One of the fastest-growing services we offer is support for account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns. It’s also a service that generates a huge number of questions as clients grapple with the different approaches that could be used to target marketing activities to specific accounts. As we often discuss which tactics would be the best with our clients, we thought it would be fun to create an automatic tool that enabled anyone to get at least some of our ABM expertise.
The Napier ABM advisor is our attempt to codify our knowledge of what ABM tactics work best in different situations. All you need to do is complete a form that asks simple questions about your target customers and personas, as well as whether you already have contacts in your database. It then implements a set of AI rules we developed from the responses given by our ABM experts to recommend the best approach for your particular situation. As important as recommending the best tactics, the system will also identify if the campaign you want to run would be effective as an ABM campaign and will highlight any set of criteria that means ABM isn’t the best way to achieve your objectives. For more information about the logic behind the tool, check out the page explaining how the ABM Advisor works.
Recommended Tactics
At launch, the ABM advisor considers eight different tactics, although we anticipate increasing the number of tactics as we further develop the tool. The tactics are:
LinkedIn: this is one of the most commonly-used platforms for ABM as you can target people by work-related demographics. Our tool understands if you have a good idea of the demographics (e.g. job title) so that you can use LinkedIn effectively and if the number of people you are targeting means that LinkedIn would be cost-effective.
Email campaigns: if you have the contact data for the target audience in your database, you should use it! For small target audiences, it’s often best to use the CRM and target the high-value contacts directly with personal messages, whereas marketing automation systems can be extremely effective when there is a larger audience to target. Although this is one of the most cost-effective and powerful approaches to ABM, it’s frequently the case that companies want to run an ABM account because they don’t have great data on these organisations, so email might not be possible.
CRM retargeting: this is a great tactic when you have a large number of email addresses in your database. Although not as effective as email, it lets you target advertising by email address, allowing very low CPM and CPC values for highly targeted adverts. It can also be used on some social media platforms. CRM retargeting usually has a low match, so is often used in conjunction with other tactics.
Landing pages and nurturing: if you are trying to grow your database then you need a means of capturing contact information. Marketing automation tools enable the creation of landing pages for capture, as well as email sequences to nurture the contact until they show an indication that they should be elevated to lead status. Although it’s possible to use landing pages with inbound campaigns, typically this tactic would be coupled with an outbound marketing campaign to drive the target audience to the landing page.
Programmatic ABM platforms: although LinkedIn and Google ads are programmatic, they don’t offer the same features as dedicated ABM platforms. These systems are designed to enable targeting of companies through techniques such as identifying IP addresses associated with the company, and can be extremely effective when you have a large audience to reach. Napier works with a number of ABM platforms and has a partnership deal with N.Rich.
Website customization: an important part of ABM is ensuring that the companies you want to target receive personalised information throughout their journey. Personalising content on your website is a very effective way to increase the velocity of your ABM contacts through the funnel to generate opportunities sooner. Typically website customisation is implemented by marketing automation systems, but there are also dedicated tools that offer this capability.
Postal mailings: yes, the old tactics still work really well! When you have a small or moderate number of contacts to reach, there is nothing as effective as sending a great mailing through the post. If you’re not convinced, then ask us about the time we won a client by sending them a pebble!
Sales and CRM systems: although we primarily work with marketing teams, sometimes it’s more effective to run sales campaigns. This is particularly true for ABM campaigns where you have a small number of high-value targets. The sales outreach is almost always better when coupled with other tactics that begin to engage your target audience before the sales team picks up the phone.
Send us Your ABM Advisor Feedback!
As we’ve only just launched the tool, we are confident that there is room for improvement. We’d love to hear your feedback on whether it is making the right recommendations. Please email Mike to let him know your thoughts and any suggestions you might have to improve or enhance our ABM Advisor.