Slides from Rich Rodgers' Forrester B2B Summit presentation 2021.

1. How to Avoid the Pitfalls of ABM
Forrester Virtual B2B Summit
Richard Rodgers
05/04/2021
Global Digital Marketing Director
Agilent Technologies

2. Agenda
● Main Challenges of ABM
● Tip #1: Get Stakeholders to Invest Time
● Tip #2: Educate the Team on ABM
● Tip #3: Increase ABM Adoption with Data
● Tip #4: Mature Initiatives Over Time
● Implementing Demandbase
● Proving ABM Success

3. Main Challenges of ABM
1.Creating buy-in from key stakeholders
2.Setting expectations around what ABM can do
3.Building the right ABM strategy for your organization
4.Increasing adoption of your ABM tactics -build upon successes
5.Making your learnings actionable to allow for improvement along the way

4. #1: Get Stakeholders to Invest the Time
● Management says they need it, but don’t do it—why?
○ Time invested is worth X, Y
● ABM is a marathon, not a sprint
○ Set realistic expectations with revenue teams is a must
○ Educate your teams and colleagues on what is ABM
● Get buy-in from sales
○ Marketing taking the initiative alone is risky

5. #2: Educate the team on ABM
●Build an ABM deck – “What is ABM”
●Get everyone ABM certified (foundations + advanced for some)
●Think differently on how you approach your accounts—what makes the most sense for
your company?
○ ABM is new to many sellers/our client partners
●Show why ABM can work better than current marketing strategy
●Move away from the “X amount of people filled out a form”
●Start with your list and keep that as your top priority before tactics!
“Think beyond the form fill – ABM allows you to do that.”

6. #3: Increase ABM Adoption with Data
●Set Up Small Pilot Campaigns
○ Define success metrics upfront and report on these regularly to the team
●Agilent’s ABM Advertising Pilot
○ Product lines defined which accounts were ready for each campaign
■ Utilized the assets from the content library in each channel
○ Visualize what’s working and what’s not to easily share results and outcomes with
team. (We used PowerBI)
○ Review key KPIs related to ABM - what does success look like now?
■ Account Reach
■ Account CTRs
■ Account Lift
■ Net New Accounts on-site

7. #4: Mature Initiatives Over Time
● Started with One-to-Many, advancing into One-to-Few and even One-to-One
○ Nurturing/Personalization to specific accounts with targeted content
● One-to-One Eloqua
○ Creating landing page templates w/ Demandbase Personalization elements, targeted emails,
ad campaigns, sales efforts and even offline can work
● One-to-Few and One-to-Many at the same time!
○ 1:Few (25-50 account) and 1:Many campaigns (100-200 accounts)
■ Supporting “Sideline” list- it is like an NFL draft board. Second and Third Rounders
■ Gathering Intent data and optimizing the main list over 3-6 month period. Some stay and some are replaced
● One-to-Few (20 accounts)
○ Every 6 months, make iterations (add/remove to 1:1 campaigns for accounts that progressed
forward)

8. Implementing Demandbase
● In the past I built a “Solutions Marketing Team” that was really an ABM
Marketing Team
○ Stealth-mode ABM team by vertical.
○ Deep dive into the accounts, our competitors, attend the events, sponsor and
show the industry you know them.
○ Gain insights that can drive your lists, your content and your marketing
messaging
“ABM is a marathon, not a sprint”

9. Implementing Demandbase Cont.
STEP 1: Built a list for all accounts, competitors (big and small) and
events, publications and even influencers by vertical
● Get impression estimates (advertising)
● Analyzed reachability, etc. with Demandbase team
STEP 2: Built out more content by vertical
● Case studies, use-cases, videos, future events
STEP 3: Built a content library of verticalized assets
● Ready to “plug-in” to ABM campaigns

10. Implementing Demandbase Cont.
●Setting up Google Analytics integration was paramount
●Agilent has 30+ product lines
●Custom Reports
○ Accounts by specific product page
○ Turned unknown into known traffic - this fed into campaign success
○ Reviewing the “referring” page
●Automated email reports from GA to internal teams with accounts visiting X page
(Demandbase powered-identification)

11. Proving ABM Success at Agilent
●Moving the needle!
○ Are accounts progressing in sales stages?
○ Is the list working or where can we do better?
○ Are new accounts visiting websites?
○ Are accounts becoming opportunities and turning into revenue?
○ What is sales saying?