Many times when Marketing is turning to Account Based Marketing the driver is marketing automation with a focus on inbound digital marketing
Main reason is to scale ABM activities to more accounts to increase the top-funnel by using marketing automation and other MarTech tools. What it means is that they build online personas and tailored their online messaging and activities to these personas during the online buyer journeyOf course a big step forward compared to just trying to reach as many people as possible. It will improve the top-funnel and sometimes mid-funnel as well. But what about the bottom-funnel, where we need conversion to deals and revenue?
Why REM is a cornerstone of your ABM?
The enormous amount of MarTech tools has led to overwhelming digital marketing channels for customers, who have become inundated with emails, eBooks, and social ads. It’s increasingly difficult for organizations to create online marketing campaigns that stand out. The answer is in personalization, but the online personalization is rapidly becoming a mandatory commodity. As a result, more and more organizations are turning to in-person marketing events to grab the attention of their audience and drive business results. That is where revenue event marketing (REM) comes in.
Revenue event marketing is a strategy that focuses on driving the business metrics that matter-the ones that ultimately prove the impact events can have on a company’s bottom line. Revenue event marketing sets revenue and pipeline as goals, instead of lead generation.
Why ABM is the approach for revenue driving events?
A study, by Hank Bames and Tiffani Bova from Gartner, about the marketing activities that most influence the purchasing decisions of B2B customers, showed that the top three most influential activities are: Direct interactions with the provider, References and Life Events.
In other words, when events leverage customer advocacy and references, they combine the three most influential B2B marketing activities into one powerful touch point.
Then we are talking about revenue driving events – for pipeline creation and acceleration – instead of events focused on lead generation.
Look now at the ABM strategy. A successful ABM strategy requires that you take the following steps:
* Select your target accounts – The goal of this is to align your sales and marketing efforts by focusing on key accounts that are most likely to drive big revenue.
* Discover the proper influencers of and contacts within your target accounts – More coverage and engagement at your target accounts will help you identify buying centers and where to get in.
* Develop account insights – Research about each account and stakeholder so you can deliver personalized and relevant touches.
* Generate account relevant messages and content – Creating the right content and messaging based on your account insights are key for the right conversations.
* Deliver account specific interactions – Decide how, when and what is going to be the best to deliver your messages.
* Orchestrate account based plays – Synchronize your team’s interactions into coordinated plays that align to account plans and goals.
These steps are also necessary to create successful revenue-generating events. So a lot of the hard work and coordination among internal teams, to ensure that the three most influential marketing activities – direct interactions, references and events – come together at your revenue driving events, are part of your ABM. You just need to set up the logistics of an event to reap the rewards.
How revenue driving events strengthen your ABM?
There are many types of revenue driving events. They range from 121 executive meetings to intimate C-level dinners to large industry conferences – and even though they range in size and format, revenue-driving B2B events typically share several common characteristics that are directly related to an account based approach:
– Joint effort of multiple internal teams, especially sales and marketing, to make the event successful
– A clear set of objectives are defined and discussed (Is the purpose of the event to position a solution, set follow-up meetings, arrange specific engagements, drive awareness, or something else?)
– The list of targeted contacts that includes both selected customers and targeted prospects.
– Specific account and stakeholder mapping to identify who needs to connect with the different attendees.
– The events provide useful, relevant content and discussion options, whether that takes the form of a keynote, roundtable, expert session about the latest industry research, top-notch networking opportunities with other C-level executives, interactive and engaging experiential activities, and more
– The event provides time for networking, peer-to-peer and between key players of your organization and targeted attendees
– The post-event follow-up is in time, personalized and contextualized
These revenue driving events are the perfect platform for delivering account-specific interactions and orchestrating account based plays.
For example an account-based play for a conference might involve your CIO hosting an executive dinner table before a conference with specific CIO’s from your ABM accounts. You could also create such ABM plays for an executive round table or expert session during the conference.
These type of plays will not only help to align your sales and marketing teams, but will also allow your CIO or key players to build better relationships with key contacts within target accounts not only during but also before and after your event !
Conclusion: ABM and REM = a happy marriage!
To further marry your ABM strategy with REM, you should keep core tenets of account based marketing in mind while planning your events. The other way around you should use REM in your ABM strategy to help aligning internal teams, build better personal relationships and drive business with your target accounts.
Do you want to drive more revenue out of your life events with ABM and REM?
Feel free to contact me and together we will find out how you can best marry your ABM and REM strategy to further develop your account-specific relationships and drive business results for your company!