The Pragmatic Guide to

Account Based Marketing

C

on

ten

ts

1

Introduction

Winning the biggest deals

2

5 challenges for B2B marketeers Size of the buying centre, GDPR and contact privacy, Non-linear and long sales cycles, reaching the people that make or influence the decisions

3

The Account Based marketing Essentials : How does it work?

IP Targeting, Cookies, Targeting, Geo-Targeting,

Social ABM, Profiles, IP and Geo Fencing with Data

Management, Platform (DMP) contact layer

4 Known challenges

• IP Targeting

• Cookie Targeting

• Geo-Targeting

• Social Media, Personal Profiles

• IP or Geo-Fencing with Data

Management, Platform (DMP) contact layer

5

Become an Account Based Advertising Specialist

• Understand your data

• Understand your vendor

• Understand your objectives

6

Conclusion and about The Digital Effect

Winning the biggest deals

You could make enough confetti for a summer of

weddings with all the papers that show how much

B2B companies can gain from Account Based

Marketing (ABM). With 80% of the buying journey

being both digital and anonymous, traditional

marketing channels show limitations into how deeply

one can engage large organisations.

Winning the biggest deals involves communicating

with large audiences in ways that only Account

Based Advertising (ABA) and social ABM can do

at scale.

ABM is ideal for complex selling but an evolving

and non-linear buying journey that is increasingly

digital means that many organisations struggle

with the ‘complex’ part without really achieving the

‘selling’.

If you are ready to move from the WHY to the

HOW, this could be the most important guide to

read this year. This is one journey you can not

afford to miss.

Intr

od

uc

tio

n

4 CHALLENGES for B2B Marketeers:

Challenge 1:

Size of the buying centre

It is all about collective decision making. Very large

numbers of people involved in the purchase results in the

need of ‘consensus selling’. Only marketing can do this at

scale.

A study in Germany found that groups of two to 20 people make 86% of the

procurement decisions at large corporations and medium-sized enterprises. In

large companies this can grow to an average of 34, with loads more involved in the

prescription and influencing of the purchase.

Challenge 2:

GDPR and contact privacy

The EU directive coming into effect in May 2018 is

closing a chapter to Marketing Automation and last-

mile touch-points in Europe.

The two biggest changes for marketers will be:

No longer being able to send an email, even a letter without your

prospects clear and unambiguous permission (opt-in)

Not being allowed to automatically drop cookies on your prospect

unless they have given you clear and unambiguous permission (opt-

in)

With email marketing and retargeting often cited as the two highest

converting channels, these GDPR challenges are going to leave a

lot of marketers in a pickle.

Why is this so important? The growing focus on Account Based

Marketing in the B2B community shows that many organizations

understand that they need to influence large decision making

groups to be effective. Not only this, the ubiquity of social and

digital communication channels mean that programmatic display

advertising is increasingly important. Content needs to be visible in

the channels and on the devices that buyers use.

Challenge 3:

Non linear and very long sales cycles require

working the entire account at all stages of the nurturing cycle

1 2 3

AWARENESS 0% ACCOUNT BASED SOCIAL ABM ACCOUNT BASED

ADVERTISING MARKETING

AUTOMATION & TLMK

REACHED ENABLED ATTRACTED CONVERTED TRANSACTED

Challenge4: How to reach all the people that

make or influence the decision? Targeting the collective with your messaging requires that you

reach out to people with whom you have very little previous

engagement, or none at all.

WHY DO WE WE KNOW ROI? NEED YOU? BETTER

EXPERTS CSO CIO

USERS USERS CEO

GATE KEEPER EXPERTS CFO EXPENSIVE

The Account

Based Marketing

Essentials

Increasing risk aversion, technology complexity, high

numbers of people involved in the purchasing process

and compliance concerns (email and opt-in

legislation) seem to have all come together for the

perfect storm to hit Marketing and sales. As every

B2B professional knows, the bigger the purchasing

team and the longer the sales cycle, the less likely

they are to end up buying. In this context, winning big

deals today means working the entire account.

Account Engagement is the new KPI to track in a “pre

-funnel” digital environement and therefore you need

to master the two key elements that will make your

customers love your brand which are the correct

targeting martech with content relevance. Bear in mind

that before spending any money with you, customers

will first need to spend time with you.

ACCOUNT BASED ADVERTISING: REACH

AND INFLUENCE LARGE DIGITAL

AUDIENCES ONLY AT KEY ACCOUNTS

Key Accounts No Target

Imagine that you are invited by Acme Corp.

to respond to a major RFP. Your Key

Account Managers (KAM) spend time talking

to Purchasing and some other contacts within

Acme Corp. You want to increase your

chances of winning and you know that in

order to do so you need the attention of

Senior Engineers (they will be key users of

your service), the finance Department (they

need to know that the RoI comes within a

year) and the IT department (who will run

with the product implementation). All these

people will never meet your KAM, but are

crucial influencers in the final decision.

If you only rely on your CRM and MA data,

reaching these audiences is a real challenge.

This is however not a problem with digital

advertising and social ABM. Furthermore, you

can engage without needing to send any

emails which comes in very handy in countries

with restrictive email opt-in legislation! Not

only this, you can be very targeted in your

messaging and track the engagement (or lack

of) from Acme Corp. and adjust your

message accordingly.

Scale Scope Strategy

How many accounts? Start with a pilot? Is this mostly about

How big are the deals? Will this be an intensive, growing existing

What resources are high-touch approach accounts, winning

available? for a few accounts? new logos or both?

Marketing and sales can not engage

enough people in existing and new

accounts as they usually reach only

contacts in their CRM or Marketing

Automation Engine. This is provided they

have the right optins. Otherwise they will

have Legal on their backs telling them not

to communicate with their own

customers!

This is a critical bottleneck that results in

longer sales cycles and lost deals.

The challenge is therefore for sales and

marketing to have increased visibility,

attention and engagement by reaching all the

people that make or influence the major

decisions.

EACH COOKIE HAS IT’S OWN

BEHAVIOURAL DNA STRING

HOW DOES IT WORK?

A very high level of targeting and

personalization is possible thanks

to different technologies. Some

vendors provide with all, some

other vendors with just some. There

is no right or wrong way here, but

you need to know what you can

expect from each.

IP TARGETING

IP Address - traditional – Ensuring our

targeting is specific only to a set group of

IP addresses. This is the earliest

approach used by Account Based

Advertising providers when IP data

started to see widespread interest and

adoption three or four years ago.

IP targeted ads deliver content through

web publishers. Thanks to IP Based

technologies, companies can target key

accounts and close the big deals faster,

delivering the right content with the right

frequency. B2B Marketing is therefore no

longer limited to visitors to your website.

Reaching everyone in large organizations

like IBM, Ford or Citibank, when you only

care about a very specific audience, can

become expensive. Think of it like a

billboard outside an office, everyone

working in that location has the potential to

see it.

IP addresses are used to identify devices

that connect to the Internet. Think of it as

the ‘sender’ address in a normal postal

letter. As an example, when you search

something in Google, the IP address is

associated with your question and

therefore the search engine knows exactly

the machine it should be returning the

answer to!

When connecting to the internet every

device uses a surf IP address. This is true

for computers but also for printers,

servers… etc. Big companies normally

have ranges of IP addresses dedicated to

them whereas smaller companies will most

likely use the default IP ranges given by

their ISP.

When an employee connects to the internet

from his work computer he is most likely

using the corporate IP address. Not to mix

with the IP address of the website as it will

be most likely hosted somewhere else, ie.

MS Azure, Amazon WS or any other hosting

provider.

COOKIE TARGETING

Some Account Based Advertising providers start with

a list of individuals at the target companies. And since

they are targeting individuals, not locations, it doesn’t

matter if someone is in the office, on the road or at

home. This approach relies on the availability of 3rd

party data and has big limitations because of data

privacy concerns.

It works relatively well in the US, Canada and UK

because of availability of service providers that can

provide such data to advertisers. You may be able to

reach your individuals as part of a big target audience

without needing to know their identity.

You can target users based on cookie information

and in some cases you can even identify the

individual end user by their name.

GEO-TARGETING

With geo-targeting you can target contacts that sit

within a perimeter of a given location. Imagine that you are running an event. By using

mobile geo-targeting you can capture relevant digital

mindshare as they interact with you in the real world.

Furthermore, once the event is over you can use the

mobile IDs your ads were served to as an audience

that you can re-target for up to 3 months. Or imagine

that you want to target Acme’s HQ but that there is no

dedicated IP address for a given location and cookie

based data does not provide the desired reach. With

geo-targeting you can place an online banner aimed

exclusively at the desired targets working at the

address of your choice.

SOCIAL MEDIA

PERSONAL PROFILES

LinkedIn and Facebook targeting solutions

rely on the fact that they can leverage the

user identities across multiple devices.

Some other solutions blend LinkedIn

audiences with Facebook Ads to provide

Account Based Contact Advertising. This is

another way to think about social media, it’s

a more effective approach as a direct

marketing

channel and a one to one channel to key

decision makers, C level contacts and

influencers in key accounts.

You can engage and convert more

prospects from your key accounts while

they are actively in Social Media Ad

Networks, which includes not only

Facebook but over 4 million different media

sites and apps.

LinkedIn

Public LinkedIn Facebook

Advanced Custom Audience Profile Emails

Using LinkedIn Social Id is imported

Advanced Search into Facebook Ad.

we construct a list Network to create a

of targets that Custom Audience.

match your Public

customer criteria.

Databases 50%

MATCH

RATE

Email Finders

FOCUS AREAS FOR LONG TERM

SUCCESS WITH ABM

BRAND DEMAND EXPAND

ACCOUNT ACCOUNT ACCOUNT

AWARENESS DEMAND DEVELOPMENT

5 STEPS TO KEEP YOUR ABM FOCUSED

PRACTICAL AND PROFITABLE

5. START WITH QUICK ABM WINS

4. USE ACCOUNT BASED ADVERTISING

3. AGREE ON KPIs FOR LONG SALES CYCLES

2. SALES + MARKETING ARE EQUAL

1. IDENTIFY YOUR KEY ACCOUNTS

IP WITH DATA MANAGEMENT

PLATFORM (DMP) BEHAVIOURAL

LAYER.

The combination of Account Based

Targeting (both IP targeting and Geo-

Fencing) with a DMP represents a real

revolution. As a data creation engine, the

DMP provides advanced real-time audience

segmentation as it enables advertisers to

connect with audiences across it’s roster of

premium publishers, creating and sustaining

demand for their inventory. Better audience

intelligence, and the ability to act upon that

intelligence, means enhanced campaign

performance and efficiency.

Unlike traditional IP targeting that bases

the ‘persona’ targeting in the ‘media

packages’ ie. if I publish the ads in the

Financial Times, then I’ll target the

Finance department, the DMP allows

‘persona’ based targeting.

This is a combination of cookie based data

demographics and behavioural, hence the

content is presented only to the right

individuals irrespective of the media they

may be checking – DMP’s stream

processing engine continually responds to

changes in behaviour patterns inferred

from anonymous data points to reach

better decisions more quickly.

Using predictive modelling algorithms,

machine learning and advanced semantic

technology, DMP’s can automatically

determine what audiences to create, in

which context and in what order to target, to

optimally meet the needs of each campaign.

USERS DIGITAL DMP SEGMENTS FOOTPRINT FEEDS DMP USERS TO TARGET

Users visits Device connects Company Website has Website communicates

website to website IP address inventory available with ad exchange SSP

DSP DMP

SSP passes user Advertisers DMP runs real

information to place bids time audience

DSPs via a DSP segmentation

WHY DO WE NEED A DMP?

A Data Management Platform is the most effective way to

dynamically bring your content to your Account Based

Marketing audience.

START LIKE AN ABM PRO

Identify accounts that Align your marketing Identify content

you need to actively investment with the that speaks to your

engage expected revenue per audience

account

WE MANAGE THE DMP

Collect digital signals Analytics and Machine Identify content

and data across Learning algorithms for that speaks to your

multiple channels audience profile audience

ADDITIONAL DMP BENEFITS

Optimize frequency Report engagement Take advantage

of online content for each B2B account of real time data in

display and content all ecosystems

Known Challenges of Account Based

Advertising

Reverse IP-lookup

Some solutions work on the principle that it is

possible to identify the surf IP address by looking at

who’s coming to your website. On this basis, we

simply have to run reverse IP look-up to identify who

the company was and decide whether we want to re-

target in the future.

Thirty-five-years ago, when Internet started, Internet

Protocol version 4 was developed which created 4.3

billion IP addresses for potential connected devices.

Believe it or not, we ran out of IP addresses a few

years ago and so, IPv6 was launched which has

increased the number of IP addresses there are to

about 340 trillion.

REVERSE IP-LOOKUP

TARGETING RELATIVE ACCURACY

BY COMPANY SIZE

GLOBAL ACCOUNTS

LARGE ACCOUNTS

MID MARKET

SMALL COMPANIES

LARGE

Large companies tend to

have a complex IP Set-up.

Reverse IP-lookup is unaware

of organizations relations and

fails to provide insights to

ensure targeting the right sites.

MID-SIZE

One can trust data on

mid-size companies.

Be aware, however, of

blindspots - the majority of

the web traffic is still not

successfully identified.

SMALL

Small comanies do

not usually have

dedicated IP ranges.

They will most likely

use the default IP

ranges given by their

ISP.

ACCURACY CAN

BE A CHALLENGE

There are companies that use a single global IP address. Whereas this can be great news if

you target single-location based companies, if you want to reach an organization that sits in

more than one location, this will not be very helpful. Not only that, if you target large

corporations you can be certain that your ads will probably not reach the individuals you want

to engage.

GEOGRAPHICAL IP ADDRESSES

IP addresses do not correlate at all

with geographical coordinates. If you

ever thought this could be a work

around, unfortunately the answer is

no.

KNOWN CHALLENGES OF COOKIE TARGETING

Let’s face it, cookie targeting is just as good

as the coverage it can provide. It faces a

number of challenges as some browsers

delete cookie information after each session,

cookie lifespans get shorter and shorter and

often match rates can drop to 50% when

moving cookie data and device Ids from

platform to platform. Moreover, with GDPR in

many Western European countries acquiring

3rd party data with this approach is simply

not possible as privacy laws make it illegal.

You also rely on the availability of 3rd party

data providers which in many regions such

as APAC and LATAM are simply not there or

in very small scale. If you therefore need a

global solution for your Account Based

Advertising, make sure you validate their

regional coverage, especially if cookies are

involved.

KNOWN CHALLENGES OF GEO-TARGETING

Geo-fencing relies on the position of a

device connecting to a mobile network. As

such, if you target an account in a highly

populated urban area or in a big building

where your target account shares location

with other companies, you may be reaching

just too many people outside your target

audience.

Geo-fencing works nearly exclusively with

mobile devices – which can be a limiting

factor if your audience does not browse on

their mobiles while being in the workplace.

KNOWN CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILES

By definition, social media profiles are built

at contact level. Additionally, not all the

relevant data sits in the same platform and

at the end of the journey there is some data

loss when profiles are moved from another

set to another

and then to the ad networks. Despite being a

very powerful tool to drive engaged

awareness you will only target contacts in

your key accounts. This is not the optimal

solution if you need to have account level

insights: most times you will need a

minimum target size of over 1000 records

and hence chances are that you’ll be

targeting people from different organizations

as part of the same campaign.

KNOWN CHALLENGES OF IP

OR GEO-FENCING WITH DATA

MANAGEMENT PLATFORM

CONTACT LAYER.

This is the most robust solution to

effectively run Account Based Advertising.

However, because of the complexity of

the underlying platform, this works best if

provided as a Managed Service. If your

audience is more transactional, a simpler

solution could be just as good.

GEO-FENCING IP TARGETING DMP

BECOME AN ACCOUNT BASED

ADVERTISING SPECIALIST

While there never seems to be enough time to perform an

adequate vendor evaluation process, any time spent qualifying the

best vendors and solutions will save effort and budget down the

road. The following check list can be used as reference during

each vendor evaluation process. Use it as both a guide and as a

scorecard, inserting notes beside each information source.

UNDERSTAND YOUR DATA • Reverse IP-Lookup targeting - With

trillions of IP addresses available,

If you want to make the best of your reverse IP look-up will not run short

ABA investment, start by understanding of work for a while! Many vendors

the nature of the companies you want offer the possibility to run a trial

to target so this can determine the level and tell you who comes to your

of sophistication required. website. If you plan to invest in ABA

it makes a lot of sense to start by

1. If you have a large number of checking how much of your existing

accounts within the same level of traffic they can identify. If you run

sales engagement you can share Marketing Automation you certainly

high level content across all of know already some names and

them. nothing prevents you from running

concurrent tests with different

2. Company size – large accounts vendors to prove their worth. Most

tend to have complex IP scenarios. times you’ll be given a weeks free

Do not trust your targeting only on trial worth of traffic.

automated IP-lookup.

• Geo-Targeting - Can they

complement the existing program

UNDERSTAND YOUR VENDOR

with a geo-approach? Many

times you wish you’d had the

opportunity to target only people

• What reporting and insights in a given building or location. Do

are available? not risk everything for only using IP

• IP targeting capabilities - There is

targeting.

no such thing as 100% accuracy so • Cookie based data – Which are

check to see how they perform their the sources, how is the vendor

IP mapping and be aware that if complying with data privacy and

they only use IP targeting you may which is the country coverage?

not be able to target that account.

• Platform – Some vendors offer a nice • How well can they reach your platform that integrates with your individual contacts/persona? - Cookie SFDC and CRM, others don’t. Think based, media targeting, DMP… etc. about it and consider if you really Think of it this way: the bigger the size need the integration and if you have or your organization, the higher the the resources to run the campaign need to target the right individuals. with your own team. You can burn your marketing budget very quickly if you misuse the platform. Our recommendation for a zen Account Based Advertising moment is to focus on Outcomes, not Outputs.

UNDERSTAND YOUR OBJECTIVES

ABM is all about Revenue and Account Lifetime Value.

We’ve seen companies with sales cycles that can last up

to 3 to 5 years and others generating 6 and 7 digit

opportunities within months . In this context, looking for a

short term lead is probably not the right KPI. Ask your

vendor for the kind of reporting they will provide and how

they plan sharing the insights.

CONCLUSION

Remaining competitive means constantly iterating and

improving all elements of your go-to-market strategy. If you do

not focus on Account Based Advertising yet, you are certainly

leaving money on the table. With ABM you’ll focus your

marketing budget at the accounts with more chance of

delivering revenue.

Your marketing messages can cut through

the noise and you’ll be able to secure more

deals that otherwise would have been lost

because of lack of resources to engage and

communicate with key stakeholders. Done

correctly, ABM can build long lasting

connections with real people at your key

accounts.

If you still think you are not ready it is

time to change your mind. ABM is a new

process that has no way back, the sooner

you start, the earlier you’ll reap the

benefits: increased deal velocity and

volume, shorter sales cycles, increased

alignment between marketing and sales.

Rebrand your thinking from Lead Generation to Revenue Generation and you’ll be ready for Account Based Advertising.

Organizational ABM results ABM Law of 80/20 Marketing and Sales need to focus on Most revenue comes from the top 20% key accounts and sing from the same of accounts, yet traditional marketing hymn sheet. efforts are spread evenly across all

accounts.

ABOUT THE DIGITAL EFFECT

Long before ABM was a buzzword, The Digital Effect (TDE) has

been delivering precision account and audience targeting.

Founded by industry veterans from the advertising and IT

industries, TDE offers the world’s leading Account Based

Advertising Platform with Global Reach (ie, not limited by

cookies) on IP targeting on top of the world’s leading DSP and

DMPs. We have also developed leading Social ABM solutions

to help you bridge the last-mile conversions into an actual Sales

conversation.

TDE has offices in UK, Denmark, France and South Africa. Written by: Toni Chumillas has worked as Consultant for Fortune 500 and Technology Startups in

various industries for over twenty years. He leads the development of ABM and Social

Solutions to help companies succeed in their ABM journey. He is a Board Advisor on TDE.

You can read more from Toni or follow him on Linkedin.

Antoni Chumillas Programmatic ABM and Social Strategy

thedigitaleffect.com