“Account-based marketing (ABM) is an alternative B2B strategy that concentrates sales and marketing resources on a clearly defined set of target accounts within a market and employs personalized campaigns designed to resonate with each account.” - Marketo

Account Based Marketing isn’t exactly a new idea. Enterprise B2B companies adopted this thinking a while ago. However, ABM has only recently become the “buzzword” of the day for digital marketing firms trying to up their game to capture better and more qualified clients. Why shouldn't your agency be targeting the whole herd, instead of just one cow?

Sales teams have always addressed their processes this way: Account Based. (How many “account managers” do you know?) Typically, marketers have not followed this process (How many “account marketers” do you know?). They think BIG; cast a net as wide and far as you can to gather as many prospects as you can, and let sales sort the chaff from the wheat later.

What if you, as a marketer, started to think about accounts rather than prospects? You’re B2B right? What would the benefits to your business be, and what would your marketing strategy look like? Why should you focus on accounts rather than prospects? If you could answer these questions you wouldn’t be reading this, now would you?

Benefits of Account Based Marketing

• Efficiency- It focuses time and resources on accounts most likely to drive revenue.
• Alignment- It tightly integrates your sales and marketing teams.
• Account penetration and expansion- It guides intelligent account expansion at existing customers.
• Customer experience- It delivers the consistently relevant experience that customers demand.
• Big wins- The deal sizes are bigger.
• Close rates- It increases the quality of your biggest opportunities.

What does this sort of strategy look like?

To begin, know that it’s not just a simple lead nurturing, CRM automation, “attract convert, close and delight” kind of campaign. It’s more expensive up front, it takes research, it takes time to get up the learning curve on your target, it’s not easy and it takes a special set of skills with organization. Scared yet?

Step 1- The foundation of your ABM strategy
Define Your High-Value Accounts- Then find them


Instead of thinking demographic, think “firmographic”. Gather all the data and business intelligence you can find on your specific vertical target. What are the industry issues, what are the specific firm issues? Separate the chaff RIGHT HERE. If the firm/company does not meet your definition of “high-value”, give ‘em the boot.

Step 2- Defining who in the firm you’re talking to through your content
Map out the profile


Learn how your target is structured. Is there a procurement department, marketing team, and sales team all at play? Who are the key influencers within these teams and are they the decision makers?

Step 3- BIG, HUGE, HUGE IMPORTANCE
Define your personalized message


“Content strategies” are so yesteryear. (Opps, that was supposed to be an inside thought.) While you do need a “plan” it must be micro “firm-a-lized”, because not every firm in your vertical will have the same pain points. Within the firm, not all entities you’ll deal with even have the same pain points. So, the typical B2B types of content strategies don’t work well here.

Hopefully, you’ve educated yourself about your target vertical and your target accounts within that vertical. If you have not, go back to steps one and two; repeat until you get it.

If I have said it once to clients, I have said it a THOUSAND times, “Provide meaningful content to your audience, stop writing on keywords so you can report some bullshit ranking metric.” Effective content is not based on a keyword, it’s rich with solutions; it’s rich with education about your target’s pain point. You didn’t click on this article to find out how great my company is with marketing project management (shameless plug), or how my company can help you with ABM, you clicked because you saw an answer to your query.

If you’ve done your homework well, you will know what your target firms pain points are, who is privy to that pain and how is it perceived by different departments and you can create a unique content strategy for all points in the buyer’s journey that is both vertical specific, as well as firm specific.

Step 4- Go to the watering holes


Define the most optimal channels for your content


This takes time and research on your part. You’re a marketer, not a manufacturer of adhesive products, so you go to the marketing watering holes, but you need to know where your adhesive manufacturers go for a drink.

The typical channels every marketer uses, social media, off site blogs, on site website blogs, blog distributions etc. are easy. But you REALLY, REALLY, REALLY need to know where your targets go for information specific to their industry.

These are SPECIFIC channels to the target verticals. This is where your content needs to be. Content still needs to help with the big net casting in the regular channels, this doesn’t hurt, but the wide net is just not effective enough for high conversions. 

Step 5- Know if it’s working
Evaluate, Learn, Fix and Repeat


Define your metrics and KPIs. Be mindful of the metrics, are they just KPI’s or are they truly a measure of the success of a campaign? Not knowing the difference is a pet peeve of mine.

KPIs are Key Performance Indicators, they simply indicate if the campaign is headed in the right direction, KPIs ARE NOT METRICS BY WHICH YOU JUDGE THE SUCCESS OF A CAMPAIGN. They’re merely road signs.

Metrics are the gold standards by which your campaign is judged. There are basically 4:
• Traffic- Are you drawing visitors?
• Engagement (even that’s disputable)-Are the visitors staying on the site and reading the content?
• Social Shares- Do the visitors find the message you're sending out valuable/informative/engaging enough to share with their peers?
• Conversion- Are they filling out forms and calling for assessments, website builds, quotes, PPC or whatever other service you offer? THIS IS THE PLATINUM STANDARD FOR WHICH YOU JUDGE YOUR SUCCESS!!


At first, you will need to rely on KPIs to know if you’re on the right path, things like
• Keyword ranking- Does Google find value in your content?
• Links back to your site- Do others find value in your content?
• Citations- Is your industry recognizing you?
• Page views on key pages- Are the visitors finding the right content on your site
• New visitors vs returning- This is a tricky one. New is good but returning is even better. If they are returning, their interest is better and they are further down the funnel and closer to that conversion.


When you are not realizing positive KPI you will not have positive metrics. Then you need to reevaluate the message you are sending out. It’s not resonating with your audience.
If you can check off the boxes as “yes”, then keep doing what you’re doing. If there is a “no” in there, you need to evaluate, learn, and fix the problem. Repeat this process with every campaign, maybe even every piece of content.

There’s not a lot new here, it's rudimentary principles applied differently to create account based marketing. ABM is hyper-targeted to produce the highest ROI for the effort you put forth in the beginning. Obtaining larger firms with more spend is good for you.

The best part about ABM is that once you have done a few campaigns targeting Firm XYZ, there will be others within that industry with similar pain points that will follow along as well.

You can also assemble a team of heavy lifters, like J-TEK Solutions, who do your foot work and manage the daily “to-dos” so that you can do the important things, like strategizing, targeting leads, and closing them. For more information about Digital Marketing Project Management, give us a jingle at 772-486-9121 or email tracy@j-teksolutions.com