2. Today’s Promise
Provide insight into Kapost’s ABM Journey
Make it not sound so incredibly nebulous
Provide a actionable takeaways for
success
3. About LeadMD
Digital Marketing
consultancy specializing
in making strategy
actionable
Focused on the Marketo
platform
7 Years and 2600+
engagements
4. Here to Share the Story of a Flipped Funnel
Justin Gray
Founder/CEO, LeadMD
@Jgraymatter
Shar Berwick
Senior Director of Marketing, Kapost
@SharBerwick
6. Process of Selling ABM Internally
1. Targeted set of accounts (typically larger accounts)
2. Programs deliver highly personalized experience
3. Coordination across touches, channels, and experiences
4. Always-on until account is removed from target list
5. Marketing, sales development, and sales alignment is crucial
12. Kapost ABM Framework
MARKET PLANNING
Define Ideal Customer Profile
(ICP) and Buyer Personas (BP)
Ideal Customer Profile
Buyer Personas
Target account list
Sales and marketing signoff
ACCOUNT PLANNING
Gather account/contact insights
that will inform campaigns
Account teams
Quarterly account reviews
Bi-weekly insight scrum
2-3 insights for 100% of accounts
LEAD QUALIFICATION
Sales development follows-up on
leads to set appointments for
sales
SDR touch pattern
Live call script
CRM updates
Set meeting for sales
SALES CYCLE
Sales works opportunities while
marketing provides campaign
support
Sales process
Ad retargeting
Close net new or expansion deal
SALES QUALIFICATION
Sales holds initial call with
prospect to determine opportunity
Show and tell
Discovery
Sales creates an opportunity
OFFERS
Develop high value offers (e.g.
events, content) to support ABM
Digital content (WPs, Webinars)
Meetings (Trade/Road Show)
Sales offers
Repeatable set of offers available
CAMPAIGN PLANNING
Determine ABM campaign based
on account’s current situation
Pipeline Build
Land and Expand
Ad-hoc
Nurture
Campaign type determined
EXECUTION
Distribute offers across multiple,
well-coordinated channels
Direct mail
Outreach (SDR, Rep, Exec)
Targeted ads
Email
Web personalization (future)
Create one-to-one engagement
Closed
ABM DATABASE
Create and maintain database of
target accounts and contacts
Pre-load contacts
Cleanse
Append
90%+ of ICP/BPs in database
MQC
SAC SQL
Contacts
18. Operationalizing personas
ASSET TYPE DEFINIED
Promotional
Which promotional assets are needed in order to deliver via
selected channels
Destination
Where will traffic be routed based on promotion assets and
channels
Content
Who will author, design, and package the offer; along with timelines
and actions
Personalization
How will the content be personalized based on target account or
vertical
Enablement
How will Sales be educated on the campaign; where do they
access; and how is it tracked
LeadMD Overview –
Top tiered Marketo Preferred Partner
Why we specialize in Marketo
2500 + engagements
Early adopters – started out as a marketing automation agency NOT as a digital marketing agency.
30 + Certified experts
Enterprise-level account focus
Specific ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
Need to understand the challenges within those accounts:
What does it take to get one piece of content done?
What ROI could be achieved with efficiency?
Once content is created, how is that being immortalized for reps?
Conveying this in the traditional demand gen sense is very hard
Focusing on a limited amount of accounts allows for reps to understand account better.
The answer: heavy Kapost usage equates to reduced churn risk
ABM reduces the risk of churn – penetrating the entire company makes us sticky
If a customer only has one or two users on the platform, it’s easily deemed non-essential and replaced.
So, the key for success is getting more teams – like demand gen, customer success, services – involved.
It all comes down to: penetrating the entire institution, not just the content or marketing team
How was the ABM idea sold internally?
What’s process did you use to determine the changes that needed to take place?
Walk us through: How did you seek and get internal buy-in to switch to ABM?
Who did you pull together? What did that process look like?
How did you work to achieve sales and marketing alignment?
Let’s talk about data structure under this model
Surrounded by a buying committee
s
Do you have the entire icp in your database? 55% coverage 100 %
What’s an ideal buyer persona
What’s the differences in
Two dimensions, the individual, who they are, what level they are at, what their role is, the distance from purchasing power
How much autonomy to make that decision, if they have to bring in that many people.
it, the distance in buying power?
Doesn’t align to industry
The person and their distance to purchasing power
The size of the initiative…
Kapost wanted to kick off ABM in a controlled way:
Focus on 100 key companies
50% limited to tech
Other 50% from various industries
Account planning process
Everyone else, made up of early-movers with a content marketing play
Two reps: Enterprise, Mid Market
Mid Market account executive
Focus on top 50 Mid Market (high-growth) companies involved in content marketing
Using predictive to build ICP
Using Leadspace, Kapost was able to assemble 500 companies that would fit ICP
Within those 500, they took a “tiered” approach:
100 accounts in a pilot program.
Two reps: Enterprise, Mid Market
Top 10 accounts in Tier 1
40 additional accounts in Tier 2
Enterprise software org focus
Tell us about the balance between:
The focus on enterprise software organizations
Bringing in additional company types where content marketing has had slower traction, such as manufacturing, healthcare, insurance
Graphic that shows this
Kapost used their own tool to do this.
Alignment through content marketing
How did you align content to specific buyers?
How did you work to understand what type of content those buyers like?
What tools of enablement did you use to find and fill gaps?
What Kapost came up with:
A diversified content strategy to support ICP
Predictive persona breakdown:
Digital marketing
Field marketers
Product marketers
Demand generation
Marcom Ops / Tech
Persona Operationalization
Kapost had to answer: How much content do we have tailored to those individual personas?
Content to persona coverage matrix: “Covered here, light here.”
From there, it boils down to the heavy lifting required to create content that resonates and fills the gaps
Getting the team together
Brought on product marketing for insights, to help create more content about Kapost’s solution and the problems it solves – not content about the virtues of content marketing
Bottom line: How does Kapost’s solution meet the needs of different roles?
50/50 Content Alignment
Gaps in content provides opportunity to fill them
Kapost’s biggest gap was: Middle of funnel content
While Kapost was doing well preaching evangelism for content marketing & how to use their solution, they had to focus much effort on creating solid middle-of-funnel content
Persona-based engagement tracks
Creating specialized nurture that focuses on covering the entire account, not just individuals
All tracks have a different message that resonates with different members of the buying committee
The bases are covered: When you’re talking to an account, all individuals will be in a relevant nurture track, and much more informed
Dynamic buying committee
Leverage content to create buyer engagement
Still enter in content roles
Marketing committee is move involved
Content supports these efforts and more
Sounds great, but where are the metrics?
Kapost is currently exploring Engagio for this
Moving from concept to tactics
Let’s talk timeline:
Once you had the plan ironed out, what were the steps you knew you had to take?
How long did you give yourself, and your team, to take them?
What Tech stack pivot was necessary. What did you use then vs. what you are using now?
What changes & additions were made?
What else, down the road, are you looking to adopt?
What educational resources did you use?
What format did the plan take? A sales kickoff? Playbook? What tangible item did you document the process with?
Tell us about how you assembled your tech stack
What pitfalls along the way?
How did you work to not cannibalize existing pre-ABM momentum?
How did you balance the urgency with doing things the right way?
What is your training plan? How long is it? How much support for reps?
How did you fill that big gap that you mentioned in pipeline?
Tell us more about the role of:
Dedicated Content
Additional supporting creators
Thought leadership
Pivot to “Large Tech Focus” to empower ABM
Tell us more about the algorithmic approach to:
Determining the amount of marketing effort, based on company size, for selling the deal
Expansion ops – what’s the opportunity?
Total spend potential – Based on revenue, understanding just how much Kapost can be successfully sold to a given account
How are you going measure this process against what was naturally happening your demand gen process?
What type of benchmarks are you collecting to compare pre- and post-ABM efforts?