You step out of your Uber and glance up at one of those digital billboards on top of a cab.

“Getting into OOH advertising, Hayden?” the ad reads. “We can help.” 

That might sound like Minority Report, but all the ad would have to do is combine geofencing with a dynamic ad creative and programmatic placement via a DSP—along with a healthy level of account-based segmentation on the back end.

It’s not exactly a demand generation campaign, but it’s not pure account-based marketing, either. It’s just smart marketing. 

It’s this kind of blended approach that will eventually allow for the “ad of the future” described above. (It’s not that far off, either.)

In the meantime, what kinds of ABM and demand gen campaigns will have the biggest impact?

We put together dos and don’ts plus six examples to help you get even more creative with your marketing tactics both now and in the future. 

1. Our distinction between ABM and demand gen
2. Demand gen campaigns: dos and don’ts
3. 4 demand gen campaign examples
4. ABM campaigns: dos and don’ts
5. 2 ABM campaign examples

Why our distinction between ABM and demand gen doesn’t matter as much as we think it does

Let me switch gears for a second.

As I was preparing to write this article, I had a conversation (well, Zoom call) with Logan Neveau, our Sr. Director of Product Growth.

He asked a quasi-rhetorical question I still can’t get out of my head.

“Most marketers don’t consider demand gen campaigns as part of ABM, or vice versa. But why the hell not?”

The more I think about it, the more I see what he means. 

The lines between demand generation strategies and ABM campaigns are arbitrary at best: when the ultimate goal is to drive more revenue, what does it matter if the campaign uses one channel over another or a predefined list over a look-alike audience?

OK, sure. The goal is often different:

ABM is often about account engagement, while demand gen is more directly about activation.

But one should flow into the other, instead of standing entirely apart. (In fact, we wrote an entire blog post about it.) 

The reality is that both of these are the marketing tactics that will all support the same overarching goal: get in front of the right person and drive more revenue. 

Demand generation campaigns: Dos and don’ts

I’m going to go out on a limb and say: this is where most of your budget currently goes. 

That makes sense, too: it has the most direct line to revenue, it’s faster to experiment with, and it’s generally easier to measure because marketers have been running direct response lead gen campaigns for so long. The systems are just set up for it. 

But that’s not the only reason: your CEO and CRO probably think “leads, MQLs, and opportunities” in the same breath as “marketing.”

Trying to get them to use new engagement metrics to measure ABM programs doesn’t always go over well—so you return to tried and true demand generation tactics.

Nothing wrong with that—but using a measurement system that has been around for a decade is no reason to phone it in. 

Dos for demand gen campaigns

1. Retarget folks who’ve visited your pricing and demo pages.

We’d call this low-hanging fruit, but we don’t like the buzzword. How about a no-brainer?

2. Run conversation ads on LinkedIn without an incentive.

You don’t have to reserve the effective channel for direct response, cold outreach. Try it out for retargeting and intent-based audiences, too. They may respond well.

3. Return to pipeline acceleration.

We don’t often see marketing teams using demand gen channels to push deals through faster. This is a great opportunity to blur the lines between demand gen and ABM to great effect. 

4. Rewrite your objectives.

Everyone defaults to direct response lead gen campaigns in demand gen. But switching over to engagement objectives (watching the video in the ad, for example) can work to support retargeting down the line. Aim to serve content that attracts or repels—something only your ICP will find interesting and valuable. 

Don’ts for demand gen campaigns

1. Treat all conversions and leads the same.

Leads captured through demand gen campaigns don’t all have the same level of intent or interest, so don’t make the mistake of treating the same in subsequent engagement. 

2. Add leads from demand gen campaigns to automated sales sequences.

The best way to alienate your carefully curated leads is to pass them to a biz dev team that will ask for 15 minutes of their time. If B2B buyers want to get in touch and schedule a demo, they know how to do that for themselves. 

3. Use the same offer all the time.

“Schedule a demo” might work some places some of the time, but it won’t work everywhere all the time. Your offer should be relevant based on the target audience and where they are in their evaluation process. For example: don’t serve demo request ads to an entirely cold audience that would benefit from sponsored content on Facebook or LinkedIn, instead. 

4 demand gen campaign examples

1. Retarget high-intent audiences

• Strategy: Remarketing to anyone that bounced from your demo or pricing page to get them to sign up.
• Creative: Testimonials, Awards, Anything that shows you’re the sh*t.
• Ad Objective: Conversion / Lead Gen
• Ad Channel: LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Discovery, Display

Anyone who spends any amount of time on your demo or pricing page is most likely part of your highest-intent audience. You should be running with that all day, every day. 

If someone landed on one of those pages and didn’t convert, they either aren’t ready to give you their money or they don’t understand how your solution can help them. Retargeting them helps on both fronts. Here’s how. 

First, set up a custom audience on Facebook and/or LinkedIn that narrows in on visitors to either your demo or pricing page. 

LinkedIn:

Account Assets Matched Audiences Create Audience Website Enter URL paths

Facebook:

Audiences Create Audience Custom Audience Website People who visited specific pages Enter URL paths

Then, start a campaign to this custom audience with ad creatives that other people talking about how awesome you are.

Testimonials work great, especially if you can put a face to the name. Awards in a relevant category work great, too. 

Now’s not the time for discounts or desperation. 

2. Offer demo requests for high-intent audiences

• Strategy: Conversation Ads + Intent Audience + Incentive 
• Creative: Personalized convo ads offering a gift card.
• Ad Objective: Conversion / Lead Gen
• Ad Channel: LinkedIn

I might not be a math guy, but here’s a simple equation: Conversation Ads + Intent Audience + Gift Card = Ultimate combo of maximum interest.

You start with a high-intent audience—you can pull a list from Bombora based on broader browsing habits, or get a feed of visitors to your category’s G2 page. For example, in Metadata you can pull up: 

Then set up your Conversation Ads campaign to that specific list.

Convo Ad with an incentive:

Instead of making it broad, make it specific to them: Are you still looking at that software category? Can I help? Want a $50 Uber Eats gift card?

(I mean, work your copywriting magic, but you get the idea.) 

3. Convert trial users

• Strategy: Leverage product usage data to target accounts that are actively using their trial 
• Creative: Testimonials, Awards—ideally testimonials discussing how they upgraded their trial and benefits they’ve received.
• Ad Objective: Conversion / Lead Gen
• Ad Channel: LinkedIn/Facebook

If you’re already leveraging product usage data, you should easily be able to pull a list of users within specific accounts who are actively using their trial (for example, “Days since Last Activity < 30”). 

Instead of lumping these accounts in with the rest of your custom audience or target list for your next demand gen campaign, separate them out so you can serve a hyper-relevant and timely creative. 

This approach (along with email marketing drip sequences) is often reserved for re-engagement—but why not aim to convert some of your most engaged trial users?

4. Increase brand awareness via demand gen channels 

• Strategy: Promote helpful, specific-to-your-ICP content that doesn’t sell anything. Retarget viewers based on video completion with trial and demo offers.
• Creative: Educational, non-promotional content: an ICP-specific video, an industry report, an ungated deep dive guide, and so on. 
• Ad Objective: Video Views
• Ad Channel: LinkedIn/Facebook

Capturing existing demand via Google and Capterra works for the time being. But what happens when these more direct channels get more saturated and more expensive?

Why not think outside the box before then?

With this campaign, you’re more focused on capturing interest than leads—at least, initially. 

First, take time to create a truly helpful piece of relevant content. Let’s take a video, for example.

Serve it to a wider audience on Facebook and LinkedIn, and watch for the number of people (potential customers) who finish watching the entire video. Suddenly you have a much more qualified shortlist even after casting a wide net.

Look for engagement on that creative (native to the platform—you’re not looking for conversions just yet.)

From there, retarget that shorter list of qualified leads with a follow-up offer. 

ABM campaigns: dos and don’ts

Let’s get this out of the way: ABM isn’t just “air cover” for your sales team. You can (and should) get strategic with account-based campaigns.

Better yet: instead of treating ABM as entirely separate from demand gen, why not use it to both support demand gen efforts and experiment with more demand gen-esque tactics? 

Overall, you’re looking at awareness first, then engagement, then direct response. ABM can feed all three, even as it focuses on just a handful of key accounts. 

Dos for ABM campaigns

1. Lead with content marketing but set up strong intent scoring in the background.

Instead of aiming for a direct response right off the bat, take a slower approach and measure engagement along the way. 

2. Adjust your outreach along the way.

Measure engagement within the account, and reach out with the right message at the right time. If you start with display ads to drive awareness, add in Conversation Ads once penetration is high enough (go from “nurture status” to active prospecting). 

3. Experiment with channels.

Most people hear “ABM” and immediately think of direct mail or running display ads. They’re far from the only things that will help you move forward with your accounts. 

Don’ts for ABM campaigns

1. Run the same demand gen campaigns against a list of accounts.

If you’re not aiming to appeal to the entire account, you’re not doing ABM. You’re doing demand gen with a smaller list. 

2. Think you need an ABM platform to run ABM campaigns.

And I say that as a marketer selling what some consider an ABM platform. You can run account-based campaigns on your own, natively in LinkedIn and Facebook. See how it goes and if the approach even makes sense for your company. 

3. Run account-based marketing campaigns without coordinating with sales.

Consult your sales team both on who you’re targeting and the messaging and offer that you’re using. Coming off as uncoordinated will be off-putting for prospects. 

2 ABM campaign examples

1. Keep the recurring revenue train going by re-engaging customers

• Strategy: Pull a Salesforce report with company names, serve account-based ads ahead of renewal and expansion efforts. 
• Creative: Testimonials, Awards with company name mention
• Ad Objective: Awareness ahead of renewal
• Ad Channel: LinkedIn/Facebook

Let’s be honest: usually, demand gen couldn’t care less about existing customers. 

It’s not their fault. OKRs for demand gen typically double down on new acquisition, not renewals or expansion.

And, like most people, those in demand gen care about more than their numbers than the company numbers. 

But that doesn’t have to be the case. If ABM can run “air cover” for the sales funnel, why can’t ABM run “air cover” for customer success?

Here’s our take: allocate most of your campaign budget to Tier 1 customers, then a smaller fraction for Tier 2 and Tier 3 customers (with a wider audience). 

Pull the company names from Salesforce, fill out your custom audience based on seniority and department (see the screenshot below), then push live and automate updates from Salesforce down the line. 

Sales reps aren’t going to tag everyone in the buying committee, so you need a tool that can automatically bridge the gap between Salesforce and your advertising platform. 

2. Use intent data from G2 to populate new campaigns

• Strategy: Integrate G2 with your Facebook and LinkedIn campaigns to get a fresh audience for your demo request campaigns. 
• Creative: Demo request
• Ad Objective: Conversion/Leads
• Ad Channel: LinkedIn/Facebook

This one’s pretty cool, I’m not going to lie. 

If you’re a paying G2 customer, you can get a list of everyone who visits the category and comparison pages for your product. Better yet, with the API you can automatically throw them into campaigns, and update your audience on a daily basis. 

Here’s the ABM bit: instead of limiting the audience to direct visitors, you can expand it to include relevant buyers at the same target account. 

With a bit of fancy footwork, you can also suppress the cookie pool so that it excludes current customers and competitors. 

Example of building dynamic SFDC exclusion audience of customers in Metadata:

Just like your demand gen campaigns that rely on intent data, relying on G2 to feed your ABM campaign gives you the best possible audience to hit with a demo request. With this always-up-to-date and qualified audience, go for gold in your ad creatives. 

Bringing it all together with measurement

So you’ve launched the new demand gen and ABM campaigns you borrowed from this post. Now what? 

First, you need to make sure you’re measuring the right things to show your impact to your boss (and your boss’s boss). 

It all depends (as much as I hate typing that) on the objective of the campaign: consumption vs. conversion. Find the right balance between the two objectives, because you need both leading and lagging indicators.

For leading indicators, you can measure ad engagement, traffic and scroll depth. It’ll show you whether your audience is actually seeing and consuming your message. (And, yes, you can measure high-quality leads and MQLs too. Just don’t make them the end-all-be-all of your success metrics.)

I recommend keeping it simple for lagging indicators too. Measure things like demo requests, opportunities created and pipeline/revenue created. Don’t try to make the move overnight and jump directly to revenue. If you want to level up your measurement, you can measure things like average contract value, deal velocity and win rates.

Notice how we didn’t mention influenced revenue or account engagement?

100% intentional. Why? 

Because neither have a direct line to revenue.

And neither are things I would hang my hat on when showing our CEO or CFO. (Because they won’t care.)

That’s the high-level view of measurement.

The post 6 Demand Gen and ABM Campaigns You Can Steal to Level Up Your Marketing appeared first on metadata.io.

Now you have to face the more difficult question to answer: how do you measure account-based marketing success? 

Be careful when answering this one—in many ways, we’ve been brainwashed by traditional ABM vendors when it comes to measuring the success of ABM campaigns. 

They recommend measuring what their platforms were built to measure… not the metrics that matter to you, your boss, and your boss’s boss. 

How to measure ABM success

Traditional ABM programs and platforms will point to things like reach, engagement, and influenced pipeline as key performance indicators —three key metrics I would never hang my hat on.

Your reach doesn’t matter if you’re not reaching the right people, engagement doesn’t always result in pipeline, and influenced revenue is fuzzy math at best.

“Influenced revenue’ is a loose metric, defined differently by every ABM platform. 

The calculations tend to be generous, giving marketers way too much credit for the impact their marketing programs generate. Some platforms will give you “influenced” credit for a deal based on serving a single ad impression. 

But that’s not the worst part. 

What’s even more dangerous is that influenced revenue has the habit of getting marketers laser-focused on the easiest-to-measure channels instead of the highest-impact channels. 

And most sales teams want their marketing teams focused on sourcing new deals, not running tactics that just help them claim attribution on revenue that would inevitably close anyway. 

On this episode of By Marketers for Marketers, Jason Widup, VP of Marketing at metadata.io, and Mark Huber, Metadata’s Director of Growth, discuss how to successfully measure ABM.

Keep it simple

If you’re just testing the ABM waters, you’ll quickly realize Salesforce and marketing automation platforms weren’t originally set up for an account-based marketing approach.

They were set up to manage and track individual people as buyers.

A quick caveat with that in mind: rather than rebuilding your systems or buying other expensive tools to do this for you, just keep it simple with your measurement.

You can get away just fine by using many of the same metrics for both your ABM and demand gen campaigns.

You can use demand gen to:

• Target companies and prospects that still meet your Ideal Customer Profile
• Focus on educating the market on big macro changes
• Make sure you’re not leaving potential revenue on the table

You can use ABM to:

• Focus on the right accounts where you are most likely to win
• Provide much more personalized experiences for your buyers
• Improve your coordination across Sales and Marketing (if it’s done well)

Less is more, here. 

Marketers tend to overcomplicate measurement, getting caught in analysis paralysis instead of executing. 

Instead of spending a bunch of time setting up measurement systems to measure things that may or not matter, first determine what you want to measure (and why). Then obsess over the analysis.

Pro tip: include metrics your CEO and CFO will actually understand; e.g. those clearly tied to business outcomes. 

ABM metrics: Narrowing in on your leading and lagging indicators

We try to keep this simple approach when measuring our ABM efforts here at Metadata: in general, we keep our ABM metrics to five leading indicators and four or five lagging indicators (depending on how you look at it). 

Combined, these metrics give us everything we need to understand both how our ads are performing and their impact on revenue. 

Let’s walk through all nine of them.

Leading indicators

1. Ad engagement

First up: how your audience is (or isn’t) engaging with your ads, whether it’s a conversation ad on LinkedIn or a PPC ad on Google. 

Why? Because it all starts with the first impression. If your ad isn’t being served to the right person and list of accounts, everything else will suffer. If your copy or creative is lacking, you’ll see low engagement and subsequently lower conversions.

This is less of a vanity metric and more of an in-the-weeds question: are my ads good enough to meet our long-term goals, or should we revisit our approach?

To measure ad engagement, we recommend looking at both quantitative and qualitative metrics. 

• Quantitative ABM metrics for ad engagement: Click-through rate (CTR), cost per thousand (CPM), and cost per click (CPC). 
• Qualitative measures for ad engagement: Look at the feedback from comments on your ad, the titles of people interacting with the ad, and the logos of companies engaging with the campaign. (For LinkedIn Ads, you can view this on the platform; for other channels, you can use an identity resolution tool like Kickfire.) 

In general, you’re looking to keep your CTR as high as possible and your marketing costs (CPM and CPC) as low as possible, so you can reach as many individuals within your list of accounts as possible. 

2. Website traffic

Not every single ad campaign should be aimed at sending traffic to your website; that’s not how marketing works anymore. Many people will want to stay wherever they are (their inbox, LinkedIn, Facebook, and so on).

Website traffic is still an important leading indicator for assessing how effective your ads are at driving the right traffic to your site (i.e. are they likely to convert or are you wasting clicks)? 

Measuring website traffic is fairly straightforward, as long as you’re consistently using the same UTM parameters (so make sure to find a format and stick to it). 

On top of straight-up traffic, look for answers to questions like:

• Which campaigns and channels are driving traffic to your website?
• What are they doing once they get there?
• Are they leaving right away? Are they sticking around and checking out other pages?
• Are they new users vs. returning users?
• Is your campaign traffic trending in the right direction over time?

3. Scroll depth

Go deeper than website traffic metrics by looking at how engaged leads are once they land on your website. If people click on your ads and land on your site, you want to make sure they’re actually consuming your message and your content. 

Think about the last time you clicked on an ad out of curiosity, spent 5 seconds on the landing page, and then left. 

This is natural behavior, especially if you’re pulling folks from Facebook or LinkedIn. But you’re ideally looking for conversions that lead people to stay (qualified traffic, in other words). 

Instead of looking at bounce rate (which might lead you to sound the alarm too early), we recommend looking at how deep visitors are scrolling on your site. You can measure scroll depth in Google Analytics with some light set up in Google Tag Manager. (Check out this article to learn how to set this up.) 

I typically measure scroll depth in 25% increments (i.e. 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). 

Big picture, you’re trying to answer this question: after people click on your ad and arrive on your landing page, how much of the page are they consuming? If they’re only looking at 25% of your page (or even 50%), you’ll want to reassess how consistent your messaging is between your ad and your landing page. 

Looking at scroll depth as a leading indicator helps you avoid a bait and switch kind of situation and keep your messaging aligned. 

4. Leads / Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

We’re not here to argue whether or not MQLs are dead. Why? Because all that really matters is:

1. How well defined each metric is for your own company

2. Whether your sales team is on the same page with the definition, and

3. You know these aren’t the metrics you hang your hat on. 

(Full disclosure: We don’t care about leads or MQLs very much at Metadata, but that’s because of our ungated approach to content and where we’re at with measurement maturity. If you’re still gating your content, you’ll want to keep track of both metrics.) 

Read More: How Not to Lose Your Marketing Budget for 2021

We recommend looking at these ABM metrics at both the campaign and channel level. 

• For campaigns: Use Salesforce campaigns to keep track of how each campaign is doing. This tag stays with the Lead/Contact record and makes it easier for you to see which sales campaigns lead to more opportunities (and revenue) than others. 
• For channels: you can use Salesforce fields like Original Source and Original Source Detail, as well as Recent Source and Recent Source Detail. The point here is to avoid obsessing over attribution and instead look at which channels drive more Leads and MQLs. 

As you get this measurement set up, start asking questions like: 

• Which marketing campaigns and channels are driving the most Leads and MQLs? 
• What are the cost-per-Lead and cost-per-MQL? 
• Is this sustainable for your budget?
• Are you generating interest from the right people and companies? 
• How well does this compare to your ideal customer profile and target accounts? 

If you’re generating interest from the wrong people, it’s time to look at your targeting and your content to see what’s missing the mark. 

5. Demos and meetings booked

Exactly how you measure this will depend on whether you’re marketing software versus services; but, at the end of the day, your marketing needs to be generating high-intent leads. 

Demos and meetings booked are the best way to measure that interest. 

The key here is to make sure you’re generating interest from the right people—not just anyone, but the people in your ideal customer profile and target account list. 

For starters, you’ll want to determine how many demos and meetings booked you need each month and each quarter. 

At Metadata, we look at this on a weekly and monthly level as a gut check, but we don’t obsess over it—it’s just to make sure we’re on the right track. (It’s still a leading indicator, remember?)

You’re looking for a few things when you measure demos and meetings booked:

• Light forecast: If demos and meetings booked are down in the current quarter, it’s safe to assume that opportunities, pipeline, and revenue may be down in the next quarter. 
• Channel insights: Which channels are generating the most demos and meetings booked? Which channels are generating the best demos and meetings booked? Are they from paid channels or your website? 
• Marketing alignment with content and goals: How well do these demos and meetings booked convert to opportunities? Are you generating legit interest from people in your ICP and target account list? 

Lagging indicators

6. Marketing-sourced opportunities and marketing-sourced pipeline 

If you aren’t on the hook for generating qualified pipeline for your sales team, you’ve got a pretty cushy, low-pressure gig. 

The reality is, in order to meet your company’s revenue targets, you’ll need to make sure you’re generating enough qualified pipeline each month to stay on track. That’s where both marketing-sourced opportunities and pipeline metrics come in. 

Read More: How to Build a Demand Model Any CMO Would Respect

These are just two different ways to slice the same pie: marketing-sourced opportunities look at individual potential deals, while marketing-sourced pipeline looks at the entire lift across a month or quarter. 

To measure either, don’t obsess over attribution—there’s no such thing as perfect attribution. 

At Metadata, we use first-touch attribution to track marketing-sourced opportunities (and pipeline in general). 

We use Hubspot workflows to populate two fields (Lead Source and Lead Source Detail), each of which have both marketing-owned and sales-owned values. Just make sure you’re aligned with your sales team on your targets for each measurement period.

Questions you can answer with these lagging metrics:

• What percent of total new business pipeline is marketing contributing? How close is this to your target? (At Metadata, marketing is on the hook for 70% of new business pipeline contribution.)
• Which Marketing channels are generating more pipeline than others?
• What’s the average deal size from the Marketing-sourced opportunities? How does this compare to the average deal size from Sales-sourced opportunities?

7. Pipeline coverage

Pipeline coverage is just a fancy term that wants to answer a simple question: do we have enough pipeline?

It’s a ratio number: your total pipeline divided by your sales target (usually for each quarter). 

If your sales target is $10M and your total pipeline is $40M, your pipeline coverage ratio is 4x. You’ll have to use historical data to assess whether that’s enough pipeline for how well your opportunities turn to closed/won. 

If you’re looking at your pipeline coverage in the current quarter, you should only look at the total amount of open pipeline expected to close this quarter and your sales target for the same quarter (apples to apples and all that). 

The standard measure of success is 3x pipeline coverage, but you can move the target each quarter: how is your pipeline coverage quarter over quarter? Are you looking good for next quarter, or is it time to start freaking out?

Either way, get ahead of this so you know when you need all hands on deck to generate short-term pipeline. 

8. Marketing-sourced revenue

Marketing-source revenue might be “trendy” right now, but we’re not complaining: the best marketers are revenue-focused, and the best leaders hold their marketers accountable to revenue targets. 

The mechanics of tracking marketing-sourced revenue is similar to marketing-sourced pipeline: you can use the same fields to track the amount of net-new-business revenue marketing is generating each month, quarter, and year. 

Just remember: set your marketing-sourced revenue goals with your sales cycle length in mind.

You can answer key questions using this metric: 

• How many of your Marketing-sourced opportunities are converting to revenue?
• How is this trending over time?
• Are there specific segments where you’re consistently generating the most revenue?
• How close are you to your revenue targets? How is this trending over time?

9. Win rate 

Win rate might not quite be your North Star metric, but you 100% need to be tracking this.

Companies use win rate to determine which time periods, sales reps, and win/loss reasons produce the strongest likelihood that a prospect will become a potential customer for the business. 

In other words, it’s not just about quarter-over-quarter growth; it’s about improving over time. 

Calculating win rate is straightforward: it’s the number of closed/won deals divided by the total number of deals in the pipeline. 

Consider calculating win rate by month, quarter, and year to track progress over time. You should also specify which one is the “norm” so your entire org can follow along with the progress.

Looking at your win rate gives you the chance to draw qualitative conclusions from initially quantitative insights. You can answer questions like:

• How is your win rate trending over time? Why? 
• Are there specific segments where your win rate is noticeably higher? Or lower?
• When specific competitors are mentioned, are you consistently winning out (or losing out)?
• Where do you have the highest win rate? How does this compare to your ICP? 
• When you lose… why are you losing? Are there any closed/lost reasons that consistently crop up? 

Take your measurement one step further

If you want to level up your measurement, you can measure things like:

Average contract value (ACV) 

If you’re generating opportunities and the ACV remains much lower than your sales team, you’re not generating the right opportunities. Ideally, you want ACV to be as close as possible whether it’s marketing-sourced or sales-sourced. Tie it to the big picture instead of getting bogged down: we recommend looking at the ACV for any marketing-sourced opps by quarter and by year. This may differ from your customer lifetime value (CLTV).

Deal velocity 

If your marketing is working well, you should be generating deals that move (and close) fast. Be sure to factor in the baseline B2B sales cycle when beginning to view these trends. 

When your buyers come inbound as a result of your marketing, a lot of their questions and objections will have been addressed by the time they have their first meeting with your sales team. Track when lead activity takes place in your CRM; things like Demo Requested to Demo Scheduled and Demo Completed to Opportunity Created. 

Again, take the long view here: are your deals and sales velocity speeding up or slowing down over the course of the year? 

Qualitative feedback from the “dark funnel” 

If you’re only doing marketing that can be measured quantitatively, there’s a good chance you’re focused on the wrong tactics, channels or behaviors.

Buyers are researching and evaluating in places that companies can’t track directly:

• Communities
• Organic social
• Podcasts
• Review sites
• Word of mouth

Should I go on? 

But just because you can’t measure them with a tool doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in these channels and work on getting qualitative feedback from community members, social connections, customers, and more. 

Don’t forget to keep it simple 

Let me clarify: you don’t have to measure every single one of these metrics. 

In fact, you might be better served by narrowing in on a handful of both leading and lagging metrics to measure your ABM and demand gen marketing efforts through a simplified lens. 

At the end of the day, your goal as a B2B marketer is to provide pipeline lift and customer engagement. 

Which metrics will best reflect that in your situation? 

Start there. 

The post ABM Measurement: The 9 Most Important Metrics to Track appeared first on metadata.io.

If you’re a B2B marketer, you’ve probably heard of account-based marketing. When you focus your efforts on a small group of highly targeted accounts instead of going after a large, broad audience.

But as more marketers try to use this as some sort of silver bullet, one thing quickly becomes clear:

Not everyone needs to do account-based marketing.

In fact, it may not be the right fit for your business at all.

So below you’ll get a crash course in ABM. You’ll learn what it is, its benefits, its challenges, and if it’s right for your business.

And at the end, you’ll find a step-by-step guide to creating an effective ABM strategy that generates leads and boosts your organization’s long-term revenue potential.

What’s account-based marketing?

A lot of B2B marketers tend to focus on attracting lots of leads. You’re a fisherman standing on a boat, casting a wide net, hoping to pull in as many fish as possible. But pulling together a quality catch turns out to be much harder than it looks.

Some fish might show a little interest but swim away. Others may not be the type of fish you’re looking for at all. It’s like getting a lot of email sign-ups or newsletter requests but ending up with a smaller-than-expected sales haul.

Account-based marketing is more like using a spear. Forget about all the smaller fish milling around. Instead, you focus on the big tuna floating just out of reach. Getting those big fish to move closer means you need to figure out what makes them tick.

With ABM, if you can determine the right bait, the greater your chances of reeling in big accounts in your target audience and generating demand for your products and services. It’s why the ABM market is expected to grow to $1.6 billion by 2027.

The many benefits of account-based marketing

Combining sales and marketing resources improves efficiency and lets businesses take a more thoughtful approach to engagement. Customers have to believe they’re your top priority when they see your marketing efforts. 

An account-based marketing strategy can fuel your B2B marketing by creating a pipeline to facilitate ongoing collaboration between sales and marketing. Let’s jump into a few of the benefits of implementing an ABM strategy.

Brings people together to create a dream team

Usually, marketing teams go all out by placing ads and setting up content to attract a bunch of clients. Then they step back and let the sales team take over. ABM turns that around by focusing on a smaller list of target accounts.

Fostering collaboration from the get-go helps marketing generate more demand and allows sales teams to take a more personalized approach to lead outreach. Sales and marketing put the list together by deciding which potential customers fit their ideal customer profile (ICP). 

And you can’t forget about the executive suite and your technology stack. 

Bring in key decision-makers from those areas to give their opinion through each step of your marketing approach. Pick software that’s powerful enough to support every step of your ABM strategy — including supplying data to help narrow down your account choices.

Executive buy-in increases your ABM program’s chance of success. Use IT feedback to guide your purchasing decisions for ABM tools and software needed to support your efforts. Make sure to account for how that technology integrates with your current marketing technology (martech) stack — and helps you get the most out of it.

Provides detailed reports and analytics

Analytics are an essential part of your ABM efforts. Predictive real-time analytics help you figure out where to focus marketing activities. You can look at the information within your customer relationship management (CRM) platform to see who makes the most purchases, who engages the most with businesses, or who provides the most responses to email outreach.

Use that info to create reports that break down potential clients by details like:

• Job title
• Buying history
• Industry
• Location
• Company size
• Influencer potential

Don’t limit the analytical capabilities of your martech stack to pulling in customers. Look for signs that B2B customers may be unhappy and looking to jump ship. That way, you can step in to resolve issues leading to their restlessness before losing them to a competitor.

Use the same info to spot what new problems customers may be looking to solve. Target them with content pointing to solutions from your brand. You can also find existing customers who are prime retargeting candidates.

The more you’re willing to invest in quality analytics tools, the more you can get out of your CRM. Understanding buyer behavior is key to figuring out their intent and setting up more successful prospecting endeavors.

Sets up automation to scale team efforts

Automating your ABM helps you target the right buyers with personalized content. Getting them to engage lets you influence their final purchasing decision. Another benefit of automation is increasing the bandwidth among team members. Instead of getting bogged down in manual research, they can focus on moving customers through your sales channels.

Dealing with fewer accounts means sales reps can give more attention to each one. Each team member gets to decide which prospects need further nurturing and when to target those leads.

Automation helps marketing produce content at scale and track the sales generated through those efforts. You can also avoid burnout within your team — which happens a lot when manually developing email and campaign material. 

As a result, marketing can generate more leads while salespeople can form relationships with buyers and close more deals.

Reduces the sales cycle

ABM inverts the traditional sales funnel. Instead of fitting as many prospects as possible at the top, you want to bring in a smaller number of individual accounts. The metrics pulled from your ABM analytics tools help you spot where things are working well and where there might be issues.

If things progress nicely with specific prospects, your team can focus its efforts there. Aligning your account research gives sales teams the info they need to make targeted pitches for potential buyers. For example, if a prospect seems receptive to phone calls, the rep can figure out the best time to contact the buyer.

Can deliver a higher ROI 

Focusing on high-value accounts with your marketing programs helps maximize ROI and increase your chances of long-term ABM success. You’re no longer chasing multiple leads that go nowhere. Targeting fewer accounts lets salespeople put their attention on prospects capable of returning a higher lifetime value. 

As a result, you deal with less waste and fewer risks while boosting their bottom line.

Common ABM campaign challenges

While marketers gain a lot from pursuing ABM strategies, it does take a lot of commitment. 

You can’t approach it as a quick fix designed to generate more profits quickly. 

The longer you invest in ABM, the greater the returns. This means taking the time to conduct the research necessary to set up ICP profiles for your ideal accounts. 

Let’s break down some of the most common challenges that crop up when setting up ABM programs to help you get ahead of the game.

Creating unique and personalized content

Trying to come up with innovative and engaging content consistently can be a drain. It’s why automation is so crucial to ABM success. With the right automation tools, you can quickly locate new topics of interest, cutting down on the time you spend doing manual research for content marketing ideas.

Tracking and monitoring the correct metrics

Keeping up with metrics is another area where it pays to invest in the right technology. The more information your team has to sort through manually, the harder it is to keep up with your ABM strategies. 

Remember that not all metrics are created equal — some may not be relevant to your ABM goals at all. Instead, rely on your ABM technology to track essential metrics like:

• Target account reach
• Traffic generated by each account
• Speed of closing deals
• Account engagement
• Lead contract value

Juggling too many campaign tools

ABM is something you do, not something you buy. And you can absolutely do ABM without an “ABM platform.” 

You don’t always have to buy the fanciest software suites with all the bells and whistles to handle your marketing campaigns. That being said, you still need technologies to run ABM, but every company’s go-to-market strategy is unique and the technologies you use will vary.

So, look at what’s important in supporting your ABM needs, then use that criteria to understand what technology you need.

Overwhelming sales teams with too much data

There is such a thing as too much information. Keep your sales team from getting swamped in data by going back to your research. Eliminate unnecessary data points that don’t contribute to the metrics you value.

8 steps to create a legit ABM strategy

Getting buy-in from your decision-makers is key to setting up effective ABM campaigns. But once you get it, then you’ve got other things to think about: your available resources, making data available to all team members, and how to generate the highest ROI. 

Ready to start building your ABM strategy? Here are eight steps to help you create a solid program:

1. Build chemistry between your sales and marketing teams

As mentioned earlier, you can overcome a lot by setting up a foundation of collaboration from the start. Encourage all team members to offer their input on supporting the buyer journey and collect the most promising ideas. 

The more invested everyone feels in the process, the more likely they are to commit to seeing ABM strategies to fruition. It helps to have a strategic template available to help you outline key initiatives.

2. Perform thorough research to inform buyer personas

Use your ABM tools to filter through buyer data based on specific criteria. Categorize target accounts based on factors like industry and location. Focus on those companies most likely to engage with your inbound marketing efforts.

3. Develop account plans

After creating an account list based on ideal customer profiles, have marketing and sales go through each potential candidate and narrow the list down with questions like:

• Who are the key stakeholders and buying committee members?
• What kind of contact will attract the buyer’s attention?
• Which marketing channels do target accounts frequent?
• How can marketing and sales support each other through the buying process?

4. Use inbound marketing to attract potential customers

Take a look at your ICP profiles to determine what appeals to individual key accounts. Funnel the content through marketing channels most visited by your stakeholders. Then engage by sharing relevant content designed to address the potential buyer’s pain points. 

5. Loop in the buying committee

Setting up a relationship with buying committees can take a while. Take the opportunity to educate members about available products and services. Keep generating and sharing personalized content to show your industry expertise and continue building bonds of trust with key stakeholders.

6. Add a personal touch to your content

Keep up with what’s at the top of mind of your named accounts. Enhance your communications by referencing topics of interest, passing on info about upcoming events, and offering to set up one-on-one communications (phone calls, demos, video chat, etc.). 

Those one-on-ones are another touchpoint that give your reps the opportunity to provide a great customer experience. 

7. Launch your targeted campaign

When it’s ready, unleash the latest version of your ABM program. Keep refining your workflows until you find one that gives you consistent, effective results.

8. Track and monitor your performance for future campaign improvement

Use marketing automation to track essential metrics. Look for ways to refine your approach with specific accounts, including sending out direct mail or optimizing your website landing pages.

Improve your ABM approach with Metadata

ABM strategies combine your marketing efforts with your sales processes. From lead generation to nurturing and closing deals (and even retargeting), a solid ABM campaign can help your teams go after the right accounts — and waste less time in the process.

Metadata helps organizations streamline and optimize their ABM campaigns. Find out how your company can benefit by touring our platform.

The post A Complete Guide to Account-Based Marketing appeared first on metadata.io.

ABM is a proven way to connect with your target accounts in a personalized way. Most B2B companies should be doing ABM.

Yet IMHO, the pendulum has swung too far to an all account-based mentality at the expense of proven demand gen activities.

But before I delve into ABM’s overuse, I need to address an elephant in the room.

Is there an agreed-upon definition of ABM? You’ll get 10 different answers if you ask 10 different marketers.

This may sound cynical, but I blame software vendors for “ABM” being ill-defined. 

For the past 15-plus years, we’ve simply let ABM vendors define the ABM category. And guess how they defined it? Based on what their technologies could do.

It didn’t start with ABM as a strategy first, followed by defining the technology — it was the other way around. And they did such a good job at it that marketers and analysts alike just bought into it.

You can see this when you look at the inclusion criteria for a Forrester or Gartner report on ABM Platforms — it reads like a Demandbase features list. 

When “ABM platforms” showed up 10 years ago from Demandbase, Terminus, and others ABM was accepted as a “technology.” 

Not an approach or a strategy, but a quick-fix, silver bullet “tech platform.”

B2B companies went all-in on ABM without understanding if they had the sales-marketing alignment and budget to run ABM campaigns and actually make them work. 

Not surprisingly, ABM platforms never did fix B2B marketing.

Why? Because ABM is NOT A TECHNOLOGY. 

But more on that later. 

In this post, I’ll set the record straight on what ABM isn’t…and then define what it is and how you can integrate it into your marketing strategy.

To start, here’s what ABM isn’t….

ABM isn’t…B2B

In the real world, ABM is just one piece of a B2B marketing strategy. But it’s not the entire thing. You’ve heard things like “ABM is B2B” — it’s not. 

Intuitive marketers blend ABM with demand gen tactics such as direct response and performance marketing. They leverage a double-funnel approach, figuring out the right balance between ABM and demand gen.

This way, you’re not leaving any part of your market untouched — you leverage ABM programs for your top accounts and pair that with demand capture activities for 2nd-3rd tier accounts who are in-market.

B2B is all about balance.

ABM isn’t…for everyone 

Not every B2B company needs to leverage ABM as a strategy. 

For example, if your ASP is less than $50k/year — you may not need ABM (probably still a good idea, but you could grow with just demand capture). 

There are other reasons as well, for example:

1. Your business model is based on free trials and micro-transactions 

If you sell to individuals within a company and rely on free trials and monthly payments, you’ll be almost all demand capture. Most of your business is from 25 individuals doing $10 per month deals. You don’t need ABM.

2. You’re strapped for resources 

ABM is expensive. If you don’t have the budget and people yet for content creation, personalization, direct mail efforts, and proper communication with the sales team, you’ll put out shoddy, poorly coordinated ABM. 

No one can agree on what ABM actually means. It’s thrown out as a “quick fix” instead of doing the work to develop a real strategy. ABM personalization is usually the same as Hi {{first.name}} as personalization. It’s not personalization.

Megan Boone

Director of Demand Generation @ ThoughtSpot

ABM isn’t…running display ads

Display advertising has been the primary activation channel for ABM. But this is a flawed approach, for a few reasons:

1. Display ads broadly target a whole account 

When you’re spending ad dollars, you need to be sure they’re only getting in front of the relevant people within an organization. Display ads have limited ability to target specific job titles — they just blanket the entire company based on IP address and other factors. 

Why display to everyone at a company when ABM depends on targeting small, specific groups?

2. Display ads aren’t very performative

Display is historically good at driving website traffic, but most of these visitors are not qualified and your ads are not relevant to them. Is it the company’s office manager or the CMO? And then if they click, their engagement on your website is low. 

This is why it usually takes several additional retargeting touches before you get a conversion. At the same time, you can get close enough to a display-level cost-per-click in paid social, if your ads and offers are good enough — especially when you consider the fewer touches and higher engagement you get.

3. ABM platforms love display ads because they take a cut

Hmmmm, so why would ABM platforms push for display ads? 

Because they charge a percent of the ad spend. 

Meanwhile, their core metrics are impressions and engagement, which are misleading because revenue is never tracked. You’re basically stopping at “cost per impression” or maybe “cost per click”, which today’s B2B marketers understand is just not good enough.

ABM vendors have created this movement around account-based efforts. Period. In reality, shouldn’t we have been going after our target accounts all along? Riddle me that. ABM was a motion set in place by vendors, and proper execution unfortunately was never prioritized.

Kaylee Edmondson

Director of Demand Generation @ Chili Piper

ABM isn’t…a technology

Smart B2B marketers don’t depend on watered-down, all-in-one tech. They understand the gaps and strengths of their go-to-market approach and plug in point technologies.

For instance:

• You know your TAM is small, so you need a technology for targeting.
  
• You’re exploring new ad formats and messaging, so you need a tech platform for experimentation.
  
• You’re struggling to optimize to revenue so you need an analytics platform to improve closed loop feedback. 

Because ABM isn’t a technology, it also shouldn’t be a category line item in a budget. 

Spend on ABM should spread across supporting techs like those mentioned above. Additionally, companies should only spend money on technologies they need for a competitive advantage.
What ABM is…and where it fits into marketing plans

ABM is something you do, not something you buy. You can do ABM without an “ABM platform”. You still need technologies to run ABM, but every company’s GTM strategy is unique to them and the technologies will vary.

The resources you’ll need for ABM vs. demand generation will depend on your business model and customer base.

Here are two companies at opposite ends of the ABM spectrum.

Example 1: Loom 

Loom is a product-led growth company that provides video messaging, relies on small ($10) monthly payments from individual people in a company. 

Ninety percent of Loom’s marketing goes to demand gen tactics to get people to sign up for a free trial and then convert them when the trial ends. Loom may still have a few white whale enterprise accounts that require ABM drips. But that’ll likely be only 10% of its budget. 

Example 2: Zendrive 

Zendrive sells mapping/routing data and software to major mobile carriers. Zendrive’s TAM is small, but all the potential customers are huge companies with about five internal buyers to market to. 

Each Zendrive deal is roughly $5M. Therefore, ALL their activity is ABM because they’ll spend $75K in marketing to get one opportunity from one company. 

Those are two extreme cases. 

Most companies are in the middle where an ABM/demand gen hybrid is the right approach.

It takes experimentation and a deep understanding of your resources, product, and TAM to strike the right balance and do ABM. 

But you’ll come away with a versatile plan that merges ABM (account engagement) with demand gen (direct activation) to get your message in front of the right people and generate more revenue.

The post Redefining ABM: What It Isn’t and What It Needs to Be appeared first on metadata.io.

Mark Huber, Director of Growth at Metadata, discusses what it takes to knock your campaign targeting out of the park with B2B demand generation leaders.

Panelists include:

• Hana Jacover, Director of Demand Generation, MadKudu
• Maurice Maxwell, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, LaunchDarkly
• Sidney Waterfall, Senior Director of Demand Generation, Refine Labs

Tune in to learn tried-and-tested strategies to build paid social audiences, the right way to use intent data, and how to power up your demand generation with account-based marketing.

Three top takeaways:

Takeaway 1: Go beyond the ICP

Your ideal customer profile is a good place to start understanding your customer. But to get real insights into their pain points and how you can help them, you need to go further.

To know more about who you’re targeting, try these three things: look for data in your CRM, understand the product, and talk to different teams.

Sales and product teams can give you key insights into the language your customers use and the problems they’re looking to solve.

The number one way to understand your customers is to talk to them. That’s easier said than done for a lot of us. So if you can’t talk with them directly, try listening to sales calls. At all points throughout the funnel, sales calls are a high-value discovery tool. And they can help you get a 360 understanding of your customer’s wants and needs.

Takeaway 2: Target, test, then scale

Testing is a vital part of ensuring you’re scaling for the right audience. Start your tests with a very targeted audience. This is a great way to prove your core audience before taking it to the next level.

Once you’re confident with your audience, the next stage is to scale – slowly. Start with the parameters of your number one buyer and go from there. An example would be to start with geographies, then job titles, then factors dependent on the product and the problems it solves.

One way you can monitor your progress is to analyze demo conversions. If you’re getting the right titles coming in, for example, then you’re ready to start thinking about scaling your budget, audience size, and so on.

Takeaway 3: Approach intent data with an open mind

If you use it effectively, intent data can help you move fast. However, the real key to utilizing intent data is your mindset. Intent data on its own doesn’t prove that your leads are ready to buy. So think about how you can apply intent data to what you already know.

Leveraging intent data requires your data to be legitimate in the first place. If you have solutions that can get you this high-quality data and go on to pair it with factors such as proximity to revenue to see how people are engaging, that’s when it becomes powerful.

Keep in mind that intent data isn’t always suitable for creating better campaign audiences. While it can help you achieve amazing things, it’s a “nice to have” and not always a “must-have”.

BONUS!

Hana explains how to validate your audience before you test, and how the ‘validate, test, scale’ formula shaped Marketing Ops Confessions.

The post Creating Better Campaign Audiences appeared first on metadata.io.

Jason Widup, VP of Marketing at Metadata, explains why this tactic works for a range of demand generation campaigns and shares his entire playbook for running LinkedIn conversation ads.

Whether you’re a conversation ad novice or more experienced, this session will give you the confidence to experiment with how these could work for your future campaigns.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Key takeaways

Takeaway 1: Run LinkedIn conversation ad campaigns with one clear goal

Campaigns most suitable for a LinkedIn conversation ad include demo requests, content downloads, event registrations, and just raising brand awareness. The nature of these kinds of ads means that they’re often delivered cold, so success usually means keeping things simple.

Jason’s top tip is to have the ads delivered by someone your target market can relate to. Sending the ad from a person who has a similar job role to the recipient is a great way to make the message and the action you’re asking them to take more relevant.

Relevance is key to conversions for any campaign. Always try to make sure that the offer matters to the recipient by targeting your audience accordingly.

Takeaway 2: Choose your opening message wisely

Your first message is critically important. You only get 500 characters to share who you are, why the recipient should listen to you, any social proof, information about your offer, the offer itself, and any pleasantries and additional context. It’s a lot, so you have to be clever and make each character count.

Like traditional email, LinkedIn conversation ads also have a “preheader”, aka, the text you can see before you open the mail. Jason suggests paying close attention to these opening characters and experimenting with them to find out what will boost your open rate and even lead to higher conversions. But beware that the character count for this is different depending on if the recipient opens the message on desktop vs. mobile.

Takeaway 3: Jumpstart results by getting started quickly

LinkedIn conversation ad campaigns need testing to refine what works and what doesn’t, so don’t spend months building the perfect flow. Instead, just get started and then iterate.

If you’re using LinkedIn conversation ads for the first time, map out a few example flows and draft the copy first. Once you’ve worked out which ones you want to go with, polish up your copy and check you have the ability to follow up with the leads you may generate. Designing a brilliant ad campaign is one thing, but what happens next is just as (if not more) important. Ensure everything is in place to give your recipients the best experience before you launch.

BONUS!

Over the last year, we’ve put together a ton of resources on how you can make Linkedin Conversation Ads work for you and your business. Here’s a full list of our best stuff:

1. Your Incomplete—but Still Pretty Amazing—Guide To LinkedIn Conversation Ads
2. How I Generated 5X Return From One LinkedIn Conversation Ads Campaign
3. Why We Decided To Go All-in on LinkedIn’s Conversation Ads
4. How Metadata Customers Are Using Conversation Ads
5. How I Delivered 230% More Demos in a Month With 60% Less Budget

The post Running LinkedIn Conversation Ads That Generate Revenue appeared first on metadata.io.

Additional panelists for this episode include:
• Alex Mann, Director of Growth and Marketing at Capchase
• Blake Cohlan, Director of Growth Marketing at SupportLogic
• Brandee Sanders, VP of Marketing, Motive Retail

What is the definition of ABM and demand gen?

ABM and demand generation are two of the most common strategies that B2B organizations use to generate leads.

The problem is no one agrees on a standard definition of the two.

Most marketers define demand generation and ABM differently depending on how their company or software vendors define it. And that’s a big problem because it distorts the reality of what’s involved in demand generation and ABM.

The truth is, the definitions of demand generation and ABM are the same regardless of what technologies you use.

Think of demand gen and ABM as subsets of each other rather than two separate things. You can’t have one without the other.

Demand generation involves using paid ads, organic search, or other channels to reach your target audience. Once you’ve done this, ABM allows you to go after the most valuable accounts on your list. It helps you personalize your messaging.

And when done correctly, it leads to better alignment between sales and marketing and improved return on investment.

Are display ads for B2B worth it?

As a B2B marketer, you’ll need to continually experiment with different ABM channels to get the results you want.

Many software vendors recommend using display advertising for ABM, but it’s not a requirement.

The problem with display ads is that it can be challenging to prove their ROI. Yes, they can help you with brand awareness.

They can keep your brand top of mind. But if your goal is to increase conversions among your target accounts, you might be disappointed by the results you see when using display advertising.

ABM lists are typically smaller compared to broader audiences you would use for brand awareness display ads. As a result, an ABM display ad campaign will more often than not have lower click-to-conversion and higher-than-average costs.

Why bloated sales teams make ABM harder

ABM is especially challenging to implement in large companies. The larger the sales team, the more importance is placed on quantity over quality of leads.

This forces marketing teams to focus most of their effort on launching demand generation campaigns at the expense of ABM.

The difference between volume and quality is often the difference between demand generation and ABM. You can only generate a large volume of leads by using a one-to-many demand generation approach.

It’s not possible to do that with ABM, which requires you to focus on lead quality instead of quantity.

Prioritizing a large volume of leads means that marketing teams won’t always be able to put resources towards an ABM strategy. Similarly, focusing too much on ABM might create a situation where the sales team doesn’t have enough leads to hit their goals at the end of the quarter.

A compromise between sales and marketing is always required when developing an ABM program.

The post By Marketers, For Marketers Ep. 8: ABM vs. Demand Gen appeared first on metadata.io.

And don’t get me started on ABM platforms defining what ABM is based on their products’ capabilities.

The past few years, we’ve seen a shift toward favoring account-based activities in B2B marketing—and for good reason.

ABM offers the opportunity to connect (or reconnect) with your target accounts, scaling and personalizing as you go.

But some have swung the pendulum a bit too far, trading in proven demand generation activities for an all account-based, all-the-time mindset.

Marketers taking on ABM like a college kid buying up AMC stock may not realize:

1. How critical alignment and coordination between sales and marketing is. I know, I know, everybody talks about sales and marketing alignment. But there’s a reason: your ABM programs won’t amount to anything if you’re coming up with and executing them alone.
2. Their average deal size may not warrant an ABM approach. If the average deal size is less than $20k, it probably doesn’t make much sense for you to go all-in on ABM.
3. How expensive ABM can be. I’m talking content creation, program spend, direct mail…this all adds up really quickly. And many companies don’t realize what they need to get legit ABM programs off the ground.

I’m here to set the record straight: ABM is just one piece, not the end-all-be-all, of B2B marketing.

This is part 1 of our ABM/demand gen series. In this first article, I’m starting at the 30k foot level to look at why most companies should take a blended approach to ABM and demand gen. For most of the series, I’ll focus on the ground level: targeting, setting up campaigns and how to measure success. Finally, I’ll pull back out for some perspective on when ABM isn’t the right call.

30,000 feet: ABM and demand gen

What am I talking about, here?

Plenty of B2B marketers are going strong with proven demand gen tactics and focused ABM campaigns.

But some enthusiastic marketing teams have latched onto an account-based approach, leaving direct response and performance marketing behind as the pendulum swings.

Others have confused ‘demand gen’ with a shotgun approach to marketing, resulting in more leads that don’t ever convert to revenue.

I’m not here to sell ABM short—it’s an incredible way to engage with target accounts.

But here’s the thing: you don’t need to choose between ABM or demand generation (or anything else, really).

Plenty of marketers think you have to choose one or the other, as if demand gen and ABM are mutually exclusive.

But the best B2B marketers use both demand gen and ABM at the same time.

You can (and should) run targeted demand gen programs for your ideal customer profile, even if you have ABM in place, too.

This series will give you, the marketer, a framework to think through how ABM and demand generation fit together in your own company and specific strategies to get better at both.

Long story, short: ABM is one of several marketing tactics you need for a well-rounded B2B marketing program—and ABM platforms aren’t the cure all you might think they are.

If you haven’t dipped your toes in the ABM water yet, take a breath (no FOMO here). ABM isn’t for everyone.

If you’re in over your head with the account-based approach, let’s get you back to safer more innovative waters.

Running legit demand gen campaigns will help you hit your revenue numbers.

10,000 feet: Where marketing gets mixed up

I see marketing teams make many of the same mistakes as they grow the team, expand to new markets, and take on new tech to support growth and get the message out.

The most common pitfalls I see include:

• Thinking technology will solve a marketing problem. Adding an ABM platform to your stack doesn’t mean magically fix your messaging, just like downloading Calm won’t automatically increase your zen on a Tuesday morning.
• Swinging too far in either other direction. Some marketing teams are either all-in on demand gen or all-in on ABM. You gotta find the right balance for your company and target audience.
• Mixing up the intention of ABM and demand gen. Demand gen doesn’t mean take a shotgun approach with your bad marketing. ABM doesn’t mean forget about accounts that meet your ICP but didn’t make your target account list.
• Getting stuck using one-trick pony platforms. ABM platforms can help you set up effective, account-based campaigns, but they can’t scale other demand gen campaigns to fill the rest of your funnel with new prospects.

While I recommend a mix of both demand gen and ABM campaigns, most marketing teams will end up leaning one way or the other.

How do you know which to use, and when?

ABM gets me in front of my ideal customer. Why’s that so bad?

Short answer: it’s not.

Slightly longer answer: it’s not, but true ABM should focus solely on your top tier accounts and high value deals.

The smaller your deals, the more volume you need so your GTM strategy will rely more on demand gen tactics. They’re scalable and typically cheaper.

You can use demand gen to:

• Target companies and prospects that still meet your Ideal Customer Profile
• Focus on educating the market on big macro changes
• Make sure you’re not leaving good revenue on the table

Side note: once you start to build more awareness, you can start to run more direct-response campaigns.

Demand gen gets me lots of qualified leads. Why do I need ABM?

In a phrase, the larger and more complex your deals, the more your GTM strategy will rely on ABM.

You can use ABM to:

• Focus on the right accounts where you are most likely to win
• Provide much more personalized experiences for your buyers
• Improve your coordination across Sales and Marketing (IF it’s done well)

Side note: depending on where the account is in your funnel (open opp vs. no open opp) it may not make sense to run direct-response campaigns at all, and instead focus on a more personal touch with ABM.

Ground level: What to do now

I’ll be going deep in this series, but I can’t let you go without something a bit more tangible after all that naysaying.

How do you get started if you’re currently only doing demand gen or ABM?

So you’ve swung all the way to ABM. What now?

You can double down on the efficiency of your account-based campaigns and use the targeted account lists to run better demand gen campaigns down the line. 

• Review your target account list with your sales team. Ask some simple questions to make sure you’re prioritizing the right accounts. How did you come up with the list? Did everyone agree on the list? Which criteria did you use, and why? Is it all firmographic, or do you use technographic and intent data? 

• Review who you’re targeting within each account. Again, take stock of how you’re reaching (or not reaching) your tier 1 accounts. Are you only targeting the decision makers, or have you added contacts for the rest of the buying committee? Which channels are you targeting them on—and why those channels? 

• Turn your account list into a legit Ideal Customer Profile. What are the common attributes of your target accounts? Which job titles make up the buying committee at your target accounts? If your lists are laser-focused on the most promising opportunities, you’ll end up with much better targeting for your demand gen campaigns.

So you’re still all-in on demand gen. What now?

Starting an account-based marketing approach from scratch can seem more than a little overwhelming. But, as long as you don’t overcomplicate it, ABM can complement your demand gen campaigns and lead to bigger opportunities. 

• Don’t go “whole hog” right away, start small. Start by meeting with Sales, Product and Customer Success. Find consistencies across your best accounts so you can see where you have the strongest value prop, case studies and social proof. It can be as simple and small as 10 enterprise accounts, but whatever you do, don’t just pull a list of nice-to-have logos out of a hat.
• Figure out the right approach to get started. ABM isn’t just one thing—there are one-to-one tactics, one-to-few tactics, and one-to-many tactics. Depending on how many target accounts you’re including in your pilot and the internal resources you have (think people and budget), pick the approach that makes the most sense for you. The more personalized your ABM approach is, the bigger lift will be for your team. One-to-one personalized content for your target accounts sounds great in theory, until you see how unrealistic it is for a small team with limited budget.

Tl;dr — whether you’re all-in on ABM or still heads down in demand gen, you’ll likely get a lot of value by taking a blended ABM + demand gen approach. Just make sure you’re using the right tools, testing and collecting feedback, and iterating as you go.

The post There’s No ‘Or’ in Marketing: Why You Should Blend ABM and Demand Gen appeared first on metadata.io.

Most companies approach account-based marketing the way most sellers of ABM solutions write about it: they pick a small list of companies, tailor messaging specific to their profiles, and close revenue. In theory, it’s very logical. Personalized ads catch attention. Messaging specifically related to your business will always close more business than broad generalizations.

The problem most companies face, however, is where to begin that hyper-targeted messaging. Marketers oftentimes approach their sales team with a simple request to provide a list of companies they think would be a good fit. “A good fit” can be defined in many ways — firmographic, technographic, location-based, or they just have a lot of money to spend (think Fortune 500 list).

What happens next? Sales teams provide marketers with a list of their dream accounts, the white whales with infinite budget and sexy logos to boot. That’s all fine and dandy until it comes time to actually generate leads from this list. The problem we see with many customers and their ABM strategy is that it looks a lot like a child’s Christmas list turned disillusioned teen’s dating profile. They want to go out with the best looking, most out-of-their-league companies in the market without even asking if they’re single. Sometimes, no matter how good your pick-up line is, no matter how many roses you sent to their front doorstep, they might be dating someone else!

You may be saying to yourself, that’s not what I read on a blog of a company that sells ad personalization software! I wonder why.

The best account-based marketing strategy does include personalized outreach, but that is after a very wide net is cast and intent is understood. To assume Deloitte is interested in your startup because you managed to fit their name in a line of copy is delusional. But to generate eight leads from a smaller, more interested company, research those eight people, and send them personalized messages and sometimes even gifts makes far more sense. After all, “A guy don’t walk on the lot lest he wants to buy.” Stop trying to flag down cars on the freeway and start dealing with the people that have their hand raised.

CPMs, CPCs, CPLs — these are all scary acronyms that eat budgets like PacMan. Marketing could spend hundreds of dollars to ensure your ads target the biggest companies in the world. But do those companies really need your product? To me, it makes far more sense investing those top-of-funnel dollars on campaigns that allow you to at least sift through trends of interest. From there, your willing and able sales team can do what they do best — create highly targeted messaging to close business, otherwise known as account-based marketing.

The post The Top ABM Misconceptions appeared first on metadata.io.