Why ABM? (+ case study)

Written by Adechina Odjo, Content Marketer @Trenches

Hey ,

Did you know that a new study conducted by the ABM Leadership Alliance and ITSMA found that 76% of marketers achieved a better return on investment with ABM than with any other marketing strategy? Don’t take it from us, check this yourself.

But before you dive headfirst into this highly effective strategy, it's essential to understand that ABM isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. While it can work wonders for some companies, it may not be the right fit for others.

That's why in this newsletter, I’ll share with you the secrets to ABM success and help you find out if it's a right fit for your type of business. Plus, I'll be giving you an inside look at a real-life case study of one of our recent ABM campaigns that generated $300k in revenue with a $6k budget.

Let’s get right into it.

“ABM is crucial for companies in the sense that if they put in consistent effort, it will be easy for them to have an evergreen funnel and sales opportunities.” Thomas Goubau, CEO at Q7Leader.

The importance of ABM for B2B companies lies in its scalability. You can start really small and build up to become something big. What’s more, you do not need expensive tech when you’re starting out, and ABM can help you keep your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) under control.

In fact, the point with ABM is not whether or not your ideal customer profile (ICP) will become a prospective client right away. Instead, it is all about getting your top prospects to engage with your brand and develop a relationship with them so when the time comes, they are more likely to have a conversation with you.

In one of our recent ABM campaigns, Andrei reached out to a select list of 30 qualified companies for one of our clients (a high-ticket B2B service provider).

The whole program was executed by Andrei, 1 SDR, and 1 junior marketer responsible for account research, with a total budget of $6k.

The client’s background 

A software development company without any clear niche focus or specialization. They used to generate most of their sales opportunities through recommendations and attending conferences/tradeshows.

Their challenges

• Their outbound campaigns have a poor response rate;

• Commodity vendor positioning;

• Lack of brand awareness and demand generation.

How did we help them?

Stage 1: ABM strategy 

We started with:

a) Market segmentation and prioritization to identify verticals where we have competitive advantages. This includes elements such as:

• domain knowledge;

• case studies;

• competition

b) In-depth interviews with key customers from selected verticals to understand their buying process: what triggers and influences it + tangible values they got from the collaboration.

c) Developing an ICP (ideal customer profile) and defining the buying committee structure with the sales team.

d) Defining tier segmentation criteria to put all the strategic accounts into different segments

Stage 2: Campaign orchestration

Due to limited resources, we only focused on tier 2 and tier 3 accounts.

Tier 2

US mid-sized healthcare tech companies (50-200 people) that need to quickly ramp up their team with a specific skillset on a timely basis.

The buying committee includes:

• The champion: product manager

• The decision-maker: CTO

• The influencer: CEO and/or HRs

We selected 30 accounts for the pilot campaign, which consisted of job role personalized pitches via direct mail and phone follow-ups.

Tier 3

U.S. healthcare startups with fewer than 40 people that need help developing specific functionality in compliance with U.S. medical standards such as HL7 and HIPAA.

The buying committee consists of the CTO (who is usually a co-founder), a product manager (an influencer), and a CEO.

As part of the pilot campaign, we used creative cold email outreach to re-engage with the 40 accounts we previously connected with.

Stage 3: Campaign execution

Every direct mail swag included a personalized gift and pitch. All the swags were delivered by FedEx (we use it because of urgency and credibility) and the next morning, the sales team would call all the accounts.

Email and LinkedIn were used to follow up with the contacts that the sales team couldn't reach.

Result?

This campaign had a whopping 37% reply rate (12 of 30 accounts replied) and a 20% success rate that generated $300k in revenue (pilot contracts).

See , ABM works. But take note - just because every company out there is doing ABM doesn't mean you should too. Before diving in, consider if your organization will actually benefit from the strategy.

Does account-based marketing really make sense for your business?

ABM might be the right strategy for you if:

• You are in the B2B industry;

• You have a high lifetime value (LTV);

• Your sales cycle is sophisticated and longer than the average (not a definitive must);

• You have a clear idea of your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

• You have a solid sales team — and you enjoy collaborating with them 😅

Account-based marketing is a significant investment — not just in time but also in resources. Make sure it's a good fit before you go all in.

When you decide that ABM is appropriate for your business, here are some channels you can leverage.

ABM CHANNELS

If you don't choose the right channels for your ABM campaigns (the channels where your prospective clients spend most of their time), chances are you'll be the best-kept secret ever and your target accounts will never hear of you and consequently, they’ll not buy from you.

In this section, we’ll show you one of the best ABM channels.

LINKEDIN

Many B2B companies find it hard to get good results from their LinkedIn ABM strategy because they’re doing it wrong.

Here's what they think it should be:

• Send 500-1000 spammy inmails - get 1-5 meetings booked.

• Display ads routing to a landing page - get 1 demo request.

They create a huge list of accounts only based on firmographic data (descriptive attributes that are used to segment target accounts: the niche, the size, the structure and status, the number of customers, the geographic location, and the likes.)

Then they start warming up those accounts with gated content (ebooks, whitepapers, templates, webinars, checklists, etc.) with the aim of getting additional information that will be passed to the sales team.

But let’s face it. Most of the time, these contacts have no buying intent.

If somebody downloads an ebook or signs up for a webinar about a given topic, the only thing it says is that they’re interested in learning more about that specific topic. Not that they are ready to buy.

• How to do ABM on LinkedIn instead?

The easiest way to deliver tremendous results from your LinkedIn ABM strategy is to apply the 20/80 framework. If you are in a “Less traffic, More qualified prospects” type of scheme, you should consider spending 80% of your time on 20% of the activities that generate 80% of results.

Here are those:

1. Thought leadership: sharing content that demonstrates that you are an expert in a given domain, field, or topic is the surefire way to:

• Generate demand for your product.

• Prove niche expertise.

• Position yourself as a trusted advisor.

• Nurture target accounts.

2. Thoughtful commenting on other niche experts’ posts. This will definitely help you:

• Create awareness & attract attention.

• Show your expertise.

• Repurpose comments into posts.

3. Ads promoting your best content

Why?

- Generate demand.

- Generate inbound opportunities.

According to Thorstein Nordby from our B2B marketing community, you can use company match to create an audience for your ads on LinkedIn, then make a lookalike on that traffic for Facebook/Instagram or remarketing campaigns for Youtube to reduce ad costs.

4. Engaging with a network of target accounts (Linkedin ecosystem): this is crucial in the sense that it will help you:

• Appear regularly in the newsfeed of your target accounts.

• Build a strong brand & a solid relationship with your target audience.

• Generate and capture demand.

• Educate & nurture your target market

5. Personalized connection requests: this is the best way to:

• Boost your acceptance rate

• Make a good first impression and build strong relationships

6. Non-sales touches:

Why:

• Maintain your audience's attention & nurture them

• Capture demand.

7. Engagement-based outreach: this will help you:

• Increase your response rate.

• Land opportunities to get customer insights and see if there is a fit.

• Build strong relationships.

• Capture demand and generate sales opportunities.

UPCOMING COMMUNITY EVENTS

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE THE PRELIMINARY RESULTS WE'VE GATHERED ON THE STATE OF FULL FUNNEL RESEARCH.

Over the last 2 weeks, we’ve collected insights from 150+ B2B tech companies about:

• The role of marketing in their companies;

• Their challenges;

• What takes up most of their budget;

• What operations they are focusing on

Today Andrei and Vlad will share the learnings on a live webinar.

BEST SHARES FROM THE TRENCHES COMMUNITY

• How we turned our worst-performing campaign into our best (Read here)

• 7 learnings about building a successful ABM motion (coming from Day 1 of Full-Funnel Summit) (Read here)

QUESTIONS FROM FELLOW TRENCHERS

Dear , your help is needed. If you can answer any of the questions below, please click on the link and share your ideas.

• Hi all - any recommendations on tools/processes to get insight into where/how various levels and functions spend their time?

• Has anyone here had experience with executing a B2B Affiliate strategy? Would love to chat - we're looking into it!

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See you in Trenches 😉

Adechina ODJO