5 unconventional Account-based Marketing tactics for B2Bs
Despite most B2B marketing teams now adopting Account-Based Marketing (ABM) as their primary go-to-market motion, Vlad Blagojevic contends that most teams leave large parts of the strategy entirely untapped.
That is, there’s even more potential for growth with ABM!
To aid B2B marketers on their path to ABM Shangri-La, Vlad has put together a list of 5 unconventional ABM tactics.
Dreamdata CMO, Steffen Hedebrandt recently sat down with Vlad to discuss the list, and in this post, we’re diving into each of the 5 tactics:
Leverage Customer Advocacy
Create net new opportunities with intent data
Expand your Deals
Renew Contracts
Accelerate Deals
Key takeaway: B2B marketing teams can get more out of their ABM motions by: 1) letting customers do your marketing for you, 2) refining your ICP so you can target only the very best (closeable) accounts, 3) upselling to your existing customers, 4) reducing churn to improve your ABM Lifetime Value, 5) targeting all stakeholders in the buying committee to avoid putting all eggs in one basket.
What is Account-based marketing?
But first things first, what is ABM?
In short, ABM is a targeted approach to marketing, in which marketing and sales collaborate to create a highly personalised buyer experience for a group of high-value accounts.
B2B marketing usually takes a broad approach to lead generation - with the goal of capturing as many leads as possible.
The issue with this approach is that the funnel narrows towards the bottom, so the vast majority of B2B leads never become customers (meaning a lot of your time and efforts were wasted!).
The deals that you do get tend to be smaller and come with a high cost of acquisition.
ABM flips this traditional B2B sales and marketing funnel on its head by helping to stack the odds in your favour for landing high value customers.
When you’re selling a high-value product, you don’t need a lot of customers but you do need the right ones. ABM has therefore become an increasingly popular approach for B2B companies that target larger accounts, as the more focused strategy will often perform better than casting a broad net.
By working and communicating with these accounts as if they’re individual markets - along with personalising the buyer’s journey and tailoring all communication, content, and campaigns to those specific accounts - you’ll weed out less-valuable companies early on and see greater ROI.
You can dig deeper into the ins and outs of ABM in this post →
5 unconventional ABM tactics for B2Bs: the list
1. Leverage customer advocacy
The first ABM tactic that Vlad shared with us, is to turn your best customers into your best marketers!
A lot of the people in your pipeline may be on the fence about whether to purchase from you or not, but are unwilling to ask you directly for proof that your product’s right for them!
To solve this, consider whether you can bring in your existing customers to speak to them on your behalf.
By doing this, your potential customers can find answers to any questions that they might have and receive reassurance from someone (previously) in their position that you offer the best solution for them.
For this to work, you’ll need to make sure your advocates fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and have had good results with your product.
With this in place, you can then select people inside these companies to talk on reference calls to potential customers.
One way this could perhaps be carried out is in the form of a live case study or webinar.
In it, your current customers would demonstrate what the implementation of your product looks like, and answer questions that only a user of the product would be able to answer.
2. Create net new opportunities (accounts not in your pipeline) with intent data.
You can use intent data to capture accounts which you may have missed out on.
Your targeting plan isn’t always completely watertight (kind of possible for it to be, right?). Which means that there can be (ICP) accounts hovering around your brand that you’re missing out on.
Here Vlad tells us to:
ensure you’re tracking data on all the pages that signal ‘warm’ buying intent, for example, certain product pages, pricing page, comparison articles, etc.
Also bear in mind tracking how long (and often) they’re hanging out on your website.narrow down your criteria to find out exactly what your ICP looks like:
Vlad told us how you have 20-30 criteria at your disposal, which can all be used to narrow down your search. And importantly, can help you select the accounts you want to reach out to with the intention of selling to.
With your criteria selected and your ICP found, marketing can then start to incorporate commenting, engaging and building a relationship with the accounts.In ABM, you can’t reach out to people haphazardly without having a clear idea about your potential client’s motivations and likelihood to convert first.
You’ll have to score these accounts on intent (see point 1 above) and only reach out to those accounts that seem likely to buy.
The important thing to keep in mind is to do your research!
3. Expand your existing deals with upselling.
So you have an existing deal - that’s great! But how do you expand on it?
With a few right steps, there is a big opportunity to upsell other features or grow your deal size with your existing customers, especially when it comes to enterprise accounts.
Imagine you have a six-figure deal - they’re a big customer and you can afford to spend a bit more time on them. Your marketers can write a case study around the deal, and the customer success manager can use it to promote to other geographies or departments (depending on the solution that you are selling).
Think about getting a champion within the company to promote your work. ABM is often one-on-one, so you can build up your relationship with the champion who can connect you to other people in the company.
Ideally, your champion would organise a webinar or event which you can then use in the content hub for that specific account. You can be 1 on 1 precise on what benefits they might get - the more personalised the better.
4. Focus on churn prevention, wide adoption of product/ service and contract renewals
No one wants to hear right before a deal renews that they won’t be renewing after all. Sadly, 90% of B2B customers won’t tell you anything before they churn.
Churn prevention is therefore something that should be worked on from day one.
Read about how we prevent churn at Dreamdata
After a successful sale you can start by asking them about the buying process to find out which pain points they might have experienced.
You’ll need to follow this up with a regular check in where you ask questions about the value they’re getting, what their next plans are, and whether your solution will support them in the future.
Likewise, find out what gaps in value they’re experiencing.
With the knowledge gained, you’ll be in a better position to adjust your strategy and demonstrate how your product can help them now and into the future.
Remember: you can never over-communicate about the value that you can offer them. You want your contract to already be pre-sold before it comes to contract renewal and the best way to do this is to let their people talk about it (think back to your champion in the company!).
5. Accelerate deals by targeting the whole buying committee.
Now on to the last of the five tactics that Vlad shared with us: accelerate those deals!
People are often focused on just one person in a company. This is a mistake if you want to increase your chances of getting deals (and getting them fast!).
You want to find out who all the members of the buying committee are and make sure they’re all getting targeted with ads, and you’re working to build up a relationship with them. As you add more stakeholders the chance of getting a deal increases (up to a certain point).
Marketing shouldn’t stop when the lead is generated. Every deal is an opportunity to learn and answer questions that other buyers may have.
If you don’t answer the questions within your content, they won’t come and ask you. You therefore need to make sure you create content that answers all the questions they might have.
Try to make your BOFU as airtight as possible, and send all the pieces of the puzzle out to the prospects.
It’s all about stacking the odds in your favour for getting those deals!
ABM done right is a recipe for success
When ABM’s done right, it can bring benefits to your company that you’d otherwise miss out on.
It can help create alignment between sales and marketing, and in fact requires it for ABM to be implemented successfully. Each team will have the same goals, stick to a mutually agreed budget, and understand the specific roles of each internal stakeholder.
This transparency and alignment is great for growth, and can help you stay efficient through the streamlining of your sales cycle.
Check out how we’re trying our best to align sales and marketing
ABM furthermore ensures the accounts you target are the right ones for your business and vice versa.
The ABM process requires you to invest significant time and resources in engaging a group of carefully chosen, high-value accounts, versus trying to quickly close deals with less-qualified leads who may not be the best fit for your company in the long run.
By focusing on specific high-value target accounts that are more likely to close, and nurturing all prospects simultaneously, you shorten the sales cycle - saving time and resources in the process.
Additionally, as a result of personalised, thoughtful, and consistent customer experiences, accounts will become loyal to your business over time — and loyal customers become your best marketers, promoters, and brand advocates.
You might be interested in this article on using Revenue Attribution to fire up your account-based marketing —>