Your ABM Strategy is Outdated

Account-based marketing ABM is a huge focus on many B2B brands today, but Mandy Thompson, Co-Founder, and CEO of Digital Reach Online Solutions says that your ABM strategy is likely outdated.

That’s what she shared in her Hot Takes Live session, and she said this realization came about after seeing several problems working with SMB, mid-marketing, and enterprise organizations across a number of different verticals.

The problems included the following:

• A lack of alignment between all revenue teams on ideal customer profiles (ICPs), program goals, and their definition of success
• Unclear handoffs, particularly in the shift from something becoming account-based marketing and when it becomes account-based sales (ABS)
• No strategy for account-based efforts to continue in sync with the sales team after the handoff and after the initial sale 

Alignment and full-cycle strategy are essential for ABM and AMX’s success. 

Tools aren’t going to fix an alignment, definition, and strategy problem.

That’s because alignment is layered—strategy isn’t enough on its own. You need a plan for execution, iteration, and ongoing improvement if you want to reach success. That being said, the right tools can help you track accounts throughout the funnel if everyone on the team is on the same page regarding how to use them. 

This needs to happen cross-departmentally, and everyone needs to be on the same page regarding how success is defined.

How many campaigns need to be created? How many ICPs does the marketing team want to target, and are marketing and sales prioritizing the same ICPs? Are the resources available that are needed to create the kind of campaigns and creatives that both parties are hoping to run? 

And this means, crucially, that ongoing effort, even after the sale, is what will win. You need to re-engage users even after the sale and keep them engaged, looping both marketing and sales back in after the initial sale. This is important to do on an account-based level in order to keep your momentum going. 

So in practice, what exactly does this mean?

Thompson argues that success with AMB marketing only happens when all three of the following things are true:

• All stakeholders are at the table—which means both marketing and sales—and resourcing is considered alongside the tech and time that’s needed to accomplish specific goals.
• Success, in stages, is defined and aligned.
• Ongoing iteration is accounted for by everyone involved. 

Want more? Join 48 of the top SaaS leaders on February 16th, 2023, as they dish out hot takes and surprising insights on product-led growth, RevOps, marketing, and sales. Save your seat now!