How a B2B business or a product-based company can transform its GTM strategy from lead gen to revenue gen with the blend of ABM & Demand strategy

Drive marketing results, from reach to revenue

Reach hard-to-reach tech buyers leveraging ABM strategy

In many b2b organizations marketing, sales, and customer success teams work in silos. Fortunately, that’s not the way it works anymore for your GTM teams toward business growth. 'Spray and Pray' approach will fade away sooner or later, and forward-thinking companies are embracing Account-based-marketing (ABM) strategies with the right blend of Demand gen. B2B companies have to shift their entire marketing strategy from the current lead generation approach to a revenue generation machine and drive brand awareness & business expansion, foster customer retention, and improve upsell.

What is account-based marketing (ABM)?

Account-based-marketing (ABM) is a b2b marketing laser-focused approach in which marketing, sales, and customer success teams work hand-in-hand to identify, and target best-fit customers or propensity accounts to reach, connect and engage with an individual prospect or customer accounts with highly targeted personalized multi-channel campaign to drive business expansion.

What is demand generation marketing?

Demand generation is the marketing process of building awareness and creating interest/demand for your brand, products, or services at your customers' top of mind. Demand gen fuels your lead gen strategies in building a healthy pipeline for your sales team. And also, the right blend of your demand gen + ABM strategy can make wonders for your business by generating revenues through upselling.

To help you get started, here is the four-step pillar approach to integrating your account-based marketing and demand gen tactics.

1. Shift your mindset and marketing goals from leads to revenue

Get a clear picture of your Total Addressable Market (TAM), and Total Relevant Market (TRM)—which helps businesses, marketing, sales, and customer success teams to understand your best-fit customers then identify a few accounts (say 30 or 50) from the list of master accounts/high deal customers list which fits your TRM. And then all three GTM teams have to sit and agree on specific revenue goals you want to hit from those identified propensity accounts (Higher Average Contract Value). This approach ensures a strong alignment with the right mindset between the three teams and the brand.

2. Build and execute ABM programs along with demand gen strategy

Say together, you have identified 30 propensity high deal value accounts from the Manufacturing industry in the US who are your paying customers for the past 3 years for ERP implementation services. Now you have to make a specific list of all decision-makers and strong influencers who can also try and buy your newly launched Customer Experience (CXE) solution.

- Build ICP by uncovering your paying customers' business problems and challenges by speaking to your Sales leaders and Customer Success champs. (Ex: your customer wants to build a b2b website for their Tyre manufacturing unit in California to meet today's customer demands, and business needs and deliver greater customer experiences to stay ahead of the game). Build ideal customer profiles (ICP) for personalized targeting. 

- Develop an account-focused content strategy by producing customer-relevant content assets which talk about your customer challenges in the first phase - your solutions to overcome customer pain points in the second phase - why someone has to choose you as their trusted partner in the third phase. Your personalized content assets can include: playbooks, industry reports, email signatures, blogs, web pop-up forms, pillar pages with dynamic content, eBooks, podcasts, webinars, customer success stories, customer references, videos, demos, workshops, free consultations, and pilot projects.

- Reach buying committees across channels to map an entire customer lifecycle by this time you will build a solid ABM strategy which includes - program budgets, goals, content calendar, ABM platforms, automation tools, CRM, GTM dashboards, and more to scale and optimize your account-based marketing. Now it's the time to connect and engage with your target audience on multi-channels. Blogging, LinkedIn advertisement, Google text ads, LinkedIn InMail, Remarketing through display, Content syndication, and Emails are the best channels to consider for b2b organizations to get started with the ABM program.

Accounts Don't Make Decisions. Customer Do. Marketing Accordingly. Win Likely.

3. Track your customer/account behavior on the website and channels

Configure and integrate your website, digital channels, content assets, and creatives with your favorite ABM platform to unlock real-time data and actionable insights into your ABM accounts. Create personalized dashboards for your #GTM teams to track and measure business metrics and channel metrics as agreed earlier. These dashboards help your sales and customer success teams to see valuable insights and paramount data on which prospects visited your web, responded to display ads, read blogs, downloaded eBooks, watched customer stories, visited pricing page, filled up a smart form, booked a meeting, requested for a free consultation/demo and more. 

TRACK WHAT MATTERS MOST

4. Scale and Optimize your ABM program

Upon witnessing results, revive your #ABM and demand gen strategy based on the performance and goals you have achieved so far. ABM is all about quality not quantity so I am sure you will drive brand awareness, shorten-sales cycle, build a strong pipeline, create opportunities faster, increase ARR, elevate customer retention, improve upsell, and drive business expansion.

ABM IS FOR ACHIEVERS

The best Account-based marketing (ABM) tools to consider:

1. Demandbase
2. Terminus
3. RollWorks
4. INFLU2

Top three account-based marketing stats to know in 2021

• In 2021, 70% of marketers report using ABM, up 15% from 2020
• 67% of brands leverage account-based marketing
• "Researching Accounts" and "Identifying Target Contacts" are the top two tactics used by marketers within an ABM model

Source - Hubspot

Images courtesy - Pixabay

HAPPY ABMify!!!

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