In our latest Leadous digital transformation podcast, Tracey Ellis, CEO at Leadous, and Holly Hartling, Consultant at Demand Chain, joined us to talk what’s new and what’s next with Account Based Marketing (ABM). Below is a quick highlight reel from the podcast, for the full episode you can listen on YouTube here.
Advice for teams looking at where ABM fits in their digital marketing strategy
While ABM may feel like the next big thing on the block, Tracey reminds us that we’ve actually been doing ABM for awhile. Most sales teams call it account-based penetration, where they base their sales efforts off a list of top target accounts. The only difference now is we’re plugging marketing into the equation earlier and more often so that before sales can even reach out, the accounts are warmed up and familiar with your brand story.
Just getting started with ABM? Start here
We say it often on the blog, you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been. Your ABM strategy is no different. Holly suggests starting off your ABM strategy with a serious audit, including:
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing programming? For your weaknesses, do you have the budget and buy in to level those up?
- Is your marketing funnel working?
- Are you tracking all the way through the funnel? If not, do you have the data and tracking to get you there?
- Are you tracking the leading and lagging indicators along the marketing funnel?
- Is your database clean? Do you have the contacts you need to make ABM work?
These are just a few of the areas to fortify to get you off to a running start with ABM.
The next step is to assign a sponsor for someone committed to the success of the project. With a clear owner, you have someone ready to take the project all the way forward.
Your sponsor should be pulling together documentation, aligned across both sales and marketing (and ops!) that governs the rules of engagement for leads and contacts through the funnel. Everyone needs to be on the same page about who can be communicated with from your database and at what points during the buyer’s journey before you get started.
Finally, your sponsor will want to clearly lay out what success looks like. Outline clear SMART goals, and make sure you have a plan for what you’ll do in the event of both success AND failure. Both are likely to happen at some point, plan ahead for mis-steps and you’ll be able to recover faster in real time.
For the full podcast, including more tips on preparing your sales and marketing teams for ABM and some of the measurable results Holly and Tracey have seen from organizations implementing ABM for the first time, listen here.