ABM Lead Generation - How to Get Started

Since ABM is an increasingly popular approach to marketing in B2B nowadays, we wanted to get some inside information on the topic and share it so that you can assess whether this approach could also be of benefit to your organization.

How can ABM transform your marketing?

Imagine a world where you could start the sales process by selling directly to your best-fit, highest-value accounts with no wasted time trying to market to unqualified leads who aren’t exactly the best-fit audience for your business. You could move straight into the phases of engaging and delighting your target accounts. Wouldn’t that be much more efficient?

ABM allows you to eliminate less-valuable companies early on and ensure sales and marketing are in complete alignment. In return, your team can more rapidly begin the follow up process with the accounts that matter for your business.

ABM transforms businesses is such a way that it helps them work and communicate with high-value accounts as if they are individual markets. By doing this, along with personalizing the buyer’s journey and tailoring all communication, content and campaigns to those specific accounts, you’ll see an improved lead quality and greater ROI.

Why do you need to flip your lead generation funnel with ABM?

If you’ve ever worked in B2B sales or marketing, chances are you’re familiar with the concept of the lead generation funnel.

The traditional lead generation funnel starts with a wide pool of leads at the top, which gradually narrows down to prospective customers, then opportunities and, eventually, to customers.

This encourages sales and marketing to take a so-called ‘spray and pray’ approach to lead generation, thus targeting masses of people on the premise that more leads will eventually lead to more revenue in the long run.

Of course, for some types of campaigns this approach works well, however, for B2B marketing, the funnel approach can be insufficient at times.

This is where ABM comes into play. Account-based marketing turns the traditional lead generation funnel on its head by starting with those consumers who would be the best fit for your product and working upwards.

ABM has been around for a few years, but it’s really starting to take off now as marketing technology has simplified the process with a wide range of data collection, personalization, and automation tools.

How to know if your company is ABM-ready?

This is indeed a very good point. Account-based marketing can be complex. To help you understand whether you need ABM or inbound marketing, we typically recommend considering the following:

• Do you have a high value product or service? Low value doesn't tend to justify the ABM approach due to the excessive cost-of-sale?

• Have you developed personas, and do you know the different messaging angles/pain-points of your target customer(s)?

• Have you got clearly defined criteria to identify and analyze target accounts?

• Can you execute a multi-channel campaign? Is there a sales team who’ll be running direct outreach/follow up across the target accounts?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then ABM might well be an approach to consider.

How do you know the difference between a good lead and a bad lead?

It really comes down to a simple analysis of interest and intent.

Interest is where someone has expressed interest in is curious about your product or service. They might have downloaded an e-Book, visited your website or attended one of your webinars. They have taken some action that tells you that they have at least some interest in what you have to offer.

However, interest alone is not enough. Interest without intent at best clogs your pipeline, and at worst results in wasted time and resources.

Here’s an example:

I am interested in high fashion. I have gone so far as to walk into a designer store. Does this interest mean I have any intent to shop there? Absolutely not. Anyone working at the store who spends time with me would be wasting their time.

Why? I may be interested, but I don’t have the funds needed to shop there, and even if I did, I most likely wouldn’t invest in more than one item. I have neither the ability nor the willingness to act upon my interest.

Intent is interest plus the ability and willingness to act.

So, when you go about the process of lead qualification, you must determine if the interest demonstrated is coupled with intent. Too often we try to find out if we think the person is a ‘fit’ for our product without considering if they are willing and able to buy it.

What is the hardest part of getting started with running ABM campaigns?

It would be difficult to just point out one single hard part, but I can point out a few of the main challenges.

The first is to ensure that you have the right content for an account-based approach: We always say that content is king. I would argue that clients often already have plenty of content for an ABM approach but are just not leveraging it. You have it in your sales decks, product sheets and even your website. The key to making that content usable is to only extract the exciting parts of it. Identify the most attention-grabbing parts and repurpose it. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, instead create a campaign with content you know is already working.

The second is aligning sales and marketing on key accounts:

Developing an agreed list of ‘target accounts’ is critical. So, before you even think about ABM, you must agree on your ‘ideal customer profile’. Start analyzing your best clients, investigate the insights and take it from there.

And last but not least, moving away from lead-based volume metrics: Generating a high volume of leads is great, but only if those leads are: (a) from companies that meet your well-defined ideal customer profile, and (b) come with more information than just a name, i.e. what topics they might be interested in, what content they converted on and is the level of their engagement. All of this will then define the quality of your lead. That being said, you need to start thinking and aiming for quality over quantity.

How to start with ABM

Getting started with ABM could be one of the greatest moves you can make as a B2B marketer, if you have the right product and if you know your target audience well. But there is definitely a learning curve and it’s important to set yourself up for success with the right partners and tools. If you’re facing challenges and would like to dig deeper into how to solve them, feel free to contact us via LinkedIn. We offer free brainstorming sessions – no strings attached – focused on learning more about your pain points and giving you advice.

If you want to learn more about how to deliver successful campaigns with ABM marketing, you can contact us here directly.