Friday 14 April 2017

How to Orchestrate a Solid ABM Team [Gifographic]

Author: Ellen Gomes

A movie is nothing without great music. Whether you’re watching a Disney animated film, an Oscar-worthy musical, or a horror movie, the soundtrack is critical to creating the perfect ambiance. Don’t believe me? Try watching Silence of The Lambs on mute…way less scary, and a perfect way for this scaredy-cat ( oh hey, that’s me!) to tiptoe toward watching her first horror movie. But what does it take to create a perfect sound that elicits the right emotion, at the right the time?

A great team.

An Oscar-worthy orchestra doesn’t happen by mistake. It takes selecting musicians, allocating resources, and understanding the size of the team needed to create specific sounds. Believe it or not, marketers face similar challenges as they’re assembling their account-based marketing team, combining unique roles into cross-functional teams that create beautifully orchestrated campaigns.

ABM Hits the Right Notes

Moving from a broad-based demand generation strategy to a more targeted, account-centric approach requires a shift towards acquiring, retaining, and growing high-value accounts. And that shift is often well worth it because the targeted accounts are likely to generate more revenue and often have strategic significance like helping to penetrate new territories or influence a market.

Just take a look at these industry stats:

  • The buyer’s journey is 1.5x shorter with ABM. —Aberdeen Group
  • Account-based marketers are 33% more effective at connecting marketing efforts to revenue. —Aberdeen Group
  • 97% of marketers surveyed said ABM produced their highest ROI. —Alterra Group

Assemble a Harmonic Marketing Ensemble

Creating the perfect account-based marketing team starts with defining specific roles. Just like instruments are strategically and specifically placed in an orchestra, organizations need to understand the different roles team members play and then coordinate them to target and engage high-value accounts.

For those just embarking on their ABM journey, your team will shape the change management necessary to make your ABM campaigns successful. If you’ve already been practicing ABM, then you may want to tweak your roles to ensure you have the support you need for proper coverage. Either way, these roles will provide the support you need for a successful ABM campaign:

  • Executive Sponsor: Typically, your executive sponsor will come out of marketing, but you may have an executive sponsor driving this strategy in sales, support, or services. They will act as a champion for your ABM strategy— offering support and strategic guidance—from an executive standpoint.
  • Marketer: Drives the ABM strategy from creation to execution, acts as the point person to ensure cross-functional collaboration, and reports on the progress of the strategy.
  • Account Executive Leader: Helps align the strategy around customers and their needs, creates ABM service-level agreements and leads and educates the rest of team on best practices.
  • Marketing Operations/Sales Operations: Works to examine your existing database, identify trends, and report on progress. MOPS and SOPS are critical to choosing the right accounts.
  • Sales Development Leader: Helps guide research on accounts, providing feedback to the group to recalibrate if necessary.
  • Services Leader: Looks for opportunities to support current customers in their product and potentially identifies new opportunities for upsell and cross-sell.
  • Support Leader: Strategically monitors target accounts to help ensure customer retention and prioritization of cases.

If you have a lean team, this list may look overwhelming. At the very least, it’s important to have both marketing and sales involved and well aligned, as well as the executives that oversee the teams.

To learn how to assemble the right talent to create engaging ABM campaigns, check out our new gifographic Orchestrate a Solid ABM Team: How to Assemble a Harmonic Marketing Ensemble.

Looking for more on Account-Based Marketing? Check out our Definitive Guide to Account-Based Marketing.

View the gifographic in a new window here.

Please use the HTML code below to embed this graphic

<a href="http://blog.marketo.com/2017/04/how-to-orchestrate-a-solid-abm-team-gifographic"><img alt="Orchestrate a Solid ABM Team [Gifographic]" src="http://blog.marketo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Orchestrate-a-Solid-ABM-Team_Marketo-.gif" width="100%" /></a><br><p><small>Brought to you by <a href="https://www.marketo.com/software/platform/">Engagement Platform by Marketo</a></small>

How to Orchestrate a Solid ABM Team [Gifographic] was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

The post How to Orchestrate a Solid ABM Team [Gifographic] appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.



from Marketo Marketing Blog http://blog.marketo.com/2017/04/how-to-orchestrate-a-solid-abm-team-gifographic.html

No comments:

Post a Comment