How to scale your ABM programs [Part 1 of 2]

The B2B marketing conversation has moved on: quicker conversions to closed revenue, larger average deal size, reduced customer acquisition costs and maximum customer lifetime value is the new talk of the town. And ABM at Scale can help deliver this. But it's a tough nut to crack. In this two-part series, we will guide you through your ABM at Scale program journey, sharing tips on scaling the proven impact of 1:1 and 1:few programs without over-indexing on resources and focus per account

It’s a far cry from bygone - and more subjective - days of brand building and ‘into the hopper’ lead generation. CMOs are now expected to evidence how they are driving higher-quality pipeline, accelerate conversion to closed revenue, lower the cost of acquisition, increase average deal size, and secure long-term customer renewals.

Standing out among all these metrics are two that have garnered outsized attention and importance: reducing ‘customer acquisition cost’ (CAC) - how much an organization spends on landing new customers - and maximizing ‘customer lifetime value’ (CLV) - total net profit a company can expect to generate from a customer throughout their entire relationship.

In other words, CMOs are now being held accountable for direct contributions to the bottom line. This shift in focus calls for a reevaluation of marketing strategies and a realignment of priorities. ABM programs go a long way toward answering these demands.

Yet in the rush to do more with less, the pressure to scale the initial impact of pilot and 1:1 ABM programs, the effectiveness, and consequently the results, can be diluted, or even lost. Traditional demand generation programs, however, while providing scale, do not provide the precision and results of ABM, so are often wasteful and lack focus.

Let’s look at the definition of 'true' ABM - treating each account as a market of one. And while scaling ABM holds the key to many prized metrics, we must think multiple moves ahead, thanks to greater scrutiny across the organization.

As ABM came to the fore across B2B organizations through the 2010s, many practitioners became almost tribal about their preferred approach. Dyed-in-the-wool 1:1 ABM-ers would decry 1:many ABM as ‘just good demand generation.’ Digital-first 1:many ABM-ers would chide small-scale ABM programs for being expensive and too inflexible to suit fast-changing organizational realities.

With CMOs under increasing pressure to deliver revenue, Agent3’s ABM at Scale solution helps shift how organizations evaluate their contribution. Instead of the tired, linear ‘waterfall’ mindset of baton-passing moments between the functions fixed on individuals (think Marketing Qualified Lead’ to Sales Accepted Opportunity, Sales Accepted Opportunity to Sales Qualified Opportunity, etc.), the focus here is on accumulating increasing opportunity intelligence across the buying committee, then leveraging this insight to tailor a more pertinent conversation between the vendor and the prospective buyer. 

More on how this works in a moment.

To date, these models have worked well, but they don't provide the flexibility, scale and efficiency needed to meet the challenges of today’s CMO. At Agent3, however, we believe there is a way to address this, by bringing together the precision and exactness of 1:1 ABM, with the scale and breadth of demand generation.

We call this ABM at Scale.

The ABM at Scale solution from Agent3 offers the best of all worlds. It can help today’s CMOs deliver on key performance metrics and ROI goals. Including all-important CAC and CLV.

This hybrid approach leverages data-driven insights to identify clusters of similar accounts and applies customized messaging and outreach strategies to these groups, effectively marrying the best aspects of personalized ABM with the scalability required for broader market impact.

The best ABM strategy for your organization should align to your business’ go-to-market and will largely be determined by the products or solutions you’re selling, and crucially, your target audience (enterprise, mid-market or SMB). More complex solutions go hand-in-hand with larger deal sizes, and longer sales cycles. These factors point to a custom, 1:1 ABM approach. By contrast, a less complex solution and a smaller deal size requiring a less personalized approach would be better served by a scaled ABM program.

The diagrams below illustrates some of these factors:

In Agent3’s ABM at Scale model, the focus, resource and associated investment levels in any given account are aligned with something often overlooked in other ‘once-and-done’ account selection models: the impact over time of fluctuating propensity buying signals.

Our approach begins by targeting dynamically personalized, multi-channel digital campaigns across a segmented target account list (TAL), This creates a foundation to track interest and engagement signals across each account.

This campaign leaderboard is the conduit to drive an objective discussion between Marketing and Sales around the accounts that merit further ‘manual’ ABM support.

The creation and monitoring of an ABM ‘leaderboard’ provides a data-informed method for choosing the accounts deserving increased time, resources, and effort across Marketing, BDR, and Sales teams. You can then tailor your message and outreach activities, based on the accumulated insights gleaned, to ‘surround’ named target stakeholders on priority accounts.

By leveraging a turnkey set of engagement templates at this stage - account-specific content hubs, video explainers, value engineering reports, exec-to-exec direct mailers, etc. - we can mimic the sense of a truly custom 1:1 ABM pursuit, yet with a pragmatic sense of repeatability to run across multiple accounts in parallel.

In other words, best of all worlds. That’s ABM at Scale.

As we’ve shown, ABM at Scale has serious potential to support marketing objectives to reduce CAC, increase CLV and, ultimately, drive revenue growth and customer engagement. But to maximize results, the foundations must be in place in terms of organizational alignment.

In the first half of this guide, we’ve highlighted the increasing complexity of the marketing landscape and the associated evolution of the CMO’s role. With escalating pressure from an increasing number of metrics, ultimately, success will be measured on two key metrics: reducing CAC and increasing CLV.

Increasing CLV will enable higher value conversations and ever deeper relationships with key customers. This in turn makes your marketing programs more productive, creating a greater probability of unearthing opportunities and renewals.

In conclusion, scaling ABM effectively requires organizations to re-think the purpose and dynamic of their Marketing, BDR, and Sales functions to become more collaborative around pursuing deals. By building a solid foundation of understanding, defining processes and workflows, integrating technology and data, fostering cross-functional alignment, and continuously optimizing and innovating, organizations can position themselves for success in scaling their ABM efforts and driving sustainable growth and revenue.

Next: Read part 2 of this guide, where we explore in detail how to set up ABM at Scale for success.