The scope of business to business marketing and sales is going through an evolutionary transformation as a result of ABM or account-based marketing. The effectiveness of ABM results in garnering target accounts of high market value. However, the strategic velocity ABM is difficult to manage. ABM consists of various moving elements that collectively synchronize to give results within an organization. However, since marketing is the driving force here, strategic planning has helped in easier implementation and maintenance of ABM within organizations.
The key to building an ABM campaign that is functionally effective and beneficial for the company is to list goals and then strategically and systematically map out the plan. Below is an in-depth break down of how ABM mapping practices can be implemented within the marketing workflow of an organization and what leads to a successful campaign.
Account Mapping
It basically refers to the selection and organization of targeted accounts within the ABM program. Once the goals are established, the next step is to rightly select and map accounts that will ensure a successful and effective campaign plan. After mapping and selection are done, the marketing and sales team get together to build an engagement strategy for the company by ensuring there is maximum alignment on both sides.
Getting Started
Account mapping paves the way for detailed documentation and account research that is helpful in targeting an account. Account mapping consists of four steps that should always be kept in mind.
Identify Influencers and Decision Makers
After the completion of account targeting through account planning, it is time to integrally understand the structures and organizational characteristics of the account. How decisions are taken and by whom, everything should be studied. Map your functions y starting with the head of a certain functional area or team. However, the job becomes more difficult if the account is very large since large companies since they tend to work in a matrix environment. With influences and decision-making impacts flying in from every direction, the job becomes all the more difficult.
Sourcing credentials and documentation through system records help in improved tracking and management of information relating to individual resources. The experience is also priceless in your journey with the ABM campaign. Considering buyer roles is also extremely crucial which often goes unnoticed since it is linked to the overall buying process of the account. Some buyer roles that can be considered are decision-maker, influencer, blocker, champion, budget holder, and legal and compliance.
It however depends on the product and its operational impact within the account. If need be, roles can also be adjusted or expanded in order to fulfill the account’s requirements. Hence, new roles can be added or unlisted as per needs. There are various tools available for the same that helps in aligning account intelligence to the resources of the account.
Information Gathering and Content Alignment
One of the most important inputs for an ABM engagement strategy is to understand the requirements, drawbacks, prospects, and vision of the account. Irrespective of the goal of the campaign, aligning communications along each stage of the buyer’s journey is of extreme importance. Garnering intel from discovery calls helps in the research a great deal but not stay restricted but utilizes your sources to collect every bit of information so that there is not a functional gap in the planning.
Some of the most effective resources include social listening, press releases, search intent, and Google Alerts among other things that can help gather the right information. This not only expands your insights but also allows the account to look into their future needs. Documentation can then be used to map marketing content ensuring a uniform and meaningful interaction with the account.
Engagement and Learning
A separate plan for when and how the target account should be engaged is of great importance. Use a playbook for both marketing engagement and sales plans that will help standardize the strategy. This helps in identifying the workable and functionally accurate plans and also those that need to be improved. Engagement approaches vary depending on the position of the account in the sales cycle during the ABM implementation. If one is working with cold accounts, the best first step recommendation would be to target account-based advertising.
Documenting Decision-Making Processes
All the data collected during the research and documentation process can be put to use in both marketing and sales. With the slow velocity of the engagement process, reaching out to the contacts and resources within the account will also be required. But what matters is value addition and the implementation of best practices so that interaction can be improved which further makes the execution of the whole process valuable and seamless.
After intelligence is gathered through the process, everything must be put to practical work. Always make sure to fill gaps in the data so that any future engagement can be improved. Identifying the role of the influencer who might have a direct impact on decision-making is very important. Making a purchasing decision to the acknowledgment of a contract, everything should be studied in detail. By doing under legal proximities of the account will help you garner better results in the long-run.
Account Mapping Software
There are many software and applications that are used as effective assistants in account mapping. Depending on your budget, you can choose the most suitable one. However, some of the most common and useful ones are HubSpot, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, 6sense.
Conclusion
Complex account structures and their effective navigation is often maintained through ABM mapping. The aforementioned tools will definitely be an important resource in the whole process but the mapping process itself requires a great deal of manual effort. Assigning the right team members into the various parts of research and documentation will help in building a centralized and well-connected information tree that will further help in incorporating account mapping plans with more accuracy.
