Account-Based Marketing Anti-Failure

I help my advertising and marketing agency clients build effective ABM – Account-Based Marketing programs. I’ve seen some failures over the years and want to share my thoughts on failure over the next few newsletters. Here is a quick list:

You cannot build your best prospect list because you haven’t accessed the right information and data. As a result, your target list is too broad and undefined.

You do not personalize your outreach content.

Your marketing and sales teams are not aligned.

You do not give your ABM programs the time to become effective. This isn’t usually an overnight/one-time hit tactic. As in, your sales cycles might be too short for pure ABM, and worse you are way too impatient.

You do not have an efficient, smart, hard-to-resist thought leadership program. Plus, you might not be sending unignorable content out into the world. Be not boring.

You haven’t allocated the right budget for your Account-Based Marketing efforts. There are staff, design, and marketing costs. Plan well.

ABM works if you have a solid plan. Full stop.

What Is Account Based Marketing?

I will start with a quick story. One of my advertising agency clients, an ex-Microsoft marketer, is based in Dubai. When we started working together a few years ago he asked me about my thinking on the best practices for using account based marketing. He had just discovered it. I have been coaching agencies on how to run account based marketing programs for years and asked him for his definition of what he had in mind. He essentially described B2B direct marketing wrapped in new lingo. I laughed.

Yes, there is account based marketing (ABM) — but it is just the current marketing universe’s definition (think hype) of direct marketing which sounds a bit too old-fashioned. Kinda like a typewriter or Rolodex. Like the typewriter which turned into your laptop or the Rolodex which is now your contact database, B2B direct marketing is now called ABM.

I am going to be writing about best practices for account based marketing over the next few blog posts. I am also being interviewed on the subject for a marketing podcast. I’ll be discussing how to define ABM – as in answering the questions… “what is ABM? And how can a busy agency can design and run a kick-ass program.”