4 ways to build a successful ABM strategy

B2B has been growing in recent years. “We’re moving away from the traditional linear demand generation funnel and towards an account-based marketing structure in which marketing, sales, and customer success collaborate.”

To compensate for the loss of marketing possibilities, marketers should ensure that their ABM strategies are optimized across all digital platforms. These are four ways brands may use ABM to increase audience targeting.

Target “best-fit” accounts

Marketing’s primary focus has switched to “best-fit accounts” – consumers that fulfil their ideal customer profile and give the most potential value to the company. Marketers should invest more resources in locating these customers in order to strengthen their ABM initiatives.

“Account targeting — specifically deal acceleration and pipeline acceleration — is one of the areas with the biggest opportunity for improvement.”

Pipeline acceleration initiatives, which can help boost ABM strategies by raising the amount of leads while ensuring relevant content reaches customers at each level of the funnel, should be considered by marketers. ABM solutions can assist marketers in personalizing these journeys and securing the best-fit accounts.

Align sales and marketing teams

Marketing and sales teams depend on one another to move prospects through the pipeline, yet misaligned tasks can derail both operations.

Marketing and sales teams should also agree on KPIs. Most of the distinctions between these departments arise from variances in performance tracking – sales may be focused on lead quantity, whereas marketing may be focused on lead quality or brand recognition. While both sets of data are important, reporting on the same goals will help these teams achieve more success with target accounts. The information gained can then be used to optimize advertising and eliminate inadvertent disparities in customer journeys.

KPI alignment is important, but the implementation of the strategy is the most significant alignment factor for ABM success.

“That’s where you’ll see the majority of the success. If marketing is running their programs and efforts to target accounts, but sales isn’t performing outbound prospecting to those target accounts at the same time, you won’t see the results that you desire.”

Use first-party data to fuel the ABM strategy

Consumer data is the driving force behind any successful ABM strategy. But, with the demise of third-party cookies on the horizon, many marketers are scrambling to find alternate methods of gathering this important data.

First-party customer data is critical to the success of ABM campaigns because it offers marketers with valuable insights directly from customers. Marketers can customize advertisements using this data to help establish customer trust because it is information users have authorized to provide (which adheres to data compliance requirements).

The most useful data you will have is first-party data. This trend will only continue, thus it’s critical to develop a strategy for relying less on third-party cookie data and more on internal first-party data.

Prioritize campaign attribution measurement

Attribution has always been challenging for marketers. Marketers can use multi-channel attribution to gauge customer engagement. ABM campaigns used to focus on a single channel, such as email, but now customers interact with businesses across many channels and expect tailored, seamless experiences. Multi Channel Attribution assists marketers in identifying each touchpoint in customer journeys, which elements lead to conversions and other high-value KPIs.

At the end of the day, assessing whether your marketing is effective is dependent on looking at macro metrics such as account engagement.