Account-Based Marketing Pro Tips From BlackWing Creative
If you want to engage high-value customers and prospects, account-based marketing (ABM) is a go-to strategic approach. This is particularly true for B2B marketing. ABM allows companies to allocate resources where they are most likely to yield the highest results, which is especially important when dealing with a limited marketing budget.
Over the past 20 years, BlackWing Creative has garnered some hard-earned insights into what works in ABM — and what can derail ABM campaigns.
We’ve seen ABM ROI exceed 3,400%. And we’ve run multiple campaigns that have each generated hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue. Here’s a bit of what we’ve learned.
Digital ads geo-fenced around target headquarters.
Digital ads geo-fenced around target headquarters.
Note: some of these pointers may seem obvious to seasoned marketers, but you may (or may not) be surprised by how many companies fail to follow these practices.
Buy-in from Sales is crucial.
This is a no-brainer, but account-based marketing is useless if salespeople don’t follow up and follow through in a timely manner. Let’s be clear: Salespeople are often like water; they flow to find the fastest, least-resistant path to earning commissions. Show them how you’re going to help them get there and they’ll jump on board.
Make sure your heads of sales are actively involved and hyped up about how many doors you’re about to bust open for them. Then give sales teams extremely clear and detailed communications on the strategy and creative work supporting your ABM campaign, when it will launch, what role sales needs to play, and what resources you’ll be providing to support sales.
BlackWing typically creates an ABM campaign visual timeline that is distributed to sales. We also provide sample teaser emails, follow-up emails, call scripts and presentation decks to support sales teams.
What typically goes wrong?
If senior sales leaders aren’t on board with championing your ABM campaign, you’re off to a rocky start. Hot-quality leads turn into hot turds if no one follows up on them in a timely manner. Salespeople also tend to be a bit maverick. So getting them to stick to a clear plan on lead follow-up is essential. On the flip side, like begets like. Once you execute a successful ABM campaign, your colleagues in sales will be hounding you to know when the next campaign is going to launch.
What about ABM for prospects?
Absolutely. Prospective (new logo) clients are typically harder to engage than current customers for obvious reasons. But the right approach will yield significant ROI. Don’t start too big. It’s best to test and roll with ABM. Begin with one industry vertical. Or one smaller list of potential clients for whom you are certain you have accurate contact information — email, phone, direct mail, social, etc.
Once you send an initial wave of ABM communications, assess the feedback you’re getting from the sales team and adjust.
What blows up?
The list. The list. The list. One of the biggest issues we see is companies compiling a prospect contact list that’s wildly inaccurate. There are a lot of services out there (we won’t name names) that promise to give you an ABM prospect list that’s 80% or even 90% accurate. We’ve never found that to be even close to true. If you don’t want to waste money and tank your results, have internal teams verify ABM target information.
Determine your acceptable cost per lead.
There are far too many factors that go into building an official marketing campaign pro forma for us to cover in this article. But if you know what your average deal price is, what your average close rate and close time frame is on qualified leads, and what your average customer lifetime value is, you can do some quick math to figure out an acceptable cost per lead.
Build an incredibly compelling creative campaign (easier said than done).
Another obvious pointer here. But once again, you’d be surprised how many companies swing and miss on this. The most successful ABM campaigns are focused on addressing the target audience’s most pressing pain point or desire. ABM efforts should be focused on getting qualified leads to simply engage and connect with the sales team. ABM should not be a process of throwing mountains of product and solution info at targets. Get the fish on the hook. Let sales reel them in.
It’s not about you.
A lot of companies (tech companies in particular) love to talk, talk, talk about themselves as opposed to talking about what their target audiences want. There’s always a temptation to try to jam tons of detailed product or solution content into communications. We’re not saying ABM campaigns shouldn’t have opportunities for targets to dig deeper and learn more via high-value content. We’re just saying it’s good to keep initial communications simple and focused on target audience desires or frustrations.
Use an offer that reinforces the point you’re making.
When ABM campaigns offer random promotional items or incentives that have nothing to do with the point they’re trying to make, it’s gross. The promotional incentives feel like straight-up bribes, and while this approach can still work, it’s less effective and not a good look.
We counsel our clients to directly link any promotional offer to their key selling message. Pair that promotional incentive with business intelligence, insights and advice that have real value. Then wrap everything in a branded theme that makes sense and isn’t forced. This goes a long way toward leveling up the sophistication and legitimacy of your ABM communications.
One other tip we give clients is to offer something unique. In most cases, the people being targeted earn more than enough money to buy whatever incentive companies may be offering, without a second thought. So creating custom or one-of-a-kind promotional items and experiences generates a much higher response and end result.
Get personal.
Another obvious one here, but the more personalized you make communications, the better your results will be. It’s quite easy to create personalized URLs and digital experiences for thousands of ABM targets. We find that personal QR codes that drive to a mobile-first landing page are most effective.
Based on the insights gathered, you should offer content that’s tailored to address the unique needs of each target account. This typically involves versioning your creative to deliver customized emails, case studies or even product demonstrations that speak directly to the account’s situation.
A common roadblock.
Creating personalized experiences doesn’t have to be hard. But if you work at a big company, it can seem impossible. You’ll hear things like, “It’s too difficult to support that request with our current marketing automation solution.” Or “Yes, we can do that. But it will take three months to set up, and we won’t be able to close the loop on which leads turn into sales.”
Fear not, BlackWing has expertly navigated and worked around situations like this for years. Just ask us, and we’ll show you how.
Surround your audience.
ABM campaigns work best when they are executed across multiple channels, both online and offline. This can include personalized email campaigns, social media interactions, targeted online ads, geofenced digital ads, direct mail and even in-person events or meetings.
For high-value, long-sales-cycle deals, we recommend engaging audiences with a variety of traditional content-based marketing to gauge interest. When targets reach an engagement threshold (access X pieces of content within X time frame), it triggers an escalation to a higher-profile marketing activity, such as high-impact direct mail, direct phone follow-up, etc.
Let BlackWing Help.
We hope these tips are of benefit to you. And if you’d like to work with an ABM partner that has a long track record of delivering outstanding results, hit us up.