Quality rather than quantity: The mechanical engineering company Mooser is currently in the middle of planning its first ABM campaign and finds out how to define KPIs, identify and contact individual, valuable accounts – and also that ABM makes use of the oldest sales technique in the world.
A packed workshop day lies ahead for the fictional company Mooser. Today’s goal: identifying the most important ABM accounts. Prior to this, the first meeting clarified what Account-based Marketing is, how it differs from Inbound Marketing, and why these two methods still make a good pair.
Mooser chose this combination of Inbound and Account-based Marketing for an exceptional reason: The company is expanding with a new product range of industrial machinery and assets, which it wants to promote to key players in the market.
Three employees of Mooser's marketing agency went to the main location in Salzburg for this workshop. At the conference table they are accompanied by their executives and members of the internal marketing department and sales team. This large team has been convened to enter the first phase of concept development and determine the account funnel – the starting shot for the campaign. To begin with, the funnel is called to mind once again:
The funnel is often depicted as an inverted funnel, because from the very beginning everything revolves around a few, but well-researched customer profiles. Before it comes to who should be reached, it has to be clear what is to be achieved. Time for the first item on today's agenda:
Start small and explore possibilities, that's the motto. Mooser wants to increase interaction with selected target customers. How successfully this is achieved can be measured with specified key performance indicators (KPIs) for different metrics. Today, for Mooser’s first ABM campaign, special attention will be paid to selected pre-sale metrics.
In order to map the complete sales cycle, the marketing agency briefly explains which metrics are decisive after the closing of a contract:
The Key Performance Indicators are set – time for today's main part: Who are Mooser's target accounts?
It’s the turn for the internal marketing department and the sales team: Their presentation is about the customers who are already important to Mooser. The employees have combed through the existing, well-maintained databases and have come to the following conclusion:
These nine customers were not identified by chance. The sales and marketing teams know exactly which the important players in the international market are. In the conference bout a discussion is initiated, which is based on the focus group method. Mooser’s Marketing Agency takes over the moderation and wants to know from the participants what the profile of their desired customer should look like: By means of association exercises and open questions in the group.
The discussion in the large team was long overdue. The management's vision has not yet been fully communicated to the sales team and internal marketing team. And vice versa: Not everything that the management has in mind is in line with the experience of the two departments.
Do we want to address individual or several companies in one sector? What values should our accounts represent? What are the parameters of the optimal customer profile? Do our different ideas also match the existing regular customers?
The discussion could have dragged on for days, but two hours later the group has arrived at a result, with which each party can identify. The optimal customer profile should be:
In addition, transnational companies with branches in German-speaking countries are also targeted: besides the geographical proximity, particularly Germany is home to many innovative centres. And some company names come up in the discussion: Thermo Fischer, Amgen and Bayer (editor's note: since Mooser is a purely fictitious company, these existing corporations are only potential accounts) are only three of the companies being discussed as future accounts. Before the coffee break, an agreement is reached: Four companies are targeted as accounts, in addition to the nine customers presented by the sales team.
So how can Mooser make sure that the message reaches the right people, the so-called "key contact“ persons? The target for the metric reach are ten contact points within an account – but in most cases the necessary contact information is missing. Information, however, which is essential for Mooser's Account-based Marketing campaign in order to gear the entire sales cycle towards success. Three basic steps are needed to identify the key contacts:
Mooser's marketing agency makes it clear: The possibilities of Account-based Marketing are only fully exploited when attention is paid to interpersonal relationships. This method is not new, it has always been used to build trust and long-term business relationships. What is also at the heart of Inbound Marketing becomes important in contacting key contact persons: Marketing is only effective when people receive the content that is currently relevant to them. The decisive components are a well executed content strategy and a stable campaign structure. Which content and which marketing strategy can Mooser rely on? Which requirements must be met for the campaign? How can the timing be set up?
The first workshop day is done. The core team will work out the answers to these questions tomorrow.