Account-based marketing (ABM) is an exciting new way of marketing involving a forward-way of thinking about the industry you are in. By including advertising and sales in its all-encompassing approach, it is both challenging and rewarding.
When supported by the right processes and given the right focus, this customer-centric approach often yields the highest engagement, return on investment, and results.
Focusing on the right KPIs will maximize the prospect of increasing ROI and engagement in a way that is tangible in the results it provides you and your team. It will also make the most of your time, ensuring your valuable time and money is spent on the biggest money-earning accounts.
1. Engagement on Every Level
The word “engagement” is thrown about quite a bit these days, especially with the rise of digital content creation. The concept can sound vague, so what we mean here is that it is important to quantitatively measure the ways in which your target account engages with the content on your website and that you provide them through omnichannel marketing. This measure visits your homepage, how long they spend there, what they click on, and how many advertisements they click on.
Be sure to measure engagement coming from the account as a whole rather than on one single lead to get the most accurate results. There are already marketing automation platforms out in existence doing the heavy lifting for you when it comes to producing this kind of data. Some even provide an “account score” given to each account to measure its likelihood to provide a return on investment.
2. New Prospects
How much reach and potential does an account really have? It can be a hard number to calculate. What you can measure, however, is how many new contacts you are able to reach when launching a new campaign. Keep an eye on this after the launch of a new campaign or after making significant changes to your website or strategic plans. This is another way of keeping an eye on the entire account–and its potential beyond what you currently have–rather than focusing in on single leads. This will ensure that new prospects are targeted while their interest is at peak.
3. A New Vantage Point
ABM doesn’t mean that you have to go through the process of goal-setting and KPI-identification all over again. Instead, track the same things you used under the traditional sales and marketing models: closed business, conversion percentages, and lead measurements.
But for an ABM campaign, look at the numbers both on an account level and on a targeted lead level in order to see how many individual opportunities advance under each given account, and how many close to see which tactics work on a big level to affect smaller change.
While you may not have to totally revamp the dashboards you’ve made in your business intelligence software for the sales and marketing teams, you may want to duplicate them. Clone a new dashboard for each account with achievable KPIs for that account, and then use your existing sales and marketing dashboards to track the overall metrics from all accounts.
4. Your Marketing Reach
The market is inundated with market research, and companies are now spending a larger chunk of their gross revenue on marketing than ever. The Small Business Chronicle reported marketing budgets account for as much as 40 percent of a company’s budget. Ensuring the money you are spending is well-spent is integral. How far is the influence of your marketing going? This is particularly difficult to measure in B2B and ABM in particular, more complex types of marketing. Sales cycles are longer, and there often is not one aspect to pinpoint as having gone right or wrong in your campaign. This makes it more important than ever to measure the influence of your marketing every step of the way.
5. Lifetime Value of a Customer
There are many ways to measure the value of a customer in this given moment if we are to close the next sale with them. Think long-term in your business and measure the worth of a customer to your business over the lifetime of your relationship with them. Vital Design says this is one of the best ways to gauge a company’s return on investment when it comes to both your time and money spent on a customer. They suggest calculating this KPI by breaking down revenue and gross margin.
Wrapping it up
Using account-based marketing is effective when it comes to winning new business, but also when it comes to obtaining new customers. Hours can be spent studying the ultimate client, but it is paid back in much higher conversion rates and return on investment when you can be more adaptable and responsive to your consumer base with these strategies.
Have you read the ABM Playbook? Download and read the definitive guide to nailing your account-based marketing strategy. No fluff, just good stuff.
