How Does Your Named Account List Stack Up?

B2B companies everywhere are turning their focus to account-based marketing strategies to better target their ideal customers and drive more revenue effectively.  However, as these ABM strategies are being built out, the level of detail to which these strategies are being executed varies – as well as their results.

While working with our clients to run successful integrated brand, demand and sales enablement campaigns, many of them will ask me to target a specific list of accounts.  In order to target these accounts as effectively as possible, I inevitably ask our clients for more detail about their sweet spots and the methodology that went in to building these lists in the first place. To which I’ve heard varying responses – many to the effect of: ‘This is a list we received from sales as the accounts they want to target’ or ‘We got it from our CMO’.

If you have worked for months with your sales team to analyze your CRM data, create multiple personas, identify key firmographic and activity data and know the ins and outs of your target accounts, great job!  But if you fall short of this standard, don’t feel too bad – for many companies, building a smart, solid ABM list is still a work in progress. To successfully optimize this approach, it should be an ongoing project to measure results, learn and adjust accordingly.

Do you know who your ideal prospects are?

This process raises an important question – how effective can you really be at engaging your ideal prospects when you don’t know what makes them ‘ideal prospects’ in the first place?  It’s like knowing your nephew who lives in New York is a football fan, and for his birthday you give him a Tom Brady jersey.

A named account list should be a living, fluid tool for marketing. Account selection is a critical component of a successful ABM strategy. If there are certain accounts you are having more success with, you need to find a way to deliver more of these accounts.

I often urge the marketers I work with to dig deeper into the methodology behind their Named Account list so we can maximize their reach and engagement as much as possible with their ideal prospects.  For example, if we find out that 70% of their named account list is comprised of companies with 500+ employees focused on the Financial, Retail, Manufacturing verticals, we can run a program against their named account list in addition to targeting companies that aren’t on their list, but fit that account profile and are researching a client’s key technology topics. This allows us to not only message the companies on their named account list, but in addition, significantly increases the client’s reach and influence within similar accounts from which they have a better chance of winning the deal.

Or to get more granular, we could learn that there are certain entry points for a vendor’s sales team that tend to lead to more closed business.  For instance, their product may fit well in an organization that has another technology already installed.  With that knowledge, we then have the ability to identify and deliver organizations that have a particular install base well as an open technology initiative within the client’s market through our Qualified Sales Opportunity data, in order to further drive more accounts with a propensity to buy from them.

Choosing a partner to build and execute your Account-Based Marketing strategy

For marketers who need help building out their named account list or driving better results from account-based marketing, TechTarget offers a simple turn-key solution – Instant ABM^TM. Instant ABM offers:

• Instant and continuous access to verified active contacts on your ABM list
• Detailed intelligence on additional accounts planning to purchase in your market segment
• Data-driven account-based targeting
• The ability to directly influence prospects at target accounts

Whatever tactics you end up choosing to execute your ABM strategy, it will be worth the time and results to dig deeper into the details of what actually makes up your named account list in order to better engage those companies as well as additional sweet spot accounts that can yield bonus revenue for you and your sales teams.

To learn more about how to better plan and kick-start your account-based marketing efforts, connect with us today.