Businesses are waking up to the fact that B2B
marketing is broken!
- It looks at customers as faceless organizations
- It discounts the fact that people are at the heart of purchase decisions in B2B scenarios – and multiple people at that
This is the reason why Account Based Marketing
(ABM) has been making waves.
If you would like a primer on how ABM fixes
what is “off” with B2B funnels and cycles, check out our blog here.
For the sake of this piece we are assuming
that you are already sold on the idea of Account Based Marketing and how it can
help you deliver an optimized, multi-channel, multi-persona buying experience
for your prospects.
But the question is, who do you follow to get your fix of reliable ABM tactics?
We found out that enthusiasm isn’t the only thing that you need to make your account based drives a success. Learn from our mistakes here.
These 7 ABM’ers don’t just offer some really useful content on ABM but also help demystify the halo around it, showing you exactly what’s working now.
Here goes…
John Common (CEO and founder of Intelligent
Demand) specializes in growing his clients’ revenue by helping them “reach, engage, retain and grow their best
customers.”
Common is your go-to person to learn the
fundamentals of account-based marketing and for staying on top of the most
engaging ABM discussions the geekiest B2B marketers have in packed conferences.
John’s posts from the ID’ology blog (for example, this and this) are must-reads for any
ABM’er.
Oh and here’s our favorite quote on ABM by John:
Call it ABM or Not. It doesn’t matter… ABM isn’t that different — especially at the tactical level. But what I think ABM does do is give us A BIG SHOT IN THE ARM to continue to up our game as B2B revenue practitioners. And modern tools like predictive, AI, intent data, automation, account-based advertising, sales assistants, content personalization, etc… give us better ways to operationalize and scale those fundamentals.
In other words, ABM guides us to keep doing a better and better job at applying the fundamentals for succeeding with any B2B revenue growth strategy.
Bev Burgess (Senior Vice President and Global
ABM Practice Leader at ITSMA) helps companies “design, launch and scale the right blend of ABM for their business.”
She is also the author of “Practitioner’s Guide to ABM: Accelerating Growth in
Strategic Accounts.” Her book (co-authored by Dave
Munn) is almost a mini-bootcamp for anyone who’s interested in implementing account-based
marketing.
In addition to writing helpful articles on
account-based marketing and sharing ABM insights from across different
industries, Burgess also writes/co-writes rich educational resources on ABM on
for ITSMA.
Her series (I’m an ABM-er!) that features excerpts from her book about ABM’ers from companies like SAP, Fujitsu and more is an absolute must-read.
Justin Gray (CEO at LeadMD) specializes in
helping companies set up winning ABM programs. An early adopter of
account-based marketing, Gray uses a mix of his proven framework (The Catalyst
Marketing Framework), technology, and data to power ABM campaigns for LeadMD’s clients.
Gray’s interviews are always full of insights
into the latest ABM best practices. For instance, in this interview with
LinkedIn, Gray generously shares the exact process LeadMD follows when it
comes to planning and executing ABM campaigns for its clients.
Here’s an excerpt from the same:
It’s about identifying your best buyers and treating those best buyers in a much more personal way. We’re focusing on not only the lead but really that account as a whole. What is the makeup of that company? What are their initiatives? How are they planning? Who’s on the buying committee? Who’s making the decision? And then we formulate the marketing based on what we learn about the account. It’s a much more laser-focused approach that eliminates a lot of waste.
You can follow Gray on Twitter to learn about his upcoming interviews.
Patrice Greene (President and Co-founder of
Inverta) specializes in helping B2B marketers source and win their most
strategic business opportunities “in
today’s ever-changing omni-channel marketing landscape.” Greene helps
companies like Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones, and CA Technologies run ABM programs
for building demand and engagement with their key prospects. An expert at
setting up optimized martech stacks for ABM programs (and marketing automation,
in general), Greene also made it
to the 2019 edition of the top 20 Women Leaders in Business to Watch.
We totally second this excellent tip Greene gives to those just starting out with account-based marketing:
A lot of organizations think that they have adopted an account-based marketing strategy because they bought certain technologies like Demandbase or Terminus or they bought Engagio. They’re sending cupcakes, right? Therefore they have a set of target accounts and they’re not outbound spraying and praying like they did before. They’re getting a little more specific and disciplined, but it’s still outbound marketing where they are handing leads over to sales. So it’s not really ABM.
And while she doesn’t blog often, her agency blog is full of ABM insights and tutorials. (A special shoutout to Ashley Shailer, a Senior Associate at Inverta, for her amazing work on the blog!)
Alisha Lyndon (Founder and CEO of MomentumABM)
specializes in transforming “how
sales and marketing teams succeed with their most important customers.”
Host of “The Account-Based Marketing Podcast,” Alisha has about two
decades of experience focusing on key account marketing and consults companies
like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google on their ABM programs.
In her article (A day in the life of an
account-based marketer), Alisha gives us a walkthrough of what a typical day
looks like for an ABM’er. (The article is almost a primer on account-based
marketing, by the way!)
Oh and here’s a totally quotable quote from Alisha on how account-based marketing works with “markets of one”:
Account-based marketing is about people, not personas; accounts, not markets. Rather than focusing on the broadcast method, ABM is a highly-targeted and real-time technique of influencing individual “markets of one”.
David Lewis (Founder and CEO at DemandGen
International, Inc.) specializes in helping companies align their sales and
marketing teams, setting up and operationalizing processes for generating
demand, and leveraging marketing and technology for winning their most
strategic customers.
Lewis is the author of “Manufacturing Demand” (an
Amazon best seller) in which he shows savvy marketers and salespeople how to
work together and fuel their campaigns with data and analytics and dives deep
into tactics like segmentation and automation with real-world examples and case
studies.
He also runs DemandGen Radio
where he hosts pioneers, influencers, thought leaders, and disruptors from the
marketing and sales fields to talk about the methods and technologies to power
high-performance marketing.
In addition to getting a copy of his book (that you can get here for free) and subscribing to his channel, you should also follow him on LinkedIn as he actively shares news, stories, and content around ABM.
Andy Bacon, ABM Specialist and Senior Advisor
at B2B Marketing, offers ABM consulting and mentoring to enterprises across
various industries. His disruptive demand generation ideas won him recognition
even when ABM was a very nascent field.
He’s your “ABM guide” if you want to
learn the nuts and bolts of account-based marketing, right from choosing the right target accounts
and doing “enough” research to setting up an optimized account-based
marketing tech stack. Most of Bacon’s content is available for free on the B2B Marketing website (needs
opt-in, though).
We absolutely loved this word of caution Bacon has for marketers rushing to buy flashy ABM tech solutions impulsively without doing the research:
My worry is that this often means putting the ‘cart before the horse’. A farmer can now invest just short of £1 million on a state-of-the-art, tech-laden combine harvester that uses GPS to measure crop yield across every square metre of his field. Technology won’t make his wheat grow stronger or enable him to get more £/tonne at market. He will, of course, ‘reap what he sows’; his experience will tell him there’s no escaping good groundwork. Getting the fundamentals of soil management right will always come first.
So, while selecting the right mix of tech solutions is really important to reap the rewards of ABM, don’t assume they guarantee success and certainly don’t let them define your strategy.
When choosing your ABM expert, it is key to
ensure that they are not too closely affiliated with a particular software
solution, and if they are then they have a reputation of calling a spade a
spade.
ABM hasn’t been fully thrashed out and codified yet – in short, there are lots of grey areas where best practices do not work. Follow these leaders for an unbiased taken on Account Based Marketing hits and misses, and test the waters yourself.
