AMA: Gong Performance Marketing Lead, Bhavisha Oza on Account Based Marketing

Content is the cornerstone of an ABM campaign. Auditing and organizing your content can be time-consuming but it is worth the effort. Once you organize your content in a way that’s easy to sort or pick and choose, you’ll be able to easily identify the assets for your ABM campaign. Below are nine questions to keep top of mind: 1. When was it created? Is the content relevant today? 2. Who is the author? Analyst, third-party, customer, or in-house content? 3. What is the format? PDF, video, or interactive? 4. Is it gated or un-gated? 5. How many MQLs did it drive (if gated)? What was the engagement rate (video views, likes) 6. What pain point/stage of the buying process does it address? 7. Which buyer persona does it address - business buyer or technical buyer? 8. Which industry does it apply to? 9. Which solution/product does it apply to?

ABM is an upmarket play which means sales cycles are longer and the buying committee is bigger. Marketing needs to target, engage, and convert multiple persona within an account. This means the account will have multiple engaged leads/contacts. Hence it is important to switch to an account-based scoring model to get a holistic view of the account. KPIs to track include: * Target Accounts Engaged * Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs) * Opportunities from target accounts * Closed-won deals from target accounts With ABM, marketing and sales are working together at every stage of the funnel starting from aligning on the target account list for 1:1, 1:few, or 1:many campaigns. The ultimate goal is to win more, win big, and win faster. So we also need to track win rate, average contract value (ACV) and deal cycle time. * Win more: ABM should drive higher win rates * Win big: ACV would be higher * Win faster: Deal cycles would be shorter

It really depends on campaign goals and budget. The channel mix remains the same: * Top-of-funnel: programmatic display, CTV, paid social and content syndication * Middle-of-funnel: email nurture, Executive Q and A webinars * Bottom-of-funnel: virtual experience events, in-person events, and direct mail In the case of landing new business, paid media budget is a must-have. Alternatively, in the case of land and expand motion you can lean more on owned media and in-app promotion

My rule of thumb is it helps to have at least 3 pieces of content, in different formats for each stage of the funnel. * Top-of-funnel content to include a mix of analyst content, podcasts, awareness videos, cheat sheets * Middle-of-funnel content to include checklists, e-guides, interactive content such as an ROI calculator or maturity assessment * Bottom-of-funnel content to include product tours, demo videos, and customer testimonial videos

The most important "tactic" (if you may) that has worked well for me is alignment with sales on strategy before launching the campaign. And regular ongoing reviews, updates, feedback, and alignment on any course correction needed during the course of the campaign. I also do campaign retrospectives once the campaign is complete to celebrate wins and identify what can be done better for the next campaign.