Account Based Marketing
Funnel - The stages of an ABM funnel are different than a lead based funnel.
Once we have an idea of what the Ideal Customer Profile is, we need to start structuring how to determine the success of the strategy. Your first, second or even third ABM campaign might not run as hoped, but keep in mind that like all marketing strategies, it is an iterative process. There are no bad campaigns, there are campaigns that we learn from and improve the next campaign.
Target Accounts
How many accounts are you starting with for this specific campaign? This should not be a dynamic list but one that doesn't change over time. The goal is to understand how many accounts have progressed in the funnel and how many are yet to move into 'engaged' status.
Engaged Accounts
Of those target accounts, how many have engaged with your brand in any meaningful way? Have they visited your website? Interacted with your email campaigns? Clicked on a paid ad or social media campaign? Engaged accounts can also be broken into several levels of engagement to better track the quality of engagement.
Here's the catch, to measure engagement in a meaningful way, you'll need an account-based web analytics tool that is able to associate known and anonymous interactions on your website back to individual accounts. There are several companies on the marketing that can help do this.
Opportunity Accounts
At this stage, you have reached out and spoken to them about using your service. The sales team is actively engaged in conversations with the account and there is a value that can be associated with each opportunity. That value can be as simple as the average LTV of a customer/client or as specific as the value of the individual services that account might want.
“One of the problems with ABM is that it has 'marketing' in the title. True ABM is the strength and alignment between sales and marketing.”
- Andy Bacon, Senior Advisor, B2B Marketing
Closed Accounts
Remember that to understand the value of your ABM strategy you are not measuring things like cost-per-lead or cost-per-conversion. Instead, report on the conversion rates from target accounts to engaged, opportunity and closed accounts.
For example, if you are targeting 100 accounts, you might be able to engage 72 accounts. Of the 72 accounts, 24 might turn into opportunity, and 6 might close. This ABM measurement approach helps you focus on business outcomes. When you focus on business results you're solidifying your sales and marketing integration and acting like one team.
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