Managing customers and major accounts is a lot different than managing new prospects. However, many companies treat these two buckets the same.
In today’s interview with Engagio CEO and Co-founder Jon Miller, we dive into a new marketing category where organizations can better target key accounts–Account-Based Marketing.
Clint Eastwood or Steve McQueen? Stick around until the outtakes and learn which San Francisco based area actor Miller picks.
Treat Accounts Differently
Account-Based Marketing addresses the need for organizations to become more relevant with key accounts and customers.
The challenge with today’s marketing systems is that they offer a wide net that doesn’t do a great job at differentiating between a lead and an account. I see this frequently with our clients. Miller refers to this process “as fishing with a net.”
For example, let’s say you have a top 10 customer account that you love (Yes, I know you love all clients). A new employee from that client account goes to your website and fills out a whitepaper form. The “net” does its job and captures the lead. However, this net approach can cause certain problems.
- Poor Experience. Marketing treats the lead as a new lead and sends out a “buy our product” message instead of a “how to use our product” message.
- Wasted Sales Efforts. The initial Lead Development Rep wastes time on this individual lead because the rep doesn’t know if the person is actually a customer or part of a target account.
- Untimely Follow-up. The Account Manager from the key account doesn’t get the customer intelligence for days, which makes follow-up untimely.
Now let’s look at an account-based marketing approach which is more like “fishing with a spear” according to Miller.
“At its core, account-based marketing encompasses everything that B2B marketers do to support sales at target accounts. This includes selecting and prioritizing account lists, generating new contacts, gathering account intelligence, building account plans, running field-marketing events, prospecting into new relationships, and engaging accounts online.” Velocity Blog
Q&A Highlights with Jon Miller
Let’s dive into a few highlights of Jon Miller’s interview where he tells us a little about the power of Account-Based Marketing.
- On Engagio. “New company focused on building an account-based marketing platform.”
- Today’s Automation is Like Fishing with a Net. “Today’s marketing automation is like fishing with a net…you don’t really care which specific fish you are catching as long as you catch enough total fish. This works great for a certain kind of marketer.”
- Account-Based Marketing is Like Fishing with a Spear. “A lot of marketers are out there selling six and seven figure deals. They aren’t fishing with nets. They are fishing with spears.” According to Miller, this creation of an account centric solution helps organizations answer questions like “Are you engaging properly with the account?” “Do you have the right contacts you need in that account?”
- Coordinated Account Planning. The solution will enable companies to “Coordinate your Sales team, Marketing team and Sales Development team around an account plan for pursuing your goals for that account.”
- Biggest Challenges. “In short-term, building and delivering a great product will be the greatest challenge.”
- Leveraging Marketo Experience. “Hopefully I can rely on that. The Marketo experience has obviously been incredibly helpful. Recently, I closed my Series A funding and the Marketo experience helped with that.” The $10 million investment is led by FirstMark Capital.
- Clint Eastwood vs Steve McQueen. You’ll have to watch the video.
In summary, the Account-Based Marketing market is gaining steam. Companies such as Demandbase and Lean Data have already started down the path with different solutions geared towards the account-based marketer. With Miller’s experience leading Marketo, Engagio should soon be a major player in this hot space.
