Stop me if you have heard this one… Your Marketing team is tasked with generating a specific number of leads, with the understanding that a certain number of those leads will become qualified and then a certain number of leads will convert into opportunities.
However, what really ends up happening is Sales says that your team’s qualified leads are crap. “They were not ready to purchase,”“They were just fishing for information,”“The lead was too small to afford our products.” Sound familiar? The list goes on and on.
“What really ends up happening is Sales says that your team’s qualified leads are crap.”
In turn, your team becomes frustrated because they feel they’ve thoroughly planned their demand gen strategy and have done their due diligence. They’ve spent a significant amount of time meeting with Sales to get their qualification criteria, they’ve gotten executive buy-in, and created SLAs. Now, just a quarter or two later, they are being told what they’re doing isn’t working and is not helpful to sales. So, the Marketing team throws their hands up and focuses more on lead quantity rather than lead quality— just getting leads in the door. If Sales follows up, who knows, but at least the Marketing team can say they hit their lead gen numbers.
Where is the disconnect?
Sales DOES want leads—they just want leads from specific target accounts they’ve been assigned to work. To be fair, a sales person’s time is very limited and the pressure to produce is extremely high; therefore, you can understand when they don’t want to send several emails and make several phone calls to a prospect from a startup that only downloaded a whitepaper.
How can Marketers deliver qualified leads to Sales from targeted accounts? Account Based Marketing (ABM)!
Here are five ways to realign your marketing strategy around ABM to meet the needs of both Marketing and Sales:
1. Update your current Marketing strategy
What does ABM mean for your organization? It could just be account identification, it could be account qualification or it could be opportunity creation. Your ABM goals will dictate your marketing tactics. Whether it be display advertising and retargeting, personalized content or content hubs, personalized websites or microsites or specific account nurture email campaigns. Whatever tactics you commit to – give them time to work and make sure Sales knows they may get less leads but they’ll be the ones they want.
2. Define your ABM process
Are you going to do account based scoring to prioritize leads? Where do qualified account leads go vs leads outside target accounts? Do qualified account leads get assigned to a BDR or do they get assign directly to sales rep? How will Sales communicate to Marketing that they’ve followed up on the leads? For many, the sales cycle is long. How can you ensure that you get coverage, reach and engagement early in the process to show management that your ABM program is getting traction? How do you leverage multiple tactics (display advertising, email, webinars, events) to make sure you get the continuous and consistent impact? Get your process in place so you can communicate the effectiveness of you ABM campaigns.
3. Leverage available tech support
Do you need additional tools or technologies to support your ABM efforts or can the tech platforms you have in place handle your ABM strategy? For example, I have discovered recently that not all ABM display platforms are the same. There are noticeable differences in global reach, targeting options, cost per thousand or account, and more. Furthermore, based on your tactics and process you may need additional tools to help you identify accounts or manage and target the accounts you want to go after. Whether it’s re-targeting, IP address identification, data enrichment or account scoring and qualification there are tools out there that will help take the load off. There are also customer success or support teams associated with those platforms and tools that can provide services that your team is not ready to handle.
4. Make or consider operational updates
Many marketers switching from a demand gen strategy to ABM don’t realize there are some operational adjustments you’re going to have to make. Your scoring model may have to be adjusted, your nurture campaigns might not make sense anymore based on a new ABM strategy or your lead handoff process may have to be adjusted. Keep in mind that the focus is on accounts rather than contacts and many tools and platforms are not set up for that consideration. Make sure you reevaluate your operational processes to make sure they also support your ABM strategy. One of the key mistakes that marketers make when they embrace ABM is that they do not pay enough attention to planning. Unfortunately, this mistake or omission catches up with them later in the ABM cycle.
5. Reporting
ABM will be an adjustment and will yield different results—at distinct stages—than a typical demand gen strategy. As such, ABM requires marketers to track different metrics and KPIs. The five key measurement areas are: Coverage, Awareness, Engagement, Reach and Impact. Make sure you get executive buy-in into what those metrics are and make sure you can report on your ABM campaign effectiveness given that you’ll have to update processes, operations and possibly incorporate new tools. Why go through all of this trouble if you are not in a good position to measure and report on program performance. With the amount of data and reporting capabilities out there now you can track a lot more than just account engagement and sales opportunities. You can also get ahead of the curve and track anonymous website traffic from targeted accounts, identify the contacts, and pass that contact and behavior information to Sales to enable them to go deeper in specific accounts.
“One of the key mistakes that marketers make when they embrace ABM is that they do not pay enough attention to planning.”
ABM can help marketers deliver the quality engagement Sales will follow up on. However; before your team dives into ABM make sure they’ve properly planned an ABM strategy around—and made the investment in—content, infrastructure, data and programs to make your ABM initiatives as effective and successful as possible.
About Moni Oloyede
Moni is currently the Sr. Inbound and Digital Marketing Manager at FranConnect. Over the years Moni has built up practitioner experience around marketing technology, digital marketing, marketing automation, and marketing operations working for various companies and consulting firms. In 2017 Moni was recognized by Onalytica as a Top 50 Martech Influencer.