How to develop an ABM strategy for your business?

In today’s competitive B2B market, it is important to engage with customers one-on-one and in a personalized manner. Did you know that an effective ABM strategy implementation in the business can increase engagement with target customers by 36%?  

This boost in engagement is just one of the many advantages an account based marketing plan offers over traditional approaches like inbound and outbound marketing.  

The shift towards ABM has proven to be a game-changer for B2B companies, driving better results and deeper connections with high value key accounts.

But how can your business implement this powerful ABM strategy? 

This blog will help you build a stepwise ABM strategy and explain how it is implemented at every stage.    

Let’s start!  

How to build an ABM strategy? 

Even if you are making the B2B ABM strategy from scratch or taking a new approach to your existing one, these five steps can help in either way to expand your business:  

Step – 1: Determine your best high value target accounts 

Account based marketing (ABM) is about identifying and targeting specific accounts to scale your business. The focus here is not the quantity but the quality of accounts.   

So, teams put effort into providing their best-fit accounts with relevant content and personalized messaging.  

But how do you determine the best-fit accounts?

What are crucial criteria you must consider? 

The best-fit accounts and criteria selection depends on the type of business; the best-fit target key accounts must vary company-wise.  

There are many factors to consider while deciding which ABM accounts to target for better campaign success. They are:  

• Do the selected accounts fit your ICP? (Ideal customer profile)  
• In which industry are the accounts operating? Health care, technology, IT services, etc.  
• Where are these accounts located? E.g., North America, EMEA, or APAC.  
• What account targeting size are you willing to operate? Know the scale on which they are operating.  
• What are their pain points?  
• The goals on which they are excelling in their business.  

However, it is yet to be answered how the accounts generally operate. All these factors are dependent on their unique position in the market.  

There are specific recommendations that will help you build your account list:  

• Create your own ICP: An identical customer profile (ICP) is a hypothetical description of the type of buyers in your market who would benefit the most from your product or service. For example, a company selling healthcare products will have a very different ICP than one selling IT products.  
• Start small, think big: The priority is to identify target accounts, as they are an excellent place to start while building a list of prospects. Knowing where you are in your ABM journey is essential when considering these accounts.  It can start with 30 accounts, and then you can target up to 1000 accounts when you scale.  
• Leverage intent data: Intent data is important to accelerate your ABM strategy and find the best-fit accounts for your business. It is considered a priority-level indicator for accounts that can be an exact match to your ICP.  

Once you have a clear ICP of your target accounts, you can layer it with intent data to better target and identify accounts showing interest and readiness to purchase your product or service.        

Step – 2: Align your teams 

The marketing and sales alignment makes adopting a B2B ABM strategy in your business better, though it is easier said than done.  

ABM strategy requires support from more than just your marketing team.   

Here are two account based marketing tactics to know that your teams are aligned:  

• Communication is the key: Encourage communication across marketing and sales teams. Ask questions like what works, what doesn’t, and what opportunities and threats exist. Open communication makes it easy for sales and marketing teams to work together as a unit.  
• Share the knowledge: ABM strategy is a group effort, with marketing helping sales identify the hot accounts related to their messaging. One way to encourage this is to set up a feedback loop for your marketing and sales teams. 

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Step – 3: Set a goal to achieve 

Creating an ABM strategy is pointless if you have no goal in mind. However, you can set a SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely) goal.   

The specific goal is to make it easier to benchmark your progress as your ABM strategy and campaigns evolve.  

• Be specific: When setting your goals regarding the number of accounts you will influence, be specific. How much of the pipeline can be influenced? How much must you accomplish, and how do you plan to get there?  
• Measurable: They are measurable against ABM KPIs. This will help you focus on your ABM strategy and achieve better engagement, market-qualified accounts, ROI, and pipeline.  
• Achievable: The ABM framework can solve your pipeline problems, but its results will only show with consistent efforts. With ABM strategy marketing, it is important to have realistic goals.  
• Relevant: ABM tends to be a company-wide strategy, so your goals should reflect the same. There are questions like: How does your ABM goal align with the company’s main objectives? Why are results so important? How will ABM benefit the overall business?               
• Timely: It is crucial to know the timeline of your ABM strategy. The gradual time it takes to see results depends on many factors, such as the existing tech stack, the size of the marketing and sales teams, and the length of the sales cycles.   

Depending on these factors, you can decide on a timeline to achieve your unique ABM goals.  

Step – 4: Select your messaging and channel delivery 

Now that goal is clear, it’s time to choose the right messaging and a mix of channels for your business. With the correct target audience, you will begin building the strategic audience segments.  

With proper audience segmentation, marketers can quickly improve their optimization, grow their mix of channels, and deliver unique calls to action that attract more attention from their target audience.  

The few common ways of ABM strategy segmentation are by account size (Large, small, medium) and by purchase stage (Prospects, pipeline, current customers).  

However, the best reachable channels are website pages, display ads, and social media.    

Step – 5: Create better value with personalization 

Valuable content will help grab your audience’s attention and is essential to any ABM strategy. Creating value gives your prospects actionable information and keeps them returning even more.  

Here are a few ways through which you can create value in your account-based marketing strategy:  

• Long-form content: Content should be personalized. Knowing what exactly works for your target audience is better than trying out five fields in one target account. Demonstrate through ebooks, blogs, whitepapers, studies, and more to see whether your audience connects to it.  
• Podcasts: Podcasts are super trendy in the current B2B or B2C world. The buzz is that podcasts are the most convenient way to deliver content and connect with the audience directly.  
• Employee insights: The most fantastic way to deliver your message is through the people or employees who know your products best. Encourage employees to share insights through social media, blogs, webinars, etc.  

Hence, once you understand the step-by-step building of your ABM strategy, with the content being the core, let’s know the ways or tips for creating it. 

Read more: The account based marketing guide

What are the ways to create account based marketing content strategy? 

Did you know that 80% of marketers improve customer market value through ABM? Creating compelling content for your ABM campaigns is essential. It must be personalized, timely, and relevant to the key decision makers.  

Here are a few tips for the on-point creation of ABM campaign content:   

Understand the who and what of each account 

There will be instances when accounts have multiple handlings; hence, gather insights on their needs, concerns, and wishes to align them with your solution.  

That’s why you must address their concerns to increase your chances of closing the sale and facilitate a smooth sales process. Timely content sets the stage for your sales reps to have a more well-rounded view of your product and arm them with content.   

An effective ABM content strategy requires personalized content that key stakeholders are interested in. To gain deeper insights into critical accounts and personas, there are a few channels that you should keep an eye on:  

• Annual reports  
• Earning calls  
• Social media  
• Blogs  

Each of these can provide critical insights into each account’s issues and how they relate to your solution.  

Audit your content to find the gaps 

If your content is personalized for specific roles and organizations, it may be easier for the prospect to connect with it. Audit and look through your content regularly to find pieces that are:  

• Relevant for the audiences  
• Effective based on analytics  
• Easily modified to speak for your target audience  

Knowing the content pieces that meet the criteria will serve as a good foundation for effectively targeting your enterprise customers.

Plan content that brings buying teams together 

Planning, creating, and personalizing content for many stakeholders is challenging.  

Still, personalized content is a priority. This content helps them envision your solution in their company and develop a deeper connection with your product.  

Besides, instead of creating personalized content for every individual marketer, you can craft content that helps align the agendas of different personas around your solution. 

Map your content for each buyer’s stage

One effective way to create compelling content is to know what kind to deliver and when to provide it. As you audit your content, it is better to look at what point of the buyer’s journey this content might be good at.  

Remember, just because a piece is delivered in the persona awareness stage does not mean it’s the right stage for all.   

Now, moving on to know how planned an ABM strategy template (a plan for the ABM strategy as per the company) would preferably look like when made. 

What does an effective account based strategy template look like? 

To illustrate, let’s consider a hypothetical company, ‘Tech Solutions Inc.’ Here’s a detailed ABM strategy template incorporating best practices:   

For “Tech Solutions Inc.,” implementing this ABM program involves using templates and tools to ensure a systematic approach.   

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Two ABM strategy examples for you to understand! 

We have given two account based marketing examples for you to understand how the strategy works when adapted with the right approach and tactic for your business:  

Intridea’s billboard campaign 

Strategy: Intridea, a web product and service company, took a bold account based advertising approach to engaging with the ad agency Ogilvy and Mather.  

They placed a billboard outside Ogilvy’s Manhattan office with the message “Ogle this, Ogilvy,” followed by a personalized URL containing humorous GIFs and a message asking Ogilvy to hire them.  

Outcome: This creative and direct approach garnered attention and engagement from Ogilvy, showcasing how bold, outside-the-box thinking can successfully capture the interest of high value customers.  

Takeaway: Bold and creative tactics can effectively cut through the noise and capture the attention of highest value accounts, especially when combined with ABM personalization strategy and humor.   

Calendly’s virtual events and free access 

Strategy: Calendly hosted virtual events for high value accounts to educate them about scheduling and appointments. They also sent email invites offering free access to their software, enabling prospects to experience the product firsthand.  

Outcome: The one-on-one interactions during these events helped convert free accounts into paid ones. This approach of providing value and building personal relationships was highly effective.  

Takeaway: Offering free trials and hosting educational events can help build trust and demonstrate the value of your product, leading to higher conversion rates. 

After learning the steps of ABM marketing strategy, let’s learn how to measure it using different metrics.   

How to measure ABM strategy market success? 

Track specific metrics to see what works for your ABM strategy. It is essential for tracking the ABM campaigns and knowing which areas to improve for your better ABM strategy: 

Conversion rate 

It is a super easy yet vital metric to check how effectively your business drives conversions through ABM strategy.  

You can calculate the account conversion rate by dividing the number of target accounts that become customers by the total number of target accounts. 

Pipeline velocity 

It checks target accounts and moves through your sales pipeline. A high velocity indicates that your ABM efforts are accelerating deals, while a slow velocity can signify roadblocks in the sales process.  

This can vary based on your industry and the customer journey base of your business.

Customer lifetime value 

Another key metric is discovering the customer lifetime value (CLV). You can calculate the CLV of accounts that participated in the ABM campaign strategy to determine the long-term health of the relationships.

Account coverage 

It measures the percentage of decision-makers and influencers within your target accounts who are successfully engaged. A higher coverage rate suggests a better alignment of the overall ABM strategy. 

Market qualified accounts 

MQAs are the accounts that show significant interest in your offerings but still need to be ready to convert. Tracking MQAs will help you identify potential customers early in the buying process. 

Account based ROI 

Calculating ROI, specifically for targeted accounts, is better. It provides a clear picture of whether your ABM efforts are financially sound.  

From strategy to measuring success, we know everything now. Let’s now the tool for ABM strategy implementation. 

Why Salesmate excels in implementing ABM strategies? 

73% of marketers have seen an increase in their average deal size and ROI. ABM strategies often fall short without a tool to streamline all the steps involved in the journey. 

While many ABM tools claim to facilitate successful ABM strategies, our careful analysis reveals that Salesmate encompasses every feature needed to create a winning plan.  

Now, let’s briefly discuss some of its standout features: 

• Contact management: Manage & connect with your contacts without any hassle through the software.  
• Meeting scheduler: Enjoy hassle-free meeting scheduling to book meetings easily.  
• Email marketing automation: Create an email-based ABM campaign easily through automated email marketing allocation for your business.   
• Live chat: The live chat can help customers interact with your business.  
• Sales pipeline management: Drive a custom sales pipeline and gain a bird’ s-eye view of your entire sales cycle.  
• Reports & Analytics: Get the reports and analytics for the strategy to the next level with advanced and actionable insights.  

Salesmate is the perfect tool for your business’s sales, marketing, and customer support teams. 

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Final thoughts 

ABM strategy is crucial for personalized engagement and increased customer interaction. It involves identifying high-value accounts, setting measurable goals, and aligning your teams.  

By using metrics and KPIs, success can be measured through customer lifetime value and continuous improvement can be ensured. Leveraging tools like Salesmate, with its intriguing features, can enhance your ABM efforts. 

ABM helps expand deeper connections with the target accounts, achieving better results and enhancing your business’s profitability. 

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