Account-Based Marketing For Dummies book cover

Account-Based Marketing For Dummies

Author:
Sangram Vajre
Buy on Amazon

Overview

Grow your account list with an effective account-based marketing strategy

Buyers have changed the B2B marketing game. Account-Based Marketing For Dummies is here to give you the tools to transform your current approach to find, reach, and engage with your potential customers on their terms to meet their ever-changing demands. Packed with expert tips and step-by-step instructions, this book shows you how to analyze current data to identify the accounts with the biggest ROI opportunities and execute effective, account-specific techniques that get results.

This practical guide takes the intimidation out of account-based marketing in today's highly digitized world. You'll be armed with the knowledge you need to increase your reach in real time, giving you greater exposure to other decision-makers and influencers within an account. You'll discover how, through a combination of marketing technology and online advertising, your messages can be displayed where and when your customers already engage online.

  • Align your sales and marketing teams for greater success in your ABM efforts
  • Analyze data to identify key accounts
  • Target your messages for real-time interaction
  • Integrate your campaign with marketing automation software

If you're a member of a sales or marketing team already using a CRM tool who's looking to increase your reach, Account-Based Marketing For Dummies has you covered!

"Account-Based Marketing For Dummies clears away the confusion surrounding this much-hyped topic. It offers simple, direct explanations of what account-based marketing is, why it's important, and how to do it.  Any business marketing professional will benefit from a look at this book."
—David Raab, Founder at Raab Associates

"If you're reading this book and just getting started with ABM, welcome to the future of what b-to-b marketing can be: insight-led, technology-enabled and, above all, customer focused. Our clients are delighted with the business impact they deliver using account-based marketing, and you will be, too."
—Megan Heuer, Vice President and Group Director, SiriusDecisions

"Like a Hollywood agent, marketing's job is to get sales the 'audition,' not the part. Account-based marketing is the key to maximizing the number of the 'right' auditions for your sales team, and Account-Based Marketing For Dummies explains how."
—Joe Chernov, VP of Marketing at InsightSquared

"Ever-advancing marketing technology is enabling a new generation of sales and marketing strategies to thrive, changing the playing field for companies of all sizes. This modern wave of account-based marketing has tremendous potential to improve your business, and Sangram Vajre is an insightful and enthusiastic guide to show you how."
—Scott Brinker, Author of Hacking Marketing

"Account-based marketing is shifting how businesses use customer insights to capture more upmarket revenue. This book teaches a new wave of data-driven marketers how to embrace an enlightened quality-vs-quantity approach and execute a scalable ABM strategy that delivers real results."
—Sean Zinsmeister, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Infer

"The book may be titled '…for dummies', but ABM is proving to be a smart approach for B2B marketers charged with generating sales pipeline and acquiring and delighting customers.  Use this book to help you get started and advance your account-based marketing strategies and tactics that will thrill your sales colleagues, executive team and customers alike."
—Scott Vaughan, CMO, Integrate

Grow your account list with an effective account-based marketing strategy

Buyers have changed the B2B marketing game. Account-Based Marketing For Dummies is here to give you the tools to transform your current approach to find, reach, and engage with your potential customers on their terms to meet their ever-changing demands. Packed with expert tips and step-by-step instructions, this book shows you how to analyze current data to identify the accounts with the biggest ROI opportunities and execute effective, account-specific techniques that get results.

This practical guide takes the intimidation out of account-based marketing in today's highly digitized world. You'll be armed with the knowledge you need to increase your reach in real time, giving you greater exposure to other decision-makers and influencers within an account. You'll discover how, through a combination of marketing technology and online advertising, your messages can be displayed where and when your customers already engage online.

  • Align your sales and marketing teams for greater success in your ABM efforts
  • Analyze data to identify key accounts
  • Target your messages for real-time interaction
  • Integrate your campaign with marketing automation software

If you're a member of a sales or marketing team already using a CRM tool who's looking to increase your reach, Account-Based Marketing For Dummies has you covered!

"Account-Based Marketing For Dummies clears away the confusion surrounding this much-hyped topic. It offers simple, direct explanations of what account-based marketing is, why it's important, and how to do it.  Any business marketing professional will benefit from a look at this book."
—David Raab, Founder at Raab Associates

"If you're reading

this book and just getting started with ABM, welcome to the future of what b-to-b marketing can be: insight-led, technology-enabled and, above all, customer focused. Our clients are delighted with the business impact they deliver using account-based marketing, and you will be, too."
—Megan Heuer, Vice President and Group Director, SiriusDecisions

"Like a Hollywood agent, marketing's job is to get sales the 'audition,' not the part. Account-based marketing is the key to maximizing the number of the 'right' auditions for your sales team, and Account-Based Marketing For Dummies explains how."
—Joe Chernov, VP of Marketing at InsightSquared

"Ever-advancing marketing technology is enabling a new generation of sales and marketing strategies to thrive, changing the playing field for companies of all sizes. This modern wave of account-based marketing has tremendous potential to improve your business, and Sangram Vajre is an insightful and enthusiastic guide to show you how."
—Scott Brinker, Author of Hacking Marketing

"Account-based marketing is shifting how businesses use customer insights to capture more upmarket revenue. This book teaches a new wave of data-driven marketers how to embrace an enlightened quality-vs-quantity approach and execute a scalable ABM strategy that delivers real results."
—Sean Zinsmeister, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Infer

"The book may be titled '…for dummies', but ABM is proving to be a smart approach for B2B marketers charged with generating sales pipeline and acquiring and delighting customers.  Use this book to help you get started and advance your account-based marketing strategies and tactics that will thrill your sales colleagues, executive team and customers alike."
—Scott Vaughan, CMO, Integrate

Account-Based Marketing For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Account-based marketing flips the marketing funnel on its head. You start with your best-fit prospects and turn them into resources for both long-term business and new prospects.

About The Author

Sangram Vajre has quickly built a reputation as one of the leading minds in B2B marketing. Before co-founding Terminus, a SaaS platform for account-based marketing, Sangram led the marketing team at Salesforce Pardot. He has spoken on the topic of marketing technology around the world and is the mastermind behind #FlipMyFunnel.

Articles From The Book

46 results

Marketing Articles

Connecting with Marketing Contacts on Social Media

The number of social media channels is endless. Each social media channel serves a different purpose designed for a certain audience. Depending on your audience and purpose, you will find yourself with using some social media channels more than others. It depends on the types of accounts you're trying to connect, and with what message. As of 2016, the biggest social media channels in the world are

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Reddit
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest

It's important to recognize the most popular social media platforms, as they all offer ways for your company to do advertising or promote sponsor content. These media help you reach your contacts in your target accounts.

It isn't possible to be on every channel and be effective. Identifying the right channels is important for connecting with your contacts.

LinkedIn is the best place to connect with your contacts on a 1-to-1 basis utilizing social media.

As the largest professional networking site in the world, every business-to-business (B2B) marketing and sales professional should understand the importance of being on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has several ways for you to connect with your contacts, including
  • Liking or commenting on status updates
  • Reading your contacts blog posts and sharing them with your network
  • Joining groups
  • Inviting them to connect
Here is when you should invite a prospect to connect on LinkedIn:
  • Business/Sales development representative (BDR/SDR): If you're engaging in conversation with a prospect, after completing an initial discovery call or scheduling an appointment for sales.
  • Sales account executive (AE): If a demo was successful and the account is progressing to a revenue opportunity. You need to connect with all the relevant decision makers in the account.
  • Project manager: If the account has become a Closed/Won deal, and the implementation of your product or service requires a project manager or professional services consultant, this individual should connect with your customer accounts on LinkedIn.
  • Customer success manager (CSM): After the account has been handed off to a CSM via email, the CSM should connect with their customers, (especially the "champion," or biggest user of your product or service). This champion can become your customer advocate, and LinkedIn can help to further engagement.
  • Marketing team member: A member from your marketing team needs to collaborate with your customers to create content. This customer content includes case studies, video testimonials, webinars, and planning for events. When marketing team members are collaborating with customers, they should connect on LinkedIn to build a relationship.

Don't ask your contacts to become your Facebook friend. If you get to the point where one of your contacts offers to connect with you on Facebook, consider what message you'll send by accepting his or her friend accounts.

Marketing Articles

What Mad Men Teaches About Account-Based Marketing

Although the hit television series Mad Men began in the 1950s, long before anyone had ever heard of a sales and marketing funnel, the agency shown in this show actually was doing business-to-business (B2B) account-based marketing:

  • Identify target accounts. They targeted companies in such industries as automotive, cosmetics, fashion, travel, and commercial goods, because they had success with those types of companies before. The account executives found the ultimate decision makers.
  • Expand the account with contacts. They determined who else from the account needed to come in for a pitch about creative. For example, when the agency was pitching a big tobacco company, they would need to know all of the executive stakeholders.
  • Engage accounts on their terms. Invite them to the office for a swanky boardroom meeting or to dinner to sip martinis. Find out their hopes and dreams for their product or service, then design creative to help tell the story. The big pitch with storyboards showing messaging that spoke to them and tugged at their heart strings would help win the deal.
  • Create customer advocates. They accounts then tell all their friends about the amazing work the agency did to help increase sales at their business. This word of mouth marketing gave the agency its excellent reputation.
Because Mad Men covered the Fifties to the Seventies, the agency didn't have access to the technology you have today. Contacts were kept in a Rolodex on a pretty mahogany desk. When an account man left an agency, all he had was his Rolodex and his reputation. Today, your reputation follows you on social media, but the way you manage accounts is much more sophisticated. Imagine what Don Draper, the creative director of Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Price, would think about all these B2B marketing automation software and sales prospecting tools.

Marketing Articles

CRM Retargeting to Expand Your Reach

Targeted advertising is part of your account-based marketing strategy. You're pulling data from your customer relationship management (CRM) system to target contacts in accounts. It's a laser-focused business-to-business (B2B) marketing technique. Another way to connect with your accounts is through CRM retargeting. The retargeting component includes taking the data in your CRM and syncing it with third-party sources for cookie- or IP-based targeting. If you know the name of an account you want to target, and this account is in your CRM, then additional platforms (such as AdRoll and LiveRamp) match your data for CRM retargeting.

Account-based marketing platforms add another layer onto CRM retargeting with account-based retargeting. Account-based retargeting proactively targets the entire set of people in the account. CRM retargeting uses the first email or contact who came to your website.

Because Bob from ACME came to the website, he is the first contact associated with the account in your CRM. You know Bob isn't the only decision-maker in the account. If Bob is a Marketing Manager, you need to find Bob's Director of Marketing or CMO. Your ABM platform will use Bob's company name, ACME, and find more contact data for the marketing team members at ACME. This way, the entire marketing department at ACME will see your advertisement. This helps to expand your reach in your target account.

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