Account-Based Marketing:

Fundamentals Every
B2B Marketer Must Know

Demandbase.com
 Introduction
If you’re a B2B marketer But there is a better path
today, you’re in a tough spot. forward, and one you’ve
You’d love to be an innovative probably heard about, called
marketer who impresses the Account-Based Marketing
whole company by blowing your results (ABM). And you may have even heard
out of the water. But where do you start? that it’s the next big thing. But you want
And how do you navigate all the buzzy to make sure it’s not the next pain point.
claims out there?
In fact, ABM is that core strategy that
You could spend your lunch hour can help you pull together all those
researching various B2B vendors that
promise to address one or two of the
challenges you face throughout the
disparate technologies into something
that truly makes everyone at your
company say “wow.”
92%
of companies recognize
funnel. But if you don’t have a core the value in ABM, going
strategy that sets you up for success, no If you’re ready for the kind of tangible as far as calling it a B2B
vendor will ever be more than a point information that can get you started marketing must-have
solution and it will be difficult to really on your ABM journey, you’re in the (SiriusDecisions)
move the needle. right place.

Instead, you’ll spend most of your time In this eBook, we’ll show you this path
dealing with buy-in, on-boarding the forward, so you can start thinking about
how Account-Based Marketing can have
technology, training your team and
a major impact on your business. Armed
integrating the tool into your tech stack. with actionable insights, you’ll be well
Only to find out that it didn’t have the on your way to driving results across the
impact you’d been promised. entire customer lifecycle.

2 Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must-Know

 What’s Holding You Back?
As a marketer, your job is to drive revenue and grow the business. Unfortunately, as the B2B buying cycle has become
more complex, the number of challenges you face has grown.

You’re attracting the Your prospects aren’t You’re having trouble

wrong audience engaging with the producing quality leads
right content

82%
of B2B website visitors are not
60%
of website visitors bounce
79%
of marketing leads never
potential customers without interaction after one page convert into sales.
(Demandbase) (Marketo) (MarketingSherpa)

Unlike consumer marketers who have Having the right content for the right With an increased focus on leads, we’ve
millions of potential customers, B2B visitors allows you to influence the traded quality for quantity. It’s easy to
marketers have a limited number of decision early on, even before your lose sight of the fact that leads do not
potential buyers. prospects fill out a form. automatically equal revenue, especially
when Sales is always asking for more.

3
 What’s Holding You Back?

You’re struggling to understand Your sales and marketing You’re struggling to keep
if your programs are working teams aren’t aligned track of the growing B2B
and prove their ROI buying group

67%
of CMOs struggle to prove the
50%
of marketing generated leads
5.4
people now have to formally sign off
long-term impact of spending are not followed up by Sales on each purchase (CEB) This is 40%
(CMO Survey)* (MillerPierce) larger than it was 2 years ago

On the marketing end of the funnel, When marketing relies on “spray and Most B2B purchases—especially
marketers often struggle to pinpoint the pray” campaigns that waste company technology purchases—span multiple
ROI of their campaigns and then direct resources, leads don’t close. Sales knows departments, which means there are
funds to the most effective programs. that, so they don’t bother following up… multiple stakeholders involved in any
and the finger-pointing starts. buying decision.

The truth is, these challenges don’t just impact your marketing team. They bleed into your sales organization and determine
the course of your company’s growth. As a result, more and more marketers are adopting an Account-Based Marketing
approach to address these challenges.

4 Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must-Know

What makes ABM so attractive right now is
the way it combines insights for strategy and
technology for execution. Marketing teams
who understand ABM are in a powerful position
to better align to what Sales needs, and to
make smart choices about the right actions to
take and the right time to take them to grow
high-potential accounts.

SiriusDecisions

5
 What is Account-Based Marketing, Anyway?
Account-Based Marketing is used by B2B marketers to identify and target the accounts
they value most. ABM solutions typically include account-based data and technology to help
companies attract, engage, convert and then measure progress against customers and prospects.

In its simplest form:

IDENTIFY MARKET MEASURE

ACCOUNTS TO THEM THE RESULTS

60%
of marketers plan on investing
41%
of B2B marketers worldwide
in technology for ABM to better said they would increase
align Sales and Marketing over spending on ABM (ITSMA)
the next 12 months (SiriusDecisions)

6 Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must-Know

 The Benefits of Account-Based Marketing

The best part of Account-Based Marketing is that it doesn’t just address one or two of your challenges, but solves for the
challenges across the entire customer journey.

1 2 3
Align Sales Focused Marketing Precise, Holistic
and Marketing and Sales Strategy Measurement

Account-Based Marketing While “spray and pray” Implementing an Account-

is a collaborative endeavor campaigns may work for Based Marketing approach
between Sales and B2C, they aren’t as effective requires shifting away from
Marketing. By shifting the for B2B. This is because traditional metrics and
focus to accounts, rather B2B marketers have a focusing on account data.
than individuals, you bridge limited number of potential Measuring by accounts allows
the gap between Sales and buyers. With ABM, marketers marketers to be an active
Marketing, which allows can focus their efforts on owner of the revenue chain. So
you to focus your strategic key accounts. you can move from inquiries
efforts on a specific list of and click through rates to
target companies. pipeline and close rates.

7
 The Benefits of Account-Based Marketing

4 5 6
Market Prior to Highly Qualified Optimal Customer
a Form Fill MQLs & SALs Experience

With an ABM approach, Marketers tend to run With ABM, stakeholders at

marketers can identify an blanket campaigns based on specific companies receive
unknown visitor and know hope and chance rather than relevant messages and
what company they are from. on logic and strategy. With content at the appropriate
This requires an investment in ABM, campaigns can be time. They get the attention
the right tech, but it allows you hyper-targeted towards your they need to move through
to focus on the visitors that account list, which ensures the funnel. Account-Based
matter the most. that the leads generated are Marketing also plays an
of the highest quality. integral role in customer
retention and helps with
cross sell and upsell.

All companies practicing ABM claim to be at least somewhat aligned with Sales, with
34 percent saying they were tightly aligned. (SiriusDecisions)

8 Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must-Know

ABM In Action – CSC

The Challenge
CSC is a global IT services company developing smart, technology-enabled
solutions to solve their clients’ challenges. CSC sells complex IT solutions to a
finite number of companies. CSC needed the ability to target specific companies
and understand their market in fine detail.

The Solution
The campaign has
CSC kicked off a campaign called “Let It In” that aimed to shed light on the way not only delivered
enterprises are approaching IT in every industry and region across the world. upon the business
As part of the campaign strategy, CSC leveraged Demandbase’s proprietary IP results that it
identification technology to directly target 300 key accounts. demands, but it has
also allowed for
The Results strong comradery,
engagement and
CSC acted in real-time and served personalized creative to the contacts that alignment from
were identified as key accounts and prospects. As a result of those efforts, the the marketing and
company ran their most successful campaign ever, which generated: sales organization.
Director, Global Digital
Demand Generation, CSC
over close to
5,000
leads + one billion dollars
in pipeline revenue

9
 The ABM Checklist
? At this point, you’re probably wondering: how do I even get started?

While there are a number of ways you can build out your ABM strategy, the basic tenants are quite simple and can be
implemented into your organization right away.

You can approach ABM from a high-level perspective—broadly identifying companies you’d like to see convert into
customers or go granular and focus your efforts on understanding the common attributes your customers share.

Once you understand the key fundamentals of ABM across the funnel, getting started, making progress, and measuring
results become more accessible —and a gateway to broader, more successful ABM programs. Although there are a
number of touch points across the funnel where ABM will play a big part, before you can execute on these things, you
need a plan to identify, market and measure your target account list.

Companies see the value

of ABM, with 52 percent
IDENTIFY MARKET MEASURE of respondents currently
having pilot programs in
ACCOUNTS TO THEM THE RESULTS
place. (SiriusDecisions)

10 Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must-Know

 Identify

The first step to implementing an Account-Based

Marketing strategy is to build your target account list
– the companies you want to market to, which can be:
Marketers can build their
target account list by:

Leveraging their list of named

1 accounts, which include
verticals and strategic accounts
prospects customers partners

or a mix of all three

2 Evaluating their current
customer base

Segmenting customers based

This requires partnering with your sales team to 3 on a set of attributes such as
identify and agree upon a list of key accounts. This industry, company size and
annual revenue
list is usually made up of attributes such as industry,
revenue and geographic type and account status,
which includes both prospects and customers.

Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must-Know 11

 ABM In Action – DocuSign
The Challenge
DocuSign is the leader in eSignature transaction management. DocuSign
needed the ability to attract the right audience and serve visitors the content
that engages them in a meaningful way.

The Solution
To help execute its Account-Based Marketing programs, DocuSign
implemented the Demandbase B2B Marketing Cloud. It’s raised the
bar for us, every
functional group
The Results in the company
has lines of
With its Demandbase Account-Based Advertising campaign, DocuSign
metrics they’re
targeted 450+ companies with over 1M impressions delivered, attracting
held to.
59% of all companies targeted to its website.
VP of Demand
Using Demandbase to shorten forms and create a highly personalized
Generation, DocuSign
website experience, DocuSign:

grew sales
increased average time
pipeline by
22% for its top
six industries
+ on site by more than
eight minutes

12 Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must-Know

 Market
Once you have your list of target accounts, it’s time to build marketing programs that focus on accounts and move them
through the funnel. You’re likely already doing persona-based marketing, so you’re familiar with the idea of tailoring
your demand gen and outbound marketing to a particular group. When you’re targeting multiple stakeholders at an
account, you need to rethink the way you approach each individual stage of the funnel.

Attract Engage Convert

Abandon the notion that you Go beyond generic content Focus on accounts to get
should reach as many people on a page in a one size fits high quality leads, see
as possible all approach actionable target account
insights and prioritize the
Focus on your target accounts Create content that speaks highest value engagements
by running display advertising to the companies on your
campaigns and other top of list and serve it to them Capture valuable buying signals
the funnel campaigns to the automatically from your target accounts early
accounts on your list in the buying process

Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must-Know 13

 Measure
The final step is measuring your results. The
customer lifecycle is a continuous circle and
so is your ABM marketing strategy. As you
go through the various stages, your data will Measurement Across the Funnel
impact decisions – including iterations
and tweaks to both your outbound efforts
and content.
Are my target
accounts on my
Measurement should happen at every stage website?
of the funnel and around metrics important
Are they engaging
to B2B rather than traditional metrics. Much
with my content?
of your marketing data doesn’t provide
actionable insight on how to drive revenue or Are they filling
out my forms?
improve performance. You need an account-
Did the deal
based view of site traffic, engagement and close?
conversion rates and the ability to connect
siloed datasets across the funnel. Deal size

Deal velocity
As you do this, you demonstrate that ABM is
more than a best-practice for the marketing Acquisition
costs
team, it’s foundational principle that should
impact operations across your organization.

14 Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must-Know

Conclusion
We’ve thrown a lot at you. Now it’s your turn. You can
take the steps and ideas we’ve explained here and use
them to craft your own Account-Based Marketing plan.

And remember, we’re always here to help.

For more information, visit the Demandbase Account-

Based Marketing Resources for additional insight on
how to get started with ABM.

Demandbase is the leader in Account-Based Marketing.

We are the only company that can help B2B companies
accurately target specific accounts in real time, with
patented IP technology, and then engage those accounts
across the web with advertising, website personalization,
and sales conversion solutions. With the Demandbase
B2B Marketing Cloud, companies can accelerate revenue
growth by marketing across the full marketing and sales
funnels to the accounts with the most potential.

www.demandbase.com

15