES
WED
THURS
Building Your Target Account List
ABM Across the Funnel
MON ABM Fundamentals
@Demandbase #ABMwebseries
HIGH PERFORMANCE ABM WEBINAR SERIES
EVERYDAY 10 AM PT
4. • Why ABM? What does ABM solve for?
• Laying the groundwork of an ABM strategy
• Leveraging ABM across the organization
• Putting ABM it into action
• Q&A
AGENDA
EventsHow many events can we do that have 1/3 DB3k accounts AND will give us a speaking slot?
Fewer events; greater investment
Digital CampaignsCan we redesign our website in such a way to deliver relevant content and keep target accounts on our site longer, from the first visit?
Optimize for the 15%
Customer MarketingHow can I help our customer success team get easier upsells and ensure their renewals?
Selling to and with our customers
Field CampaignsWhich regions should we focus on to deliver the greatest number of leads and accelerate the sales cycle for our sales team?
Set the strategy; don’t be reactive.
We looked at all our programs—analog and digital. From 2014—2015, we had the same event budget but were asked to produce more deals.
What we did was look at all our events and see what was most successful for us. Our threshold showed that if 30 percent or more of our target accounts showed up to an event, we had greater impact. Also having a speaking spot was more successful then not. So we were able to take our selves from 30 events to 18 and hit that increased pipeline. With fewer events, our sales team was also not at that many events where they aren’t closing deals. This is where that efficiency play comes in.
You can apply all these principles to customer marketing teams as well and get those renewals since you can get the message to target accounts earlier.
For field marketing, prior to ABM we had a very reactive strategy—when a new rep was added, we were asked to help run programs for these individual people so that they could get started in their territories. Once we had a target list, you could map that around the country and focus our attention within each of those nine cities. Now each member of our field-marketing team focuses on four cities to drive more business in those cities.
Last but not least is the digital campaign. Many people will shift their website based on aggregate numbers and revamp their website. But the problem is that 15 percent of visitors will buy from you so changing the entire site based on aggregate numbers isn’t really going to move the needle. So what we did was look at is how our target account list and customers were behaving on our website. If we optimized our website for aggregate activity, we would be off. We can now optimize for customers and target account lists.
EventsHow many events can we do that have 1/3 DB3k accounts AND will give us a speaking slot?
Fewer events; greater investment
Digital CampaignsCan we redesign our website in such a way to deliver relevant content and keep target accounts on our site longer, from the first visit?
Optimize for the 15%
Customer MarketingHow can I help our customer success team get easier upsells and ensure their renewals?
Selling to and with our customers
Field CampaignsWhich regions should we focus on to deliver the greatest number of leads and accelerate the sales cycle for our sales team?
Set the strategy; don’t be reactive.
We looked at all our programs—analog and digital. From 2014—2015, we had the same event budget but were asked to produce more deals.
What we did was look at all our events and see what was most successful for us. Our threshold showed that if 30 percent or more of our target accounts showed up to an event, we had greater impact. Also having a speaking spot was more successful then not. So we were able to take our selves from 30 events to 18 and hit that increased pipeline. With fewer events, our sales team was also not at that many events where they aren’t closing deals. This is where that efficiency play comes in.
You can apply all these principles to customer marketing teams as well and get those renewals since you can get the message to target accounts earlier.
For field marketing, prior to ABM we had a very reactive strategy—when a new rep was added, we were asked to help run programs for these individual people so that they could get started in their territories. Once we had a target list, you could map that around the country and focus our attention within each of those nine cities. Now each member of our field-marketing team focuses on four cities to drive more business in those cities.
Last but not least is the digital campaign. Many people will shift their website based on aggregate numbers and revamp their website. But the problem is that 15 percent of visitors will buy from you so changing the entire site based on aggregate numbers isn’t really going to move the needle. So what we did was look at is how our target account list and customers were behaving on our website. If we optimized our website for aggregate activity, we would be off. We can now optimize for customers and target account lists.
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Please make sure icons are the same color for each:
Attract
Engage
Convert
Measure
Please make sure icons are the same color for each:
Attract
Engage
Convert
Measure
Senior Leaders in…
Sales
SVP of Sales/Chief Revenue Officer
Heads of Field Sales
Sales Development/Lead Development
Sales Operations
Marketing
Demand Gen
Field Marketing
Marketing Ops
Finance
ABM Champion
Explain the different ways that participants can build target account lists. Key takeaways include:
Using common attributes to define the list. Start with the companies that are the focus of sales and look for common attributes they all share. Is there a revenue threshold? Do they have a baseline technology? Are they companies your competitors target?
Another methods is the “look alike” model where you look at the best customers you have and see what attributes they share similar to the previous method.
After compiling the list of attributes, test it against new potential accounts to decide if they should be on the list or not. If stakeholders feel strongly they should be on the list but have other attributes, consider revising the attribute list
Common attributes
Compile list - What attributes do companies that sales focuses on have in common? Revenue level? Technology baseline? Companies of your competitors?
Refine list – Test attribute assumptions against best customers
“Look-alike” model
Compile list – Who are your best customers and what commonalities do they share?
Refine list – What other companies fall into this same profile?
Once you build the target account list, you will want to look at ways to segment that list. This is where you can start to get much more sophisticated. For example, you might start with an industry segmentation – healthcare or technology and then sub-segment that industry by the type of buyer – are you selling to prospects in that industry? Upselling customers? You can see there are many ways to look at it, and how you look at your segmenting will be driven heavily by your business objectives.
it is easy to get too complicated early so start simply, prove out the model and then add more sophistication to it.
Not as scary as it sounds, need to think about things differently
Hand off to sales is different
Hand over Intelligence, not just leads
SDR team will have to do some research as a result, not just dial for dollars
Outbound (Target Acct focused) vs Inbound team (all other inquiries)
Metrics/Measurement are different
You will have overall numbers, but the success of a program is really measured on Target Accounts reached, and how those Target Accounts flow through the funnel.
Quality vs Quantity
Build programs and process to support this new reality
MBOs/KPI’s focused at the bottom of the funnel, closer to Revenue (Pipeline)
This incents the right behavior – marketing doesn’t want to bring in leads that don’t’ have a good chance of turning into pipeline.
In this section, we will look at what ABM across this funnel can do for us. We are going to look not only at the kinds of programs that move your customers through the funnel, and how ABM impacts the ways these programs focus, but also the investment that might change as a result of implementing ABM across the funnel.
Let’s keep in mind that during this cycle, we will want to measure twice—once before starting and once after to see the impact from our marketing programs.
Measure, attract, engage, convert. (measure)
As we talked about earlier, Find out what you don’t know
Company level data in your analytics tool
Do you have an attraction issue? Engagement issue? Both?
Melissa – as we discussed, it’s the account you care about. Talk a little bit about what you do with the “Hot List” reports we send you every day with your accounts that have been on our site…
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We agreed upon these metrics to track. We had leading indicators, revenue objectives, and business objectives. Our MQL definition changed to focus on target accounts vs. non-target accounts. And in the area of reach, we defined reach a little loosely—basically it was visitors to the website, clicking a call to action, or anything else they did that had them interact with us.
Our revenue and business objectives really focused on our connection to the overall business and so both Sales and Marketing were tied to the same goals and KPIs. Because our sales cycle could be three months to eighteen month,s we focused more on campaign and revenue metrics and then later looked at business outcomes.
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What was the net effect on the business? When we set out to do this, we thought we needed 1,500 accounts for our sales team. Then, with added success, we expanded our sales team, and so we needed to increase our target list to 3,000, and we saw great results. In total, 75 percent of our business came from our target account list. While not all of our revenue came from target list--the part that Marketing contributed to--from a marketing perspective, we can say we contributed or influenced 75 percent of the company revenue. As time went on, we could get more and more sophisticated with our marketing programs and approach.