Align with sales to powerfully engage customers

Truly relevant marketing requires a tighter connection to the customers and deeper
insight about their beliefs and buying behavior. But the idea of focusing on an individual
account necessitates a significant mind shift for marketers, away from formulaic,
automated processes to a more fluid and adaptive approach that integrates customer
learning in real time.

The ultimate goal in account-based marketing campaigns is to drive specific desired behavior in identified accounts. Some account-specific plays that support your company’s strategic imperatives might include:

• Increasing relevance and expanding your company’s footprint
• Engaging in specific selling strategies (e.g., selling higher in the organization, blocking competitors)
• Deepening relationships with legacy or acquired customers
• Winning back lost customers
• Building champion base and neutralizing detractors
• Increasing utilization of your products and driving up renewal rates
• Piloting new sales strategies (e.g. vertical selling, partnering, or selling a new offering)
  

Only a matter of time

Many marketers think they can’t afford account-based marketing because it’s so tailored. But as mass marketing quickly moves into more contextual marketing, the question is no longer, “How can I afford to do it?” but rather, “How can I afford not to do it?” The challenge lies in balancing between scalability and relevance.

Account-based marketing can provide the means to achieving a level of relevance with customers that has not been possible before, demonstrating commitment and understanding on your part to the customer. However, you need to be able to scale this degree of relevance across multiple key accounts to achieve economies and accelerate ROI. For instance, creating a strong library core of content, offers, and tools enables account teams to easily tailor touches for their clients, reduces duplication of efforts, and provides a flexible campaign framework for future expansion.

3 things you can do now

1. Get commitment from sales.
   

   As keepers of the account, sales buy-in, participation, and availability are must-haves to pilot an account-based campaign, and marketing teams must be tightly linked with them to truly reap the benefits.

2. Determine account screening criteria.
   

   Identify the set of criteria you will use to select and nominate accounts. Do you want to concentrate on accounts that are at-risk, or conversely, accounts that have big upside potential?

3. Set goals for learning.
   

   Develop a learning agenda to better focus and hone account-based campaigns. Identify skills and processes that need to be refined and set realistic expectations about how long it will take to close the gaps.

Moving to a more manageable scale

To leverage account-based campaigns across multiple accounts on a manageable scale, keep the following practices in mind:

• Select a set of accounts that is largely representative of the broader population for a true test.
• Look for clusters of accounts that share similar characteristics (e.g., verticals, company size, relationship dynamics).
• Focus on accounts where discrete, tactical support for clearly stated tangible account goals would be beneficial.
• Enlist support from Product Marketing to advise on matching solutions to account needs.
• Use a modular approach to marketing messaging and collateral that allows for cost-effective tailoring to individual accounts, including pitchbooks, PPTs, emails, and solution briefs.
• Maintain close contact with the account team throughout the program and give team members visibility to the status of touches to their customers at every step.
  

Integrate sales and marketing

Marketing needs to work closely with sales to design and deliver the campaign to ensure their buy-in. In order to leverage the collaboration between marketing and sales and remain relevant across accounts, there are several factors you should take into consideration.

• Engage in customer research early to improve relevance.
• Build out a campaign framework that takes into account variations by industry, type of account, solution, and globalization issues.
• Consider solution content when selecting form factor and contact strategy.
• Allow flexibility for multiple scenarios; develop a range of form factors that can be adjusted based on universe size, target title, and purpose.
• Weigh impact of relevance vs. leverage when setting goals for extensibility.
  

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