Identifying Business Objectives and Target Accounts for Effective ABM

November 5, 2021 Stan

Account-Based Marketing requires structured data and clear goals in order to maximize effectiveness. Since ABM focuses on the ‘who’ of marketing, as well as the ‘why,’ it is important to know which accounts should be prioritized based on their demographics and potential. One of the best ways to do this is to identify which accounts should be targeted first based on their known characteristics and their appeal in comparison to a defined Ideal Customer Profile.

Identifying the business objective or ‘why’ of a campaign will highlight the goal sales and marketing are working towards while keeping target accounts in mind as the audience. Some of the objectives that benefit from ABM strategies include:

Cross-sell and upsell – identifying existing customers that either have an opportunity for complementary products or services or that could do with a higher-end version that would better fulfill their needs than their current product or service
Renewals or expansions – identifying existing customers that are in need of a renewal based on an upcoming expiration or by expanding within an existing customer’s network of subsidiaries or internal business units once that initial connection has been made
New logos – identifying key accounts based on their social standing that could act as influencers for others to follow
Re-engagement or deal acceleration – identifying lost opportunities or opportunities that are losing their momentum in the sale process for targeted re-engagement as well as more long-term practices around “waking the dead” by re-targeting far older opportunities in the hopes of hitting a weak spot before the next renewal cycle
Standard Ideal Customer Profile – if none of the above sales use cases fits then focusing on accounts that best match the Ideal Customer Profile will typically drive higher engagement, especially when their profiles align closely with the most common characteristics of previous customer wins

By setting up campaigns specific to each of these business objectives clear targets will begin to emerge.

Target accounts are meant to represent the best-fit prospects, in this way, defining an Ideal Customer Profile will help determine what those targets should be. Once target accounts are identified, marketing resources can then be prioritized to focus on these best-fit candidates. The ultimate goal being that with effective sales and marketing outreach those targets will become customers as a result of customized outreach based on the business use case.

Evaluating ICP characteristics over time can continue to provide valuable feedback that can be ingested and used for future marketing and sales cycles in a more continuous fashion than a ‘slice in time’ approach. By evaluating both sales successes and failures on a quarterly basis, growing trends will surface. This type of periodic health check can even provide the ability to begin narrowing the ICP into a hierarchy of best-fit vs good-fit profiles that can help inform which target accounts to spend time and resources on for the most effective Account-Based Marketing campaigns.

By including a planned approach around selecting the business objective of an ABM campaign as well as finding the best fit target accounts, the full impacts can be seen in the results to maximize sales and marketing’s efforts. If you need help developing your Account Based Marketing strategy, Relationship One’s Strategists are always here to help.

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