Welcome back to another Ask Me Anything, a weekly series where we talk to our friends, our viewers, and our community about all of their pressing needs, questions, wants, and desires.
Let’s take a look at the mailbag to see which questions are burning this week.
Here’s a good one:
We do a lot of account-based marketing for our clients via LinkedIn. We can’t help but feel our strategies are a bit outdated and are coming off as annoying to prospects. Does anyone have any ABM resources to share or experience with ABM adjustments post-COVID?
Start ABM With LinkedIn—and Then Move Into Content
OK! Let’s talk account-based marketing.
If you want to think about ABM a bit differently, I would use LinkedIn as the first step, but not the only step.
One of the things we ask our clients to do is create a list of 50-200 prospective companies, engaging both the sales and executive teams to agree on who is on the list.
Then we use Sales Navigator to find the right titles, the right decision-making power, and the right budget to spend.
We pull those into a spreadsheet and because we don’t want to violate GDPR, we make assignments for individual emailing.
We give them content to use and the sales and executive teams email five people every day.
For instance, we may have them invite the prospects to a webinar or to download some content.
Once they’ve done that, we can add them to a lead nurturing campaign.
An ABM Real-Life Example
Let me give you an example: we have a client who has Amazon on their target list and there are 20 people there who could be decision-makers or influence the decision that our client needs to talk to.
We had the sales team individually email all 20 contacts and invite them to a webinar, which was only for Amazon. Not another single person was invited.
Of the 20 people we emailed, 16 of them registered for the webinar, and 10 showed up.
Then we put them into a lead nurturing campaign that first sent them the webinar recording and then offered more content.
It was a 10-email process and the type of content they received was dependent on their engagement and their actions.
We first sent the webinar recording and then we sent a short video, which was an extension of what we discussed in the webinar. Then, based on their activity, we sent more content.
If, for instance, they watched the video—not just opened the email and clicked the link, but actually watched the video—we sent them a white paper.
If they downloaded and read at least half of the white paper (which we can tell based on the eBook software we use), they got more content.
Eventually, they ended up with an offer to see a demo of the product as it would work in their warehousing facility.
The results were pretty significant. By the time it was all said and done, there were 121 contacts that fit into this specific ABM program, from 15 companies.
Of the 121 who got the offer to see the demo, 63 of them requested it.
Then we bundled people from the same companies so we weren’t giving six demos to people at the same company.
Of the 15 companies, four became customers and we tracked it all through a strong content-driven lead nurturing campaign.
Have a Question For Us?
Andy Crestodina also wrote a really good blog post on this topic, which I recommend you read.
It’s more in-depth than my off-the-cuff discussion in a short AMA video.
And…if you have a question about how our ABM programs work (because this is very high-level) or if you have a question for a future AMA you can drop them below or join us in the (free) Spin Sucks Community.
You can also find us on social media, email us, or stop by with a bottle of wine for porch drinking.
