1.Define your ideal customer profile (ICP)

The first step in implementing ABM is defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Since you’ll be focusing on businesses, you’ll need to gather enough data about the types of companies you want to work with.

Some of the vital data points you need are:

• The size of the businesses you’re trying to reach
• The vertical or industry the businesses operate in
• The companies’ locations

2.Identify purchasing centres and personas

Once you figure out who your ideal customers are, you’ll need to identify your buying centres within those organisations. These are the departments you’ll interact with all through the process.

This involves identifying the primary stakeholders within those departments and defining the persona or profile of your solution’s typical customer. You must find out about their main objectives, motivations, and recurring problems.

This process will help you make better marketing plans in the long run, ensuring that your marketing campaigns reach the right people.

3.Create a list of accounts to target

You’ve done a lot of research and gathered lots of info about the companies you’re targeting. At this stage, it’s important to make a list of target accounts so you can draw more valuable data.

Identifying specific targets to study will allow you to gather granular information such as the companies they’re networking with, their corporate culture, their investment portfolios, how decisions are made in the company, the pain points, and the interests of the decision-makers.

4.Sort the accounts you’ve chosen into tiers

Now that your list is ready, you want to group the accounts that you have selected. Arranging the accounts into different tiers gives you more clarity and lets you quickly sift through the available data.

You may arrange different types of potential consumers (high-potential customers, medium-potential customers, and low-potential customers) based on the available opportunities and the chance of success, into three tiers:

• Strategic ABM tier (1:1)
• Scale ABM tier (1:few)
• Programmatic ABM tier (1:many)

5.Develop the messaging and theme

By now, you should have a firm grasp of the accounts you’re pursuing and the associated individuals. Additionally, you’ll have tiered those accounts to make the information more accessible.
Now, it’s time to start developing personalised brand messaging and themes for your target accounts.

Developing your messaging involves communicating in a way that helps your customers and prospects understand your company’s values. Here, you would need to tailor your content, message, and activities to the individual needs of your prospects. Doing this creates a connection and opens the door for possible business opportunities.

6.Select the most appropriate marketing channels

One of the most crucial assignments is determining how to reach out to your target accounts. This task includes selecting the best marketing channels and determining how you will communicate your message to these organisations at the appropriate moment.

Choosing the correct channels is crucial since channels serve as the frontiers for a company to promote its products. Most likely, sales will suffer if a business owner chooses the incorrect one.

7.Create an ABM Play

At this stage, you have almost everything you need to kickstart your ABM campaign. But don’t be too hasty; now is the time to create an ABM play. An ABM play is a series of activities organised and executed to reach out to and engage target accounts. It contains defined objectives and actions carried out during the sales process.

The process of creating an ABM play is similar to that involved in creating an autoresponder sequence and email marketing automation. Everything follows a sequential pattern and is carefully executed.

Creating a strong ABM play first requires a strategy outlining the steps necessary to contact a decision-maker or close a target account

8.Execute and measure

Everything you’ve done to this point is creating the groundwork for your ABM campaign. It’s time to test your game plan. But before starting, you want to go through your strategy several times to ensure nothing is out of place.

It’s also essential to measure your progress as you execute your plan. Measuring your progress can help you figure out how to adapt your plan of action where necessary, which could speed up your progress. Asking certain questions as you go will help you keep track of your progress. Here are some thought starters:

• Are your key performance indicators (KPIs) in line with your company’s revenue?
• Are there any gaps or issues in your execution that youcan fix for future campaigns?
• Will you increase the number of stakeholders to target?
• Will you replace some of your existing targets with new ones?
• What could you do differently in the future?

9.Optimise your process and scale for more significant campaigns

You’ve done a lot of research and gathered lots of info about the companies you’re targeting. At this stage, it’s important to make a list of target accounts so you can draw more valuable data.

Identifying specific targets to study will allow you to gather granular information such as the companies they’re networking with, their corporate culture, their investment portfolios, how decisions are made in the company, the pain points, and the interests of the decision-makers.