What is ABM marketing? What makes any ABM campaign successful? Why is there a myth of AMB mechanics complexity? ….. There are many unanswered questions about Account Based Marketing in Enterprise SaaS Sales. ABM campaigns create a personalized interaction experience with your target (usually Enterprize size) customer audience.
I want to cover 3 aspects of successful ABM campaign planning and execution in this blog. I am discussing ABM campaign attributes, stages (mechanics), and recommended tools for every stage.
It should help to demystify the complexity of the ABM campaign approach and encourage modern SaaS CXOs to try it.
What are the attributes of a successful ABM campaign? It’s all about RELEVANCE.
- Having the relevant set of potential customers (suiting your ICP personas) is critical for any campaign planning, I suggest going even one step further in ABM campaign planning and classifying your target account list by messaging approach: product need, “compete” approach, product mix, and existing customers referrals.
- Get your messaging ready. Please make sure that your product messages are:
a) Focused on your ICP personas needs
c) Personalized and conversational
d) Not pushy (forget about aggressive sales pitch)
e) Multi-channel. Experiment with different media formats: LinkedIn messages, personalized web pages, e-mail and phone call script templates, educational articles, blog posts, podcasts, and webinars with interesting guest speakers (not with your sales team pushing your product story), infographics, video messages (including short “reels” style), live events invitations, etc…
f) Well-timed: use the prospect event triggers to highlight relevant content. I am talking about job changes, new product releases, new geo office openings, all pertinent press releases
- Have a communication strategy with assets calendar and variable sequences steps — depending on your prospect’s interaction with content (you can track content consumption nowadays).
- Measurable. ABM campaign shortens your sales cycle, increases your deal size, and builds long-term customer relations. That’s all true. Only if you can measure it at every stage. What KPIs to measure? Here are the most common ones:
a) Sales velocity (sales cycle length)
c) Target account coverage
e) Customer acquisition cost
f) Customer lifetime value
- Use a modern marketing toolset. AI is changing your SaaS Sales technology stack fast and you have to rely on the best and proven tools to make it a success.
Next, I want to share ABM campaign stages and tools to use.
- Identification: Select high-value accounts that are likely to bring the most revenue. With your ICP maps, you should know your prospect’s attributes, including organization size, vertical, geo, revenue, technology mix, and buyer intent. With modern tools like 6sense, Clearbit, and Bombora you can build your target accounts list to go after and add multiple triggers (org size, technology footprint, competitors solutions in place, org changes, etc…).
- Data Enhancement: With ZoomInfo, Lusha, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator you can add additional information to your target account including org chart details, names and positions, years in a role, decision-making power, and contact details including mobile phone number.
- Personalization: Tailor marketing messages and content to address each account's specific needs and pain points. That step usually reflects your company's best practices in prospect engagement. You can also call it nurturing. Using powerful tools like Terminus, DemandBase, or Uberflip you can drive personalized advertising campaigns, enhance your content with AI, and track campaign performance.
- Engagement: Use multiple channels (email, social media, events) to engage with key stakeholders within the target accounts. Tools like Outreach, AmpleMarket, and MeetAlfred can make your BDR team activities efficient and predictable.
- Alignment: Ensure close collaboration between marketing and sales teams to provide a seamless customer experience. I am talking about CRM-integrated tools to capture and measure both funnel conversion rate and lead quality (leads scoring — engagement based and lead grading — ICP attributes): Adobe Marketo Engage, SalesForce Marketing Cloud (former Partdot), or Hubspot Marketing Hub.
- Measurement: Track and analyze the effectiveness of ABM campaigns to optimize strategies and improve ROI. That's the most important part since every Marketing dollar must be measured. Many tools mentioned above have great performance reports. I also want to mention alternative ABM tools like RollWorks and Adobe Marketo Measure (former Bizible).
These tools together support the implementation and success of ABM strategies by enabling identification, personalization, engagement, alignment, and measurement.
For expert ABM setup, reach out to Chief Outsiders, and stay tuned for more SaaS sales insights!
