Bass fishing looks easy…that is, until you step off the dock into your boat and realize you have eight hours to catch as many largemouth bass as you can. The same holds true for Account-Based Marketing (ABM). It makes sense and looks easy until you have to dip your toe in the water and build out a pilot program.
The other weekend I was flipping the channels on the TV and came across an interview with a guy who had just won a bass fishing tournament. His insights seem to be just as relevant for successful Account-Based Marketing as they did for successful bass fishing. I’d like to share four of those insights with you and see what you think.
1. Know your targets and fish accordingly. This tournament winner was fishing for largemouth bass. He was not fishing for catfish, walleye, pike, trout, or any other fish. He did not go out with large nets in his boats, cast them out, pull in a variety of fish, keep the largemouth bass, and throw the other fish back because they were not qualified. He had a singular purpose and used various techniques specifically to engage only with largemouth bass.
The same holds true for ABM. Marketers need a variety of segmentation and targeting techniques that will work with their targets. Why go after the whole IT department when you only want an information security analyst or network architect? Targeting by job titles, personas, job levels, and so forth will make sure that your email, display advertising, retargeting, and other programs run efficiently and effectively—with minimal waste of time, resources, and budget.
2. Know the behavior patterns and cycles of your targets. The fisherman being interviewed spent weeks before tournament studying the weather, water temperature, water color, land contours, and environment. He knew that the largemouth bass congregated near lily pads in the morning and preferred to be near logs or downed branches later in the day when the temperatures rose.
How do your targets for ABM behave? Do they respond better to email, phone calls, or display ads? Do you know? This is where it may make sense for you to invest in creating some personas. Maybe it makes sense for you to run a multi-touch, multi-channel ABM program to ensure that you get the best awareness, reach, and engagement.
3. Use the right equipment. Watch any bass fishing show or tournament and you will see that the fishermen use streamlined boats with very large motors. That is because time is of the essence and tournament fishermen want to get to the next target spot as quickly as possible. They are looking for as many opportunities to engage with the targets as possible. (Sound like ABM?)
Tournament fishermen also use electronic fish finders and depth finders to show them the fish activity and lake contour around them. These electronic devices provide the fishermen with insights that drive and guide their decisions.
For the Account-Based Marketing practitioner the strategy is the engine. The strategy drives and propels the program forward. A weak or malfunctioning strategy will only create problems later and will probably leave the program “dead in the water.” ABM practitioners have their own fish finders and depth finders in the form of first-party, intent, predictive data, and the like. Some marketers feel comfortable that they know the target’s environment while more marketers are beginning to leverage the data and insights that a number of vendors such as Dun & Bradstreet, Infer, MarianaIQ, Oracle Data Cloud, and others can provide.
4. Make sure your impact is based on coverage, reach, awareness, and engagement. Have you ever watched a bass tournament fisherman at work? Once he reaches his target area, he casts his line and retrieves it as many times as possible. He works a given area to get the most coverage he can and presents the lure in a compelling way. Sometime that lure is running along the bottom and the fisherman periodically jerks it as he is reeling it in. Other times the lure is on top of the water and the fisherman retrieves it slowly to make it look like the lure is swimming but injured.
Sometimes the fisherman comes back off the water empty-handed. There are so many reasons for this. But instead of giving up, most fishermen can’t wait to get back out there. They take it as a challenge that they believe they can solve.
That is why I find ABM display advertising both satisfying and challenging. Some marketers look at ABM display advertising and say it not effective as it used to be. I don’t agree with that. Data is becoming richer and more accessible—leading to very deep targeting and reach. I have seen a few customers who were actually surprised when they reached and engaged with new contacts that they did not know existed prior to their program. Their sales teams captured deeper account penetration and more pipeline opportunities.
When it comes to Account-Based Marketing, I see display advertising as colored fishing line that blends in with color of the water. It provides you with the reach and awareness you are looking for—and need. Site and email retargeting is really the lure that provides greatest engagement.
I see email as the clear, monofilament fishing line. It is the line that most fishermen start with and have on their rods. When fishing in a tournament, the best fishermen have multiple fishing rods with different lines and lures on them so that they can respond quickly to changing fishing environments and conditions.
So, set up one of those fishing rods with display advertising as the “fishing line” and retargeting as the “lure.” According to an Adroll study, 61% of those who did this saw an increase in display advertising performance. Now tie a retargeting lure to an email fishing line. According to that same study, 68% of those who did that saw a lift in email performance. Don’t forget to tie a retargeting lure to a search fishing line. Those who did that reported a lift in search performance of 74% according to the study.
“The average retargeted ad campaign spurs a 1046% spike in branded search and a 726% increase in site visitation after four weeks.”
—comScore Study
Hopefully these tips will help you to be as successful with ABM as our tournament winner was with largemouth bass fishing. Not enough marketers spend enough time on considering very deep targeting, behavior patterns, the right equipment, and the power of retargeting. Give these some extra thought and preparation and you will be landing the big ones in no time.
To learn more about Account-Based Marketing techniques, strategies, and insights, please visit the Kwanzoo online Resources Library.
About Kelly Waffle: As Vice President of Marketing at Kwanzoo, Kelly brings more than 20 years of demand generation, marketing automation, and account-based marketing (ABM) experience. He has been a trusted advisor as a practitioner, consultant, and vendor and has won Marketo’s Revvie Award as well as Eloqua’s Markie Award. He was named to Onalytica’s 2017 Top 50 Martech Influencer List.