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Account Based Marketing – How Is It Different, and What Are The Best Tactics?

admin — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 17:07:58 +0000

Account Based Marketing (ABM) has been around since the 1990s, ever since marketers began to explore alternatives to mass marketing and focus on more customized campaigns targeted at a customer. Simply put, Account Based Marketing is a highly customized campaign where the sales, sales development, marketing and executive team work synergistically towards building engagement with a specific set of accounts or customers.

What Makes ABM Different From Outbound Sales?

Coordinated Efforts

Account Based Marketing is a multi-pronged campaign that uses the coordinated efforts of the account team, which usually comprises an account manager, sales development executive, marketing manager as well as an executive sponsor. Unlike outbound sales, which are handled solely by the sales executive or team using tactics such as phone calls, emails and social networks, in ABM, every member of the team has a specific role to play. The sales rep set ups and drives meetings with executive-level contacts. Marketing develops account-specific campaigns, and the executive sponsor helps in connecting with executives in the target company by sending personalized emails.

Focus on Customer Requirements

Rather than hard sell tactics, ABM shifts the focus on finding out what a customer needs and directing the campaign towards meeting that requirement. Account profiling plays an important role in Account Based Marketing. By researching and analyzing the target’s business initiatives and growth strategies, a customized campaign can be built around what is relevant to the customer.

Build and Nurture Relationships

Account Based Marketing is quite different from a hard sell technique where the relationship comes to an end once the sale concludes. Instead through building and nurturing contacts at various levels of the target account, the stage is set for an easier conversion whenever the opportunity arises.

What ABM Tactics Work Best?

Personalization is Key

With mass marketing, one campaign or strategy goes out to all customers or accounts. However, a single program might not be relevant to everyone. The success of an Account Based Marketing campaign is dependent on creating relevant offers or strategies. For instance, if the target company is looking at expanding markets, a personalized campaign focusing on that aspect is more likely to convert a customer. Similarly, a personalized landing page for an account, which has target specific content and images, can help to make an impression on the account users and win them over.

Get a Meeting

The purpose of a campaign is to get a meeting with the account’s executives or managers. Follow up the personalized offers with a request for a meeting where a free trial or assessment can be offered. This is aimed at making direct contact with a lead with whom a relationship can be slowly built up.

Use Online Advertisements for Retargeting

One of the best ways to retarget the users or employees of a particular account is to feature your company’s advertisements on the sites that they visit. You can use the services of B2B retargeting companies for doing this effectively.

Match the Right Sales Person to An Account

Moving away from geographical allocation of sales territories, ABM looks at identifying the sales person who is most suited to engaging with a particular account. Some of the factors to be considered include past sales history (for example, a sales person who has successfully sold to the account in the past) and existing contacts or relationships with the target account.

Connect Using Social Intelligence

With social networks, it is easy to keep track of a company’s activities and leverage useful information thus obtained to build a relationship. For example, an executive from your target account might post news about the company winning an award. Sending out a congratulatory message to him can help to build a relationship, which can be used in the future for connecting with him.

Build Peer Level Relationships

For making one-to-one connections, assign responsibilities to the ABM team for building relationships with their peers or people at the same level in the target account (CEO to CEO, executive to executive, etc.)

Collate a List of Contacts in the Target Account

Since connecting with the right contacts is important in Account Based Marketing, building a database of role based contacts can help in easily matching a sales rep with the right person in the target account. Don’t restrict your efforts to the sales and marketing team. Use social or professional networks such as LinkedIn to explore whether employees in other roles or departments are connected to contacts in the target account and use them to nurture the relationship. You can even purchase leads from a lead generation company by specifying the list of target companies, rather than purchasing the entire list. The cost per lead might work out more expensive, but it will produce more effective results.

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Merge and Auto Convert of leads into existing Accounts based on Rules : LeadPal

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2015 22:54:00 +0000

Leadpal in its latest release has an ability to auto convert of leads and define multiple rules to merge the converted lead into existing accounts.

For example:

If the lead has a personal email domain, like that of gmail, hotmail etc, then you would want the lead to checked against the dupe field of name of Account and the company name of Lead, and if its not a personal email domain then match the email domain in lead with the website domain in accounts. Earlier leadpal had an ability of matching with only 1 set of dupe match fields. Now you can have a set of 4 rules of dupe matching fields based on conditions.This feature is currently available only with auto convert of leads using batch process.

Another new feature introduced in the current version of leadpal is to have an additional criteria for lead conversion called contact match. If you are selecting contact match as an option of lead conversion criteria, then leadpal first checks all the leads to be converted for an contact match, if exists then it converts and merges it into the existing contact. Here the option triggering the conversion is if there is an existing contact then auto convert of leads is triggered.

In addition to these two features, we are working on improving and adding new exciting features in the coming releases.

Scan and capture of business cards into leads in salesforce.
Create a lead in salesforce from a linkedin profile in a chrome browser.
Rules engine for duplicate match for contacts.
Rules engine for triggering an auto convert of leads.
Lead Intelligence : Capture more information about the lead from Linkedin and not just the company as it is currently.

Keep checking this blog for new releases and updates. If you like to have any new additional features added into Leadpal, drop us an email at info@cm-focus.com.

You can take a free trial of leadpal here https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N3000000B5LuWEAV

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LeadPal for Lead Auto Conversion and intelligence now available on Marketo LaunchPoint

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 12:16:20 +0000

We are please to announce our release of LeadPal for Marketo LaunchPoint. You can access LeadPal on LaunchPoint by clicking here http://launchpoint.marketo.com/cm-focus/1818-leadpal-for-leads-managment/

The key LeadPal features include

Efficiently Use Linkedin by connecting with Lead using info at your finger tips
Grab Company Information to Lead. Our screen would display on the lead from Salesforce.com Employee size 10000+
Import Linkedin Connections as Leads
Publish to Linkedin Groups with single click
Auto convert leads that match a criteria into accounts and opportunities.
Rule based Autoconvert / Auto Conversion
Lead Conversion from mobile devices
Lead Conversion Screen customization to include Record Type Selection as well as adding Lead to existing opportunities
Mass Lead Conversion of up to 85 Leads into Accounts and opportunities with a Single Click or or using UI to specify Account/Opportunity names.
Setup Rules to match Leads to existing Accounts or contacts using an email match or account name match or a combination of rules
Display existing contacts and accounts related to lead so there is a continuity in the
conversation/interaction with the lead.
Do RoundRobin / Round Robin Lead assignment rules
Spam Blocking / Check for Web2Lead or Web 2 Lead Forms and Web2Case Forms with out adding data entry or Captcha

The post LeadPal for Lead Auto Conversion and intelligence now available on Marketo LaunchPoint appeared first on CM-Focus LLC - A Salesforce Training, Consulting and Product Development Company.

LeadPal : Salesforce Lead Communication Continuity