Structuring Different Types of ABM Campaigns
Part 3 of a Series
In my first post of this series I gave a brief overview of Account-based Marketing, when you might consider using the methodology in your business, and the minimum requirements for getting started without a dedicated ABM platform such as Demandbase.
My second post describes the process my team and I went through when we designed and implemented our ABM pilot campaign about 18 months ago.
In this article, I focus on how to approach different types of ABM campaigns and the marketing tactics you can use for retaining clients and acquiring new ones.
There are three basic types of account-based marketing campaigns:
- 1:1
- 1:few
- 1:many
1:few campaigns
I’m starting with 1:few because I think that’s the most practical solution for most marketing teams. This involves dividing up target accounts into like segments based on some factor such as industry, size, or shared pain points.
Working with individual salespeople or small account teams is critical to first, understand how they came up with their Target Account List (TAL). What criteria was used? Do the accounts fit the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) or a segment your company wants to go after? What intelligence does sales have? What solution are they trying to sell in and why? Acquisition targets are generally very fluid over time, so be sure to schedule recurring meetings with the sales team and check back in regularly.
Next, cross-check with what your intent data is showing. Is this account in market for a solution? Is it the solution sales is selling? Assuming everything lines up, you need to work with that salesperson and identify the content that will most useful to them at the buying stage the prospect is at.
Segmenting of Accounts
Since our company provides products and services to one segment, healthcare systems, we generally group our campaigns by pain point. We utilize account intelligence gleaned by sales, intent data, and examination of prospects’ social posts to determine what those pain points are.
It’s OK to start with general issues you know your prospects are dealing with. For example, we know that healthcare systems are still struggling with the high cost of talent and of contingent talent specifically. We can put together a campaign that we know will be germane to every account on our target list. We target our media spend to those specific accounts and the roles, or buyer personas, that comprise the enterprise buying group. We market to them specifically via LinkedIn campaigns, sponsored content campaigns with pubs and associations, and webinars.
Start with the middle of the funnel with more prescriptive content. Focus on how your services solve the issues they’re facing. This means ebooks instead of white papers, and shorter, more digestible content in different formats such as infographics or short videos.
Content Personalization
Personalizing content has many connotations; at the most superficial level, that can mean personalizing the cover of a piece with the prospect’s name if, say, the content is in the form of a WP or ebook. There are mixed opinions on whether this really makes any difference. Like a personalized email salutation, it’s table stakes when the name is correct and a glaring error when it’s not. What really counts is providing the type of content the prospect needs at the stage of the buying journey they’re at.
One option to consider is customized landing pages with repositories of thought leadership tailored to each prospect. Have your CEO record a short video message for that prospect. Keep the pages fresh by regularly updates with new content, including curated content from third parties. Have Sales use these pages whenever they want to provide a new piece of content to the prospect.
The key is getting buy-in from the Sales team that they will utilize the pages. I’ve found Sales wants Marketing’s help but is skeptical about any solution Marketing offers. I’ve heard a reflexive “That won’t work” more times than I care to count. One way past this is to get at least one salesperson or program management team member to try the approach and measure the increase in page views versus a pre-campaign baseline. Hopefully results will show more engagement with the content, included downloads. Speaking of downloads, I recommend leaving the content ungated to encourage the engagement you’re seeking.
Another way to promote usage of the customized landing pages is to provide Engage email templates you can track within Salesforce with suggested copy that the salesperson can customize. Less useful are Outlook Templates, as they don’t provide as much information on the actions of the recipient.
Our evolving outreach
Marketing is taking on more of a lead role in directing promising engagement directly to a sales leader, as opposed to sending it through our normal vetting process with our BDRs. Sales tends to be suspicious of an individual lead gathered from, for example, a download or webinar attendance, as there can be many reasons why someone took that action. It’s only one person and there’s not a clear need for a solution being expressed.
However, if we see that a target persona from a target system has engaged with us in some way, we direct that “lead” right to the proper salesperson, or account manager in the case of a current client. Our BDR team is fantastic, but they have more leads than they can handle efficiently. This is where the theme of coordination comes up again, with marketing, the BDRs, and sales all on the same page. This is also where you layer in your intent data to get a picture of who else from that account might be in the buying group and what they are researching.
Conferences and Councils
We bring our clients together yearly for our Client Summit, where they network, exchange ideas, and learn about what’s worked for other systems. We have several breakout sessions divided into learning tracks where they hear first-hand from clients and their AMN program managers on successful strategies to increase flexibility, improve efficiencies, and lower costs.
Twice each year we bring together our Executive Innovation Council, a small group of key clients, to exchange ideas, co-develop new ones, and provide input on our initiatives.
1:1 Campaigns
For high value prospects and key retention clients, adding a layer of 1:1 marketing makes a lot of sense. One approach is to use or create content that addresses that specific prospect or client’s challenges. You then coordinate with the salesperson or account lead and prepare email communications and talk tracks they can use when engaging. You can also direct an entire LinkedIn or display ad campaign against that account.
C suite or executive level conversations
Companies can find themselves in a position where they have good relationships with the people they work with on a regular basis, but very little exposure to the C Suite. For us at AMN, the rising cost of talent as a result of the pandemic has captured the attention of CFOs especially, and they’ve had more of a role in buying decisions about talent.
Asking your current POCs for introductions can be tricky, as they can feel you’re trying to go over their head. It should help if you tell them you want to expand your services within other departments of the organization. Also, if your contact is a champion of your company, they might appreciate the fact that you’re aligning for future opportunities and success.
Give sales or your C Suite something that they can go over with their counterparts in a face-to-face meeting. What we call “placemats” have been effective in generating conversations. Our placemats provide a highly visual way to showcase results we’ve obtained through our partnership with them, highlight the milestones of our relationship, and present our vision for where we go from here. They are 11″ x 17″ two-sided color printouts that are laminated. Going through information in this way provides a different tone to the meeting, as opposed to having everyone’s eyes on a screen looking at a PowerPoint.
Our Quarterly Business Reviews provide performance reports and benchmarks. We have a lot of first-party proprietary data due to our national presence and the volume of clinicians we place, which means we can provide insights down to the individual market level. We find systems want to know how they are performing vs their peers, so they appreciate benchmark stats that provide those comparisons.
What you’ve probably noticed by now is these tactics aren’t exclusive to ABM. These are activities that we use to connect with key enterprise buying group members. The difference that ABM makes is that both sales and program management teams are spending a lot of effort against a small number of accounts, so coordination is critical.
1:many
If you have a segment that contains hundreds of accounts, you can still target them on LinkedIn, for example, or through industry publications.
At a certain point this becomes much like a normal top of funnel lead generation campaign, except that you are still pursuing a list of specific accounts rather than trying to capture as many leads as possible.
For a 1:many campaign, you’re more likely to feature general category thought leadership such as white papers, as you’re more focused on a higher stage of the funnel.
Strategic utilization of 1:1, 1:few and 1:many campaigns allows you to focus on your most important prospects and do so in a cost-effective way, as your media is targeting specific roles and accounts without the waste of a normal lead gen campaign.
