Introducing account-based integrated media
Account-based integrated media (ABM IM) engages specific buyer personas at target accounts with a blend of content syndication and digital display advertising to create predictable pipeline.
It supports top-of-funnel demand by filling your pipeline with leads from target accounts. It aligns demand marketing with ABM, making you more efficient at a time when marketers need to do more with less.
ABM IM starts by using content syndication to target ideal customer profile (ICP) buyers from target accounts when they are researching on third-party websites. Then, it nurtures them as a buying group via digital display advertising. It connects their journeys to your always-on demand programs to nurture and develop salesready accounts, and to your ABM programs to generate a predictable pipeline.
In this guide we’ll walk you through a six-step process to create and execute an ABM integrated media program. To further your understanding, we’ll illustrate how an example company — Acme Co. — executes their (hypothetical) ABM IM program.
The six steps we’ll walk through are:
- Segment accounts and create a TAL
- Analyze and identify the buying group
- Content syndication strategy
- Cross-channel strategy
- Display advertising strategy
- Nurture and pipeline development strategy
Meet Acme Co.
Acme Co. is an imaginary B2B enterprise SaaS company that we’ll use to illustrate each step of the ABM integrated media approach. Acme Co.’s offerings include a cybersecurity platform and related software.
Their revenue marketing team uses a unified ABM and demand marketing approach called Precision Demand Marketing (PDM). The PDM approach results in marketing that focuses on target accounts, acquires and engages buying groups, and delivers crosschannel journeys that are personalized and relevant to buyer interests.
We’ll follow along as they create an ABM integrated media (ABM IM) program to support their program objective.
About Acme Co:
- Company Size: 1,200 employees
- Location: North America
- Industry: Cybersecurity Technology
- Annual Revenue: $250 million
Program objective
Drive top-of funnel leads from key accounts to generate demand for our SaaS offerings with a goal of engaging 25% of our target accounts before the end of Q4.
Step 1
Segment your accounts
ABM IM leverages your target account list (TAL) for improved program targeting and execution. As you segment target accounts to create a TAL for your ABM IM program, make sure that the accounts are relevant to your program goals and have similar criteria and needs for your offerings. Doing so will enable you to target them with highly relevant messaging, increasing the performance of your program.
TAL development checklist:
- Perform an analysis of won opportunities representative of your program objective to determine target account criteria.
- Consider account tier, geography, company size, industry, installed base, account type, and other account criteria to develop a segmented target account list for the program.
- Ensure the TAL has between 100 and 500 accounts.
- Ensure your account segmentation criteria are relevant to program goals and represent your ideal customer profile.
See it in practice with Acme Co.’s plan
Acme Co. identified their target account criteria for this program as companies with at least 1,000 employees operating in the financial services industry in North America. They have created a segmented TAL based on these criteria which resulted in 200 target accounts.
Step 2
Identify the buying group
B2B buyers increasingly make purchase decisions in buying groups. In addition to using a TAL, ABM integrated media also targets the appropriate mix of job functions and titles that make up a buying group for the offering your program is supporting.
Buying group targeting checklist:
- Develop a buying group hypothesis by examining won opportunities with accounts and solutions that are representative of your program objective.
- Identify the job functions, levels, and titles in a typical buying group.
- Examine the number of contacts, job title mix, and criteria from the accounts to determine patterns.
- Analyze content influence on these opportunities to identify high-impact content/content that resonates with specific personas.
See it in practice with Acme Co.’s plan
Acme Co. performed an analysis of won opportunities for their SaaS product and identified the most important job functions, levels, titles, average number of contacts, and highest performing content topics to form their buying group hypothesis. Their buying group averages 15 individuals across two functions with a variety of job levels. They also discover that ransomware content resonates well with IT, while content about AI in security is consumed more often by security titles.
Step 3
Develop a content syndication strategy
Gartner research has shown that reaching buyers early in their journey with relevant content favorably influences their purchase decision. ABM IM uses content syndication to get in front of buying group members as they begin researching solutions on third-party websites.
Content syndication strategy checklist:
- Select a mix of content relevant to your buying group, target accounts, and program goals for syndication.
- Consider segmenting your content syndication programs by job function, seniority, topic, or other criteria.
- Set account-level lead caps (e.g., limits on the number of leads per account) for each segmented syndication program to create the right mix of buyers and engagement across your TAL.
- Set a lead goal and target CPL for each segmented syndication program based on budget, demand metrics, and account engagement goals.
See it in practice with Acme Co.’s plan
Acme Co. used their buying group hypothesis to guide their content syndication strategy. They selected a mix of ransomware and AI in cybersecurity content and segmented their audience into two syndication programs. They used account-level lead capping to create predictable engagement. They set the target cost per lead and lead goal for each program based on their demand metrics and account engagement goals.
Step 4
Develop a cross-channel strategy
Once accounts engage with content syndication, the next step of ABM IM is to target the buying group with a three-step digital display advertising nurture. ABM IM optimizes your display ad spend by only enrolling accounts engaged with your content syndication, ensuring you spend your ad budget on accounts more likely to be in-market. In addition to display advertising, a best practice to consider is to enroll individual leads in a relevant email nurture series, followed by your always-on programs.
Cross-channel checklist:
- Create an account engagement algorithm or scoring model to determine whether content syndication has engaged an account by considering the number of leads, seniority levels, functions, job title mix, and other criteria.
- Define how content syndication engagement will determine enrollment in relevant digital ad nurture series and email nurture variants based on content topics.
- Define how leads will enter your always-on programs once they finish the digital display ad sequence and email nurture streams.
See it in practice with Acme Co.’s plan
Acme Co.’s engagement algorithm identified an account engaged by content syndication as soon as three leads from the program come in with at least one lead at a director or higher title. The IT function from the account is targeted with a ransomware display ad nurture and the security function receives an AI in security ad nurture. IT and security leads each also are enrolled in their own personalized email nurture. As the leads complete display and email nurturing, they are enrolled into always-on programs.
Step 5
Develop a digital display advertising strategy
Pairing display advertising with content syndication creates better buying group visibility for your brand and solutions. ABM IM supports your other top-of-funnel tactics and aligns with current purchasing behavior by creating a progressive buyer journey across multiple channels with increased personalization.
Display advertising checklist:
- Develop relevant three-step digital display ad flights using a buyer’s journey model, such as awareness, consideration, and conversion stages.
- Set a click threshold to progress buyers from awareness to consideration to conversion ads based on engagement.
- Use awareness ads to educate the audience about your solutions and the issues they address.
- Use consideration ads to highlight the advantages that differentiate your brand and solutions.
- Use conversion ads to drive interested buyers into action.
See it in practice with Acme Co.’s plan
Acme Co.’s marketing team created two advertising nurture flights, one for AI in security and one for ransomware. They carefully selected content to create call-to-action experiences that supported the advertising messaging. Take a closer look at their AI in Security ad nurture in the diagram.
Step 6
Nurture and develop pipeline
The content syndication portion of ABM IM produces early stage buying signals. Note that it’s not best practice to hand off leads from content syndication directly to sales for qualification and follow up. To develop your pipeline, you need to nurture and engage individual contacts, as well as emerging buying groups at target accounts, with your always-on and ABM programs.
Nurture checklist:
- Create a model and workflow for continuing the buyer’s journey for key account buying groups and individuals that have engaged with your ABM IM. Map how different tactics support all stages of the buyer’s journey.
- Take a data-driven approach toward identifying and prioritizing accounts ready for sales engagement. Consider account engagement, individual contact scores, buying group engagement, intent data, and other factors.
- Clearly define and articulate how marketing will support open opportunities through 1:1 and 1: few tactics.
See it in practice with Acme Co.’s plan
Acme Co.’s marketing team used a funnel model to map out the buyer’s journey enabled through their ABM IM program, and clearly identified how to connect their program to always-on marketing and sales hand-offs. As account buyer groups complete their ABM IM journey, they are enrolled in a variety of always-on tactics. Acme Co. hands off accounts opportunities to sales when they have ten opted-in individuals with at least two director level + seniority titles from the IT function, with 25% of account contacts meeting MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) thresholds for individual leads.
