Transcripts
1. ABM Promo Skillshare: Be the holy grail of marketing? Imagine taking 100 leads
and making more money than your competitors with 1,000
or even 10,000 leads. That's really the power of
account based marketing. Instead of going for volume
and volume and volume, ABM is about optimizing for businesses who fit
your ICP exactly. And the best part, it works. Companies who
actually understand ABM grow their pipeline by 78%. They increase revenue by 74%, and the size of their
deals grows by 70%. That sounds like
the holy grail of marketing to my name
is Adam Taylor, and mastering B to B
marketing is how I went from a Brooke college student to running a six
figure business. When I discovered ABM, I'd realized that I've
been wasting my time with generic cold emails or
other outbound strategies. So I partnered with an
industry expert to bring you the most comprehensive
ABM course possible. Let me show you.
We'll start with the fundamentals of B
to B marketing and ABM. Things like defining your
ideal customer profile or ICP, building a high value
target account list or TAL and aligning your
marketing sales and customer success
teams to work as. Next, we'll cover
personalized outreach. How to engage the
right stakeholders at the right times using
proven ABM playbooks. Whether it's one to one,
one to few or one to many, you'll learn how
to craft messages that actually get responses. Then we'll explore
campaign execution, using platforms like
LinkedIn ads and AI tools to target
decision makers directly. Plus, I'll show you how to track buying signals and
automate follow ups, so your pipeline
practically moves itself. We'll dive into metrics
and optimization, teaching you how to
measure pipeline velocity, conversion rates and deal sizes, so you can prove the ROI
of your ABM efforts. That and so much more. You'll get hours of high
production video lessons, downloadable resources, and real world case studies
from companies that have used ABM to break into
their dream accounts. And if you have any questions, my team and I are available
on the Q&A section 247. Traditional B to B
marketing is broken, and it'll only get you so far. And I'm speaking
from experience. AM is how the best companies
build relationships, close bigger deals, and
drive predictable growth. It's time for you
to do the same. So take action and join
this course right now.
2. Why ABM Is a B2B Cheat Code: Welcome to the account
based marketing boot camp. In this boot camp, you'll learn about the current state of ABM, ways to get started, how to identify
the right signals, and how to structure
your first program. This, along with some practical
playbooks and worksheets, so you can put your knowledge
to test immediately. Chances are, if you've
bought this course, you've already heard about
the term ABM floating around. Maybe it came up on LinkedIn, on a webinar or maybe in
a team meeting of yours. Or perhaps your manager
just grabbed you and said, Hey, let's start doing ABM. And then he suggested
you leverage AI to handle all
these new tasks. And let's be honest,
that's overwhelming. So you may have started
researching ABM, but then the deeper you go, the more you find
yourself just confused by all these jumbles
of tactics and words. So you already
feel behind and it feels almost impossible
to get up to speed. Alright, well, I'm here to
make it super straightforward. You might already know that ABM flips the traditional
marketing script. Instead of casting a wide net, we focus on quality
instead of quantity. But what does that
actually mean? In short, it means building meaningful targeted
relationships with specific high value accounts. Moving from a one size fits all buffet to a Michelin
star dining experience, something made to order. From first touch to
onboarding to expansion, your most important accounts
get a unified message and understand the value of the partnership from every
single step of the way. We frame it like that,
some people will say, Isn't this just good
B to B marketing? To which I say,
Yeah, yeah, it is. But what ABM layers on top of
a good experience is focus. It's about intentionality
with how we communicate to a target account and the value that we want them to understand. That's often why ABM is so incredibly difficult
because this level of intentionality must be driven by a human touch plus
data driven insights. And when we look at the
principles of ABM, it works. The challenge is, for a lot
of marketers and salespeople, it isn't working
for them just yet. And when you look for
resources on how to functionally go and execute ABM, there isn't a lot out there on how to start
from ground zero. And the truth is that so many
teams get bogged down in this implementation phase that they never actually get started. By the end of this
lesson, you'll not only understand what ABM is, but how it works and
how you can get started because this is a game changer
for so many companies, and it's why you
see these companies raving about it on LinkedIn. So now, let's dive in. Let's talk about why
ABM is so powerful. Traditional marketing
is all about volume. More clicks, more leads,
more impressions. But in B to B,
here's the reality. Companies don't buy things. People within those
companies do. People want to feel understood
on a personal level, or else, they're definitely
going to ignore you. ABM is about meeting the
right people where they are and with tailored messages that speak directly to their needs. When done right, it
delivers results. We're talking about 78%
faster pipeline growth, 74% higher revenue growth, and a 70% increase in deal size. And these aren't just numbers. They're proof that focusing on quality over quantity pays off. Imagine this. You're
a salesperson trying to reach a Fortune
500 tech company. You send emails with
a basic dataset, make calls, and even attend
some industry events. But Nothing sticks. Now picture this instead. Instead of guessing,
you work with marketing to find out
that this company is facing cybersecurity
challenges related to the Cloud and a distributed
remote workforce. You then send their IT director a personalized guide on how
to secure remote teams. Your CEO hosts a webinar where they talk about solving
this exact issue. And suddenly, the deal
isn't just in play. It's closing faster
than you expected because your whole team
is aligned behind you, working together to
communicate your value. That's the magic of ABM. Not about churning out more generic content to
reach more people. It's about reaching
the right people with the right messages
at the right time. So before we do anything else, let's ensure that you and I are on the same
page about what ABM is and isn't isn't
just fancy targeting, and it's not about plugging
a list of companies into Linkedn ads and then
just calling it a day. ABM is a strategy, a B to B revenue
strategy to be exact. About aligning
marketing, sales and customer service around
some shared goals. It's about intentionality at every stage of the
buyer journey. And that intentionality
is what makes it work. So let's talk about a common
pitfall when people try to adopt ABM for the first
time misalignment. In traditional marketing,
marketing's job is to generate leads that they then throw over the fence
to sales, right? Then Sales works these leads to try to close as many
as humanly possible. Then these customers
get passed over to customer success where they can keep as many of them
as happy as possible. With the shift to ABM, there's an intentionality of who we choose to engage
with to begin with. We know the accounts
that we have the highest profit
opportunities to work with. It's not just about
who we can close, but who are the best people to work with within
those accounts. And if those accounts
are going to be good long term customers. Making this change
generally results in an initial season
where you're going to have lower overall
pipeline volume, which I admit is scary. So when the pipeline volume
decreases and sales in leadership aren't
fully bought into this idea, then
there's misalignment. In order for ABM programs
to run successfully, both marketing and sales
need to be on the same page. And they also need
realistic expectations about what the program can deliver in a certain time frame, because without this,
you're destined to fail. Confused yet, let me break
it down into three pillars. Number one is targeting. Here, we're identifying
high value accounts that align with your
business' objectives. Number two is personalization. This is where the magic happens. Creating tailored
experiences that resonate. Now, number three is alignment. All customer teams need to sing the same song from marketing to sales
to customer success. So first, we're identifying
high value accounts. Then we're creating bespoke experiences for those accounts. Finally, we're
synchronizing marketing, sales and customer success
to deliver results. When these pillars
all work together, ABM is a powerful
engine for growth. So to wrap up, ABM isn't
just a campaign tactic, nor is it just a strategy. It's an organizational
shift in mindset, and it often requires a holistic change in the
management approach. In short, ABM might
actually be about organizational change first
before anything else. It's about knowing
your audience, tailoring your approach, and
aligning your teammates. So here's your homework.
Or starting point. Think about your business'
biggest accounts today and be honest
with yourself. Are you treating them
like just another lead in your pipeline among tens,
hundreds of thousands? Or are you working together with your colleagues to actually engage them with the attention that they deserve and expect? And the next lesson, we'll
build on this foundation by defining your ideal
customer profile or ICP. And we'll talk about creating a target account list that's tightly aligned
with your goals.
3. Build Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) & Target Accounts List (TAL): If you watch the
first lesson already, then it means you're
already familiar with what ABM is and what it isn't. So hopefully you're feeling
a little bit less confused and you're ready to jump into the next step of the process. And that's defining your ICP. This is one of the
most critical steps in creating a successful
ABM programming, defining your ideal
customer profile, your ICP, and creating a TAL. In other words, your
target account list. But first, let's
paint a picture. Imagine you're
throwing a big event, a Gala celebration or
even a friendsgiving. You wouldn't just leave the
guest list up to chance, no? As a host, it's your job to figure out who's going
to fit the vibe, who's going to add value
to the experience, and perhaps who's going to appreciate your
efforts the most. And that's what building an ICP and a target account
list is all about. It's about intentionality
and alignment. Hey, I totally understand. All this might sound
like a fancy way of saying, Let's make a list. But listen, if you
don't nail this step, everything else in ABM
becomes infinitely harder. So don't just put
this lesson aside. So walk through this with
me so you can create your own ICP and TAL. So you set your business goals up for success instead of panic. Alright. First, let's
start with the basics, and that's your ideal
customer profile. Here, if you're picturing buyer personas, then
throw that out. ICP is not a description
of your target buyer. It's not security
engineer Sally who loves yoga and artisanal
poor over coffee. Your ICP is a data
driven representation of your ideal account. The type of company that gets the most value from
your solution, in turn, provides you and your business the most value.
Think of it like this. Your ICP is the compass that
guides your ABM efforts. Without it, you're wandering
off lost in the dark. Here's what makes
your ICP useful. It's based on patterns. Patterns in your best customers, patterns in your most
successful deals, patterns in your deals
that close the fastest, and even patterns in your
biggest missed opportunities. Recognizing these patterns is the connective tissue between hard data and
subjective strategy. Let me tell you a quick story. A SAS company I worked with was struggling
to close deals. They were pouring money
into lead generation. They were buying lists, but months later, the
leads weren't converting. Does this sound familiar? Well, we took a step back and we looked at their
existing customers. And what we found was
actually fascinating. They were actually
in a completely different sector
that they hadn't even considered targeting
explicitly yet. Fintech. Customers had higher deal sizes, shorter sales cycles, and a greater need for the
company's solution. Once we identified that pattern, we then refined their
ICP and adjusted their ABM strategy to
target FinTech accounts. The result, it was a 50% increase in pipeline
within three months. This is the power of your ICP. It allows you to
focus your energy more efficiently on the
accounts that matter. So how do you build an
ICP for the first time? It starts with asking
the right questions and then using data
to find answers. Let's take a look. So there's six things that you're
going to want to consider. Number one is industry. So what industries do your
best customers belong to? Number two is company size. Are they startups, mid
market or enterprise level? Number three, location. Do you see better results with local accounts or global ones? Number four, is challenges. What problems do they face
that your solution addresses? Number five is TexStaC. What tools are they already using and how do you integrate? Number six is buying process. Who's involved in
the decision making, and what are their priorities? So, for every account, you're going to need to
consider industry, company size,
location, challenges, their textck and buying process. And these aren't
just boxes to check. What they are are clues
to uncover patterns. Each answer helps you understand where you can focus
your efforts. And here's a key tip. Don't rely solely on assumptions made by
your marketing team. Validate your ICP with real CRM data and insights
from everyone on your team, especially those from your sales and customer support teams, because those guys are
out in the trenches and they know which ones
are most likely to close. Okay. Now that we've
nailed our ICP, let's now talk about our
target account list or TAL. This is where your ICP goes
from theory to action. Think of your TAL as
your ABM guest list. What it is is a
curated selection of specific accounts that meet your ICP criteria and are primed for engagement.
But here's the thing. Your TAL isn't just a
static database dump. Instead, it's a living
breathing document that evolves with your business. It can and should
change over time. So start small. A lot of teams make the
mistake of trying to target hundreds if not thousands of accounts
right out of the gate. Do not, and I repeat, do not fall into this trap. Instead, focus on
a tight list of 50 to 100 high value accounts that fit your ICP like a glove. Quality trumps quantity
every single time. And starting small will focus your limited resources
accordingly, too. So how do you begin
to build your TAL? Here's a simple
three step formula. Step number one,
filter with your ICP. Every single account on your TAL should meet
your ICP criteria. No exceptions. Number
two, use intent data. Tools can help you identify accounts that show
buying signals. Things like website visits, content downloads or
competitor analysis. Number three,
validate with sales. Collaboration is key. Your sales team knows which
accounts are worth pursuing. So make sure they're
tied into the process. So start with a list of
accounts that match your ICP, then refine it further using
behavioral and intent data, and finally, validate with
your sales team one more time. May find that you're
prioritizing accounts that show a combination of high fit and
high intent. That's good. These are your low
hanging fruits, the accounts that are both
ready and willing to engage. Okay, so now let's put
this into practice. Think about your business and your top five customers
at this point. What do they have in common, and what patterns
are you noticing? That right there is the
starting point of your ICP. Now think about those five logos that you know you
would love to close. Do they fit your ICP? If not, why not? Are they just new logos for the homepage with no
real business fit? This exercise isn't
just theoretical. It's the first step
in building your TAL. But before we wrap up, let's talk about what not to
do when building your TAL. First, don't make it too broad, because remember,
ABM is about focus. Secondly, do not skip research. A poorly researched TAL is just a recipe for wasted effort. And finally, don't
ignore alignment. If your TAL doesn't have
your sales team buy in, then it's probably not
going to work out. Many teams fail at
this stage by being too broad or relying
on poor data. Remember, quality over quantity. A list of 50 high fit
accounts will outperform a list of 5,000
random logos any day. It's also important
to not just trust one data provider as your
single source of truth. So you should validate
and cross reference your TEL against at
least one other source. The market of available vendors
is changing constantly. But just know that
cross referencing multiple account data
sources is better than just relying on
one single source. It's also worth remembering that the number one reason why accounts churn is that they're not the right customer
fit in the first place. So much of this process
will be about challenging ourselves to be honest and uncover what our
ideal customer is. I know it's a bummer
to talk about failure, and these might seem like
they're small details, but really, they can
be the difference between ABM success and failure. Let me give you one more story. A midsize manufacturing company wanted to break
into a new market. Use their ICP to build a TAL of 50 accounts
in that market. And they focused
on companies with recent expansions and
new product launches. Their approach was simple. Personalized outreach
combined with targeted ads and
custom video content. Within six months, they closed deals within five
of those accounts. Generating over
$1,000,000 in revenue, that's the power
of a focused TAL. It's not just a list, it's
a roadmap to real growth. Okay. So now here's what
we've covered in this lesson. Your ICP is your compass. It tells you who to target. Your TAL is your roadmap. It tells you where to
focus your energy. Together, they set the stage
for everything else in ABM. Now I want you to take action before going on
to the next lesson. And you can start by
drafting your own ICP. Then once that's done, pick five accounts
to add to your TAL. And you can use what you've learned today to get
the ball rolling. We've even got a
downloadable TAL worksheet that you can use to get started. And once you've completed that, then you should head
over to our next lesson. There, we're going to take
your TAL and turn it into actionable ABM playbooks
and campaigns. That's where the
real art begins.
4. Build High-Converting ABM Playbooks & Campaigns: Now that you got your ICP
defined and your TAL locked in, it's time to bring
these to life. And we'll be doing that with
ABM playbooks and campaigns. I'm excited about this one because this is where
the real action happens. If your ICP and your
TAL are the strategy, then your playbooks and
campaigns are the execution. They're the game plan that takes the strategy you've
worked on and turns them into tangible
results. Think of it like this. Your TAL is a concise list of who you're inviting
to your birthday party. And the playbook well, that's the experience that
you're creating for them. So are you pulling
out the good snacks, pouring stiff drinks or
playing the right music? Or are you just hoping that they'll show up and have
a good time on their own? So, what exactly is an ABM
playbook in real terms? Basically, a playbook is
a step by step guide that outlines how you and your colleagues are all
aligned with each other. And how each of you
will engage with a specific account or
a group of accounts. It's not just a collection of
random disjointed tactics. It's a coordinated
intentional plan of action with a fixed
order of operations. The four Ds framework is a great one for making
good playbooks. Data, distribution,
destination and direction. So number one, data. Who are we targeting and why? Number two, distribution. Which channels will we use? Number three, destination. What's the next step
in the buyer journey? Number four, direction. How will we measure success? First, you need a
trigger based on data that informs you
who you're targeting. What signal activates
this playbook and who are you engaging this might
include decision makers, influencers, or even champions
within that account. Next, you need to decide
your distribution channels. Then you'll consider
the destination. What's the next step
in the buyer journey, and how will your team
engage this account? Now, this will determine the
content of your playbook. Finally, you need
direction, metrics. How will you measure success? What are you tracking?
Because it should be a lot. Meetings booked,
pipeline generated, pipeline velocity
or deals closed. Think of your playbook as the instruction for
building strong, meaningful relationships
with your accounts. Now let me tell you
a short story of a company that nailed
their ABM playbook. This was a SAS company that was targeting mid market
B to B tech firms. They noticed that one of
their key target accounts, a growing software
startup was engaging heavily with their blog posts
about scaling remote teams. First, marketing
enrolled account in an automated nurture program that spoke about
scaling remote teams. This included white papers and ROI calculator and
short demo videos. It all addressed the
pain and risk associated with scaling a remote workforce
over a six week period. Then the sales team
reached out to the buying committee
practitioners with LinkedIn Connections. In these messages, they offered a custom demo tailored to that startup
specific challenge. Then later, one of
the C Suite members recorded a quick video, congratulating the other company on one of their funding rounds. He did this along with his
LinkedIn connection request to the C suite level members
of the buying committee. Within those six weeks, the accountant booked a demo, and then within three months, they signed a six figure deal. That right there is the
power of a great playbook. It's about everyone on
your team being proactive, relevant, and intentional at every single step of the way. Now, let's break
down how you can create your own ABM playbook. First, start with a trigger. A trigger is the event or signal that tells you it's
your time to engage. Here are a few examples
of these triggers. It could be a target
account viewing and downloading some data
sheet from your website. It could be multiple
stakeholders of a target account attending your webinar or maybe even viewing
some page of yours. Or it could be something as
simple as social signals, like a decision maker commenting on your
company's post on LinkedIn. Next, define your audience. For each playbook, think about who you're
trying to engage. Is it the CFO that's
focused on ROI? The IT director who needs technical
implementation details? Or maybe it's a champion
who can advocate for you internally because of how much time your solution
has saved them? Hopefully, by now,
you understand. The point is to tailor
your approach to each stakeholder's
unique priorities. This is where things
get exciting. Now you get to coordinate your
actions across your teams. Let's say a target account
downloads a white paper. Your playbook might
look like this. For data, your prospect is
a cybersecurity architect, and he works at a Fintech
company on your TAL. For distribution, your
channels for reaching this prospect are through
email and LinkedIn messages. Now, for destination, your
goal is to get them to watch a case study
interview for one of your other clients who was
also in the Fintech industry. Now for direction, you'll track email engagement
and video viewings. The next step is
to align actions across your teams so you
all can work together. For marketing, a
personalized email is created that has
the ase study in it. Sales then follows up with a call or LinkedIn message that references the content
that you shared with them. Then customer success prepares to engage if they
become a customer. This will entail
creating a roadmap for onboarding and expansion
based on their goals. So it's clear what the key is to playbooks, and
that's alignment. Making sure everyone
on your team is on the same page and they're all working towards the same goal. That's why playbooks
are so powerful. They make sure that
every touch point feels coordinated
and intentional. Now, let me tell you
when playbooks go wrong. I worked with a company that had a fantastic ICP and a solid TAL, but the playbooks were essentially just non existent.
So here's what happened. The marketing team
would just send a generic email to
everyone on their TAL. And this included
someone that was actually already a
current customer, but was just mislabeled
within their CRA. The sales team then
called this account three days later
with zero context, asking them if they
wanted to see a demo. And just the cherry on the cake, the customer success
team didn't even know that this account
was still on the TAL. This point, you can
probably guess how it went. The account turned and
they did not renew. The lesson, it's okay if you want to have current
customers on your TAL, but this is only if
you want to upsell. And if your teams aren't aligned and your
data isn't clean, then everything can
just fall apart. Alright, now, once you have
your playbooks in place, the next step is building
a campaign to support. Campaigns are how you bring your playbooks to life at scale. Now, if you're a
cybersecurity company, then your playbook might
look something like this. A group of Linked in ads
targeting technical blog posts, targeting practitioners
at those accounts. Targeted ads on
YouTube that link to relevant case study videos or a webinar on cybersecurity
best practices. I know I say this a lot, but the key here is
to really create a cohesive experience where every single touchpoint
feels relevant. Okay, now, later
on in this course, we'll talk about metrics, but for a moment, let's talk about
measuring success. A playbook is only as good
as the results it delivers. You need to track the right
metrics at the start. When it comes to measuring ABM, it's important to understand two things right
out of the gate. One, ABM doesn't work if the primary metric for marketing is measuring
net new leads. And I know this is a huge shift for the demand gen
market this year. And two, ABM is not about getting target
accounts to pipeline. It's about getting target
accounts to revenue. With that in mind, it's
far more important to know the impact that ABM has on
things like stage progression, deal size, win rates,
and revenue growth. Now, let's actually
put this into action. I want you to think about
just one account on your TAL. What's a trigger
that would signal that it's time to
engage with them? Is it a visit to your website, a download or maybe even an
interaction on LinkedIn? Once you've identified
the trigger, outline the specific actions that every single person
on your team will make, and it doesn't have
to be perfect. It just has to be
tangible and measurable. Playbooks aren't meant to just sit in a Google Drive
folder somewhere. They're meant to be
used. To sum it all up Playbooks and campaigns are the engine of your ABM program. They take the strategy
that you've built with your ICP and TAL and
turn it into action. Remember, a great
playbook is proactive, coordinated, and tailored to your specific accounts needs. It's not about doing more. It's about doing the
right things for the right accounts
at the right times. And the next lesson,
we'll talk about personalization
strategies that will take your ABM efforts
to the next level. This is where we really start to make those connections stick. So I'll see you on
the other side.
5. Leverage the Power of Personalization for ABM: So far, you've learned
how to define your ICP, build target account list, and develop ABM playbooks to
engage your top accounts. Now it's time to take things
up a notch and talk about the secret sauce of ABM,
and that's personalization. So it's not a secret
that today's buyers expect relevant communication
because, don't you? In fact, 75% of customers say that they're more likely to engage with personalized offers. But before we can personalize, we have to prioritize. We've all heard
the phrase that if everything's important,
then nothing's important. And this is certainly
the case with ABM. Even when you've created
a tight TAL list with like 100 or so companies, before we can personalize, we have to prioritize our top
accounts within that list. Why? Because this way, you can make the
most efficient use of your team's
limited resources. Here's an example
of a target account list tiering strategy
with three tiers. First of all, when we look at this pyramid and talk
about prioritization, it doesn't mean the rest of
the accounts at the bottom of the pyramid on your
TAL aren't important. Focusing the most effort on
Tier one accounts at the top, with the highest intent and potential annual
contract value or ACV, we can ensure some
early wins that build momentum for scaling your campaigns to the
rest of the list. There are many ways to
prioritize your accounts, beyond technographics,
fermographics, or intent. The main thing here is
that you want to focus on prioritizing key verticals
for early execution. So ask yourself, what verticals do your top customers belong to? Which verticals do
you already have glowing case studies
going to want to prioritize accounts
among many metrics, but here are three
example ones for you. Accounts that will close faster, have a lower chance of losing, and have a better chance
at winning a higher ACV. Also, finding low
trend customers that fit your business problem precisely and will
build with you over time is never a bad
strategy either. Now, one key strategy, which is especially
effective is finding those accounts with past
champions who've now moved on to new
companies because these ones actually
convert 2.5 times other ones to keep in mind
are competitors of your best customers and companies that are rapidly
scaling with new funding. Next, it's important
to understand that there are levels
to ABM personalization. Many organizations
believe that ABM is only about hyper personalized
one to one tactics. While these tactics can
complement a broader strategy, and we'll talk more about one
on one in our next lesson, these tactics are tactical by nature and therefore
not scalable. True strategic ABM is about
complementing one to many, one to few, and one to one programs in a
cohesive GTM approach. So now let's talk about the three levels of
personalization. The first one is one to many. These ones are broad
campaigns that are tailored to general segments
based on solutions. The idea is to capture
the attention of your ICP with broad awareness
and demand creation. This is your Tier three. With this, you may
be reaching out to people who don't even know
that they have a problem. Next, one to few. Approach means that
you're creating specific messaging for
small account groups based on industry vertical. The goal with this one is to expand demand within
key accounts. Also, you're going to
be disqualifying and qualifying them for the
deeper one to one outreach. Now, this one was tier two. Finally, we're at one to one. This one is hyper targeted and super personalized outreach
for individual accounts. With this approach,
you'll drive high value accounts to
revenue through personalized engagement
that's based on their strategic priorities
and challenges. Goal here, of course,
is not just to run these as separate
demand gen campaigns. But instead, it's to
see this as a scalable, unified ABM strategy, not
just three siloed programs. To give you some
examples, here's how this can play
out in real life. For one to many,
you could create a webinar for Fintech companies. In this, you could talk about cybersecurity and
compliance trends, inviting only those
that are on your TAL. For one to few, you could send a targeted email campaign to companies that are experiencing
a surge in hiring. This campaign, you
could send it to five different account buying
committees and share with them your expert insight as to how they can scale remote
teams within their industry. In this, you want to highlight the risks of staying
the course that they're going and the
potential impacts that this can have
on their business. Now, lastly, we have one to one. If you're reaching out to a
renewable energy company, you could create
tailored outreach that hits the pain points of each individual on that
team's buying committee. Then you'd point them to a personalized microsite
for their account. It'll have their logo,
relevant case studies, deep technical documentation. And if you want to,
you could even include a custom demo in exchange for a charitable donation
to let's say, a nonprofit environmental
organization of their choice. Each level should have its
place in your ABM strategy, and it works best
when they're all combined into one cohesive plan. Because remember, not all of your prospects are
experts in your area. So take on the role of a trusted advisor.
And don't just sell. Actually get them to
understand how the market operates and how exactly your
solution perfectly fits. And our main goal is to simplify their decision
making process. So explain how you're
different and make this easy. So when you align
with your accounts strategic priorities, you can then go to
the individuals within these accounts and identify gaps that then impact their
strategic objectives. Then you're able to
show how your product will uniquely erase those gaps. And that is how you create real urgency
that leads to revenue. Now, here are some
other tactics that you can use to personalize
your ABM strategy. You can use dynamic
content on your website that essentially adapts based on the user's
company or industry. For example, if a healthcare
account visits your site, then they'll see messaging about HIPAA compliance and
patient data security. And using tools like Vidyard, you could create quick
personalized messages to key stakeholders. In these videos, make
sure that you address their specific challenges and then invite them to
take the next step. Another tactic is
LinkedIn display, and their programmatic ads have actually gotten quite good. You're now able to
target account list with messaging that's based on
the specific accounts goals. You can include visuals
like their logo and even key details about their business to
grab their attention. This one might seem
old fashioned, but you could send thoughtful, relevant gifts to
decision makers. Let's say you're
targeting a company with a green energy initiative. You could send over a
handwritten note on recycled paper with a
small eco friendly gift. You could use a microsite to curate a selection of resources. Case studies, white papers, videos, RY calculator,
anything goes. Make sure it is
super specific to the accounts industry and what stage they are
in the buyer journey. The key here is to balance
effort with impact because not every account will warrant one to one
personalization. But for those that do, it can make all the difference. Don't forget, your prospects are already self
educating online. So it's your job to aid them
by offering transparent, relevant research that actually answers their questions and
helps in their research. The best thing that we can
do for buyers is to help them evaluate the wealth of
knowledge that's out there. We do this all while
helping them arrive at their own understanding of why they should move
forward with us. Now, a pro tip from
me to you skip the gated forms and the
heavy sales pitches when you're building out
your personalization plan. You just want to make
it easy for them to get educated and engage with
you when they're ready. And again, no playbook
is complete without coordinating this personalization
with all of your teams, sales, marketing and
customer success. Do not forget that part, either. Now, let's just quickly
get into what not to do. One of the first pitfalls that people get into when
they're starting with ABM is over personalizing
without context. Sending a hyper
personalized gift to an account that hasn't even engaged with you yet can just come off as
creepy or weird. Always, ensure that there's a meaningful connection first before going all
out on the gifting. The second is
generic follow ups. Following up with checking in or Did you see my email or
just boring messages. Instead, reference
specific challenges or actions that they've taken that are relevant
to your message. Finally, you don't want to get tunnel vision and neglect the rest of the
buying committee. Personalizing for just one
stakeholder isn't enough, and frankly, it's
just a waste of time. Engage the entire buying
committee at the count with tailored messages that speak directly to their
individual and priorities. For example, can your solution save them time in
their busy day, whatever their
specific position is? And if so, how much? Now, it's your turn.
Pick one account from your TAL and
follow these questions. What is their biggest
challenge or goal right now? Which stakeholders will you engage and what are
their priorities? What content or outreach tactics will you use to personalize
your engagement? Write it down and
don't overthink it. The goal is to start
building the muscle for creating personalized campaigns
that actually resonate. So to wrap up personalization
is the heart of ABM. It's not just about
being thoughtful, but it's about being
delightfully relevant and making an actual human
connection with another person. Remember, personalization
happens at three levels, one to many, one to few, and one to one, and each one of these should have a
place in your strategy. Now that we've talked
about personalization, it's a good time to ask. Have you performed
a content audit for your organization yet? If the idea of a content audit is a new concept for
you, don't worry. We'll cover it in
the next lesson.
6. Perform a High-Impact Content Audit for ABM: The last lesson, we discussed
ABM personalization. But if you're struggling to find content to personalize
your ABM strategy, then performing a content
audit is going to help. What it does is identify
gaps and opportunities. So this will ensure that
you deliver relevant, impactful communication
to your audience. And a content audit is a
great tool for any marketer, not just one
specializing in ABM. And many of you might
already be familiar, and if you're not,
then listen up. This audit will be the fuel of your ABM
personalization journey. And it'll ensure that you're not reinventing the wheel
when it comes to the content that
you're putting out and creating to send
to your audience. Now, a content audit allows
you to do three things. First, it will help
you identify gaps. Are you missing content
for specific stages of the buyer journey from awareness to consideration
to the decision? Do you lack industry
specific case studies or ROI calculators for
your specific ICP? Next, it will make
it easy for you to repurpose high value assets. You might already have great
content that just needs a slight refresh or maybe just a tweak to make it fit
to your target audience. Finally, it'll help you
prioritize your efforts. So it'll focus your team's
limited resources on either creating or updating your assets that are going to
have the most impact. So no, this isn't just about
organizing your files. It's about ensuring that
every piece of content in your ABM library has a new purpose and contributes
to your ABM strategy. Now let's break down the
process into actionable steps. The first step is obvious. Take inventory. Start by listing all of the content
assets in your library. Include everything
blogs, case studies, white papers, videos, and especially customer
success stories. Now, what I want you to do
is to use the worksheet that's linked in this lesson
to organize your inventory. You'll organize it
by content title, type, stage in the buyer
journey, and target audience. This gives you a clear
picture as to what you already have and how
it maps to your ICP. Next, you're going to
want to assess what you have for relevance
and quality. You've taken inventory,
the next step is to evaluate how well your content aligns with your ABM strategy. For each asset, ask yourself, does this content address
the needs of your ICP? Is it tailored to their
industry challenges or stages in the buyer journey? Is the content up to date, visually organized, on brand, and easy to understand? Lastly, does this
content need to be updated, repurposed,
or archived? For example, if you have a
blog that's 2-years-old and it's titled Top ten Trends
in Fin tech Compliance, you might want to update it with recent trends and add visuals
to make it more engaging. The goal is to ensure that every piece of
content is relevant, high quality, and ready to
support your ABM efforts. Now comes the fun part, and that's finding the gaps. Look at your content inventory
and ask these questions. Are there stages in
the buyer journey where you just don't
have enough content? Industries or verticals in your ICP that lack
specific resources? And are you missing
high impact assets like Kas studies or
ROI calculators? For example, you might
realize that you have plenty of awareness
stage content, but not many for the decision stage that's
down the funnel. Or you might notice that you
have generic case studies and nothing that's actually
built as industry specific. This step helps you prioritize
what to create next. So focus on filling the
gaps that will have the biggest impact on
your ABM campaigns. Now, finally, map your content to your
distribution channels. Once you've identified
your content gaps, it's time to think about how you'll distribute your content. For each asset, ask
yourself these questions. What's the best channel to
reach my target audience? Email, LinkedIn paid ads, or can this content be repurposed
for multiple channels? For example, just
one white paper could turn into a webinar, a blog post, or a series
of social media posts. The goal is to ensure that your content actually
gets put to good use. We want to make sure
that it reaches the right people in
the right places. Don't let good content just sit in your Google
Drive where no one will see Companies have transformed their ABM efforts
with a content audit. For example, there was this
mid market SAS company that was struggling to get engagement from their
target accounts. Then after performing
a content audit, they realized that most
of their assets were quite generic and not
very industry specific. So they didn't align with
target industries or the main challenges of their
ICP. So what did they do? First, they updated their
case studies to focus on specific verticals like
healthcare and finance. Then they created
decision stage assets, like comparison guides and competitive feature checklist to address the gaps in the
lower stage of their funnel. Finally, they repurpose
their old blogs into refreshed LinkedIn posts. And they also use
these same posts in their email sequences. So after all of
this, what happened? Well, their engagement
increased by 50% and their pipeline
doubled within six months. This is the power
of a content audit. It should give you
clarity, direction, and a clear path to execute on personalization.
Now, it's your turn. Use the worksheet
that I provided you to create your own
content audit. So here's what you
need to do. Start with a clear inventory of
your existing assets. Evaluate relevance and quality to ensure that your
content aligns with your ICP and prioritize filling content gaps
with high impact assets. Remember, this isn't
about perfection. The goal is to create a
content library that supports your ABM strategy and delivers meaningful
value to your accounts. And creating good
content isn't easy. But after the audit, all of
your content should have a clear thesis, authority,
and personality. They should share either
unique experiences or original research that
they can't find anywhere. At the end of the day, we're looking to showcase content that people actually care about created by people
who actually care. Hey, I know it sounds
corny, but it works. And our next lesson we'll dive deep into how to
implement one to one ABM strategies and how to kick your personalized
engagement up a notch.
7. Master One-to-One ABM for High-Value Accounts: Our fourth lesson, we discussed the three levels of
personalization, one to many, one to
few, and one to one. In that, we talked about tiering and
prioritizing accounts to ensure that our efforts are put in the places where
they matter the most. And today, we're going to dive
a little deeper into what people tend to find as the
most difficult part of ABM. One to one. This isn't just about extreme
personalization. It's about building
relationships that feel tailored,
human, and useful. So you want to enable
your buyers at every step of the journey
as a trusted advisor. You want to make the
experience feel seamless while also helping them solve
their biggest challenges. Okay. Let's start by
understanding how one to one ABM is different than everything
else that we call ABM. At this level, it's not
just about accounts. It's about individual people. So if you want the logo, then you need the people behind the logo to make that
deal actually happen. It sounds a little corny, but it's important, and it could be so easy to forget that. So understanding the people
within that account, their challenges, their goals, and even their emotions
is going to set you apart from all the other people that are trying to get to them. Now, clearly, this requires going beyond surface
level demographic data. So many ABM platforms
fail because they focus solely on the
account or organization. They overlook the people, the decision makers,
the practitioners, the champions, the people behind the account that
are actually going to be making this deal happen. You probably heard this
many times before, but people buy from people. Now, here's a
guiding question for you to just keep in mind. Will these specific people at this specific company at
the specific time with so many competing
interests stop what they're doing to care about what it is that you have to say? Your strategy needs to
answer this question, and if it can't is that
account really a good fit? I know, but one to one ABM won't work if you're not being honest with
yourself first. So what we're really talking
about here is relevance. Relevance is the foundation
of one to one ABM, and it operates at three levels. The first is contextualization. This is where you tailor
your messaging based on the accounts industry,
challenges, and goals. Step beyond generic marketing, but it doesn't yet
feel truly personal. Many marketers confuse contextualization
with personalization, but they're not the same thing. Next, you need to
consider personalization. Just like we addressed
in the fourth lesson, you're addressing specific individuals within that account. Your outreach is
designed to resonate with their unique
goals and priorities. And true personalization
is never transactional. About building real peer to
peer trust and connection. And finally, there's
humanization. And this one is what we mean when we're talking
about relevance. It's about making your
communication feel deeply human, authentic, and
emotionally resonant. It requires high trust data, private and direct
communication, and a level of care
that makes the buyer feel seen, heard, and valued. Yeah, this means ditching all of your generic email
nurture sequences. And yes, that includes the
ones with variable fields. Before we move into what
tactics to actually use, let's talk about what can derail your one to one strategy. First thing to realize is
that there's such a thing as focusing too much
on the accounts brand. Outreach solely focuses on the account's brand
and not the person, then you're missing the point. You need to actually connect
with the individual within that account and understand what it is that they care about. This is also why buyer
enablement is key. Your buyers are
navigating by being bombarded from other vendors, internal conversations,
legal processes, and lengthy CFO approvals. How are you going
to empower them? If you're not providing
them an elevator pitch with sufficient materials that allows them to champion your solution, then you're leaving them underprepared and honestly,
nothing will happen. Finally, over reliance on third party intent data could lead you on a
wild goose chase. Intent signals are often
lagging indicators. By the time you're
acting on them, there's probably a handful of other competitors that are
targeting that account. Even worse, the account might already have a
short list of vendors. Instead of relying
solely on intent, focus on the full story
and the people within. All right. Now that
we've set the stage, let's talk about execution. Understanding the target
accounts story goes way beyond technographics
and firmographics. To start, you need to understand
the accounts culture, their operational style, and
their strategic objectives. So, ask yourself, what are their biggest
challenges and how do these challenges impact the
people within the account? What are the gaps
in their strategy and how can I fill them? What's the personality mix
within their buying group, and how can I
intermingle within? Level of empathy and insight allows you
to approach people within the count with
a unique approach that feels tailored to them. And that's because it is. Next, you need to enable
the buyer journey. For example, this might look like during the
evaluation phase, giving them content
that allows them to compare solutions and
quantity trade offs. When they're working through
legal or CFO approvals, offer resources that can help make these
conversations easier. And as they prepare
for onboarding, give them materials that can help them hit
the ground running. Every touch point
should make their life easier and move them closer
to saying, Let's do. The final task is to create
a cohesive experience. Think about Disney
World for a moment. Every interaction, every ride, every branded snack
and every show, feels like it's part of
a bigger brand story. That's the level of
cohesiveness that we're aiming for in
your ABM program. Your account experience
needs a certain level of saness around your
marketing sales and customer success teams. If any one person's
messaging feels disjointed, they're not just
confusing the account, but they're jeopardizing
the entire relationship. For example, if
marketing is focusing on broad pain points while sales is pushing
specific features, then there there's misalignment. Or if your post sale
onboarding feels like a completely
different experience from your pre sale process, then you're going to be risking losing that account's trust. You should always be thinking
about the entire journey, not just the first few
steps. Is it making sense? Now, let's review some
advanced tactics. First, you need
humanized messaging. So write emails and messages
that sound like they're coming from a real person and not just an automation tool. Use conversational language and always mention something
specific to the recipient. If you want to send a gift, send something thoughtful and personalized and make sure this is actually based off your conversations and this
connection that you've made. Because remember,
sending a gift before any connection was made is just going to be a
little weird and creepy. And if you hear a team member on the buying committee
that you've been interacting with is out sick, then you could send them
a get well soon package. Next, think about co
creation opportunities. So you can invite the
accounts stakeholders to collaborate on some project. Be a pilot program or even
a podcast with your CEO. This makes them feel invested in a mutually beneficial
professional partnership from the get go. Then you should focus on
creating exclusive experiences. So what do I mean by this? I'm talking about hosting
invite only events. So executive round
tables, dinners, technical workshops,
anything that gets them and your team to
interact with each other. Is a great opportunity for
your team to learn more about their struggles so
you can give them a solution that's tailored more specifically
to their needs. Now, finally, develop
your buyers story. This may manifest in a dedicated microsite
for that account. And we've talked
about this before. It can have their brand. It should have dedicated messaging that
speaks directly to their goals and also resources that help them achieve them. So showcase studies and testimonials that reflect
this buyer journey and how your solution speaks exactly to their needs and that can help
them in a meaningful way. On the other hand, you could create a demo
environment that's pre loaded with that
account's data to show them exactly how
you can help them. Remember, one to one ABM isn't only about hyper
personalization. It's about creating
connections that deliver real utility at every
single touchpoint. If you can't do that,
then you need to pick a different account
to do this one to one ABM with. Trust me. Sum it all up, one to one
ABM is about relevance, humanization and enabling
your buyers to succeed. So focus on the people within the account and not just
the account itself. Enable buyers at every stage of their journey from
evaluation to onboarding. And last but not least, deliver a cohesive
account experience that builds trust
and drives revenue. And the next lesson,
we're going to get out of the weeds and zoom out a bit to talk
about one to few ABM.
8. Understand One-to-Few ABM with Scalable Targeting: And last lesson, we focus on the ultimate and ABM
personalization, one to one. We explored how to build bespoke relationships within individuals
in target accounts. These relationships
enable them to succeed at every stage
of the buyer journey. Now we're going
to zoom out a bit and talk about one to few ABM. While it's not as
hyperpersonalized as one to one, one to few is still
very strategic. One to few ABM is about creating tailored engagement for
small clusters of accounts. Now, first, let's actually define what one
to few ABM means. At its core, one to few is about engaging small groups of accounts with shared
characteristics. These accounts might belong
to the same vertical, share similar challenges, or share some long
term strategic goals. Instead of creating individual
plans for each accounts, we're going to be creating
cluster specific campaigns. These are going to
be highly relevant without being as resource
intensive as one to one. Think of one to few as being the middle ground
between those broad one to many campaigns and the bespoke nature
of one to one. Scalable, but it's still personalized enough to
make a real impact. Now, when should you use
a one to few approach? One to few IBM is ideal
for tier two accounts. Those that have significant
revenue potential, but don't require the same bespoke attention as
Tier one accounts. These are often high fit
accounts where you can reuse the same messaging content or strategies for the same
group of accounts. So what does this look like? Let's say you're
targeting a cluster of mid market Fintech companies. Here, you might focus
on challenges like regulatory compliances
or scaling objectives. On the other hand,
if you're engaging healthcare organizations. Your messaging might
revolve around patient data security or
HIPA compliance. I know. Super original examples, but I use them because
they just work. The key is to identify
commonalities that allow you to scale your operations
without losing impact. Now, let's talk about execution. A successful one to few
strategy requires a balance of personalization,
relevance, and scalability. The first step cluster
your accounts. So start by grouping
your accounts into clusters that are based on
shared characteristics. So, this could be by industry, shared challenges
or growth stages. For industries, group
accounts by vertical, like manufacturing,
tech or healthcare. Another one is clustering accounts based on
their pain points. So this could be issues within the supply chain distribution
or data security concerns. And you could also
target accounts that are scaling rapidly or
entering new markets. But each cluster still should be small enough to allow for
meaningful engagement. Typically, this is about five
to 15 accounts per group. Goal is to create
a campaign that is tailored to the
unique group's needs. Next, create cluster
specific messaging. Once you've grouped
the accounts, you then want to create
messaging that speaks directly to their shared
goals and challenges. So if you're targeting
mid market SAS companies, then you can focus on
how your solution helps increase customer
retention and conversion. Now, this is where
relevance comes into play. While you're not personalizing
at the individual level, your messaging should still feel specific to the cluster's
core business priorities. After this, you're going to
want to create content in campaigns that can be
reused across the cluster. Remember our content audit? Yeah. This is exactly
why we do it. This helps you
achieve scalability without compromising quality. And examples of cluster
specific content can vary. They could be industry
specific case studies, webinars, tailored how to
videos, anything of this sort. Just remember that
the content has to be broad enough to apply
to the entire cluster, but still specific enough
to still feel relevant. Now, finally, you want
to get coordinated. Remember, ABM is all about driving cross
departmental alignment. One to few ABM is no different. It requires tight coordination
between your marketing, sales and customer
success teams. Now, here's an example of how these teams might work
together in this. Marketing could create a multi week webinar series
for the cluster and then develop an email sequence to send out and
drive attendance. Sales can then follow
up with attendees, referencing specific parts
of the webinar and even sharing little clips that they can then send to their teams. Then customer success
could prepare resources to address the common challenges
across this cluster. And these can just
be simple things like implementation guides for onboarding or usage tips
for your advanced features. So by aligning your teams, you're going to create
a seamless experience that builds trust and
drives engagement. Now, before we move on, let's do our favorite
thing and talk about what not to do in
one to few ABM. If your clusters are too
large or too diverse, then your messaging is
going to lose relevance. So keep clusters
tight and focused. In this case, less is more. Even at each cluster level,
research is critical. Make sure you understand the
group's shared priorities, challenges, and goals. A one to few isn't as
personalized as one to one. You're still going to be
interacting with people, individuals at each
of these accounts. So think about how you can
tweak your outreach to those individuals specific
roles and priorities. Now it's time to put
these into action. Look at Tier two of
your TEL and pull out a strategic cluster of
about five to 15 accounts. Then answer these questions. What common characteristics
do these accounts share? What are their shared
challenges and goals? Three, what messaging content and campaigns will you
use to engage them? Write down your answers
and start building your first one to
few ABM strategy. Remember, the goal here is to balance relevance
with scalability.
9. Scale Your ABM with One-to-Many Strategies: Last lesson, we explored one
to few ABM and how we can engage with a cluster of accounts with shared
characteristics. Today, we're going
to zoom out even further and tackle
one to many ABM. This is typically focused on tier three of your TAL pyramid. One to many ABM is where
ABM meets scalability. And while it's the
least personalized of any of the three approaches, it's still crucial to have a
comprehensive ABM strategy. Okay. First, let's
define one to many ABM. A lot of people just think that this is targeted demand chen. But if done right, one to
many allows you to reach a broad audience while still maintaining the relevance
of a holistic ABM strategy. And unlike traditional
demand generation, one to many ABM focuses solely on accounts
that fit your ICP. The goal is to create
awareness, spark interest, and set the stage for one to few and one to one
engagement down the road. So essentially,
it's about creating scale without sacrificing focus. So when do we use one to many? Well, it's ideal in
a few situations. First, you're
targeting a large pool of accounts that aren't yet
fit for deeper engagement. Second, you could just want to build brand awareness
within your ICP. And lastly, you could want to
generate interest and move accounts into the consideration stage of the buyer journey. And these are all
just to name a few. Now, imagine this. Let's say we have a cybersecurity firm, and they want to use one
to many ABM to create an email sequence that targets
mid market tech firms. They could use this to deliver messaging about the
risks of remote work. Though the campaign
isn't going to be deeply personalized on
the individual level, it's still going
to be speaking to the broader audience's
challenges. So to execute one to
many ABM effectively, you need to focus on
these three things. Even in a one to many strategy, your accounts should still
align with your ICP. And this isn't just about
casting a wide net. It's about focusing
on more accounts that are still a strong fit
for your solution. So your campaign should address common challenges and goals
within your target audience. So this makes sure that your
messaging is still relevant, although it's not
hyper personalized. Leverage channels and tactics that allow you to reach
a broader audience. So these could be
programmatic ads, email marketing, or content
syndication to name a few. Now that we've
covered the basics, let's talk about execution. You're going to want to
start by identifying the accounts that you want to target. Sounds obvious, right? These should be a broad
list of hi fit accounts typically based on technographic or firmographic criteria. Example, mid market
manufacturing companies with 100 to 500 employees. The goal is to create a list that's broad enough to scale, but still focused
enough to fit your ICP. Next, you're going to want
to create messaging that speaks to the shared challenges and goals of your
target audience. So what does this look like? If you're targeting
Ed tech companies, then you're going
to want to focus on messaging around compliance
and student privacy. And if it's ecommerce, you
might want to focus on messaging around improving
repeat customer retention. And the key here is relevance. Your messaging should
address real pain points and offer solutions that align
with your audience's needs. So now that your
messaging is in place, it's time to launch
your campaigns. And we already discussed ways
in which you can do this, like through programmatic ads, content syndication,
and email marketing. So you might have a broad list, but your strategy still
needs to remain focused. And as you go through actually executing your one to many ABM, I want you to keep
these things in mind. So, number one, even in
a one to many approach, it's better to target 500 high fit accounts
than 5,000 generics. Two, make sure you're
running AB tests on your messaging to see what your audience resonates
with the most. Three, use intent data
and engagement signals to identify which
accounts are ready for deeper engagement.
But be aware. If accounts are showing intent, then it's likely they have a short list of vendors
already on deck, and they're probably showing the same signals to
your competitors. So you're going to want to think especially competitive
with those accounts. Fourth and finally,
ensure your messaging is consistent across all
touchpoints and channels. I've said this many
times. You know this. This just builds trust and
reinforces your brand. And now for your favorite, a real world example. This, we're going to be
talking about a SAS company that used one to many to
drive broader engagement. So they wanted to
build awareness among mid market HR departments. So what they did is
launch a programmatic ad. So what they did was launch a programmatic ad campaign that highlighted the ROI of their HR software with
regards to employee turnover. The ads directed accounts
to a landing page with an ROI calculator and a
downloadable white paper. To complement the ads, they ran a LinkedIn campaign that
was targeting HR leaders. And these campaigns
had sponsored posts on how they could
improve employee retention. So what came of this? Over 1,000 accounts with no prior awareness engaged
with this campaign. 150 of those move straight
into the consideration stage. So we can learn a few
things from this. One to many focuses
on the solution, creates awareness and
engagement at scale. And most importantly,
it allows us to set the stage for
deeper conversations. Alright, so you
know what's coming by now. It's your turn. Use these next questions
to start planning your one to many ABM strategy. What does your target
audience have in common? Find the industries,
company sizes, or technologies that
you want to focus on. Number two, what shared challenges or goals will
your messaging address? Number three, which channels will you use to
reach your audience? Fourth and finally, how
will you measure success? Write down your answers and start sketching out
your first campaign. Remember, the goal is to
balance scale with relevance. So to sum it all up, one too many is your
opportunity to engage with a broader
audience while staying true to the core ABM principles.
10. Track & Optimize ABM Performance with Key Metrics: So far, we've built a
strong ABM foundation. You've already learned
how to do so much. You've learned how
to define your ICP, prioritize your TAL, craft paybooks and all of
our outreach strategies. But now it's time to step back and answer the big
scary question. Is any of this actually working? So, this lesson is all
about exactly that. Metrics, analytics,
and optimization. But we're not here
to talk about vanity metrics like email opens. Instead, we're going to focus on the metrics that
actually matter. I know, Ouch. Sorry to you email
markets out there. With ABM, it's imperative to
measure actionable metrics. Metrics that reveal
the impact of your various ABM efforts on
long term account growth. And I promise this is the
last time I'll say it, ABM is not just about pipeline. It's about revenue. Okay, first, let's do a reality check. I talked about this before, but if you're launching
an ABM program to an audience who's never heard of you and you're
expecting pipeline, then you have to re evaluate those expectations because
that's not going to happen. Is because ABM isn't just a quick fixed tactic for
all of your pipeline woes. So take it from me.
It's best to let your senior leaders or board
know now instead of later. Instead, you need to see ABM as more of a long term strategy, something that's
more about building meaningful relationships with
these accounts over time. Means that your early metrics aren't going to look
like anything crazy. Probably not many closed deals or demo requests
from net new leads. Instead, your focus should be on whole account engagement
and progression. Your goal is to move the entire
account down the funnel, not just one lead. But first, they need to
know that you exist. Again, if your key accounts
don't know that you exist, then they can't buy from you. That's why the first
step in measuring ABM success is ensuring that you're capturing
the right signals. Alright, now let's take a second and actually
break that down. Engagement signals are
the specific actions that tell you whether account
is paying attention to you. But here's the catch. Not all engagement
is created equal. You need to focus on
meaningful signals, those that actually reflect real interest and whole
account progression. So what does this look like? These can be visits to
high value pages of yours. So like a pricing page or
a product comparison page. They can be participation
in key events like webinars or
executive roundtables. Or they could be repeated interactions with
high impact content, so like case studies of yours. So now let me show you how you can operationalize
engagement. First, you need to
define your signals. Essentially, all this means
is that you have to identify those specific actions that indicate meaningful
engagement from your ICP. Next, set your benchmarks. So what does healthy
engagement look like in your best or most
engaged accounts? On average, how
many interactions typically lead to that
first discovery meeting? Lastly, you have to track your progression because
engagement is just one element. You want to make sure that
your efforts are moving whole accounts towards more substantive
action like meetings. Think of it this way. Engagement
is a leading indicator. So it shows whether
your accounts are heading in the
right direction, but not necessarily
the final destination. Now let's move beyond
engagement and talk about the metrics that reflect
true ABM impact. Now I'm going to give
you four key metrics that you need to keep
in mind and track. The first is pipeline velocity. So are your target
accounts moving faster through the buyer journey
than your non TAL accounts? For example, are they
moving from awareness to consideration or demo
to proposal faster? The second is, well, hopefully you already know that you need to look at
conversion rate. So how many engaged
accounts are converting into opportunities and
therefore closed deals? Third is deal size. Are ABM influence deals larger than your
average deal size? Because they should be. This is one of the
clearest indicators that your efforts are actually resulting in
something meaningful. Finally, you have to measure
retention and expansion. So the question here is, are your ABM motions
actually driving renewals and upsells with
your existing accounts? Because remember, ABM is not just about
landing new accounts. It's about expanding and deepening your best
relationships over time. Okay, with that done,
let's take a pause and discuss what not to
measure. Vanity metrics. Vanity metrics, like
anonymous website visits, email opens, clicks, impressions or even MQLs might make your
reports look good, familiar, even, but they
don't tell you whether your ABM program is
actually working right. They often just lead to
distracting conversations that get us away from the actual efforts we're
trying to put in. Like, who gets credit
for the sourcing deal? Let's be honest, we've all seen those marketing
versus sales debates. Those never end well. When
one team tries to take the credit for everything that requires multiple touch points, then everyone just loses. What we need to focus on
instead is collaboration. So how can marketing, sales and customer
success all work together to drive real
revenue outcomes? That's really all that should
matter for your business. And that's the question that
your metric should answer. So now that we've
established what to measure, let's discuss how we can
actually measure it. So a great ABM
measurement framework requires three components. First are your
leading indicators. These metrics, like
progression rates, show if your business is
actually building momentum. Next, you're lacking indicators. These metrics like
lifetime value or LTV, reflect the ultimate
success of your program. And finally, you have
optimization metrics. So these metrics, like
conversion rate by industry, help you see what's
working and what isn't. So by combining and measuring
all of these metrics, you get to see a more
holistic view of how your ABM program is
actually performing. With this, you can make
actual data driven decisions to change and improve over time. And as you build
out your program, keep in mind this one thing. Engagement alone does not matter if it doesn't
eventually lead to revenue. This is specifically a point where many ABM
programs fall short. Teams get laser
focused on tracking these siloed activities and they forget about
the big picture. Engagement metrics,
whatever you decide, should always be tied to
real business outcomes. For example, if you see that accounts are engaging
with your content, but they're not moving
down the pipeline, then allow this to be a signal for you to
adjust your strategy. Or if accounts are reaching the proposal stage
but not converting, then this means that you
might have to adjust your messaging or
address objections, much earlier in the
selling process. The goal is to create a seamless connection between
engagement and revenue. We want to make sure that
every touch point moves accounts closer and
closer to revenue. So let's put this
concept into action. Think about your ABM program
and answer these questions. What are your leading
indicators of success? What are your lagging
indicators of success? And how will you ensure
that your metrics will reflect account progression
and revenue impact? Remember, keep your focus on the metrics that connect
directly to revenue. Pipeline velocity,
conversion rates, deal sizes, and retention. And you should be using
your answers to build a reporting dashboard within your CRM so you can
track these things. This right here will become your roadmap to
optimizing your program. To sum it all up, metrics are the backbone of
your ABM program, but it's not just about tracking everything
under the sun. It's about tracking
the right things.
11. Implement ABM on LinkedIn and Reach Your ICP: Alright, so we've talked about leveraging AI to power
your ABM strategy, but one thing that we
cannot ignore is LinkedIn, because most likely it's where your buyers are and where your decision
makers spend their time. And if you know how to
use it the right way, then it can be one of the
most powerful channels that you can leverage to
execute your ABM strategy. So in this lesson, I
want to break down how to exactly run ABM on LinkedIn. We'll cover how to build
the right audience, which ad format works
best and how you can track and optimize your
campaigns for real results. So unlike other social
media platforms, which I'm sure you well know, LinkedIn is a
professional network. So people talk about work,
they research solutions, and they make
business decisions. And four out of five
LinkedIn users actually influence purchasing
decisions in their companies. That means when
you run ABM here, you're putting your brand in front of the people who matter. Most importantly, Linktn's
targeting abilities allow you to focus on the accounts and job titles that
you care about. You're able to do is filter out all the people that you don't need them to
see your brand. So when you're pumping Ad Span, this makes it much
more efficient. And lastly, and
most importantly, LinkedIn gives you
the ability to engage prospects in a space where they're already thinking
about business. Now, the first step to a successful LinkedIn
ABM campaign is obvious, and that's targeting
the right people. And there are many
options for doing this, but there are only two ways that I'd recommend
you go ahead and do. The first is
contactless targeting. This is where you upload a
list of specific contacts. Their names, emails, job titles, and LinkedIn tries to match them to profiles
on their software. Now, these are great,
but the downside to this is that these
lists become outdated extremely quickly because
people change jobs and they turn out new emails from
their business so often. So contact list
targeting is great, but just know it's not
something that you should rely on for long term. Now, the second one in
which I recommend the most is company account
list targeting. So instead of uploading
individual contacts, instead, you're going
to be uploading companies from your
target account list. You upload that to
LinkedIn and then use their demographic filters
to refine your audience. So this ensures that you're
going to be reaching the correct people within
each of these companies. So this method in
which I recommend, ensures that if people move jobs within their
company or even leave their company
or new people take in these positions
that you are targeting, then you'll always
have that person, that position, specifically
that you can target. So let me actually take you inside Linktn to show you
how this is all done. So here we're in the
LinkedIn campaign manager. And let me show you one of the first things that I was talking about
within this lesson, and that's going to be limiting
this thing to job titles. So if we just scroll down here, we have right here who
is your target audience? So, as you can see, I put in all these job titles that are basically going to be
targeting the decision makers, the people that I
want to see my ad. So, as you can see, there's
so many that I listed, and if you want to use this as a template for running
your own campaigns, then you can go
ahead and do that. And right here, I had
a more broad list. You could have this more focus depending on the niche
you're working with, or you can have it even
broader to get more people. But once you have those
job titles narrowed down, you actually have to give it
a list for it to work with. So right down here, we have this list
upload to company list. I can show you how I
got to this point. I put right here audiences, you just click List Upload, and then click Company list. And right here, I don't
have any lists uploaded, so I'm going to
click Upload a list. So here with a name, you can just name it whatever. I'll just put it
Target account list. And you're going to want
the list type to be a company list instead
of a contact list. So that's going to be
depending on what you want, but I personally recommend sticking with the company
list most of the time. Here we have the option
to upload our own list. But first, what I
would do if I were you is to download this
list template because you want to make sure that your information that
your CSV is actually going to be in the
same template in the same kind of format
that LinkedIn wants. Because if it's not
in the same format, then on the back end
on LinkedIn's part, it might get confused and it
might not do a very good job in actually matching
these accounts to the user profiles
within Linktn. So, I'd for sure make
sure that your list actually fits the template
that Linktn provides on this. So once you have
that list uploaded, Linktn is going to have
a pretty good idea of who your ICP is, who
you want to target. There's other things that
we can also adjust in this. Right here, who's
your target audience? If you want to put
in a location, right now, I just have
the United States. You can have United
States and Canada. You could have Europe, depending
on where you're working. Now if we scroll down, the next thing that
I want to talk to you about is the ad format. If you're running an
ABM campaign as we are, some of these will naturally
work better than others. So firstly, sponsored content
is one of the best options. So this is essentially just things that show
up in people's feeds. So this can be a single image. This can be a carousel image, and this sponsored
content applies to multiple of these ad formats. These ones are great
for building awareness. They make your company
social profile look good, and they position your brand as a thought leader
within the space. Now, conversation ads are also another good
option because they're interactive and
they let you guide your prospects through a
chat bot style conversation. And they work
especially well for lead qualification and
early stage engagement. But they can also feel intrusive if they're not
personalized enough. So try it carefully
in this realm. Now, another format
that you can actually use on LinkedIn is dynamic ads. And this one automatically personalizes the content
based on the LinkedIn user. So just based on their name, company, or job title. Now, these ones are especially
useful in helping to scale your personalization
without having to put tons of hours into it. These are good so that
you don't have to create hundreds of add
variations manually, but you still need
to ensure that you have good segmentation
when it comes to these. Now, I've told you about
all of these approaches, but which one is the best? Now, the best one is usually
a mix of all of these, because really, it
depends at which point of the buyer journey are your prospects that
you're targeting. Sponsored content works
well for brand awareness. Conversation ads help with more direct engagement
in the mid final stage. And dynamic ads provide
scalable personalization. And, of course, launching your campaign is
only the first step. If you want to see results, then you need to track your performance and
optimize as you go. Now, once you have your
campaign going for a while and LinkedIn has
gathered all these metrics, you can eventually get to a
place that looks like this. And here we get to see so much information
about our campaign. Engagement level,
members targeted, impressions, ad engagement. All of this. And personally, the engagement level
is my favorite. And what you're able to do is filter these from top to bottom. So if you want to filter
by engagement level, you can do that by members targeted or impressions,
you can do that. Now, what do all these
metrics tell us? First, we have engagement rate. So this one tells you
whether people are clicking, liking, sharing, or otherwise, just interacting with your app. If engagement is low
with a specific account, then maybe they're not
a good fit for you, or you need to test
different messaging. Next, we have conversion
are the people that are seeing your ads actually
moving on to the next step? Now, another important
metric which you may or may not have heard of
is account penetration. So you want to see if
the right companies, your actual target accounts are actually engaging
with your ads. If they're not, then your targeting may
need to be refined. Finally, you should be
tracking pipeline influence. LinkedIn shouldn't just
be generating clicks. It should be helping to move your accounts further
down your sales funnel. So to improve
performance over time, AB testing is critical. So try testing different ad
creatives or different copy. Try some that feature
actual people because people do tend to actually convert more
when they see a human face. And you can also try some with some statistical significance
like some graphs. Yet again, another
super powerful way to optimize your campaigns is
retargeting warm accounts. If someone from a
target accounts visits your website
but doesn't convert, then you can retarget
them through LinkedIn. So you're going to be
serving them ads that are going to be bringing
them back into your funnel. The best performing
LinkedN ABM campaigns are never just set and forget. This is going to be
an iterative process. Because you need to monitor, adjust and optimize
based on your data. Now you have everything
you need to run an ABM campaign on LinkedIn
that actually works. LinkedIn is one of the most powerful channels
for ABM success, but only if you execute
it strategically. Now, take what you've
learned to you and start building out your
own LinkedIn campaign.
12. Leverage AI & ABM Tools to Automate Your Strategy: At this point, we've
covered all of the essential
strategies for ABM. Congrats. Now it's
time to explore the role of tools and
technology within all of this. So in this lesson,
we're going to focus on two major topics, how AI is transforming ABM and how to think about
ABM tools in general. Now, this is a fast moving space that is constantly changing. But by the end of
this, you will have a clear understanding
of how you can leverage AI tools to make your ABM program
much more efficient. I don't need to tell you
that AI has fundamentally changed how we approach our
jobs. But here's the thing. AI isn't magic, and it's
not a silver bullet, no matter how much your boss tells you, do more with less. What AI does do is significantly
enhance your strategy, because it can help
you analyze data, predict outcomes, and automate some of your more menial tasks. The key to using AI effectively
is to understand where it currently will fit into your existing processes
and strategies. Why we spend so much time
on those exercises that help you build out your ABM strategy the old fashioned way? Because it's not about replacing your marketing sales or
customer success teams. It's about empowering them. So how can AI empower your team? Think of it this
way. AI helps you focus on the things
that matter the most. It identifies patterns,
predicts behavior, and automates the most
repetitive tasks. So you can spend more
time building person to person relationships and delivering value
to your accounts. Let's start with some examples
of how sales can use AI. First, we have revenue
impact forecasting. This is about using AI
to simulate and predict the revenue impact of your
marketing and sales efforts. Imagine being able to see which activities will drive the most value to your accounts. AI gives you that insight, helping your team prioritize
high impact actions. Next is churn prediction. AI can essentially analyze customer behavior
patterns and tell you which accounts are at the
highest risk of training. So by knowing which accounts
need extra attention, your accounts can launch
proactive retention strategies. So you can turn these
potential losses into renewed partnerships. Then we have conversational
intelligence. AI can analyze sales calls to identify key trends
like common objections, buyer sentiment, and
the next key steps. And this isn't about improving your individual
reps performance. About uncovering insights
that can be applied across your entire team
to bring them all up. Now, let's talk about marketing. AI can be amazing for scaling and optimizing
your ABM campaigns. So I want to give
you what I think are the most impactful use
cases for you to implement. The first is lookalike
audience modeling. So you can use AI to analyze the characteristics of your
best performing customers now so it can predict who else out there is going to be someone good
for you to target. Allows you to expand
your reach while staying focused on the
most high fit accounts. Next, there's AI generated
creative testing. Imagine being able to
test multiple versions of an ad or email to see what resonates best
with your audience. AI makes it possible to optimize creative
assets in real time. Then a personal favorite of mine is dynamic website
personalization. AI is essentially able to tailor your website's
content and call to action based on the
visitor profile. So a healthcare company might see messaging about
HIPA compliance while a CFO is going to see
more RI centered content. And finally, you
should think about how to use AI for
data collection. So you can use AI to enhance
the process of gathering, duplicating, or
even refining data. So this is going to help your targeting and
segmentation efforts to make sure that
they're actually effective and accurate. Now, last but
certainly not least, let's turn over to
customer success. So customer success is often overlooked
in ABM discussion. But they play a critical role in driving retention and expansion. And AI can help here, too. So what AI can do here,
similar to before, is analyze account activity and see which accounts are
most likely to renew. In the same way as before, this allows our customer
success team to focus on the accounts that
need the most attention. Next is health scoring. So this is going to consist of combining multiple data points, like support tickets, feature
adoption, and MPS scores. And by using all of
this, AI can create an accurate score indicating
the health of each account. It helps your team
identify risks early and take action
before these escalate. Finally, we have customer
journey mapping. So with this, you
can use AI to track user engagements
across all touchpoints and identify the gaps. So this ensures that
your team is providing a seamless experience from
onboarding to renewal. So now that we've
covered AI uses, let's talk about
every marketer's favorite topic,
and that's tools. The ABM Mar tech landscape is vast and constantly evolving
is an understatement. Dozens of modern tools
have emerged to unbundle expensive ABM platforms
like demand base and $0.06. And together, these
tools can create a beautiful surround sound
effect for your best accounts. So instead of recommending specific tools or
combinations of such, which might be outdated
in a few months, I want to give you
things that you should keep in mind
when looking yourself. These tools generally fall
into five categories. The first category you'll encounter is account
selection tool. These help you identify
high fit accounts and prioritize them based on
intend data or engagement. And remember, you
probably want to try more than one to cross
reference your data. Next, consider account
engagement platforms for creating personalized
outreach campaigns. These tools should include
your typical analytics. So tracking account engagement campaign performance or ROI. So these ones are tools like
Apollo dot IO and Lemist. Then look for orchestration
and automation tools that aggregate signals and streamline collaboration
between marketing, sales and customer success. Next, you'll want to find
an advertising platform. These can help you sell by targeting specific
decision maker. Finally, there's personalization
tools that can help you scale more personalized
marketing campaigns across multiple channels. So when evaluating
these ABM tools, here are a few things that
you should keep in mind. What are the bare minimum tools that we can use to
get started quickly? How does this specific tool
align with our ABM goals? How easily does it integrate with our existing MarTech stack? Is it user friendly
and scalable? What level of customer support
does the vendor provide? Ultimately, the best tools
are the ones that fit your specific needs and
support your ABM strategy. And don't fall into the
trap of thinking that you need the most expensive
tools to do the job. This can get your
program stuck in implementation purgatory
for months on end. Remember, the goal isn't
to have the most tools, but it's to have the right ones. So to sum up, AI and ABM tools are powerful enablers
for your strategy, but they're not a substitute
for strategy in itself.
13. Understand Real-World ABM Case Studies & Success Stories: Welcome to the final lesson
of our ABM boot camp. Look at. You've come so far. You should
congratulate yourself. Throughout all the
lessons of this course, we've covered a lot. And as we wrap up,
it's time to bring in some real world case studies
and practical applications. This is where we'll see all of the ABM strategies that we've
discussed come to life. And hopefully, you'll get some ideas of your own to
implement in your own business. So I want to give
you a clear picture of what ABM success looks like, and while we're at it, you'll get some actionable takeaways. Let's start with the SAS Club security and compliance camp. They were targeting enterprise
healthcare providers. They had a solid product, but they were struggling to move accounts past the
first awareness stage. What they first did was
refine their ICP after realizing the original ICP
was just way too broad. So what they were now
focusing on was midsize healthcare systems that were undergoing digital
transformation. So they narrowed their
scope to high fit accounts. Then they started with
one to few campaigns. For the healthcare vertical, they created tailored content, white papers on
HIPAA compliance, videos on how to secure
telehealth appointments, and case studies
that are featuring their existing
healthcare customers. Following this, they built
trigger based playbooks. So when the Cal
viewed the video, it triggered a personalized follow up sequence from
marketing and sales. So this included emails,
LinkedIn messages, and even an invite for a web on that they were hosting
regarding Clop security. So with all these
changes that they implemented, after six months, their pipeline
velocity increased by 40% and their win rate by 25%. So the takeaway from this one is by tightening up their ICP and aligning all of their teams around one
singular playbook, they were able to
turn stalled accounts into ones that
generated revenue. Now, for our next case study, let's turn to a cybersecurity
startup that had their eyes focused on a
Fortune 500 retailer. This account was a
significant opportunity, but the competition in
the market was vicious. So they made it happen by
starting with deep research. So after uncovering
that the retailer was investing heavily in the in
store customer experience, the research revealed
that they were investing a lot into IoT technology. This was a big vulnerability and something that this
startup could jump on. So they set out to build
a custom microsite, but they didn't just stop there. The CEO of the startup then sent a personalized video message
to the company's CIO. So the CEO congratulated
them on their IOT rollout, and he highlighted how their solution could
help in this initiative. He also invited that CIO to be a guest on his podcast
about IoT security. CIO was happy to agree because everyone
loves to feel important. So after recording this podcast, the CIO then booked a
demo call for his team. Following the demo,
they then signed a 1.5 million dollar contract
within just three months. So, you see, this one wasn't
just about personalization. It was about showing that
they understood the retailers specific strategic
priorities and how their solution could fit
into their long term goals. Now, our final case
study is to show that ABM is not just about
landing new accounts. It's also a powerful tool for expanding relationships
with current customers. FinTech company
wanted to drive up sales within their
top 20 customers. So how did they start? They first did a
customer data analysis. They dove into their
customer dashboards, and then they
identified the accounts that had a high
product adoption, low usage of their more
advanced features. Then Marketing partnered
with customer success to make personalized videos
for each of these accounts. These videos, they were
highlighting the benefits of each premium feature for
each specific account. And when a customer
watched a video, it then triggered a follow up nurture program from
the account manager. It started with
educational emails, which were then followed by
a tailored upsell proposal. And this approach drove a 30%
increase in upsell revenue, and it deepened
their relationships with their existing accounts. Okay. That's it with
the case studies. Now let's talk about
how you can apply these lessons into
your own ABM program. Remember to start small. You don't need to build
a massive ABM program overnight or invest in a
bunch of tools from day one. Instead, focus on a handful of high priority high
FIT accounts and refine your approach
week by week and scale to the rest of your
TAL as time goes up. As you scale, always prioritize quality over
quantity because as we know, ABM is all about focus. A smaller list of hi fa
accounts will always deliver better results than
a broad unfocused campaign. So this is why it's important
to look for the right data. Look beyond
firmographics, to uncover the real things behind
each account that matter, their priorities,
their challenges, and their internal and
interpersonal dynamics. Also, don't forget
about alignment. Collaboration is not optional. Marketing, sales and
customer success need to be working from
the same playbook. This is so that they can create a seamless customer experience and avoid stepping on
each other's toes. Finally, you have to
measure what matters. So track metrics that
reflect real impact, like pipeline velocity,
deal sizes, and retention. So make sure that you do
not get distracted by vanity metrics that don't actually result in any
business outcomes. And it goes without saying that ABM is not a one person show. So before you launch
your program, ask yourself these questions to know that you have
everything in place. Executive Ban, partners in
sales and customer success, operations and content support, clear internal driver of
the program timeline, a strategist to
guide the program and owners for all
distribution channels. If you have all
of these elements locked in, then
you're ready to go. And if you're missing
a piece, pause and address it before
you move forward. So clarity on who owns what is critical to
avoid road blocks. So, to wrap up this course, let's do one final exercise. Pick one account from your TAL that you haven't
made any plans with. And, of course, you're now going to answer these
following questions. First, what is the account's
biggest challenge, and how can your solution help? Second, what stage are they in in the buyer
Jenny right now, and how can you
move them forward? Third, what specific tactics
will you use to engage them, and how are you going to
make every interaction feel intentional and human? Fourth, how can you
empower them to navigate internal
conversations and approvals? Because remember, we
don't want to leave them without anything because
at the end of the day, they're championing
our solution. Now, last but not least, how will you measure
your team's success? So, write down your answers
and use them to create a mini ABM plan for
this specific account. This is your chance to
take everything you've learned and apply it in
a real world context. Now, once you've finished, Imagine that you are on the receiving end
of this ABM plan. Specifically, consider the point where you expect your buyers
to book a sales call. Now, would you? If your answer is, I guess, then it's time to
rethink your triggers. Your message should hit
the right person at the right time with the
right value proposition. Ideally, your content led program educates and builds trust at every
single touch point. When you transition to asking
for a demo or a meeting, that's when the stakes
are the highest. If your triggers
aren't convincing you, then they likely aren't
convincing your buyers either. So refine them until they
feel seamless and compelling. So once your ABM program starts, you should be scheduling
weekly check ins with your team to talk about and refine your current campaigns. So set a cadence for evaluating your strategy and tracking
those key metrics. And you want to
adjust as needed, but don't pivot too often. You want to adjust as needed, but don't pivot too
quickly or too often, because consistency
allows you to see what's working and what you
need to change over time. And with that,
congratulations are in order because you've
completed the ABM boot camp. Yay. I hope you're a little less daunted today than you were
before you began the program. And as you move forward,
keep these things in mind. Stay relentlessly focused
on your ICP and TAL. Personalization is powerful,
but humanization is better. And metrics matter, but only if they align with
your business goals. Alright, that's it. Thank you for joining
me on this journey.
14. Walkthrough: Master AI Lead Generation With Apollo: Easily, one of the most tedious
and time consuming tasks when it comes to
marketing is actually finding the people that we want to reach out to because
we want to make sure that we find people
that actually match our ICP. So our marketing efforts
aren't just in vain. So oftentimes that
leads us to look in places where our ICPs
are often hanging out. And these can be many places. It can be online
through social media, or it can be in person
at some events. Now, when searching for
leads through this way, we can find people that
match our ICP quite well, but it takes a lot of time to actually reach out and
make these connections. Now taking this a step
further by looking at individuals
online or in person, we can go to places online
that make them our leads. Now, we can take this
method a step further. Now, instead of doing this work ourselves and manually looking for the people and
qualifying them and making sure that
they fit our ICP, we can use a software
to help us with this. And that software is Apollo dot. Apollo is phenomenal for finding leads and accounts
that perfectly meet our ICP because we're able to filter our ICP
within the software. Features that Apollo gives us
are actually kind of crazy. But let me actually
show you how you can do this and use it yourself to form a Target account
list or even to get individuals within the
accounts to reach out to. Alright, so we're
here in Apollo doo, and the software is
completely free. You can upgrade and get some more features
with paid plans, which I'll show you what you
can use with those as well. But with the basic
features, it's free. So you can go ahead and
download and create an account right now.
This isn't sponsored. Alright. So first thing that we want to do
when we're here, you can either go to
companies or people. And in our case, I'm just going to go ahead and click companies because when we're looking at individuals within accounts
within these companies, it's oftentimes that their
positions can change. And if we are compiling
basically a CRM, a lead list, then we want to stick
with the accounts themselves because those
are never going to change. We're going to
have our accounts, the companies that will
always forever meet our ICP as long as it
stays the same definition. So, now that we're here in the
companies, what can we do? How can we filter
this to actually get those accounts
that meet our ICP? So there are so many ways for us to actually go
ahead and filter this. One of the first ones
here, account location. So if you're working
in a specific demographic or a specific
geographic area, then you can have that
right here as a filter. Then you also have a number of employees so as you
see right here, there's so many that
you can filter this. And if none of these predefined
ranges work for you, then you can go ahead and
put in a custom range. So as we are doing this, we get to see basically how many accounts are going
to be in our filter range. So right now with simply
just an employee's filter, if we do one to ten employees, that means we are
now narrowed down to 13.9 million accounts. So let's just go ahead and stick with this one to
ten and move on. So the way that Apollo
works is that it has its database of
accounts and individuals, and it's linked with LinkedIn. So basically, most of its
searching is going to be done by applying their
filters to LinkedIn. And therefore, it's
going to be filtering down all the people
on LinkedIn with their accounts or individuals that basically fit the data that you are putting
into the software. So now going on from employees, we have industry and keywords. So if we click down here, we have so many industries that we can then
filter this down. There's really so many that you can choose
from just this list, and then you can also
type in if you have a specific industry that
you're working with. Here, I'm just going to put information technology
and services. And then you can also do some keywords that are going to be associated
with the account. So if they work in kind of a specific subsector of whatever industry that
you're working in, then you can put in
that keyword there. But for now, for our sake, examples purposes,
I'm just going to go ahead and keep that empty. Now, these next ones
are especially cool. You have a buying
intent filter here, which is obviously going to
be something that can be quite useful to
you because if you want to have people with
high buying intent, that's probably going to be
helping your efforts a lot. This one isn't going to be
integrated with Apollo. You're going to have
to go through an external means to do this, but buying intent is
an interesting one, to say the least. And moving on from that,
we have website visitors. And this one is also
quite a fun one because you can integrate
your website with Apollo, and basically, it's going to be telling you who's
visiting your website. And if you're going
to be getting a lot of viewers
to your website, then you can then
filter it and see only the accounts that are the ones that are
viewing your website. So this is going to
essentially help you prioritize those accounts in your TAL to see who are at the top of your list that you should be paying the
most attention to. There's really so many filters
have technologies here. If you want to go ahead and put in something specific that works basically along with
what it is that your offer is, then you can put that in here. You have revenue, which is
another really fun one, because if you're working
at a certain price point and you know that you
need your accounts, your ICP has to be making between some kind
of revenue range, then you can be
putting that in here. I'm going to put in
500,000 to 5 million. There's even a funding filter
that you can put in here. So you can see what stage
in their business are they. You can have SDS. You can have Angels, Adventure, Series A, B, C, D E. It's so much filter. And if your offer potentially replaces some kind of
individual within an account, then you can even put that
here with the job posting. And that's not the
only example that you can use to use this job
posting to filter down. And scrolling down,
we have signals, which is another really fun
one because these are stuff that you don't have to track yourself that you
can see with Apollo. So if they have a
new partnership, new awards, cutting
costs, as you can see, this can help you in your
marketing and targeting them, but it could also help you in your personalization
when it comes to actually speaking to them and reaching out to them and
creating a personal connection. So with this signal,
I'm going to put in rapid growth. Right
here at the bottom. And now let's look at
how many accounts this has actually generated for
me with all these filters. I have rapid growth. I have the revenue
500000-5 million. And then we have
the industry is IT, and the number of employees
are just one to ten. So this is going to be
small companies that are basically experiencing
rapid growth and are making quite
a bit of money. And if we look down
here at the bottom, we see that there's 521
accounts that fit our list. This wasn't the most specific filtering I could have done, but it also wasn't
extremely broad. And it still resulted
us in 521 accounts. That's quite significant, and that's something
that we could do a lot. What we're able to do with
all of these accounts is actually click on them
and get more information. Now, within this account, we get to see all
this information. So we have to see a overview, so basically keywords, what essentially it is
that they're working in. We could also click on them and go to their LinkedIn page. But one thing that is going to be especially helpful with us is seeing all the individuals within this account on LinkedIn. So what we're able to
do is then look through this list and see the
people who is going to be best fit for us to reach
out with and actually gain a connection to within that account so
they can champ now, the next thing I
want to show you is actually going
through and searching for individual people instead of the companies or accounts. As I said, I recommend
that you go for the accounts and then look for the people
within the accounts. But if this is something that you want to go ahead and
look and explore yourself, then I want to
show you basically a few things that I think are going to be quite useful for us. So, like it was before, we can still basically
filter them with, you know, a number of
employees and even save my search from
the companies. We have one to ten employees. IT within 500,005 million
of annual revenue, and the signal here is
still rapid growth. But now that we are looking
at the individual people, there's a couple more
filters that we can then implement to help
us in the search. So the first one I want to show you is email status because we want to make sure
that we are actually getting people that have
some verified email, so we're not going to
be wasting our time and wasting our efforts endless. So prior to selecting
this email status, we see down here that 3,089 people are basically
fitting in our search. So if we now select
verified emails, then that number
goes down to 1,657. Luckily, it didn't
cut down too much. So the next thing
that we can then do from this is go to job titles. So here, basically, if you want to reach any
specific person, say, head of marketing
or the founder, the CEO, then you can go
ahead and do that here. So if you're looking
for a CEO or a founder, you can just type that in here. CEO. And now from that list, we have went down to 151. And if you're going
to be looking for, like, you know, the
CEOs and founders, I would be putting
in more basically names here that could
basically mean the same thing, because it's going
to be looking for these exact words in
their LinkedIn profile. And someone could
be a founder but not have CEO, or they
could have both. But basically, if we put this, then we get to see
how that increased. It went from about 150. Now I put founder to 277. So essentially, including in the most words here that can
describe who your ICP is, who that person that
you want to reach out to is going to help you. But there you go. This was a
quick overview of Apollo and one software that I think can be extremely helpful in
your ABM efforts.
Adam Taylor, Business Education Enthusiast
