Starting point for ABM is a shift toward highlighting ICP accounts.
Traditional marketing looks at the whole market, or industry, or segment and plans campaigns across generic cohorts.
A discipline aligned to a less sophisticated Demand Generation strategy.
Create ICP profiles (use this template here). You can have 1 ICP or 10 but make sure to focus on these points: a) What is the problem/ challenge in the market b) Why is it important to solve c) How does your solution map towards point a & b — what is the connection? Most SaaS startups forget to focus on the challenge for prospects and market change. Don’t just focus on how great your solution or product is from a features perspective. As human beings, our brains don’t work to thrive. Security is the core motivating driver. You have to find out what security means to your target persona and un-sell the status quo around it.
Create account lists. The next step is to start segmentation. This is a suggested model. The commer cial team and marketing need to own the process. Avoid ownership being unclear on outputs and de ferred responsibility. It’s everyone’s responsibility (not just marketing, not just sales, not just product).
[1] Tier 1 accounts are perfect ICP* fits, similar to your highest value customers. Tier 1 also includes logos with strategic value or accounts that show high fit, intent, and/or engagement. Sales / SDRs’ own focus on targeting Tier 1 accounts with marketing support.
[2] Tier 2 accounts are strong ICP fits but have a lower lifetime value. SDR’s own focus on targeting Tier 2 accounts with marketing support.
[3] Tier 3 accounts fit most, but not all, ICP criteria. They’re worth pursuing but typically not worth investing significant resources to win their business (either because they don’t match the ICP criteria or they’re not showing intent or engagement). Sales focus on on targeting Tier 1 accounts with marketing support.
[1] One-to-One ABM: As the name implies, this ABM strategy is as granular as it gets. Marketing and sales use highly customized campaigns for a small number of individual accounts. Clusters around 5 - 50.
[2] One-to-Few ABM: At this level, marketing works with sales to focus on account clusters that have similar “attributes” like industries, pain points, etc. Clusters around 5-15. Each cluster is based on a “trigger” or attribute (so each data segment is a specific pod).
[3] One-to-Many ABM: As you can guess, the bottom of the pyramid has the largest scope of all (mean of 900 accounts). With this approach, marketing and sales create larger account lists and scale their campaigns using martech to personalize outreach. Clusters around 100+.
Build positioning narratives starting with Tier 1 accounts (use this template here). Product (or Product Marketing) needs input into this process. Marketing should provide input for deliverables that can support content marketing, campaign development, outbound selling (sales should also own) and external market messages i.e. PR.
> Factor this into account.
• Problem you are trying to solve
• Why is that so important
• What does the brand stand for
• What is the messaging for each persona • Being customer led, what’s in it for them
• Broken down by persona and industry
Build a content hierarchy. For ABM you can do this for each individual prospect. If you are being hyper-targeted on the Tier 1 accounts. In addition to the proposition, start to hypothesise what the content marketing approach will look like; here is an overview to help your thinking.
Bonus: Think about building a compelling story (based on the Joseph Campbell and Storybrand approach).
Other content ideas for launch. Quantitative or qualitative research — a pillar content piece that is then broken down into micro-content for distribution.
• Turn sales objections into thought leadership — collate all the current sales objections and spin the content into thought leadership pieces. By following this approach, you serve the purpose of sales enablement and marketing content.
• Frequently Asked Questions About Your Business — write down 10 FAQs and answer the questions in a brief manner that establishes you as an “expert in your field”.
• Should Ask Questions about Your Business – Start thinking of competitive advantages you have in the marketplace here. Why are you better? What problems do you solve versus a competitor? Is your health supplement organic? Do you, as an HR leader, under stand e-learning authoring better than others in the market? Do you have more experience than most in the industry?
• SEO content — this should be scheduled into the mix to help rankings
Create an effective sales deck for launch (follow this structure from Sales Hacker).
CxO deck should be i.e. a CxO
Practitioner or budget holder, i.e. VP / Director / Procurement
Day-to-day users, i.e. End Product Users
Data. Best scenario is completing a data enrichment or database cleanse before you switch out to ABM marketing. If you can’t, a clean up in the most logical way is suggested.
Build contact database for ABM accounts.
You can do this by:
Suggestion: Create a process in having an always-on data strategy with a 3rd party provider. Pay a monthly retainer to secure X number of highly personalised, high fit ICP’s and manual triggers associated (i.e. just started a role or more in-depth research). This is an expense but you will save your SDR’s / Rep’s hours of time instead where they can be prospecting.
Ensure lead scoring models are created. Marketing needs to own.
Stack rank triggers in importance (higher score for the match to triggers). Then when it comes to the lead scor ing model, match higher scores to the ranking order created through the variables defined in the ICP profile. I.e. If you know they are a new hire, a role is a massive trig ger when an ICP downloads with that profile and assigns a higher points value. This would need some working through because it is fairly complex.
> Other triggers for lead scoring:
Basic Scoring Model
Score by persona for total amount
Research what security means to each persona: Security is the core motivating driver to engage and buy. Let’s find out what security means to your target persona and un sell the status quo around it.
Define campaign approach. Map a high-level work-flow of how the ABM process will work, for example factor these into account:
The simplest approach to content.
Build email sequences for outbound, for email nurture, for inbound nurture and process work-flows to lead to demo to opp. Ensure you have mapped the entire digital workflow.
Upload data to CRM. Perform data enrichment exercise. Ensure accounts are tagged correctly to measure campaign effectiveness. Assign contact ownerships. Upload data to LI Sales Navigator.
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