Looking to get off the treadmill of production and feeding the machine hoping for a hit? Are you tired of data that doesn't produce results?
Your program needs to work better in the current economic environment. It will take some work to build a program that will be proactive and targeted. Five steps will get you started on your way to a market ready program.
1. Target specific people and accounts
Account-based marketing requires actual accounts to be identified. The account needs a list of key targets. You don't need to worry about anonymous hits on your website. Get the list built
2. Know who — and what — is important
Not every prospect matters. The ones you are most likely to engage with are unimportant. There will be one active and one passive. Some responses and engagements are unimportant.
You will need to profile your targets to know the difference between the two. It will give you valuable insight into the type of people you are dealing with.
3. Use the ‘friendlies’ to get to the real buyers
It will not get fixed unless you find the pain. Don't focus on the C-suite and focus on the users.
It's better to get to the people who need it. There is no decision to be made. The case needs to be built and the need surface.
4. Build the business case
Talk less about your solution and more about what you can do to relieve the pain. It will need to be close to the business's core operations.
Can you help with cost, revenue, and productivity? We are in a situation where we have to have something. Sales and marketing have to work together.
Managing the unpredictable involves getting marketing, sales and operations to work together.
5. Communicate it back
You need to communicate back to the key targets in the account in a language that connects with them. You need the right people to take action to move the process forward.
Knowing their personality type can help you motivate them. It is possible to create offers and marketing assets that are personalized.
There are two parts to this approach, a front and a back. They say you have to make orders instead of taking orders. I wonder if I could use more cliches.
Integration between sales and marketing is needed for the front piece to be discovered.
The pain is being communicated and sold. To get a deal through the organization, you need to motivate the organization at the corporate, line of business and individual levels. For acquisition and existing accounts, this will be the case.
If you collect information on the front end, you can build a business case on the back end. This takes a coordinated approach between the two.
There are three recession-defeating marketing strategies.
Building a recession-proof ABM program
You have to work smarter and harder in a difficult market. Identifying and exploiting the right opportunities is what it is about. If it was that simple.
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The opinions of the guest author are not those of MarTech. There are staff authors here.
