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Recently, Macro President & Founder Dan Radu sat down with Devan Cohen at Demandbase’s Sunny Side Up Podcast to discuss what marketers can do to unlock their ABM success. You can catch that episode here, but read on here to get the crunchy bits of tasty takeaways!
With so many buzzwords to sift through, account-based marketing (ABM) can make B2b marketing teams feel more bewildered than amazed – especially unhelpful in today’s resource-constrained landscape.
However, an ABM strategy be as simple as three words: “Account-Based Everything”. Let’s explore that!
Account-Based Everything extends the thinking behind ABM to beyond ABE
Simply put, Account-Based Everything is a mindset that aligns marketing, sales, and customer success around account engagement. It’s not a tool or a resource, it’s a revenue operations strategy.
Instead of implementing an ABM approach in one area, instead it gets implemented across the entire customer lifecycle. Naturally, this leads to better results for a business, such as increased customer engagement.
In other words, companies should extend the thinking behind their ABM – focusing the approach on your most effective accounts – and apply it to their alignment strategy. That’s Account-Based Everything!
Account-Based Everything means shared success among teams
We know that one of the trends happening in business right now is getting rid of silos – and for good reason. By breaking down silos and connecting teams more openly, more strong relationships develop across teams and internal communications become more effective, leading to increased productivity for that business overall.
Marketing, sales, customer success – all these teams can factor into the success of Account-Based Everything. Having these teams work dynamically, collaborate together and not apart, and focus on success with top accounts is simply more effective than having one team handle ABM.
Account-Based Everything focuses attention toward the questions that matter
Now that the teams are aligned and working together, they can tackle the essential questions behind ABM, such as:
Who is in the market in terms of our business’s ideal customer profile (ICP)?
Which accounts in this market should we engage?
Which of these accounts should be given the highest priority by both our sales and marketing efforts?
With Account-Based Everything, a business can find the common themes that can work with both sales and marketing disciplines. That’s a more effective approach, especially in this market, where businesses must efficiently use every resource at their disposal.
Account-Based Everything provides a step-by-step plan to operationalize success
So, with those questions answered, how does a business put Account-Based Everything into action? Just follow these steps:
- Start with categorization. Split the best ideal customers up into account tiers.
- Next, do strategic marketing. Monitor buying signals, evaluate marketing channels, and define an attribution model.
Some key points to consider:
- Define the strategy – is the business going to the market directly, or with partners? If with partners, what roles do they play? Think about the overall channel/partner marketing strategy.
- Place accounts into prepared marketing programs, then evaluate performance of the marketing channels.
- Find what attribution model works best and stick with it – it’s important to not change the attribution model once things get started.
- Data upkeep is essential. Keep accounts and contacts data accurate up-to-date. This is where it’s important to have a great team that can complete the missing working with the tools that can accomplish this.
- Finally, get everyone on the same page. Ensure all teams involved are aligned and incentivized to the same goals. This is the essence of Account-Based Everything!
Account-Based Everything is building the metrics that build success
By the way…in terms of metrics, what should businesses be looking out for? Place value on these metrics in particular:
- Account engagement score
- Opportunity creation probability
- Deal size
- Demand Unit Waterfall
Also essential: Building a feedback loop between the leads delivered and follow-up actions from the sales team.
Customer Satisfaction
Finally, if customer success needs to maintain more customers, then an organization should take a look at what’s being promised by sales and marketing. For example, if a sales team wants to upsell and cross-sell into target accounts, then customer success is playing a crucial role!
ABM Implementation Challenges
People challenges
Before anything else, a business needs to understand what goals they must operationalize. Only by understanding these goals together can teams align and work together to go to market.
For example, a business may have, across multiple regions, different marketing teams, sales teams, IT teams, and different support functions. If these teams aren’t aligned, then the Account-Based Everything strategy is dust before it can even get started!
Technology challenges
Then there’s challenges with tech. These questions need to be asked:
Do the marketing technologies enable an ABE approach?
How do the systems support the Go-to-Market goals?
Often, this is an opportunity to eliminate redundant functionality, look up when SaaS contracts need to be renewed, or check to see how well integrations are working.
For another example, when a business is setting up ABM, they don’t just need ABM tools. They also need to ensure that CRM, marketing automation platform, and other tools are ready to support their ABM initiatives, along with having a solid testing system in place
Execution challenges
However, when it comes to ABM, it's usually not the tech that’s the problem. Instead, it’s finding the right resources available to work and execute with.
These are the execution challenges – i.e., what tactics are going to be used, and how success can be replicated if a tactic is effective across different marketing programs.
That’s why companies look for agency partners and specialists who can provide strategic thinking and are familiar with their tech stack; experts who can easily integrate into their campaigns to plan, execute, evaluate and adjust course if needed. Fortunately, this is where an agency like Macro comes in!
Account-Based Everything is made possible by Macro
Macro acts as a natural extension of global B2b marketing teams focused on Account Based Marketing. Our ideal customers are large global marketing teams that need support in different regions. Whether a business wants to go-to-market directly or with a channel, we can help teams operationalize their ABE go-to-market approach and deal with common challenges, such as:
- The marketing strategy is too high level and cannot be implemented
- There are not enough resources to execute
- The marketing team doesn’t have the right technical expertise
As an agency with an assortment of global experts, Macro provides technical know-how for Account Based Marketing execution.
If a business needs to outsource campaign operations, system administration, or MarTech stack optimization, then Macro can come and fill that role – so the business is empowered to go to market!
Rounding it all up
Want a quick-and-easy summary? Here are the most essential takeaways behind Account-Based Everything to remember!
- Select your accounts based on your ICP.
- Define your buying signals.
- Source an ABM solution.
- Direct vs ABM with Partners.
- Execute marketing programs.
- Define an attribution model and stick with it!
- Maintain clean data.
So, interested in checking out what Macro can do for your marketing team? See what marketing strategies and tactics we can bring to your B2b business. We don’t just help with your account-based marketing!
Whether it’s demand generation, go-to-market implementation, content marketing and design, or more, our team of global experts is ready to help you define and optimize your B2b marketing strategies – so you can target, attract, convert, nurture, and close more business. We can get a free consultation started today!