Useful Tools: The ABM Marketing Template
In this post, I will share the ABM Marketing Template we use. In fact, it’s actually a collection of tools and templates that support our ABM process.
Account-based marketing is becoming an increasingly important strategy for B2B marketers. We recommend it to all B2B marketers for a wide range of reasons. For many, it is the becoming THE way they market. So how do you do it?
The ABM Process
There is a fairly well-defined process for ABM that has been popularized by firms like Demandbase and Terminus. We have refined our own model depicted below. You can read more about it here.
ABM Marketing Template – ABM KickStart Approach
The template below is part of a program called ABM Kickstart. This is a 2-hour workshop that is designed to help you create a 90-day ABM Pilot. In these workshops, we help you:
- Define a goal
- Determine who you will target
- Create a persona
- Develop a plan to engage the targets
- Define how you will measure this.
You can watch one of these workshops here. This 35-minute edited video will walk you through the steps you need to take. You can also download the presentation deck from this workshop here. This is a step-by-step presentation on how to design an ABM pilot.
ABM Marketing Template – Word Document
Here is the ABM marketing template that we use in the Kickstart workshop. It is divided into the following sections:
- Goal-setting – We use the SMART framework for this (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound).
- Best-fit account research – This includes questions that will help you determine the best-fit account definition, what data is needed, and how to determine who is in-market.
- Pilot Design – A simple framework to document:
- Goals
- Who will be involved
- What type of ABM you will use
- How many accounts you will target
- What data and insights are needed
- Which personas will be targeted
- What assets already exist to do this
- What technology will be needed
- What additional budget is needed
- How will success be measured
Bonus ABM Marketing Templates
In addition to the Pilot Design framework, I am happy to share four other ABM Marketing Templates with you.
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Framework
This spreadsheet, which you can download here, will make it simple to define your ideal customer profiles. It includes a calculator to project the market opportunity or each ICP including actual numbers for several provider segments.
Persona Framework
There are many ways to do personas. You can download how we do them here. What’s a little different about the way we do it is that we spend less time on creating the persona and more time on the questions they have at different stages of their buyer journey.
We borrowed this heavily from the awesome “They Ask. You Answer” by Marcus Sheridan. Such a great read!
ABM Pilot Project Planner
Once you have completed these templates, you need to plan your pilot in detail. This ABM Pilot Project Planner will make it easy for you to break down the pilot into manageable steps and develop a detailed project plan. This video will take you through how to use this tool.
Creative Brief
The last tool is the creative brief. This is an old-school marketing framework that you can use to brief anyone who is creating content or marketing materials for you. It will help you frame the goals, audience, what you want them to think, messaging, and key support points.
The ABM Engagement Framework
We recently developed a new framework called the Engagement Framework. We use this in our ABM work in planning an ABM campaign. Above is a sneak peek. Gimme a holler if you want me to explain it. We are finding it to be an effective ABM marketing template in creating a detailed map of how we will implement an ABM campaign.
We hope this gives you the tools you needed to get started with an ABM program or fine-tune what you are doing.
If you need help, let’s set up a call to discuss what you are trying to achieve.
By the way, we created a list of 25 ABM examples and use cases.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.