How to Create an Account-Based Marketing Plan?

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy in which a supplier targets a select group of accounts with tailored marketing and sales support representing significantly higher expansion or growth opportunities. Below are the steps to be followed to develop an account-based marketing plan.

Formalize your account selection process.

Account-based marketing requires marketing and sales teams to strategically select accounts to target and nurture via personalized engagement and support. Marketing teams should create target company personas based on the high-value clients likely to convert or grow to formalize the account selection process.

Consider what business objectives and values these target accounts have in common and what major steps in their purchasing journey precede purchase. The more robust your target company personas, your marketing team can consistently identify high-quality target accounts. This data can be obtained from CRM software and directly from existing customers via surveys.

Collaborate with your sales and marketing teams.

The next step is to plan a pipeline strategy based on robust and data-backed target company personas. Marketers and sales reps must collaborate from the start to create a sophisticated, personalized campaign across multiple channels. Extending this collaborative effort throughout the sales process is suggested, maintaining a strategic marketing presence in digital media beyond the traditional sales team handoff.

Marketing and sales teams should collaborate to assess existing marketing and communication channels and identify those best suited for recurring personalized outreach, communication, and retargeting.

Marketing leaders should build a list of planned and executed engagement and nurture tactics over time, in collaboration with the sales team, and use the checklist to tweak their ongoing ABM strategy's outreach and engagement activities.

Strengthen your technology stack by utilizing third-party targeting tools.

Account-based marketing success requires the right software stack and technology investments. ABM software is designed to strengthen each critical step of an ABM strategy, from account selection to engagement and nurturing, with reporting and analysis capabilities to inform any necessary strategy adjustments as it evolves and matures.

There are two approaches to providing marketing and sales teams with the resources they need to run a successful ABM program. Adopt an end-to-end ABM platform that provides all necessary functions at each stage of the process, or build an ABM program on top of your existing stack, adding additional tools as needed to scale.

Teams looking to supplement their existing marketing technology with tools that address specific steps in the ABM process can find solutions specializing in capabilities like improving audience management, proprietary intent data, or even reporting and data modeling.

When deciding between a full end-to-end ABM service and additional tools to supplement existing marketing technologies, remember that there is rarely a single correct answer. The key to success is to work openly with key stakeholders to determine the approach that provides the best ROI.

Several experts recommend developing a short-term and long-term plan for your account-based marketing strategy. Consider which technology strategy (end-to-end or supplementary) your team will require to run a pilot ABM program and the resources needed to run your program at full scale.