Account Based Marketing Archives

Solving The Persona and Product Marketing Paradox: Engagement Personas

Account Based Marketing, B2B, Buyer Engagement, Closed loop Marketing, Content Marketing, eMail Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue Programs, Revenue Strategy, Sales Enablement, Social Media

More insights for the 85% of B2B marketers that don’t have effective personas!

Mapping out your buyers’ pain and organizing via Pain Maps™ to enable the ULTIMATE Goal: Informing Engagement Personas™.

There are many different perspectives and philosophies on persona development. This makes sense, as they’re the most critical element of creating messaging and informing Message Maps™…then identifying and developing content aligned with the buy cycle…and ultimately validating the various components of a true buyer engagement strategy. In the end, persona development should be defined by how it’ll be used – in terms of purpose and context that will drive messaging, and ultimately content strategy. Other marketers will use it more as a “playbook” of all possible or available buyer insights. I’m not saying either is right or wrong, but it’s why we’ve created a new category called Engagement Personas™.

May 30, 2018/by Keith Sullivan

Smart Rooms for Account-Based Sales

Account Based Marketing, B2B, Closed loop Marketing, Content Marketing, CRM, Marketing Automation, Measurement and Analytics, Revenue Growth, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales Excellence, Technology & Websites

The buy-sell process for B2B high consideration products and services is complex and highly collaborative involving team selling to committee buying. Virtual workspaces like Smart Rooms from Journey Sales facilitate this process by helping account teams share, collaborate and communicate with buying teams throughout dynamic sales and onboarding lifecycles.

Journey Sales built Smart Rooms natively on Salesforce® as digital workspaces that allow sales teams and service teams to quickly create personalized, guided digital experiences with their account buyers and track engagement along the way.

To optimize B2B sales, we often design funnels to drive out metrics and codify sales processes. Linear funnels for B2B are particularly relevant when purchasing is transactional or follows a highly predictable process. Yet, for complex B2B and high consideration sales, customers are interacting with a range of 3rd party research, journals and publications, as well as your competitor’s funnel. This is why we need a non-linear more collaborative approach to selling and engaging the client – one that allows us to build our value propositions responsively and engage customer teams over time. For these more complex sales and dynamic environments, a Smart Room is a great fit.

May 21, 2017/by John Stone

Under the Microscope: Commercialization

B2B, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Strategy

This blog post is part of a series providing an in-depth exploration of each dimension of the 12 Dimensions of Revenue Architecture.

The commercialization process prepares you to introduce products and services into the market. There are several different frameworks that describe the product development process in detail and commercialization is typically included in this overall process. For our purposes, in assessing and constructing a revenue architecture, we focus on elements of commercialization that impact marketing and sales execution.

Consider the traditional “7 Ps”: product, place, price, promotion, people, process, physical environment. For the purposes of the Revenue Architecture framework, the commercialization activities are central to marketing and sales execution. Sales and marketing teams do sell for a hypothetical company – their job is to sell the products and services the company offers. Commercialization helps influence product design and quality, and paves the way for more effective productive marketing and sales execution.

Activities prior to Commercialization include Market Strategy: Customer Value Research and Analysis, Firm Competencies, Competitive Industry / Market Analysis, Customer Win/Loss Analysis, Firm Performance Analysis, Requirement Definition, Product Line Economies , Budget Planning and Cost Management, Market Acceptance and Availability,Product Strategy, Product Roadmapping.

The Commercialization process includes: Value Positioning including Target Market Definition and Sizing, Customer Engagement Model, Commercial Use Cases, Pricing, Terms and Conditions.

Activities we review after commercialization include Go-To-Market: Positioning and Value Communication, Routes to market, Channels and Partnerships, Marketing Planning, Launch Planning, Customer Acquisition Models, Sales Enablement, Collateral, Lead Generation, Sales and Channel Training, Customer Relationship Management, Funnel Analysis, Market Assets at Different Sales Stages, Technical Tools and Marketing Assets.

April 22, 2017/by John Stone

Use a Mass Customization Approach for Account-Based Marketing

Account Based Marketing, B2B, Closed loop Marketing, Content Marketing, Revenue Growth

Traditional account sales is an important, but expensive approach to market. Traditional marketing programs are not account-centric and often fail to deliver the needed impact at the account level. Targeting strategic accounts requires that marketing and sales work in partnership to orchestrate effective account-based marketing and selling. Yet, customizing an approach to a specific account can be costly.

A strategy you can employ to keep costs down is “mass customization” – a leveraged approach across multiple accounts that uses standardized, more modular capabilities that can be customized and configured for the account strategy.

March 20, 2017/by John Stone

Account Based Marketing vs Inbound Marketing

Account Based Marketing, B2B, Inbound Marketing, Revenue Growth, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement

Recent focus on #ABM – Account Based Marketing – has spurred a lot of conversation about how ABM differs from Inbound Marketing. Our view is that these descriptive labels essentially are all attacking the same challenge of driving sustainable revenue growth. ABM is more focused on engaging, converting and expanding an account – a typical B2B sales and marketing challenge. Inbound Marketing is a more generic process of lead generation and lead conversion though an attraction principle – using content and permission marketing to attract leads (people) to your brand or website for nurture and sales conversion.

We focus on the concept of Revenue Architecture – a customized approach to align your business model with your revenue generation model and to unify the sales and marketing process.

Here are some ways that account based marketing and inbound marketing are different.

March 30, 2016/by John Stone

10 Attributes of Services and Solution Selling

Account Based Marketing, B2B, Revenue Growth, Sales Enablement, Sales Excellence

There is a spectrum of selling from “brains for hire” to “commodity product”. “Brains for hire” requires the “seller-doer” model where the selling professional has both subject matter expertise and services delivery expertise. A typical example of this is the consulting partner at a management consulting firm. Solution selling is in the middle of this spectrum and requires consultative selling, yet not necessarily a “seller-doer” model. In this post, we explore 10 attributes of services and solution selling.

February 26, 2016/by John Stone

Plan Your Account Based Marketing Strategy

Account Based Marketing, B2B, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Revenue Grader, Revenue Growth, Revenue Strategy, Sales Enablement

The promise of Account Based Marketing (ABM) is to increase sales success by coordinating marketing and sales efforts for target accounts. The ABM concept is a departure from mass marketing that casts wide nets with generic messages. Instead, with ABM, marketing tailors messages to each targeted prospect account, making marketing activities more efficient to help sales close more business. More tailored experiences mean relevant information for each account and a greater likelihood that potential buyers find the information they’re looking for, speed through the initial stages of the buying cycle, and become ready to be contacted, nurtured, and converted.

For B2B companies with niche offerings and finite lists of target accounts, Account Based Marketing makes sense. Typically, for these companies, the target market is smaller, sales opportunities are larger, the sales cycle is longer, and the number of decision makers and influencers are more than a few individuals. Also, companies in niche markets may have few clients, so nurturing opportunities and expanding the client relationships is a how they grow. With a small number of ideal accounts to go after, marketing can work directly with sales using a targeted, laser-focused approach.

Whether companies are in a niche or not, or whether the goal is to acquire new clients, grow existing ones, or both, an ABM Revenue Strategy is needed.

February 3, 2016/1 Comment/by nhill

Beyond Inbound… Long Live Closed Loop Marketing

Account Based Marketing, Closed loop Marketing, Content Marketing, CRM, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Measurement and Analytics, Newsletter, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue Programs, Revenue Systems, Technology & Websites

Inbound is great, but it has had it’s day…. and even with inbound strategies, the bulk of activity and spend is actually outbound. The reality? Businesses need both inbound and outbound. For B2B and Account Based Marketing, this should be managed across a single revenue (marketing-sales) value chain. We call this integrated program approach a Closed Loop Marketing Architecture … and it works!

November 1, 2015/by John Stone

Posts

Smart Rooms for Account-Based Sales

Under the Microscope: Commercialization

Use a Mass Customization Approach for Account-Based Marketing

Account Based Marketing vs Inbound Marketing

10 Attributes of Services and Solution Selling

Plan Your Account Based Marketing Strategy

Beyond Inbound… Long Live Closed Loop Marketing

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