Build Your Brand to Bloom: 5 Ways Enterprise Marketing Teams Plant Smarter Selling Seeds with Demandbase

For this next installment of our Spring into Smarter GTM™ for Enterprises series, we’re focusing the spotlight on enterprise marketing teams! Previous entries: 

• Introduction
• ABM for Enterprise Sales Teams

With the inaugural release of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Account-Based platforms now in market and the 3rd Forrester New Wave for Account-Based Platforms also published, many analysts are now viewing account-based marketing, or ABM, as a mature category.

Yet, despite these trends in the industry, many enterprises still shy away from adopting ABM as a technology and strategy.

Why?

Moving away from the status quo of lead generation marketing at an enterprise organization is like trying to maneuver the Titanic away from hitting an iceberg.

Why is it difficult to adopt?

First, it’s tough to navigate a large enterprise to identify the right stakeholders to include in a vendor evaluation, not to mention how time consuming it is to follow the procurement process. When faced with the requirements for vetting a new vendor, going through security validation, and getting all the right signatures in place, many marketers would rather stick to the status quo. Who has time for all of that?

Second, traditional lead generation marketing is tried and true and something most Demand Gen marketers know how to do. So why fix what isn’t broken? Marketers can still generate pipeline from nurture campaigns and other traditional lead generation marketing. And let’s face it – who has time to learn a new platform?

Third, getting alignment from sales is often a non-starter. Sales knows who should be in their book of business and convincing them otherwise can be a Herculean effort that many marketers would rather forgo. But there are ways to get your teams on board.

Breaking the Status Quo

If you’re ready to break the status quo to give account-based marketing a try, here are some steps you can take at your organization to get started.

First, it’s important to take a step back and:

• Understand what your goals are
• Map out the strategies to achieve those goals
• Determine whether your existing technology can help

For example, changing your view of marketing to be more account-based does require that you are able to identify and track accounts vs. leads. You will also want to think about all of your engagement channels and whether you can accurately target the accounts on your list. When evaluating ABM vendors, there are some specific questions you should ask to ensure that you’re investing in the right ABM solution. This guide can help you evaluate ABM vendors to ensure you’re being as holistic in your evaluation as possible.

Second, making the switch to be account-based does not have to happen all at once. For enterprise organizations in particular, taking a crawl-walk-run approach is often recommended. Many of our customers actually start their ABM journey with a pilot, not only as a proof of concept, but to help get over some organizational obstacles to making the switch to ABM. When it comes to overcoming organizational obstacles, the following best practices should help:

• Communicate with all the different stakeholders in your organization about the pilot and the capabilities of the platform
• Understand what each stakeholder group needs from the platform
• Setup ongoing training so each group understands how to get the information they need from the platform
• Follow a phased approach – focus on a few key features to train a core group of users on. There’s no need to turn on all features of a platform right away.

Finally, one of the keys to the successful rollout of an ABM program and platform is enablement. If you’re starting with a pilot group, identify a few initial sellers to train who are receptive to trying ABM and the new ABM platform. Get their feedback and then refine your training to meet the needs of that user group. When a new platform is in play, it’s important to ensure each user group understands what’s in it for them. Meet with them early to get their feedback so you can set up the platform and any training in a way that is easy for those user groups to get the data they need from the platform right away.

The following additional best practices will also help to ensure your organization is set up for success with ABM:

• Create how-to guides for each user group so they understand how account-based marketing and the platform can work for their use cases.
• Set up hour long live sessions with the various teams so they know what to expect from an ABM program and how to understand the data in an ABM platform.
• When introducing a feature of the platform to your team, demo the feature and use cases so they understand how to interpret the information. Record the demo so it’s always available online to review if needed.

You got this! (and we got you!)

While it may seem like a daunting task to implement an account-based marketing strategy, the benefits will more than outweigh the time and effort. Demandbase recently worked with Forrester to conduct a Total Economic Impact study on the cost savings and business benefits of using Demandbase. Here are some of the key benefits:

• Demandbase One delivers a 367% return on investment (ROI)
• Sales productivity gains of $1.2 million
• Payback <6 months

Not only does the study provide quantifiable benefits but it also highlights the unquantifiable benefits as well, like an improved sales and marketing relationship. As you can see, account-based marketing is a winning strategy that you’ll want your organization to adopt sooner rather than later!