Best of LinkedIn: Account-based Marketing CW 44/ 45

00:00:00: provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis, based on the most relevant posts on LinkedIn about account-based marketing in CW-IV and IV-V.

00:00:07: Frennis is a B-to-B market research company working with enterprises to optimize their campaigns with account and executive insights far beyond AI.

00:00:16: Welcome back to the deep dive.

00:00:18: So, for this dive, we've been looking at the sharpest insights coming out of LinkedIn on account-based marketing, specifically from the last few weeks.

00:00:25: And I think the big takeaway for you listening is that ABM is really shedding that label of just being a campaign tactic.

00:00:32: Exactly.

00:00:32: I mean, what we're tracking here is a pretty major strategic shift.

00:00:36: ABM's maturing.

00:00:37: You know, it's moving right into the core of organizations and with a, well, a pretty ruthless commercial focus.

00:00:44: Yeah, less about just volume, much more about precise disciplined execution.

00:00:48: And it seems to be built on trust now.

00:00:50: So we're going to look at the foundations people are talking about right now, things like alignment, precision and data and how AI fits in as more of an augmentation tool, not really a replacement.

00:00:59: Okay, makes sense.

00:01:00: Let's start right there then.

00:01:02: with strategic foundations and cross-functional alignment.

00:01:05: Because, you know, it was striking how many people were saying the tech stack isn't the main problem.

00:01:09: It's the internal setup.

00:01:10: Right.

00:01:11: Declan Mulkeen really hit this hard.

00:01:13: He basically said, look, ABM won't save bad marketing.

00:01:17: If you're a brand or your message or, you know, your data is weak, ABM just puts a big spotlight on those

00:01:24: cracks.

00:01:25: It's a tough pill to swallow, but yeah, necessary.

00:01:28: And what's fascinating is the scale of change needed inside the company.

00:01:31: Like Vladimir Blagojevich pointed out, ABM has to be seen as a cross-functional program.

00:01:36: It touches sales, product, customer success.

00:01:39: That's just marketing.

00:01:40: Not just marketing.

00:01:41: If you treat it like some small age and tweak, you're kind of missing the whole point.

00:01:44: it really needs systemic change management.

00:01:47: And that kind of systemic change, well, takes real time.

00:01:50: You can't just, you know, flip a switch and suddenly be aligned with revenue goals.

00:01:54: Sachin Pratap Singh actually laid out a pretty clear nine to twelve month transformation path.

00:02:01: Yeah, it's suggesting you need to spend Q one and Q two really focusing on shifting from that old MQL thinking to sequel optimization.

00:02:09: get that working, get the data right, and then you can really shift to pipeline optimization in Q three.

00:02:15: That

00:02:15: makes sense.

00:02:16: That time lag is there because you're fighting, you know, years of habit in the organization.

00:02:20: And that leads straight into the whole sales and marketing relationship or smarketing, as some call it.

00:02:25: Right.

00:02:26: We saw data, I think Ernesto Ortega Alvarez cited it showing that.

00:02:30: Teams that are tightly aligned, they see twenty-seven percent faster profit growth.

00:02:35: And the key thing isn't just like sharing leads, it's shared goals, shared data, and making sure both teams are absolutely laser focused on the accounts that actually move the needle commercially.

00:02:45: So

00:02:45: what do you think the biggest hurdle is there?

00:02:47: Is it like egos or data access problems, or maybe just not having structured ways to talk?

00:02:53: Usually,

00:02:53: yeah, it's communication and not having that sort of neutral ground for strategy, which is why a practical idea from Tyler Pleist sounds so... effective.

00:03:00: He suggested setting up an ABM advisory

00:03:05: council.

00:03:05: Yeah, like a bi-weekly meeting specifically with SDR leaders and your top SDRs.

00:03:10: And the focus is purely on go-to-market priorities, what they're hearing from the field.

00:03:15: It takes alignment out of theory and puts it into, you know, immediate actionable collaboration.

00:03:20: That collaboration feels critical, especially when you hear Alex Emberling emphasize that ABM is really sales activated.

00:03:27: He estimates, what is it, seventy percent?

00:03:29: Seventy percent.

00:03:30: Seventy percent of the program's success in just directly on sales execution.

00:03:34: So when that alignment clicks.

00:03:36: the results are just massive.

00:03:37: We're talking like, thirty-two percent higher revenue, thirty-eight percent higher win rates.

00:03:41: And that

00:03:42: seventy percent figure, for me, it really highlights that marketing's job isn't just, you know, creating buzz.

00:03:47: It's about giving sales everything they need to actually convert that interest.

00:03:51: If marketing hands over a weak target list or just generic stuff, sales can't possibly hit that seventy percent.

00:03:57: Which

00:03:57: brings us perfectly to that crucial point upstream.

00:04:00: Targeting quality.

00:04:01: Yeah.

00:04:01: Max Robiero had a guide stressing, you need to move carefully from that huge total addressable market, you know, the whole universe, down to the ideal customer profile.

00:04:10: You've got to avoid pouring energy into opportunities that just never convert.

00:04:14: Mason Cosby put it really bluntly.

00:04:16: If your target list is off, everything you do after that, custom ads, emails, SDR time.

00:04:21: It's just wasted money.

00:04:22: Totally wasted.

00:04:23: And that idea of hyperprecision, it transitions us nicely into our second big theme here, research depth and next generation targeting.

00:04:32: So if we agree, we shouldn't waste time on the wrong accounts.

00:04:34: How do we efficiently find and, well, get into the right ones?

00:04:38: Yeah, we saw some interesting thinking here.

00:04:39: Davis Potter argued that the whole one mini ABM debate is kind of old news now.

00:04:44: Okay.

00:04:45: I think the discussion should be about growth ABM.

00:04:47: It's more like a tiered approach, maybe tier one, two, three.

00:04:50: dictating how much personalization you actually apply.

00:04:53: This framework lets you scale coverage efficiently across maybe hundreds, even thousands of accounts without, you know, treating every single one like a super high touch, one point one project.

00:05:01: I think that tiered idea is just.

00:05:03: Realistic, isn't it?

00:05:05: But even within those target accounts, we're seeing a shift.

00:05:08: It's moving from targeting the company overall to targeting specific people.

00:05:12: Denise Clinker and Stephen R. Burke talked about contact level ABM.

00:05:16: Contact level ABM.

00:05:17: Yeah, it means tailoring your content, your messaging, not just to the accounts industry, but really drilling down to the individual decision makers role, their specific needs, and, crucially, where they are in their buying journey.

00:05:31: Right.

00:05:31: And to make that happen, you absolutely need an impeccable data strategy.

00:05:35: Jeff Ignacio shared a really practical metric for this.

00:05:38: Persona density mapping.

00:05:40: Persona density mapping.

00:05:41: Tell me more.

00:05:42: It basically involves figuring out how many of the right buyers, the exact titles and roles you need actually exist within a target account.

00:05:50: Ah, OK.

00:05:51: That's smart.

00:05:52: So why chase a company that looks great on the surface, but maybe only has one or two people you can actually talk to?

00:05:57: Persona density mapping helps line up territory planning, ensures your go to market efforts, focus on accounts where there's enough of a buying committee to actually, you know, make a decision happen.

00:06:08: But hang on, isn't that level of mapping that kind of intelligence?

00:06:11: Isn't that only really possible for like huge companies with massive data budgets?

00:06:16: How does a mid-market team even approach that?

00:06:18: Well, the

00:06:19: core need is the same, right?

00:06:20: Yeah.

00:06:20: It's context.

00:06:22: Bryce Marl and shared something interesting.

00:06:24: He found that while most teams enrich maybe ten percent of their data, the really top performing teams, they enrich

00:06:31: everything.

00:06:32: Everything.

00:06:32: Everything.

00:06:33: They're using tools.

00:06:34: You mentioned Clearbit, Zoom Info, Apollo, Clay.

00:06:38: Not just to find a phone number, but to pull out that context.

00:06:41: rich data, things like recent company news, tech stack changes, maybe current pain points mentioned online.

00:06:47: That's the stuff that actually gets replies.

00:06:49: Data quality is the great equalizer here.

00:06:51: And that data needs to be used smartly, especially with buying signals.

00:06:55: Eve Chen discussed moving beyond just looking at, say, isolated individual intent, like who clicked an ad, to focusing more on buyer group intelligence.

00:07:04: Basically, tracking the collective agreement, the consensus within the account.

00:07:09: That feels much closer to how BDB buying actually works, doesn't it?

00:07:13: Right.

00:07:13: One person clicking something doesn't mean a deal's about to close.

00:07:16: You need to see who agrees, who's downloading the follow-up materials, who's engaging across that whole buying group to really know if they're ready.

00:07:25: That group consensus, that's the real signal.

00:07:27: And getting that kind of insight.

00:07:29: It takes serious upfront work.

00:07:31: Kfast Lenko pointed out that real ABM research isn't just a quick Google search.

00:07:35: It means practitioners have to really understand the buying committee's roadmap.

00:07:39: Dig into earnings called transcripts.

00:07:41: Know exactly what the champion cares about versus the decision maker versus the influencer before you even think about crafting a personalized solution.

00:07:49: Yeah, if you skip that deep research, you're right back to wasting that sales team's seventy percent effort, aren't you?

00:07:54: Absolutely.

00:07:55: which brings us nicely to our final theme, connecting tech and trust.

00:07:59: AI, creative execution, and channel augmentation.

00:08:03: The whole AI discussion seems to have definitely matured.

00:08:07: It's less, is it going to take our jobs and more pragmatic

00:08:11: now?

00:08:11: Totally agree.

00:08:12: Nancy Carlyle Harlan and Dibjit Sen both seem to land on AI redefining ABM by boosting speed, scale, and synthesis.

00:08:21: The general feeling is it's here to augment our strategic thinking, not replace it.

00:08:25: You know, helping identify accounts, doing basic personalization, prediction, orchestration, but at scale.

00:08:30: And we're already seeing really practical uses.

00:08:32: Kristen Jeffery, for example, talked about using AI agents and co-pilot to build automated ABM systems, finding key contacts, summarizing company info, even drafting personalized outreach, apparently in minutes.

00:08:43: That speed is incredible for efficiency.

00:08:45: Millie H also shared using clay for AI scoring.

00:08:48: They segment prospects into tiers.

00:08:50: so the high fit high intent leads get that personalized video outreach the real human touch while others might get automated sequences.

00:08:57: It's about using human time where it counts most.

00:08:59: But, and this is a big but, this explosion of AI content and speed brings up a huge question around trust.

00:09:07: Renee Edwards made a really sharp point.

00:09:09: ABM without trust is just spam.

00:09:12: Yeah.

00:09:13: And if, as Bev Burgess referenced, something like eighty seven percent of online content is going to be AI generated by twenty twenty six, the market's just going to get incredibly skeptical, isn't it?

00:09:23: It has to.

00:09:24: So in this age of automation.

00:09:26: Building genuine trust becomes absolutely critical.

00:09:29: That means focusing on reputation, real relationships, that P to P human to human stuff.

00:09:34: It probably explains why smaller face-to-face programs are apparently seeing a comeback.

00:09:38: They just cut through all the digital noise and build trust faster.

00:09:41: So

00:09:41: if trust is the foundation, the maybe creativity is how you cut through the noise, the digital spam.

00:09:46: Nicholas Gavone gave some brilliant examples of really creative ABM campaigns that worked.

00:09:51: Things like sending custom doormats or personalized bobbleheads.

00:09:55: really specific one dot ho dot one LinkedIn ads that actually feature the target accounts logo and their brand colors.

00:10:01: You just have to be memorable.

00:10:03: And often that means being physical or highly visual.

00:10:06: And you need to be memorable across different channels too.

00:10:10: Camille Rexton suggested looking beyond just say LinkedIn and using channels like CTV Connected TV.

00:10:16: Interesting, CTV for B to B ABM.

00:10:19: Yeah, apparently layering CTV into an ABM program led to a noticeable rise in branded search volume within just two weeks.

00:10:26: It creates that kind of surround sound effect, helps with recognition, maybe nudges, stall deals forward.

00:10:31: And

00:10:31: sticking with LinkedIn for a second, Mark Woodland and Florian Hubauer announced a really powerful new feature, LinkedIn ad personalization for their single image and video.

00:10:41: It lets you dynamically tailor the ad copy using macros like the person's name, job title, company, industry.

00:10:48: Early tests apparently showed engagement going up by as much as two X.

00:10:51: That capability for dynamic personalization, that's a massive win for doing ABM at scale, isn't it?

00:10:57: Because you get high relevance, but across a bigger audience.

00:11:00: So when you piece all this together, the need for strict internal alignment, that granular persona mapping, the deep research, the AI augmentation, it really confirms that core idea.

00:11:12: ABM is basically a strategic operating model now.

00:11:15: Built on trust, fueled by hyper-relevant context.

00:11:18: Yeah, what really stands out for me across all these different posts is the absolute necessity for quality over quantity.

00:11:23: Source after force seem to argue that the most successful ABM programs, they're the ones that are just relentless about the quality of the target list first and then the depth of the research.

00:11:31: Making sure every single interaction afterwards, whether it's AI or human, lands with maximum relevance and crucially builds trust.

00:11:38: That really sums it up.

00:11:40: Okay, that was our essential deep dive into the current state of ABM based on what we're seeing out there.

00:11:46: If you enjoyed this, remember new deep dives drop every two weeks.

00:11:49: And do check out our other editions covering field marketing, channel and partner marketing, AI and B to B, MarTech, go to market and social selling.

00:11:58: Thanks for joining us as we unpack the latest ABM strategies right from the field.

00:12:02: Yeah,

00:12:02: thanks for listening.

00:12:03: And don't forget to subscribe so you catch our next deep dive.