Unlock the secrets of SaaS growth

Have you noticed that the vast majority of Account Based Marketing (ABM) industry guides, webinars and blog posts seem to focus on the fact that the majority of programs fail?

That seems strange, right? That a marketing tactic so lauded in the industry is so prone to failure? 

Let’s be clear from the outset. I’m not here to bash ABM; it’s just that when so many organizations struggle to realize value from it as a marketing tactic, something must be terribly wrong. 

Maybe it stems from a time when many marketers felt pressured into an all-or-nothing approach to ABM. Entire teams were deployed, new technologies sprung up and budgets were influenced accordingly. 

“You can’t sell unless you build amazing experiences, and sell to an audience of one”, we were told.

Yeah? Tell that to my board when they ask why pipeline isn’t closing. 

There’s a right (and a wrong) time to deploy ABM

Luckily we’ve gone beyond that all-or-nothing approach, but it’s still worth making the point that ABM is simply one part of a much wider mix of marketing tactics that you need to employ. It isn’t the enemy of traditional demand generation efforts. Far from it. In fact the two are so complimentary that I could argue ABM is completely ineffective without the air-cover of traditional paid marketing and demand generation techniques. 

One of the biggest concerns expressed about ABM is that it alienates a large proportion of your Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) and reduces your Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM). This is why you just need to understand the right, and the wrong time, to be deploying an ABM motion; and where it fits in your wider marketing strategy. Sure, if you’re a single product company, selling to a clearly identifiable buyer, in a single industry, then go all-in on ABM. You have a known universe that’s easy to quantify. But that’s just not the reality for 90% of SaaS businesses out there. Particularly where product market fit is still being tested against different ICPs. 

What they don’t tell you about ABM – 5 rules to getting it right

Focus ABM on high value enterprise accounts only.

Remember your cost of acquisition metrics. ABM can be time intensive and expensive so the outcome has to be rewarding enough to justify the time and investment. Large enterprises are typically more complex, have existing rosters of approved vendors, unique requirements, and multiple stakeholders. ABM makes most sense here. You need to build relationships and influence decision making. 

Focus ABM on high value products

If you have multiple product / solution lines, you need to understand which of those require the help of ABM. Some may be working well through an existing inbound demand generation channel, or simply won’t deliver the deal values you need to justify the expense of ABM tactics. Seriously, don’t waste your resources on ABM efforts to achieve a $10k sale within a cohort that’s already converting well through your inbound demand funnels. You just won’t scale. 

ABM-Lite is OK

ABM stalwarts will tell you that you’re doing it wrong if you’re not deeply ingrained in an account and selling to an audience of one. Do not be ABM-shamed. It might not be true ABM, but taking an ABM-lite approach has its place. Think of ABM-Lite as Industry Based Marketing. The majority of accounts in your target ICP likely all share the same use case, and market challenge. Their buying teams are broadly the same, and their budgets similar. In that instance, just build your campaigns around deep industry and domain expertise. Show the account that you understand what keeps them up at night. It’s relevant enough to draw attention, but not so specific that it needs iterating upon for every account. Once you start seeing traction in some accounts you can add the account to your ABM list and start nurturing it with true AMB tactics. Again – it’s all about applying the right resource, at the right time. 

Refresh your target account list routinely

You can’t boil the ocean so your target account list is likely restricted by your internal resources. There’s many guides explaining how to build your target account list. Unfortunately very few of them go on to tell you that it’ll be out of date in a matter of weeks and that you need to maintain it constantly: 

• New industries appear, old industries disappear. New regulations give you product market fit in a new category. A competitor prices you out of an established market. The point is, ICPs change. 

• You don’t know who you don’t know. Previously unidentified companies are discovered through other marketing channels (trade shows, whitepaper downloads, webinar sign-ups etc). If these fit the original ICP / ABM thesis then add them to the list. 

• You just got it wrong. Don’t beat yourself up over it, it’s normal. Look at your data. Are you seeing better results and engagement in certain industries, or geographies? Perhaps with certain buyer profiles? Understand what works, and what doesn’t and iterate.  

Integrate it with your other demand generation activity 

Personally, I’ve only found ABM to be effective when used in conjunction with more traditional demand generation tactics. It’s really the only way to add some scale and cadence to the process. 

ABM tools such as 6Sense can help with this, as can automation tools such as Hubspot. For example, we automate the delivery of ads and email campaigns to accounts in our ABM list as their intent signals start to increase. 

It’s not uncommon for us to work an account for several months, only to see them come inbound through a generic paid ad, or retargeting campaign, weeks later. That’s simply because you just don’t know the conversations that happen behind closed doors. People change roles, your sales emails get forwarded, and your name gets mentioned in internal meetings. It’s all invisible to you, so you need to make sure you have the aircover in place to be in the right place, at the right time. 

Don’t try and scale ABM – it doesn’t work that way

So yes, ABM is still relevant in 2024, but thankfully we’ve moved beyond the hyperbole. 

Personally, I think one of the reasons why so many ABM programs failed was simply because marketing teams went all-in on it, to the detriment of existing funnels. It cut their SOM and when they realized it was hard to scale and came under pipeline pressure, they took some ineffective shortcuts or backed out entirely. 

Thankfully, we now have a better understanding, and a more considered approach of how ABM integrates with your more traditional demand generation tactics and funnels. 

On its own, ABM (done properly) is only ever going to be able to address <10% of your Serviceable Addressable Market. Don’t try and scale it beyond your resources; it doesn’t work that way. Instead, work from the ground up; identify the right accounts and solutions for ABM, address the rest with an ABM-Lite approach, and use traditional demand generation tactics for the rest of your SAM.