Target account
definition
Setting up and prioritizing the target account list
The whole point of Account-Based Marketing is to reach the right audience. To do so successfully, the first step is to define who that audience is. Pinpointing the right high-value accounts is key to efficiently implementing an ABM strategy.
Where are your future customers? Which companies would you like to add to your list of partners? Which industries stand to gain the most from your products or services?
Growly can help you answer questions like these and create a complete picture of your targets.
With ABM, it’s about quality, not quantity. By identifying the best fit for your company, you’ll be in a position to form valuable, long-lasting relationships.
The list of companies you want to target is based on a comprehensive combination of factors. Industry, company size, roles and responsibilities… They all need to be taken into consideration.
Target account definition consists of four crucial parts. Click on an item from the list below to find out more and discover how Growly can help you get started.
Ideal Customer Profile
Buyer personas
Decision Making Unit
Target account list
Ideal Customer Profile
The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is exactly what you imagine it to be. It defines the key characteristics of the ideal accounts you want to attract and nurture. ICP attributes should match your company’s goals.
To create your ICP, you use both internal and external data. This helps align your Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams from the beginning.
Identifying ICP criteria is the starting point for every Account-Based Marketing (ABM) campaign. It guides the creation of your target account list and other key decisions throughout your marketing efforts. Essentially, it’s the foundation of a successful and repeatable process list development process.
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In a brainstorm session with the Growly team, you’ll get to the initial definition of your ICP. Our Online Marketing department will then complete a targeting check on the most used advertising channels like LinkedIn and Facebook to see if your ICP’s scope is large enough to target some of these accounts through online advertising.
Buyer personas
Once you’ve defined your Ideal Customer Profile, it’s time to go deeper and create buyer personas. A buyer persona is a detailed, semi-fictional profile of a person who might be interested in what you have to offer. It is a realistic type based on the ICP that includes a description of specific characteristics, behavior, roles, responsibilities, challenges, goals and wishes, among other relevant information.
Defining these buyer personas allows you to get a feel for your target audience, which in turn creates a great opportunity to determine specific marketing techniques. It also ensures that the resulting account list provides coverage of all impactful target accounts like CXO, marketing, sales reps, external influencers, etc.
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Information is knowledge. In order to create realistic buyer personas, the Growly team will first fill out a buyer persona canvas with all available information. We’ll then set up a meeting where you can provide the necessary input or take part in an interview to get more insights. Afterwards, the contacts in the target account list are mapped with the created buyer personas.
Decision Making Unit
In B2B marketing, you generally need to convince more than one person for their company to choose you as their partner. A Decision Making Unit (DMU) in ABM consists of key stakeholders who influence the buying process and decisions. The DMU can be made up of any number of people, ranging from one person to a whole group.
Prioritizing who’s who in the Decision Making Unit is essential. In a typical B2B purchase of any significance, there will likely be a more complex DMU. In simple terms, more details need to be communicated to more people, each of whom potentially have different information needs.
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Sometimes, less is more. At Growly, we believe a DMU canvas only needs to be created when:
– it’s essential for the specific proposition we aim to market in the ABM program;
– the ABM program consists of an individualized approach
aimed at anywhere from 20 to 50 accounts.
If both of these criteria are met, the Growly team constructs a DMU canvas that is prioritized around the buyer personas. Once you’ve given final sign-off, the DMU is ready to be put in place.
Target account list
Have you defined the Ideal Customer Profile, your buyer personas and a DMU if necessary? Then it’s time to select and prioritize the list of target accounts. This list contains both the named accounts that your company will engage and the target contacts within those accounts who match the defined buyer persona criteria.
Defining your target account list is critical. Keep in mind however, that it’s impossible to effectively engage all companies at once. Ranking and prioritizing your target account list based on data and intent is crucial. The result is a tiered account list based on expected value, both financial and strategic. You can then use it to align resources to target accounts.
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Once you’ve got your target account list ready, the Growly team performs a quick health check to look for any issues. Errors ranging from incomplete to wrong data will be revealed.
Optimization of the target account list
Growly offers an array of separate services to optimize your target account list:
- In case there is no or an incomplete target list available, Growly helps you create or expand your list with extra accounts based on the ICP.
- The available account data can be enriched through external enrichment services in case of incomplete profiles.
- Based on the specific buyer journey and proposition, a predictive analytics model can be created to continually add potential accounts with buyer intent to the target account list. The set-up of such a model depends on the availability of the right tech stack, but also the type of products or services and even the region to market.