Account-based marketing is a B2B strategy that aligns the sales and marketing teams and delivers highly personalized campaigns and content to key decision-makers within a specific account. An ABM campaign can be explained through an example clearly, which is, instead of casting a wide net, if you target big fish with a hook and line. Let’s learn ABM execution with planning, using channels, and personalization tactics in detail in this session.
What Is ABM Campaign Execution?
ABM campaign execution is the process of collaboratively running personalized marketing attempts to target high-value accounts specifically, where sales and marketing work together across multiple channels. Instead of targeting a group of accounts, AMB targets specific companies that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) with high potential for revenue.
ABM campaign execution builds:
- Stronger relationship
- Increase engagement
- Provide measurable ROI
According to IDG, 96% marketers around the world use account-based marketing campaigns, and 86% marketers report that this campaign increases noticeable ROI.
How to Plan an ABM Campaign?
Planning an ABM campaign includes defining an ideal customer profile, targeting desired accounts, and aligning sales and marketing teams. Map the buyer journey, set KPIs, and establish a measurement framework.
Step 1: Define Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) and Target Accounts
First, you should identify the specific company that fits your ideal customer profile(ICP) and then start targeting them. You can analyze your potential customers’ industry type, company size, location, needs, pain points, and then come to a decision whether your account is one you are going to target or not.
Key Attributes:
- Firmographics: Industry, location, company size, revenue, growth rate.
- Technographics: Current tech stack, digital maturity.
- Business Needs: Key pain points, goals, challenges, buying triggers.
- Financials: Budget, potential lifetime value.
Above are the key attributes you must go through while analyzing an ideal customer’s profile. Once you get your account, create a target account list and then plan the next step for further actions.
Step 2: Align Sales and Marketing Teams
One of the most effective features of an account-based marketing strategy is the alignment of the sales and marketing teams. They work together in this step. After defining the ideal customer profile and targeting accounts, you have come to step 2 for aligning the sales and marketing teams. Let’s discuss how you do it.
- Shared Account Definition: Both teams collaborate to define the ideal customer profile and create a target list.
- Unified Goals & Metrics: Instead of separate MQl/SQL targeting, they agree on common revenue, pipeline, and account-based KPIs, raising shared accountability.
- Integrated Processes: ABM allows clear handoff protocols, shared workflows, account transition rules, escalation paths, and mutual SLAs that both teams commit to.
- Campaigns together: Marketing team runs digital plays while sales conducts personalized outreach. This holds joint account reviews and strategy sessions.
- Joint Strategy & Content: Marketing creates personalized campaigns using sales intelligence. Sales provides feedback and requests materials for specific account stakeholders.
- Shared Technology: Implement integrated CRM and marketing automation. Providing a single source of truth for account intelligence, engagement data, and performance dashboards.
- Regular Communication: Schedule weekly syncs on account status. They conduct monthly business reviews on ABM performance. Also, maintain ad hoc channels for urgent opportunities.
This is how the sales and marketing team gets aligned together with combined work to improve account-based marketing to bring better ROI.
Step 3: Map the Buyer Journey
Mapping the buyer’s journey means understanding the step-by-step process so you can give the right message to the right persona at the right time. More specifically, the journey of a potential customer from not knowing you tp trusting you.
- Define & Tier Accounts
- Map the Buying Committee
- Research Account Intelligence
- Develop Account-Specific Value Props
- Map Content to Stages & Touchpoints:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
- Arrange Multi-Channel Engagement
- Align Sales & Marketing
- Measure & Optimize
Those are the briefs for your potential customers’ or buyers’ journey. So your job is to plan how you want to take your buyer through your sales funnel. The most usual, effective, and standard steps are given so you can follow them without a doubt.
Step 4: Set KPIs and Measurement Framework
Finally, Key performance indicators and measurement or optimization frameworks are the last crucial step of this repetitive journey of account-based marketing campaign execution.
- Engagement metrics: Account engagement score, website visits, content downloads, email open rate, and ad clicks from the targeted account.
- Pipeline metrics: Conversion rates (opportunity to close), pipeline velocity, sales cycle length, deal size, and percentage of opportunities from ABM accounts.
- Revenue Metrics: Revenue is influenced by ABM, customer lifetime value (CLV), and retention or churn rates.
- Account Metrics: Account penetration rate (contacts engaged), buying committee engagement.
Those are the key parameters that measure your campaign’s performance and framework’s capability.
Choosing the Right ABM Channels
Choosing the right channel in account-based marketing is very important for B2B lead generation and appointment setting as well. If your prospect uses LinkedIn regularly but you keep trying to reach them via email, which they open only occasionally, you are just wasting your time.
1. Email and Direct Outreach
Email outreach has long been widely used and remains the king of all outreach channels. Most business professionals use email for communication. Direct communication, like an appointment, is also one of the best ways to pitch your offers.
2. LinkedIn and Paid Social
LinkedIn has become the hub of business personalities nowadays. Almost every company, marketer, SDR, and business-related person uses LinkedIn. So finding your ICP on LinkedIn and reaching them becomes easier and effective. Like it’s a social communication. You can also run ads on search engines and social media, such as YouTube and Facebook, using your valuable content.
3. Display and Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic and display ads allow you to put your brand in front of target accounts across the web. With ABM targeting, your ads follow key decision-makers wherever they browse, reinforcing brand recall and keeping your solution top of mind throughout their buying journey.
4. Events and Webinars
Events and webinars create high-value touchpoints. Offering education, networking, and interaction with your experts. Whether virtual or in-person, they help you build trust and engage multiple stakeholders. From the same account at once, perfect for accelerating ABM deals.
5. Content Syndication and Intent Platforms
Content syndication helps distribute your high-value assets (whitepapers, case studies, guides) directly to your ICP. Through your trusted third-party platforms in B2B marketing. Combined with intent data tools, you can identify when key accounts are actively researching relevant topics. This allows you to personalize outreach at exactly the right time.
Personalization Tactics for ABM Success
When it comes to Account-Based Marketing, if you try to use a cookie-cutter approach with all your target accounts, it’s just not going to fly.
We all know that the more effort goes into making each and every piece of contact, outreach in particular, the higher the chances of getting the target accounts’ attention. So here are the four personalisation tactics that really get results in any ABM strategy.
Website Personalization
Think of your website as being like the really important first impression. A front door that opens up to your business. When an account that you have been trying to catch comes to your site, you want them to be able to see straight away that the specific page they’re on was written with them in mind.
It could be as simple as a specific headline, a message tailored to their industry, or a product recommendation that’s tailored to their needs. These small adjustments can make a massive difference to the length of time that visitors stay on the site and the speed at which they convert.
Content Personalization
Every one of your target accounts has its own set of problems and challenges, and what they need is content that reflects that. So instead of browsing through boring generic content that doesn’t give you any real insight into what they are dealing with.
- Create highly customized case studies.
- Custom reports
- Role-specific guides that show them you actually get their world
We are talking about telling the stories and sharing the solutions that they know are going to be acutely relevant to their needs.
Email and Ad Personalization
We also know that email and paid ads can still pack a punch if you use them right. You have heaps of different insights at your disposal, like
- Industry
- Behavior
- Intent signals
that can make the difference between sending out generic mass emails or paid ads that just end up falling flat, and sending out messages that genuinely speak to the people that matter most. It’s 1:1 marketing at its finest.
Sales Enablement and ABM Orchestration
But it’s not just about the marketing side of things. Personalisation is about making your sales team feel the same level of insight and getting them the customized tools they need to knock it out of the park.
Think for a second about using the exact same level of insight to write out the sales team’s outreach scripts, to give them an easy-to-digest account summary, and to put in place a well-coordinated follow-up plan. When sales and marketing are working in perfect sync, the ABM program just becomes a consistent, highly effective beast.
Final Thoughts
Account-based marketing campaign execution through proper planning and personalization, using the right ABM channel, can be a game-changer for your business. Personalization tactics that we have discussed in the blog are the key aspects that you can use to improve your outreach strategy. Choosing the right channel and following the step-by-step account-based marketing guide can take your ROI to 2x to 6x or more.
