AMA: Google Group marketing manager, Steve Armenti on Account Based Marketing

Host a lunch and learn. Give people free lunch or a snack or something to attend. Then tell a story. Don't present facts and figures. If you're new to storytelling, try using ChatGPT or Bard. Here's a sample prompt: "Using the classic story structure, write me an outline to explain why account based marketing is a strategic benefit to a B2B company. Give me an explanation, with no fluff or extra words, for each of the seven main parts of the story including the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, dénouement, and themes." I tried it and the output wasn't bad.

Sales and operations. I recently talked about this on LinkedIn and here's the strategy I like for aligning GTM teams on ABM. 1. ask sales "who matches our 𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗔𝗟 𝗖𝗟𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗙𝗜𝗟𝗘?" to ensure marketing's hypothesis matches the people that sales regularly encounters as leads of contacts 2. get sales' feedback on your 𝗕𝗨𝗬𝗘𝗥 𝗝𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗡𝗘𝗬 - agree on the way customers actually want to learn about and purchase your product 3. share your 𝗨𝗡𝗜𝗤𝗨𝗘 𝗩𝗔𝗟𝗨𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 with sales to determine if this is the way they actually tell our story and make sure all campaigns are written with this message 4. share marketing's 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗔𝗥 with sales, so that they can help promote big events, new content, or important social media posts 5. co-create 𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗨𝗘 𝗚𝗢𝗔𝗟𝗦 to ensure everyone is guided by the same North Star

Metrics are the quantitative measures of ABM performance. They provide a snapshot of what is happening at a certain point in time, such as website visits, leads/ MQLs, engagement rates, and conversion rates. Analytics is the process of organizing, interpreting, and displaying ABM metrics to identify trends and patterns--often in a dashboard. It involves understanding the data for trends into why things are happening the way they are. Insights are the conclusions drawn from the ABM analytics process. Insights provide a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of ABM campaigns and identify areas for optimization. Good insights can be turned into stories that explain to stakeholders why ABM is a good investment.

Start with the business targets to understand what the goals of the business are. Slice those business targets by available segments such as: region, country, solution, etc. Then look at the historical conversion rates within each segment to understand what's worked in the past. Build your model off the historical data to find out where you should be investing. Now, put together a recommendation that invests in the highest performing channels in the regions with the best win rates.

How well does the content align with the organization's overall business goals? Is it helping to achieve key objectives such as generating leads, increasing brand awareness, or driving sales? Can we measure it? Is the content relevant to our ICP? Does it address their pain points, interests, and needs? Would they consume it and take action? How well is the content performing? What are the traffic, engagement, and conversion rates? How does it compare to other content on the website, against industry standards? Is the content optimized for search? Is it incrementally increasing organic search traffic on the site? Does the content have a clear call to action? Is it telling people what you want them to do? Are they doing it, at what rate?

Yes. With any internal pitch I've made for resources or investment in technology, I've always focused on three simple things: 1. Tell a story around the pain caused by the problem 2. Present a world where that pain is gone and the business growth we could be achieving 3. Offer the solution for how we get to that pain free world The problem could be a leaky funnel. The leaky funnel causes lost revenue but it also burns out the team and wastes resources. Make that problem personal and explain that every hour marketing spends on this leaky funnel, they aren't working on things that drive revenue. Quantify that if you can. Imagine a world where the funnel wasn't leaky. What would that look like? Conversion rate improvement? Quantify what this new world could provide. Now build your case for why MarTech is a solution. Anchor it in ROI and quantifiable measurement.

You'll need to adjust the way you measure account vs lead activity: * Instead of measuring leads generated, measure account engagement and influence * Instead of measuring marketing qualified leads MQLs, measure account qualified opportunities * Instead of measuring pipeline creation, measure pipeline and account progression * Instead of measuring customer acquisition cost only, measure account lifetime value and develop ROI of CAC <> LTV Then align those KPIs with sales goals * Work with sales to define key account milestones and goals * Develop KPIs that measure progress towards these milestones and goals * Regularly review and update KPIs as needed with sales * Have recurring performance reviews and deep dives

ABM for new customer acquisition is focused on identifying, engaging, and converting high-value accounts (your ICP). The goal is to acquire and build relationships with key decision-makers at your top accounts and demonstrate the value of your solution via marketing campaigns. ABM for expanding / cross-sell / upsell is focused on deepening relationships with existing customers. Your account list is smaller and more defined. The goal is to understand data and signals that will help your team identify additional opportunities to sell them more products or services. Similar models but different data and execution.

The ideal percentage depends a lot on the industry, ICP, and your goals. I'd say a general guideline is: * Top of funnel (TOFU): 60-70% * Middle of funnel (MOFU): 20-30% * Bottom of funnel (BOFU): 10-20%

I would make sure your leadership team is built into the vision for what the MarTech is going to unlock. Even after their approval, keep them in the loop on your implementation progress. Then when you're live, socialize your successes and failures with leadership and xfnl teams. Bring people along for the ride and get them excited about what you're doing. Specifically, I'd build relationships with teams in marketing, sales, operations, product, and anyone else that is part of go to market. You may need to build a relationship with IT or engineering, depending on your company. Ask for help when you need it. Most marketers aren't good at onboarding technology and maintaining technology so if you can find a team or someone that has experience managing software projects they might be able to help you avoid critical mistakes.

Yes. Intent data plays an important role in three areas: 1. Developing your ICP 2. Building a target account list 3. Feeding insights into the funnel to trigger marketing or sales activities If you're going to use intent, think about what else you can use those intent signals for besides at the point of acquisition. A lot of intent vendors want to sell you leads with intent, ask if you can get just the intent and then think about where that intent can drive marketing or sales activity.

There's some great tips here. Ultimately, you own the story that others are going to tell about your work. You should be communicating it vs letting it go through the echo chamber. I would institute an email or internal comms strategy that brings people along your journey from start to finish. Excite and entertain people. Make it interesting. Talk about wins and losses. Invite others to get involved and participate.

I like to build target accounts lists WITH sales. It's a shared activity. I've used this framework often as a starting point. 1. Figure out your data sources 2. Develop your ICP 3. Scrub the data 4. Segment the list 5. Launch it Depending on the size of your TAM, you may want to establish a hierarchy of accounts. Something like this: 1. Account universe: every account in your TAM 2. Target account list: every account in your SAM 3. Segmented account lists (usually many): the accounts that receive your marketing