How To Get Started With Account Based Marketing

  Ross Palley

We invited three B2B tech startups in the Venture Lane community to participate in our Account Based Marketing Lab. Founders worked directly with a Mentor Committee of seasoned ABM leaders in Boston tech to game-plan acquisition motions for their top prospects.

On the Mentor Committee, we welcomed Jen Dold (Head of Demand Generation @ Riskified), Nick Bennett (Director of Account Based & Field Marketing @ Alyce), and Elena Madrigal (Director of Product Marketing @ True Motion). Check out their key takeaways below!

Set top-down foundations for your ABM strategy…

• Group similar accounts in your TAM. Startups have a tendency to pick 1 or 2 key accounts and go hard on them right out of the gate. Look across your addressable market and form groups of similar accounts. Developing template playbooks for each group will build repeatability into your ABM motions.
  
  

• Tackle contact personas and messaging next. Within each account grouping, look for patterns across the contacts you need to engage and develop those common contacts into personas. Consider what those contacts' 5pm-9am looks like in addition to their '9am-5pm'. This people based approach will ensure your messaging resonates and that you're using the right channels to engage. 

• ABM motions are sales led. Contrary to what the name implies, account based marketing should be sales led and marketing supported. Sales leads the charge on discovery and rollout, while marketing pulls together all the necessary materials for outreach.

Use a sliding scale of personalization in your messaging…

• Higher tier stakeholders need more personalized messaging. The messaging you use for the most important champions and decision makers involved in the sales process should be customized to those particular contacts. For other contacts at the account that are less directly involved, just customize messaging based on their role.

• The bigger the whale, the more personalized the messaging. The potential deal size of the account should also dictate how much time and resources you spend personalizing the messaging they receive. As check sizes go down, you can move down the personalization rungs from contact level to role, company, industry, etc.

• If they're talking about you, that's a good thing. Start engaging all contacts at a key account in tandem. You want folks to talk internally about your product. Just make sure all contacts didn't get the same template messaging. First impressions count, and you want to make a good one by personalizing messaging to some degree.

Engage your contacts with omni-channel outreach…

• ABM is always omni-channel. Branch out from email and LinkedIn to ensure 5-7 marketing impressions with all key contacts at the accounts you're targeting. Calls, video, and even gifting or direct mail are great channels to tap into.

• Use personalization in video campaigns. Using video in your initial outreach can really dial up conversion to the next stage of your sales process. Personalize videos using the contact's name and ask thought provoking questions that peak their interest in getting on a call.

• Gifting can really help you cut through the noise. A few best practices worth mentioning here. First, always include a hand written note. Second, scale the cost of gifts based on how critical contacts are to the buying process. Lastly, be clever and creative - e.g. if there's a big storm coming to your contact's area, send some specialty hot coco to help them hunker down and stay warm.     
  
  Want to take part in one of our upcoming Labs and get 1:1 time with Boston's best operators in B2B tech? Apply to join our live beta of Venture Lane | Connex, our newest virtual offering!