2 - General Best Practices for ABM

You know how certain foods are marketed as “part of a complete breakfast?” Full Circle ABM is a little like that — it’s part of a complete account-based marketing strategy. Before you dig into the ins and outs of the Full Circle ABM platform, let’s take a moment to review some best practices for ABM more generally.

Get Specific

Account-based marketing works by focusing your marketing efforts on a few key accounts that you think are likely to buy what you’re selling and benefit from it in the long term. So it follows that you’ll need a crystal clear picture of a good-fit account. That’s called your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and it often includes characteristics like:

• Company size
• Annual revenue
• Geographic location
• Likely job titles of key decision makers

That information is the baseline minimum that you’ll need. The more specific your ICP, the better you can target your marketing — and the more effective your ABM strategy is likely to be. It’s crucial for Marketing and Sales to collaborate to define the ICP, since both teams will be heavily involved in reeling in the target accounts.

Choose Target Accounts Wisely

Once your Marketing and Sales teams have aligned on an ICP, it’s time to sort through your market and cherry-pick some target accounts.

Depending on the size of your company and the scale of your ambitions, you may have a Target Account List (TAL) of anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand. If you’re a Demandbase user, you have a selection of pre-built account lists to choose from. If you’re not, never fear! This is another great opportunity for Marketing/Sales alignment. Assign a member (or members) from each team to collaborate on creating a list that works for your company. Ensure that they document:

• The steps they took to create the list
• The criteria they used to select accounts (this should be based on your ICP)
• Where the list “lives” and how it can be accessed
• Who can make changes to the list
• How frequently the list should be updated

The team members who own this list are accountable for keeping it up-to-date. They’re also responsible for letting the rest of the team know about changes to the list, or any processes or procedures related to it.

Leverage Intent Data

You’ve now identified your universe of target accounts. Congratulations! You can think of that as your wish list — and intent data is how you determine which of the accounts you want might also want you.

Intent providers (IPs) like Demandbase, 6sense, and Bombora use proprietary technology to collect data about online behavior that signals potential intent to purchase. Using an IP adds another layer of confidence when it comes to selecting and marketing to target accounts, so if you already use one, congratulations! Your ABM strategy will thank you. And if you don’t currently use an IP, no worries! Full Circle will still provide insights that boost your account-based marketing, and we can work with you if you add an IP later on.

Measure, Measure, Measure!

“Measure twice, cut once” may be an old saying, but it’s as relevant as ever when it comes to ABM. To improve your strategy in the future, you need good data from the past, and that’s where Full Circle ABM shines. Unlike other ABM platforms, we offer historical data reporting that empowers you to make smart, fully-informed decisions about how to optimize your approach.

Some key metrics to take into consideration may include:

• Activation rate: This tells you how engaged your target accounts are with your campaigns.
• Pipeline speed: Closing deals in half the time means you can double your earnings within the same timeframe, so it helps to know how fast those deals are moving through your pipeline — and if they’re faster or slower than they used to be.
• Volume trends: Are you bringing in more target accounts lately, or fewer?
• Progress toward pipeline and revenue goals: You know how many accounts you need to bring in to meet your revenue targets. This metric tells you how far you’ve come, and how far you still need to go.

The Full Circle Method for ABM leverages data from four dashboards to provide you with a holistic view of your ABM strategy’s success. By using the 60+ components available on your ABM dashboards, you’ll be able to answer questions, tell data-driven stories, and move your strategy forward with actionable insights.

Next Up

Learn some best practices for leveraging Full Circle ABM to the fullest!