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In this episode we share the most common mistakes B2B SaaS companies make when trying to build an ABM strategy and how we've helped clients avoid those mistakes
On SaaS Marketing Bites from Powered by Search, we bring you the best B2B SaaS insights shared by our team of growth experts. Each week, we publish a new episode on topics like landing page design, PPC marketing, SEO, CRO, marketing automation and growth strategy.
Most B2B SAS companies start at some
point to think about how they can
implement account-based marketing or ABM
as I'll use for the rest of the episode.
Unfortunately, it's not always
that straightforward and they often
run into mistakes and problems.
And this episode, you'll get a
seven step account-based marketing
strategy for B2B SAS, including how
to segment your target account lists
based on your customer personas.
How to break a list down into quartiles
based on the value of prospects so that
you can allocate more budget to high
value accounts than low value accounts.
And this strategy is based on what we
have seen our top B2B, SAS, clients,
and other leading B2B SAS companies do.
To further increase the
performance of your ABM campaigns.
We'll kick things off with 10 common
mistakes to avoid making that we
think limit a lot of ABM programs.
Marc: I'm Marc Thomas.
I'm the head of growth
at powered by search.
And today I'm going to talk you through
some of the best knowledge that we
have on building B2B SaaS businesses.
Now, if any of this is interesting
to you and you want to read more,
you should go to our website.
It's poweredbysearch.com
and check us out there.
Let's start by taking a look at 10
account-based marketing mistakes,
B to B SAS companies should avoid.
Number one.
Not allocating more budget to
accounts with higher potential value.
Now, let's say you're a SAS company
doing account based marketing.
If you think account a on your target
account lists could be worth $50,000.
ARR.
And account B would be worth $15,000.
ARR.
You should be willing to spend more
to acquire account a I can't be right.
Now.
While this logic is easy to understand.
Occasionally we see this fail to translate
into practice for SAS companies doing ABM.
What happens is once a target
acquisition cost is determined.
That's target CAC or the amount
you're willing to pay ultimately to
spend, to acquire a new customer.
It's applied across the board to all
campaigns, but in doing so, you miss an
opportunity to allocate more budget to
accounts with a higher potential value.
This is one of the biggest mistakes
that we see limits the results for SAS
companies, struggling to make ABM work.
Number two.
Thinking Lynn, investing in an ABM
platform alone will make it all work.
Popular ABM platforms like
Terminus role works or Demandbase
definitely worked fine.
But investing in these
platforms alone, isn't enough.
And if you don't give the platform,
the right inputs, your marketing
efforts, aren't likely to improve.
Investing in one of these
platforms make sense.
Only when you have a
well-developed ABM strategy.
The platforms alone, won't make
your account-based marketing work.
Our ABM strategy, which I'll talk
about later in the episode, we'll show
you how to get good ROI from the ABM
platform that you actually invest in.
Uh, number three.
Purchasing ads through AdRoll or perfect
audience instead of directly on the
platforms where you're advertising.
when you run ABM campaigns
through a platform like ad roll or
perfect audience, they're buying
ads for you and marking them up.
These platforms don't show you what
you could have actually spent on an ad.
Had you bought it directly
from the channel itself.
For example, you'll see a CPC of
$5 40 on your account from ad roll.
Without being able to see that
they bought those clicks from
LinkedIn for $5 per click.
But without transparency on those metrics.
It's impossible for decision makers
to monitor and understand the actual
value in that service over time.
If you want to see a higher ROI.
We recommend bypassing these services
to avoid that markup and running
your marketing campaigns directly
through the native ad platforms.
Number four.
Poor journey off a fit.
Going straight for the sale with
cold prospects offering a demo or
trial right off the bat is like
proposing marriage on a first date.
It's a big turn off.
This is a symptom of short term thinking.
Overlooking where in the customer
journey, your target audiences
are leads to poor click through
rates and higher cost per click.
Platforms we'll end up delivering
your ads to less of your
audience due to these metrics.
And you'll be left, wasting
money on underperforming ads.
Number five, putting your list together
without enhancing and further refining it.
Another mistake that we see B
to B marketers make is creating
their initial target account
list without refining it further.
Creating your initial list
is just the beginning of the
process to develop it right.
But an effective ABM approach
requires further list enrichment.
You want to ask the question?
What are some other things that we
can add to this list that will help
us better target these accounts?
Uh, those characteristics are sometimes
referred to as firmographic data.
Uh, firmographic data includes
basic information like company
size and annual revenue.
But for SAS companies, we
find technographic data
to be particularly useful.
We'll try to answer the question.
What are the various types
of technologies that using.
There are two helpful things.
You can keep an eye out for.
First is companies using the same
tack as your existing customers and
tack that's complimentary to your SAS.
And also companies who use tack that is
at a comparable price point to your own.
Uh, signal that they make significant
investments in services like yours.
Both of these can indicate the
right accounts from your list
to prioritize in your targeting.
Number six, not doing proper data hygiene.
Effective ABM requires good data hygiene.
To successfully target accounts.
Missing data, it can lead to
missed targeting opportunities.
To drive home the
importance of data hygiene.
Consider this scenario.
You've got a list of 500 company
names and each company has
10 people you want to target.
So you have 5,000 people in an Excel file.
If you don't get your data hygiene, right.
You might think that you're
targeting 5,000 people.
When, in fact many of them aren't mushed.
When you finally upload your
list, there might be a hundred
valuable names on your list.
There simply aren't much because of
typos or formatting errors leading
you to miss out on targeting them.
Number seven, not setting up your
campaigns on an account by account basis.
Account-based marketing consists
of marketing sales and performance
tracking across each individual account.
Yeah, we still see sometimes B2B companies
segment, there are countless based on the
shared characteristics of their accounts.
For example, they might create
a campaign for us enterprise
technology companies, because that's
what their target companies are.
Then they run that ABM campaigns
toward that group rather
than each individual account.
But this misconception defeats the
purpose of an account-based approach.
You'll get performance data on enterprise
technology companies, but not data
specific to the individual accounts you're
targeting across each individual account.
Using sponsored InMail without
warming up prospects is number eight.
This mistake is similar to mistake.
Number three of having
put journey off of fit.
If you're sending sponsored
InMail to prospects without any
pre-targeting communication,
you're going to turn prospects off.
Instead.
You should send out ads a month ahead of
time to reach these people before you ever
reach out to them through their inbox.
Our stance is that sponsored InMail is
one of those marketing tactics that should
be reserved for retargeting campaigns.
Definitely not first touch.
To learn more about B2B marketing,
best practices for LinkedIn, you
can check out the article on our
website, LinkedIn ads for SAS.
It's definitely worth a read.
Number nine, not remarketing
on every possible channel.
Multi-channel marketing, that's
marketing to prospects through
many different channels.
Is the status quo today.
Everyone expects it.
However on the channel marketing,
which places users at the center of the
marketing experience by connecting the
different channels where they interact
with you is still under utilized.
One easy way to implement on the channel
marketing is in your remarketing efforts.
But many SAS companies fail to use this.
Not creating omni-channel remarketing
campaigns for people who've engaged
with your ads is a missed opportunity
to reach leads in different places.
They spend time online.
While ABM prospects will usually
enter your funnel through LinkedIn.
You should be retargeting them through
Google and Facebook to further increase
their awareness of your solution.
That's just an example, by the way.
Your channels will be different.
In addition, when you get a click through
Google or Facebook, it's likely going to
cost less than getting it on LinkedIn.
And we recommend implementing omni-channel
campaigns to help you make your ABM
more successful and cost effective.
The final mistake.
Is bidding on CPC based on
what LinkedIn recommends.
Marketing teams that follow LinkedIn
suggestion about what to bid for
campaigns often fall victim to
overestimations of what that beds
actually need to be and end up paying
more to the platform than necessary.
We recommend starting your bids
at 50% of the recommended, right?
Uh, to see how things perform first and
then increasing them from there as needed.
We can often attain click-through
rates of 1% upwards.
Well beyond LinkedIn standard for a good
ad of 0.1, 2.7, click through right.
With a CPC, that's a fraction
of what they suggest.
Remember, these platforms are designed
to get rich, not to make you rich.
So do your own testing to see
what bed rates perform best.
Now that we've covered the common ABM
mistakes that we see all the time.
Let's dive into our process for ABM.
As we covered in our article on SAS
buyer personas available on our blog.
We typically develop personas
for three key stakeholders.
The daily user.
The manager and the check sign up.
When we onboard clients, we'll workshop
with them to lay out basic demographics
for each persona, as well as their fears,
frustrations wants and aspirations.
Then we'll create persona profiles
based on what was brainstormed.
This is the first step because it
sets the stage for you to reach
the right people at your target
accounts, with the right messaging.
Number two, build your target account
lists and ensure that your data is clean.
Uh,
in order to build your target account
lists first, you have to get the
basic information of individuals
who work at the companies you're
seeking to acquire as customers.
Common ways to get this data include
purchasing it from a data provider
like lead feeder, Crunchbase
angel list data lace, or ZoomInfo.
Compiling it through attending trade
shows, conferences and other events.
Doing research with LinkedIn sales
navigator, target account websites
or other online directories.
Now the basic information you
need to get started also known as
anchors, a first name, last name,
email address, and company name.
And the note.
Yeah.
In addition to those basic data points,
you can also add in your technographic
data or any other relevant data that
you've decided to use to enrich your list.
For example, MRR, ARR, that kind of thing.
And once you have this raw data for
your target accounts, you want to be
sure to check your list thoroughly
for typos and formatting errors.
If you really want to
do your due diligence.
Check for bounced emails through
a service like NeverBounce.
Step three.
Segment your targeted account lists
based on your customer personas.
One account at a time.
You'll take your list at separate
individuals into three categories,
one for each customer persona.
For example, if you sell a
SAS to marketers, You might
separate your list as follows.
People with job titles like
CMO or VP of marketing, go in
your check, sign a segment.
People with job titles like
demand gen manager or SCM manager
go into your manager segment.
And people with job titles like
SEO, strategist, or content writer.
Go in your daily user segment.
By segmenting your list in this
way, you can add personalization
to the messages you deliver.
And create separate campaigns
for these different stakeholders
within a target company.
In the accompany in blog posts to
this episode, there is a graphic
that I'm going to refer to here.
That shows how you might personalize
messaging for your different personas.
For example, the daily user might need
workflow, ease and speed messages.
The manager might need
target attainment messages.
And the check signup might
need ROI focused messages.
Number four.
News and account-based
structure for your ad campaigns.
Once you have your cleaned segmented
lists for all of your target accounts.
The next step is to set up your
prospecting campaigns for each account.
Now you want to set them up with an
account-based structure that divides the
target account campaign set into subsets
of segmented stakeholder campaigns.
Whew.
I won was a mouthful.
For example, and I'm again, referring
to an image that is actually
on the accompanying blog post.
The link is in the show notes.
Account-based marketing
campaign structure.
So we've got a daily user segment.
We've got a manager segment and we've got
a check sign, a segment, all campaigns
below a target account campaign set.
Each account will have a set of several
campaigns running, serving different ads
and messaging to the various customer
personas that you've identified.
And a note at this stage, we've
created our lead magnet landing
page flow that users will follow
from ad click through to conversion.
We have a great article on this
that I refer to all the time.
It's covered in our blog called mapping
SAS landing pages to your sales funnel.
And there's also an episode of this
podcast on the same topic from a couple
of episodes back, check that out.
Step five, separate your target
accounts into core tiles based
on that revenue potential and
set your budgets accordingly.
Now this isn't a perfect science, but it's
an effort to factor the potential value of
individual accounts into your budgeting.
Let's say you have 400
companies on your list.
You'd go through the 400 companies
and segment them into four quarters.
Al's.
Now in the first quarter, you put
the top a hundred companies that you
think would bring in the most revenue.
If you acquire them as customers.
And the second core tile.
You'd put the next a
hundred companies and so on.
With this additional layer of
segmentation, you can increase
your target CAC for higher value
prospects, which allows you to deliver
more unique ads to key accounts.
Pay more for that clicks commensurate
with that clicks being worth more.
And dedicate more remarketing
budget to those accounts to.
This can all increase the quality
of your lead generation and the
likelihood of better conversion rates
with your most prized prospects.
With all of this in place.
You're set to launch your campaigns.
Step six.
Launch reach based campaigns
followed by engagement campaigns.
We always start with launching
reach campaigns first.
For these, we might kick things off
with running video ads or ads that
offer ungated content like a blog post.
The purpose of reach campaigns is to
create general awareness of your brand
and service among your target accounts.
And once you've done this and
they're becoming familiar with you.
You can move into the next phase
of running engagement campaigns.
Engagement campaigns, where we
begin offering lead magnets, like
downloadable resources or webinars.
Yeah, we start using the landing page flow
and we mentioned above in the episode.
And the purpose of these is to turn
anonymous prospects into a name
and a lead on your prospect list.
Step seven remarket with lead
magnet campaigns followed by
conversion campaigns for lead magnet.
Download us.
Uh, remarketing company
to set up to begin firing.
As soon as we collected pixel data
from prospects who engage with our ads.
These engagements might mean they
watched a video or write a blog post.
Visited other webpages, like
a product or pricing page.
Downloaded a lead magnet resource
or signed up for a webinar.
The first stage of remarketing ads, our
lead magnet ads, but once someone has
downloaded a lead magnet ad, that's when
you can beat again, delivering conversion
focused ads with trial and demo office.
Now the key to remarketing is to do it
Omni channel, as we mentioned earlier.
And to meet prospects in the different
places that they spent time online.
So while you'll be seeking to
get the first click on LinkedIn.
That's the origin point of discovery.
You want to remarket to them
on Facebook and Google as well?
Omni-channel remarketing helps to
speed up your sales cycle and has
the added benefit of getting clicks
at a lower cost than LinkedIn.
Throughout this process will
closely monitor our campaigns and
tweak messaging and budgeting when
necessary to optimize performance.
So let's pull this all together.
Signing up with services like Terminus
or Bizible or ad roll or perfect
audience, they come and they go.
Uh, only half the battle.
If you want to execute on
account-based marketing for SAS.
Now, if you've been using these
services or others, and you're
still finding it challenging to
get results from your ABM program.
I hope the strategies on the mistakes
that we've pointed out in this episode.
We'll help you to refine your
approach to optimizing your campaigns.
I'll see you next time.
Marc: now, if you enjoyed that
today and you want to do something
about your B2B SaaS marketing,
you should get in touch with us.
You can do that by going to
poweredbysearch.com and checking
out our assessment page.
Or you can browse the case studies
and blogs that we have on the site.
Now if you're not ready to do
that, definitely say hi anyway,
you can ping me on Twitter.
I'm @iammarcthomas that's Marc with a C.
Or you can ping our founder and CEO,
@devbasu and connect with us there.
Looking forward to seeing you
again for another episode.