Mastering ABM for Competitive Advantage

Where does ABM come from?

ABM or my preferred label, ABX (X for Experience or Everything), has been around for about a decade and seen strong adoption over the last 5 years. Most companies that have deployed ABM practices have enjoyed solid results and would generally become strong proponents; It aligns marketing efforts much more closely with sales efforts, looks at the process from a buyer perspective rather than the seller, understands that buying decisions are a shared responsibility within an organization. ABM also gets marketing focus away from generating individual leads (eg MQL’s) which have had a chequered reputation within sales organisations and rather think of accounts as a whole. It is also somewhat easier to think of a demand funnel for accounts over a lead funnel to understand the health of your pipeline. It is a much more targeted process and therefore a much more cost effective way to engage prospects. It tailors itself to personalization so that your messages can be much more effective. 

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All of this has resulted in much higher conversion rates for opportunities and a higher quality/more reliable sales funnel. 

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One key aspect of ABM is to specifically target accounts that are already out actively looking for problems that your company’s offer can solve through the use of Intent Signals. Intent Signals can be sourced from your company's website, 3rd party sites, review sites, social media pages, etc. By aggregating all of these signals across the buying group, you can get a good sense of a company that meets your Ideal Customer Profile is actually “in market”. You can use these ‘in market’ account lists to drive your demand gen and sales development efforts. 

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ABM to reach your Total Addressable Market (TAM List)

As a practitioner, I can confirm that this works. However, one aspect that has become an increasing concern is around having sufficient volume to meet growth demands. At any given point in time, only a percentage of your Total Addressable Market (TAM) will actually be in a buying motion. Most experts would agree that only about 3% to 8% of your TAM is actually in market at any given point of time. That means that about 95% is not! That could mean that the number of accounts that you need to feed your sales department could be undersized and present challenges to the business. And just as importantly, if you weren’t actively involved in engaging with the dormant portion of the market, then by the time they do begun the search for a solution to a problem you could solve, someone has gotten there first and started to build those relationships and trust.

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We feel that this is a problem that is going to become more critical going forward, especially as many of history's more aggressive broad based awareness campaigns are going to present challenges going forward; challenges in attribution, cost and message saturation.

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In recent years, marketers have struggled to generate sustainable and high-quality demand because:

• Product Led Growth (PLG) strategies are no longer delivering sufficient lead volume to deliver against growth expectations in a post-COVID world.
• Most brand awareness campaigns are not designed to progress accounts through the demand funnel, so they aren’t helping that much and can be massively expensive. 
• There is a complete saturation of generic outbound channels at scale.

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As a result, Demand gen and sales development campaigns are not delivering against expectations, especially when the need to demonstrate rapid time to value is becoming more critical as budgets tighten.

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What is ABM 2.0 and how can it help?

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ABM 2.0 leverages many signals to better identify, understand, target, and prioritize the audiences leveraging well-known sources such as Firmographics, Technographics and Industry segments to build out a strong definition of your Ideal Customer Profile. However, without intent signals, it is hard to target a subset for engagement. That is where behavioural signals could become very useful. By looking beyond the ICP and by understanding those behaviors that have led to wins in the past, you can start to understand and target accounts that are exhibiting similar behaviour. Some basic examples are the onboarding of a new executive, a fresh round of funding, a new set of regulations, etc. By understanding these buyer triggers (dynamic ICP markers), you can build a very targeted set of accounts with highly personlized set of messages that can move them into a buying cycle. 

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It can then help build highly customized and efficient campaigns:

• Segmentation: Identify much more segmented ICP specifications for a more refined targeting while mitigating limitations of over-segmentation.
• Leveraging and engaging Dynamic ICP Markers: Capture Dynamic ICP Markers available in the market before intent signals to work above the 5% ‘in market’ portion of the demand funnel.
• Arm campaigns with deep insights: Understand decision makers and buying group key personas to deliver much more effective messaging and reach them on the right channels
• Build sales engagement that moves buyer interest down funnel: Leveraging AI to build low-volume, highly engaging, and relevant outreach
• Rolling thunder approach: Small Integrated Campaigns that run for 1 quarter, rinse and repeat

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What can ABM deliver?

ABM will truly transform your growth approach and marketing strategies moving from lead-generation and volume-focused model to a buyer-centric and quality-focused model.

What can you expect?

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Conclusion

Account-Based Experience is transforming the marketing landscape by prioritizing personalization and targeted engagement. By focusing on high-value accounts, businesses can elevate their marketing strategies to foster stronger, more meaningful connections, and maximize ROI.

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This article has been co-written by Alizée Varloud at MyDigipal and Bruce Eidsvik at TheRC.