How can you use ABM to strengthen your customer relationships?

You're not going to like these statistics. 80% plus of marketing investment is spent on new logo acquisition rather than on existing customers. Something is clearly wrong here. The perpetual chasing of new logos when all the data shows it is cheaper and higher ROI to invest in growing your existing customers. So why ABM? Because ABM was founded to grow + keep your existing customers. Yes, it's evolved. But at its heart - that is what ABM is all about - getting close to your customers, delighting them and keeping them.

In the B2B world, where relationships matter, ABM becomes a strategic guide for nurturing and growing those connections. Picture this: if you're using Salesforce CRM for sales, you become part of the Salesforce team's accounts. The marketing team now through different channels such as Retargeting, Social, Webinars, Offline events etc. will educate and increase your awareness of their other products such as Einstein, Marketing Cloud, or Customer 360 etc. and it's use cases so that not only they retain you to use the CRM for next cycle but also upsell their other products as add on to their existing service.

Why does ABM matter for customer retention? It matters because it facilitates unified efforts. One significant benefit I've discovered through ABM is the unity and momentum it fosters within the company. For instance, as part of our ABM strategy, a company I worked for displayed flyers around the office featuring our top 15 accounts. Previously, if you asked a random employee to name a few of our biggest accounts, getting even ONE would be lucky. However, after implementing this strategy, it became second nature. Suddenly, everyone in the company understood our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and actively worked toward helping. The outcome? We all moved in the same direction, breaking all-time revenue records.

Turns out, ABM isn't just fancy initials; it's your B2B love potion! Treat each customer like a VIP crush. Personalize your approach, serenade them with tailored content, and make them feel so special they'll think they've got a sales admirer. ABM: Because who doesn't love a bit of personalized romance in B2B?

It's the hyper-personalization that makes your chances to be noticed higher. It needs lot of efforts and planning. With Hubspot having ABM capabilities it becomes simpler.

ABMs are more effective when executed on a 1:1 or 1:Few approach. From my experience, segmenting customers per vertical, use cases and adoption level have been the type of segmentations that work better.

For your segmentation to be accurate, you need to be clear on why you're targeting certain accounts. What are your goals and have they been sense-checked and aligned with sales? One factor that is not paid enough attention is the 'health' of the account - are they happy customers right now? If there is an ongoing support issue, or adoption levels are low, perhaps now is not the right time to be placing them into a cross sell/upsell campaign. Relationship building and reinforcing your value and commitment to the customer should be the focus of a 1:1 program before anything else.

Segmentation of an audience is what will develop the grounds for your strategy. There is no right or wrong way to segment as the purpose of each campaign may differ. You can segment from intent behaviors within an account, demographics, company size, revenue, industry etc. The effectiveness of how you segment ultimately defines whether it's a 1:many; 1:few or a 1:1. Success from segmentation isn't a stand-alone but when you also have the sales alignment from end to end of the campaign creation.

Adding to this, I've seen successful ABM-programs where you also segment on which type of customers (existing or prospects) as well as where you are in your sales process towards them. Your messages will obviously be different towards an existing customer compared to a prospects. As well as it will be vastly different early compared to later in the sales process.

When a client launches a campaign on LinkedIn, they can readily access Company Engagement Report which will indicate which companies, industries, job seniorities, etc. engaged with your campaign. You can then segment further by any of those variables - as broad as industry or as niche as a company if you believe there is high profitability there. What’s also nice is that it allows for real time marketing & sales alignment - marketing teams are able to share Company Engagement Report with their sales teams to immediately prospect. Their lead quality feedback is then fed back into the marketing campaign for continuous improvement & optimization.

CReating Buyer Personas is NOT enough for ABM. We need to depict the Buying Committee and each buyer personas that takes part in this Committee. Contrarily to short and transactionals buying decision processes, in ABM the decision processes are particularly long and complex.Several profiles participate in the buying decision process,not just 1 or 2. That's why we need to understand each Buyer Persona or profile that participate and how they interact with each other: their pain points, priorities, their roles (decider, user, blocker...) in the decision process and in what moment or point they get into the buying decision process. Knowing how they engage and get along with each other is paramount.

WARNING - there are no buyer personas in ABM... Caveat at the end... ABM is when you shift from PERSONA to PERSON. ABM is all about building deep relationships with your most important customers - or target accounts that you wish to win. Your job therefore is to gain insights into the right PEOPLE not PERSONAS to engage with via Marketing and Sales. First name, surname, etc. Not IT Decision Maker. Caveat - you may need to start with Personas to agree who the right people profiles are but you quickly shift from this.

Tudo começa com o ICP, depois a ideia é mapear o comitê de compra daquele ICP. Para facilitar, eu separo em dois grandes grupos, os influnciadores e os decisores. O ideal é tentar entender qual é a for principal de cada, e a partir disso construir uma narrativa para cada grupo. Uma boa lógica é: Problema a persona > melhor ângulo da solução > funcionalidades da solução > capacidades que ela gera para a persona > benefício percebido Esse frame acima ajuda muito na construção da mensagem, começando, sempre, pela dor do influenciador ou do decisor.

In leveraging Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) for customer relationship strengthening, personas simulate diverse individual customers, allowing tailored strategies for personalized interactions. Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) focus on organizational traits, ensuring efficiency and accuracy in targeting businesses aligned with the product or service. Combining both approaches provides a holistic understanding, integrating micro-level personalization from personas with macro-level strategic alignment from ICPs. This dual strategy embraces individualized interactions and targeted scalability, fostering sustained and meaningful customer relationships through a customer-centric approach.

Your sales team is likely your most under utilized personalization engine. Instead of providing templates and tools for scheduling cadences (marketing automation can do that), retrain your sales team to create and send truly personal communications based on the organization, role of contact and stage of the buying process (ie. near renewal time, newly adopting product etc).

As mensagem são desdobramentos do posicionamento, que por sua vez é criado *por ICP*. Logo você terá uma mensagem por ICP também, se indo em nível granular para os i) influenciadores e ii) decisores, como coloquei acima. Entender as funcionalidades > capacidades > benefícios percebidos da sua solução sob a ótica as persona do ICP é fundamental.

En la metodología ABM, los mensajes desempeñan un papel central al demostrar conocimiento, empatía y propuesta de valor única para cada cliente. La alineación cuidadosa de tono, contenido y contexto resulta en mensajes claros, concisos y persuasivos, orientados a guiar al cliente en su trayectoria específica.

Agree with Samantha on this one. Sales is underutilized. Personas may not be enough. Craft a campaign to nurture buyers, feed sales with insights from your intent, and make sure they're getting notified when accounts are hot. Of course, it's not one size fits all, but the only way to have a clear, concise message across teams is if your sales team knows who to reach to and what they need in the first place.

Yo creo que no sólo en ABM hay que personalizar el mensaje. ¿A quién le gustaría recibir una newsletter genérica? ¿Qué tipo de engagement y de interés despertaría un correo así? Ya lo decía Bill Gates “The content is the king” y sin eso ni el ABM ni el marketing más puro y tradicional no pueden seguir adelante.

No contexto ABM as vendas são complexas, sem impulsos e envolvem muitas pessoas. Logo, você não conseguirá metrificar tudo, a melhor forma é explorar a jornada invisível (dark social) e acompanhar métricas de alcance, engajamento e frequência. Com isso, poderá fazer um motion tático com o time de vendas para abordar essas personas de forma diferentes para começar a capturar essa demanda. Convites para podcasts, webinars e eventos podem ser ótimas maneiras no cenário 1:Few e 1:1, além da criação de páginas e anúncios personalizados.

Customized trials and pilots! Instead of generic trials, you need to create tailored experiences for your prospects that offer greater value. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn't cut it in ABM anymore. Offering customized trials or pilots in your prospects' brand, allows prospects to experience firsthand how their solution addresses their specific pain points, resulting in higher conversion rates.

ABM by itself is totally fine, the power lies in ABM with “Re-Platforming”. This isn't just about showing off your shiny product; it's a deep dive into 'Why us and not them?' Get into the “why switching from Competitor X to You” is like upgrading from a flip phone to a smartphone. Show them the seamless transition, the unparalleled support, and the u matched array of features that make your offering not just a choice, but THE choice. This approach isn't just powerful; it's game changing. In the high-stakes game of high-ticket B2B marketing, ABM with replatforming is your secret weapon.

Concordo muito com o que o David falou abaixo. E pra deixar mais palpável sobre como fazer anúncios personalizados para as contas específicas, recomendo o Linkedin Ads porque a plataforma permite que façamos anúncios para pessoas específicas de empresas específicas. Assim, podemos ter campanhas só para as contas tratadas como 1:many, outras só para as contas de 1:few e outras para 1:1. Obviamente, como uma compra via ABM é complexa, esses anúncios devem ser muito menos vendedores e muito mais educativos. Por isso, o ideal é trabalhar em alta frequência (volume de vezes que uma pessoa vê um criativo) e um alto volume de criativos também para nutrir melhor as pessoas via anúncios, diminuir o ciclo de venda e gerar mais oportunidades

As old as a concept may be, word of mouth & optimal customer service still remains. While today they may exist in the form of case-studies, referrals & testimonials. Value is offered by trust through transparency. People like knowing that the source is trustworthy & that their time is valued & their input is considered, a tailored experience throughout the customer journey can go a long way. ABM after-all is about building off the foundation of deep relationships, creating delightful experiences to continue to win the customer throughout the customer cycle & even beyond.

Strong relationships are crucial in retaining customers. When clients feel heard, valued, and supported, they're less inclined to switch to a competitor. This stability significantly impacts revenue generation and reduces the expenses involved in acquiring new customers. Listening to your customers' feedback and leveraging it to enhance your products, services, and processes is pivotal. Events and workshops, in particular, have shown great effectiveness based on past experiences.

The best way to nurture long-term relationships in ABM is to prioritise, incentivise and celebrate longevity. Prioritising the needs of your most important existing accounts and backing it with investment will lead to longer term relationships. Don't be tempted to spend all your time and resource on chasing net new logos.

Em um cenário de sobrecarga de informações e escassez de tempo, ser direto e objetivo faz diferença. Do treinamento do produto, passando pelo suporte e seguindo até, eventualmente, uma nova oferta, é necessário ter o maior número possível de informações sobre o cliente, conhecer a sua jornada e seus micromomentos para conseguir economizar seu tempo e atenção, dar fluidez às interações e adicionar valor ao contexto do seu relacionamento.

Your relationship with your customer is a continuous loop. A continuous loop of: - communication - engagement. - learning. - value exchange. Today's headlines may all be about using ABM for new logo acquisition. But its origins are in customer expansion, retention, and advocacy. There are a number of strategies and tactics you can deploy to move the prospect to customer to advocate. These cannot be done in a disjointed fashion. It needs close integration between teams. It needs an overarching strategy to control this. And it needs clear communication with all stakeholders... ...to make sure they have access to everything they need to build relationships, strengthen your brand, and ultimately create customers for life.

Empathy-driven ABM customer support! To strengthen your customer relationships you need to recognize that exceptional customer support is a key driver of strong ABM relationships. They prioritize empathy in their support interactions, actively listening to their customers' concerns and offering tailored solutions. This human-centric approach leaves a lasting impression and fosters loyalty.

Place your customer at the heart of everything you do. Your job is to help your customer win. Devise how you can do that and you won't go wrong.

Muchas veces nos olvidamos que detrás de un marketing B2B siempre hay una C, es decir siempre hay un consumidor/ usuario final al que tenemos que satisfacer. En este caso en un ABM marketing es clave identificar todas las personas a las que tu producto toca en la cadena de valor y generar segmentos para dirigir tus mensajes a cada uno de ellos. Estos segmentos van más allá que su rol dentro de la compra, sino que también importan sus intereses, objetivos profesionales y objetivos dentro de su compañía. El marketing basado en cuentas es también marketing basado en las personas detrás de esas cuentas.

Don‘t mix up ABM with „targeting of ‚strategic accounts‘“. KNOW the account which you want to „fall in love with you“ - due to your ABM activities - very (very!) good! [strategy, org., challenges, pains, execs….] Act sustainable - ABM is not a one-night-stand. Define your taskforce for every ABM target account. Understand every ABM target-account as a market of its own. No matter how Big you are - keep the number ob ABM projects low. Involve your own executives Define (very regular) ABM account reviews. (more to come…..)

Your most important customers are looking for partners to integrate into their business or operations, not just a supplier to conduct transactions with. This often results in rather complex buying journeys that are difficult to navigate. How does one actually work, both internally and externally, to ensure that you are the supplier that customers believe adds the most value to their own operations, thus creating long-term relationships? The supplier seen as an innovator whose purpose is to constantly improve their customers' operations? Regardless of whether you are in sales, marketing, the key is to crack this code; to be exclusively seen as the supplier that becomes a value-adding partner. This will lead to more and larger deals.