Its 2021 and you’re not using a account based marketing agency?
Update: Our b2b agency guide is now updated
You’re probably reading this article because you sell things and that’s OK.
Selling things is so important. You speak to any startup founder off record and when you strip away the dreamy narrative and tech talk they’ll call it true….sales is as important as the development process and building of the product.
Maybe Sales is even more important now
Maybe Sales is even more important now so much development is supported by modern fast well documented SDKs and frameworks that cover multiple formats and thus lower build and maintain costs for any new startup and give them a huge advantage over even incumbents who may have established their marketing position in the last ten years but, by comparison, have significant technical debt.
This is why there’s not just sales teams but a whole seriously successful industry specialising in high ticket B2B enterprise sales who have adopted increasingly sophisticated customer profiling and sales flow processes and software to allow them to do account based marketing at scale for this clients. And this model is working based on simple maths.
If you pay a, by no means cheap, b2b sales firm £50k to get you a new £50k per year customer you are the client are still in the money based on your knowledge of your Year 2 retention rate (i.e. we keep 80% of new clients in year 2) and up-sell potential (i.e. we up sell 40% of our new SEO clients digital strategy services).
These underlined healthy marketing conditions and rapid advancement of technology and access to data analytics has been the perfect storm for the rise of this new more technically sophisticated b2b firm.
Why your account based marketing agency is your new best friend
ABM is defined on wikipedia as a strategic approach to business marketing based on account awareness in which an organisation considers and communicates with individual prospect or customer accounts as markets of one.
Example of tactics
Here are a list of the ABM tactics commonly deployed in a structured work flow to successfully increase deal flow.
Buyer profiling and the Ideal Customer Profile
Working with you the ABM agency define which buyers you can help and which you can’t. The ideal buyer profile also know as the “Ideal Customer Profile” (“ICP”) defines which companies are a great fit for your offer or service and which ones are not.
Develop prospect-specific offers
Most ABM campaigns are likely to include a small pool of target accounts so campaigns and offers need to deliver high rate of conversion. And this is why content marketing has become so incredibly important in the early stage of the process. By personalising content marketing specifically for a particular target account the ABM agency can build awareness and highlight intrinsic challenges their clients service can resolve. For example, a white paper is produced for the client with the target companies name in the tile such as “Santander social media effectiveness report”.
- Retargeting to retain front of mind
- Personalisation
- Content Marketing
- Social Media
- Amplification
- Data Analytics
Maybe the first ever ABM framework…
You’re probably more than familiar with various sales pipeline templates for categorising the stage of the deal from pool to qualification to won and the ABM agency can take this one step further by tailoring your strategy and brand narrative to appeal to key stakeholders in the deal flow.
Here Terminus codify it in what they claim is the first ever ABM framework
Working at scale with ABM software
One word. Linkedin.
For the majority of high ticket mass market sales, the first point of call in terms of any kind of account based marketing tactics is Linkedin. Using Linkedin and specialist software the ABM agency can build an Ideal Customer Profile of their clients customers sales and then broadcast to that persona type across the wider Linkedin network. The concept is not new and can be achieved manually by the client but in practise it is easier said than done. An ABM agency automates this process and then optimises and executives at scale.
Account based marketing plan template
In terms of your ABM plan it doesn’t look too different to a classical B2B sales plan but with the added focus on and inclusion of content marketing, data analysis and persona profiling. Here’s a great example of a account based marketing plan from Integrate.
Summary
We hope we’ve demonstrated how having a Account Based Marketing framework and using account based marketing tactics can have a phenomenal impact on your sales success in a repeatable and scale way.
Right now, if you are selling a product or service generating over £50k per annum in revenues particular a soft service (i.e. not a physical product requiring shipping and low margin) with high margin we’d advocate you adopting account based marketing tactics and that you look into some of the marketing leading London account based marketing agencies and beyond to compliment your existing sales processes, help you win new business and transform your sales methodology and win rate.
Happy hunting!
Chat with us now if you’d like us to help you find the perfect Account Based Marketing Agency for you
SEE ALSO
B2B Account Based Marketing Training
This is officially a thing now! Think about it just like your classic sales training day but hosted by an absolute category expert who is going to teach your management and sales teams modern sales methods for enterprise B2B business development, update you on the cutting edge software now available to execute at scale and hopefully help you gel your marketing and sales team together into one integrated team along the way.
Maybe not as much fun as a day out at Go Ape, so maybe consider combining! 🙂
5 Benefits of using ABM to your business
So go get yourself a account based marketing agency before it’s too late for your B2B sales
Image credit: Get Out by Blumhouse Productions
Please see our Account Based Marketing Agency list or get in contact with us via our contact form or by emailing us at [email protected] to discuss your requirements
