Sales have always been a numbers game - more prospects equals more chances of sealing the deal. But with the sales cycle getting longer and with an increasing number of decision-makers, one’s sales strategy has to go beyond the numbers game. And this is why more companies are including account-based marketing to drive additional revenue growth.
What is Account-based Marketing?
Simply put, is it focusing your marketing and sales towards a few, highest value accounts. It is treating each customer as a market in itself, so imagine the detail of personalisation involved! Account-based marketing is a channelised and relationship-based strategy for driving sales. This type of marketing can work in conjunction with the traditional board-based inbound marketing methods.
According to Atera Group, 97% of companies said ABM had a higher ROI than other marketing initiatives.
This sounds great, but where to begin? Will it be too much work? Is there a tool that can help identify these key accounts and drive the process?
Yes, Yes, Yes!
Marketo, Adobe’s marketing automation unit, is the answer to hitting a sixer with your account-based marketing. Via Marketo, you can identify the target accounts and follow-up using personalised content, all while aligning sales with your marketing! That is a lot!
But not when you have us! On this blog, we will guide you on how to successfully use Marketo to drive account-based marketing.
You have a match!
Picture yourself skimming through a dating app, looking for the match, the one you want to reach out to and potentially go out on a date with. This process takes time and usually is a shot in the dark. How does this apply to ABM? With Marketo, the guesswork of coming up with a list of target accounts is gone and time is saved. Marketo’s AccountAI uses artificial intelligence to discover and define the high impact accounts by using existing sales data, company size, location, and social media parameters. You can either import data from your existing database or use Discover CRM or Discover Marketo to identify these accounts.
Marketo also identifies the common ground between accounts that bring in the largest recurring revenue, and uses predictive scoring to identify accounts that have the potential to expand.
Once target companies have been identified, you can map the accounts, add buyer personas, and even create an ideal customer profile. Who are the key decision makers, what commonalities do they have, what are their pain points, what and where do they seek information? This insight is vital because, according to Gallup, in today’s complex sales cycle, there could be up to 11 decision makers (yikes!).
Know thy Customer and Impress Through the Buying Cycle
Nurturing and building relationships is the heart of account-based marketing. The insight that you have gotten from account selection and buyer personas will help you create content that directly speaks to the decision maker. Research from Aberdeen states that 75% of customers prefer personalised offers. A classic case of this is Amazon! How is it they know exactly what you are looking for every time you visit their site?
Marketo’s ABM allows you to create a content matrix that maps out what content will be sent to each decision maker through the buying cycle.
NBA team, Portland Trailers, used Marketo to improve two things: engage customers in all events held at the Rose Quarter and convert more fans into season ticket holders. Marketo’s automation allowed them to design campaigns targeting different demographics and fan types and also provided insights into whether any campaign needed immediate follow-up action, like a phone call or anything else.
Seamless Communication Across Multiple Channels
According to SiriusDecisions, 92% of B2B marketers worldwide consider ABM “extremely” or “very” important to their overall marketing efforts.
Raise your hand if you have been messaging the same person via different platforms. We all prefer certain information through specific channels, and the same applies to customers. To truly succeed in ABM, you have to be able to engage the right people across any channel and device, whether that be social media, email, website or a phone call. Marketo’s integrated engagement platform offers these cross channel marketing capabilities and more.
Marketo’s Audience Hub captures all account behaviour across multiple channels; you can set triggers which will automatically send personalised content via the preferred medium. This time saver tool allows you to deliver top-notch customer experience, just the way they like it! GE Healthcare successfully used Marketo to touch base with doctors through their preferred channels and this resulted in (drumroll) $600 million of sales.
Deliver Coordinated Campaigns Through Solid Partnerships
Sangram Vajre, Co-Founder of Terminus says “ABM is the combination and range of activities from advertising, direct mail, calls, emails, content — all centered around the ideal set of accounts that you believe has the need for your solution. It's quality over quantity in its most basic form.”
One feature that makes Marketo standout for ABM is that it builds a strong partnership of trust between sales and marketing. Both teams work as seamlessly as Bob & Mike Bryan - the infamous tennis double partners. All the information gets stored and accessed by relevant teams from the same source; there is clear visibility on goals and progress.
Panasonic’s European division faced a unique challenge - they wanted to change their sales strategy to start focusing on higher revenue accounts, and also be able to cross-sell and upsell. They quickly realised this was not going to be possible without the right alignment between sales and marketing.
However, they overcame this challenge by implementing Marketo and sharing the sales pipeline between marketing and sales. This simple move resulted in a revenue increase of 26%. ABM forces the marketing and sales team to join forces to identify ideal accounts and decision-makers and generate appropriate content.
Offer Continuous Improvement With the Help of Metrics
Some automation tools allow measurement of campaigns only after deployment, however with Marketo’s ABM dashboard and Named Account Dashboard, you can look at performance indicators at various times or stages of the sales process.
Not only does it provide a comprehensive view of how the top accounts are performing, clicking on a single account also offers in-depth analysis of KPI such as email clicks, unsubscribe rate, page views, win rate, and average revenue annually. Real-time analytics allow you to measure programs, and solve any bottlenecks instantly.
Quick Refresher
Marketo’s automation and engagement software allow you to jumpstart your account based marketing without ever having to switch platforms. With all the data centralised and accessible by both the sales and marketing functions, identifying top accounts and designing personalised experiences across multiple channels will be easier than before. Marketo guarantees your customer a smooth experience through the entire sales cycle. At the end of the day, it is the final experience that sets one company apart from another, and account-based marketing focuses on just that.
Want more information on Marketo or need help with strategising how Marketo can help your business?
Let’s say we have the Marketo Superpower. Get in touch with us today!
