Introduction to Account Based Marketing

Learn what ABM is NOT, who can use this guide & the outcomes you can expect.

ABM Foundations

Learn what ABM really is, how to decide if your organization is ready for ABM & what are the 4 primary goals in ABM

How to build an ABM Strategy?

Learn how to prioritize your target accounts list, conduct account research the right way & use a framework to craft an outreach strategy for each ABM goal. 

How to deploy ABM?

Learn how to run an ABM Pilot Program the right way, how to analyze & optimize the right metrics for each goal and finally how to scale your ABM Program.

Introduction to the Foundation of Account Based Marketing

"We want to land these following companies as clients. Let's try ABM."

The sales team creates a wish list of 30 companies that fits their ICP & hands it over to marketing.

The marketing team spends a lot of time & effort into curating personalized content strategies for each company.

→ Huge amount of money spent on resources

A lot of B2B companies try an ABM program without analyzing if the accounts even have

 These companies invest thousands of dollars into creating an ABM tech stack before even figuring out what is working for them. 

→ It appears more complicated than it has to be.

→ There are very few free actionable resources on the internet that can get you started ASAP.

And this is exactly why we've built this guide.

This foundational guide on ABM takes a structured approach on how to plan, execute & analyze an ABM program at your org. It is actionable & goes deep into every aspect of ABM. Here's what we will cover in-depth 👇🏼

→ Is your organization ready to launch an ABM program?

→ How to build a target accounts list by leveraging buying intent data

→ How to build an outreach strategy from scratch for each ABM goal

→ How to track metrics for each ABM goal

→ How to analyze & iterate your ABM program

After reading this guide, you will know how to:

→ Target only those accounts that will convert & drive revenue.

→ Be able to craft an outreach strategy that helps you book meetings & close deals.

→ Track the right ABM metrics to analyze & iterate your ABM pilot program

This guide is for B2B marketing & sales teams who are struggling to set up an ABM program that drives revenue.

Learning is tough. It takes effort. Lots of it. It's not easy to pull the brakes on your work or life and sit down to learn when you have the option to spend your time in a million other ways. 

But now that you've taken this step for yourself, let's do it right. 

Don't think of this guide as just another piece of content to read and learn from. Instead, take it a step-by-step process, which if you follow will help you achieve the above outcomes. If you find yourself dozing off - take a break, stretch and come back. Take notes, read, re-read, process, practice and apply. 

Set up your work desk and sit there (We know, the temptation to be on your bed is real)

Put your phone on silent, switch it off for the next hour if possible. 

Grab your favourite cup of tea or coffee and settle in. 

Outcomes from the Foundation of Account Based Marketing

Get an in-depth understanding of everything you'll learn in this Foundation & the outcomes you can expect.

Why so? Well, this is simply because sales is expensive. For a lead to be profitable, the value of the lead should be higher than the cost of sales. This is where the problem arises. 

Most organizations don’t have clarity on which leads are profitable.

Account-based marketing enables organizations to identify which accounts are 

 so that organizations’ marketing and sales reps can 

Account-based marketing is a highly customized, data-driven B2B marketing approach that targets high-value accounts and delivers messages according to specific attributes and needs of accounts. 

The simplest way of thinking about ABM is to think about 

fishing with a spear instead of fishing with a net. 

When you fish with a net, you are throwing out a generalized marketing campaign to fit the needs of your ICP, but you’re not entirely sure what will stick. You’re aiming to catch a larger audience and convert some of them into customers as you nurture them.

But when you are fishing with a spear, you 

 with the help of your sales team. The marketing & sales team work together to identify these ideal clients & then create a campaign that speaks directly to that audience. It's like inverting the usual sales funnel.

ABM focuses on building an elaborate outreach strategy that matches perfectly with the account. You have to dig deeper than just your customer persona's firmographics (company size, industry, or growth rate) & 

It’s different from ICP-based outbound which targets a list of accounts that matches your ICP without difference in the outreach strategy.

So far you have learnt about what ABM really is & how is it different from ICP based outbound marketing. Next, we will learn how you can take a decision on if your organization is ready for ABM.

What is ABM, really?

Understand what Account Based Marketing is at the core.

A lot of B2B companies get excited about account-based marketing and jump right into execution without evaluating if ABM is the right motion for them. Before diving into ABM strategy development, ask yourself:

Are we even ready to launch ABM at our org?

To answer this question, you need to take a look at 

The first 2 points are the most important.

 You definitely can launch ABM even if your TAM is >1000 companies. You can also sell to an SMB where there are not a lot of decision-makers, but the ACV is high.

Flowchart to decide if your organization is ready for ABM:

If your organization passes the ABM litmus test, the next question you should be asking is:

Why do we want to launch ABM as a strategy?

Traditionally, most B2B companies consider ABM only to generate new sales opportunities. You can use ABM to achieve 

Generate New Sales Opportunities → Increase Net New Revenue

 Pipeline Accelaration → Decrease Turn Around Time

 Account Penetration → Up-sell or Cross-sell to Existing Customers

 Churn Prevention → Renewing Contracts with Key Customers

Funnily enough, goals 2, 3 & 4 are much easier to launch but most companies never do it. 

Ideally, your ABM strategy should involve all 4 campaigns.

With that we've completed this section. Consider this a V1 and if you have any recommendations, resources, or information you’d like to contribute, 

Alternatively, you could also email us on learn@growthx.club

In the next section of this Foundation, we will learn how to build an ABM strategy for each goal from scratch.

Is your organization ready for ABM?

Learn how to decide if your company is ready to launch an ABM program and what are the 4 ABM goals.

How to pick the right accounts by leveraging buying intent data?

Learn how to organize, track & leverage buying intent data to build & prioritize a list of target accounts.

Step 4: Research each account individually.

The goal now onwards is to create one strategy per account. For this, you will need specific details for each individual account. Let's bring back our inverted sales funnel, to understand step by step what exactly are you supposed to do. 

So far, we have selected the P0 accounts we want to target. Now remember, these P0 accounts don't necessarily need to be new sales opportunities. They can also be existing clients you want to upsell to or potential clients who are already in the funnel but you wish to fast track the process.

While conducting account research, you need to find the 

 that have a direct impact on the company?

You can find this information through data aggregators, industry reports, government websites & social media.

You can find this information through the company's website, press releases, corporate reports, & company's social media handles. This information will help you build highly personalised strategies to close them.

These are strategic insights you can only avail by being connected to the inside. e.g. conversation with any member of the buying committee & networking. We will be diving much deeper into understanding the buying committee in our next step.

What are the signs they need your product?

Step 5: Navigate through the buying committee.

Intuitively, we can say that decisions are taken higher in the hierarchy. This is why marketers and sales tend to target Head of Department, VP, or a CXO. But it is more complicated than this.

In every company, there is an internal buying dynamic. 

Buying dynamics vary in every company, but there are recurring patterns.

First, let's understand what a buying committee looks like:

Your offer needs to persuade & handle objections from 4 groups of people:

A "champion" refers to an individual within a 

client's organization who actively supports and advocates for your product or service

. This person is typically a key influencer or decision-maker in the client's buying process. 

Why identify the champion, & not directly target the decision maker?

Decision makers will (almost) always come into the buying process at the end of a sales cycle. They will 

❌ They aren’t going to read your homepage. 

❌ They aren’t going to watch your product release video. 

❌ They aren’t going to read your latest blog post.

Next, we will learn about the framework to craft an outreach strategy for each ABM goal and also how to use the framework.

How to conduct account research the right way?

Understand how to conduct account research the right way and also how to navigate through the buying committee.

Framework to craft an outreach strategy for each ABM goal

How to use the 4-variable framework to build a highly personalized outreach strategy for each ABM goal.

Use the pilot program to learn a lot about target accounts.

 to run an ABM pilot program from planning to execution?

Although the timeline will defer based on the sales process, industry & the ACV. A generalised way to look at it would be:

Prioritize accounts, conduct account research, understand the buying committee dynamics

Next, we will learn how to track the right metrics for each ABM goal & how to analyze and iterate the program to optimize for results.

How to run an ABM Pilot Program

Learn the right way to run an ABM Pilot Program.

Let's take a look at the metrics you should track for each goal:

Here's what the ABM report would look like:

This campaign can be merged with an expansion campaign.

How to analyze the results of your ABM program?

Although how you analyze your ABM program depends largely on your outreach strategy, you can follow this 

Step 1: Breakdown the process & ask the right questions

You can breakdown your ABM process into 4 parts:

For each part, you need to figure out what went right (to be doubled down on) & what went wrong.

Answering these questions will give you a lot of qualitative insights on what can be done better and what is working. The metrics you track will also give you a lot of answers to these questions.

List out your resutls and see if they matched your expectations.

Now that we have learnt the fundamentals of building an ABM Pilot Program, we will next learn how to operationalize and scale it.

How to measure and optimize your ABM results

The goal is to embed ABM into your marketing operations & make it an ever-green process instead of a one-time campaign.

In the pilot program, the team consisted of only 1 SDR & 1 Marketer. As you scale your ABM program, you'll have to expand your team to include:

Before you invest in more expensive ABM software, make sure you have robust playbooks and are already generating opportunities with a lean stack. The software can only refine and accelerate the processes but not replace them.

Strategy → Resources → Pilot campaign → Process → Stack

You can begin to include tools like Sendoso for gifting & lemlist to also start automating processes for P1 & P2 accounts.

With a core ABM team, vetted playbooks & an advanced stack, you can begin to include new verticals & markets in your program. Once you have nailed the ABM game with P0 accounts, you can build & modify campaigns for P1 & P2 accounts as well. And finally, you can embed the ABM program into your marketing operations process.

We hope this guide has been full of value for you. Consider this a V1 and if you have any recommendations, resources, or information you’d like to contribute,