Are your ICP accounts in-market?

I’ve spoken with many founders and marketers who are either planning to implement an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy or are about to launch their first campaign. They are heading in the right direction with their marketing strategy — aligning marketing efforts with sales, defining the ideal customer profile (ICP), and agreeing with sales on the highest-value target acquisition and expansion accounts. When the entire company is on board that B2B marketing and sales are account-based, ABM is more likely to succeed.

But I ask one question that often leads to a long pause: How do you know your target accounts are in-market?  

Too often, businesses embarking on ABM do not consider whether their ICP accounts are actually looking for their products and services. Technically, the ideal customer would see the value in the company's products and services, and the ideal customer would buy — that is the premise of the ideal customer profile. However, knowing which target accounts are in-market — looking for solutions for the problems your business solves — allows the company to target potential customers more effectively, and, more importantly, more efficiently. Regardless of the economic climate, deploying marketing investment against accounts looking for your solutions is more efficient than spinning your wheels targeting accounts that wouldn’t give your sales team the time of day. And in-market accounts convert to sales-qualified pipeline and revenue faster.  

The right message to the right account, at the right time – intent

Ask any seasoned salesperson what they think when they hear “no” from a prospect and they will say that means “not right now.” When it comes to ICP accounts, assuming the ICP and product-market fit are solid, an opportunity to sell to the account usually comes down to timing.

Good timing translates to whether an account is showing intent to solve a problem that your business’s products and services can solve. When an account is showing intent, they are considered in-market. Intent does not necessarily mean that the account will buy your solution, but it does indicate that it is a good time to pursue the account, meaning it’s worthwhile to invest in marketing and focus the sales team on the account.

Understanding the intent of your target accounts narrows down the list of accounts formulated with the ICP, allowing marketing and sales to carefully tailor the message to the account, across the proper channels. An intent-based ABM strategy to acquire new accounts can be one of the ABM strategies deployed, leveraging awareness campaigns against not-in-market accounts to create intent as well, or can be the sole strategy, focusing on efficiency by only targeting accounts indicating a need for your products and services.  

The buyer’s journey - Intent

The intent-based approach requires a responsive content marketing strategy that allows the marketing and sales teams to provide messaging that resonates with the account. It also includes launching campaign assets in a timely manner across the proper channels, like targeting the right personas on LinkedIn, display ads targeted to the account (leveraging a DSP that targets accounts), and landing pages that educate the personas on the problem they are looking to solve depending on how they are showing intent.

SEO as the foundation for intent keywords

Intent data comes in two flavors – first-party intent and third-party intent. First-party intent is what an account does directly with your brand online and offline, like visiting your website, engaging with advertising, accessing your content, communicating with sales, trialing your product, and meeting with representatives at events and tradeshows. Third-party intent includes internet research, like keyword search, competitor search, and engaging with communities online and offline.

While first-party intent seems straightforward, there is a massive blind spot in knowing which accounts are engaging with your brand outside of people voluntarily providing their information when accessing content, submitting a contact form, or direct correspondence with sales. However, there are tools available to reveal the blind spot, which I will get to later.

Online third-party intent is derived from the words and phrases target personas would use to search for solutions to the problems that your products and services would solve. These intent keywords are found in your SEO strategy and keyword research, making SEO foundational to an intent-based ABM strategy. Leveraging keyword research and keyword lists from your SEO strategy, group the keywords in a manner that allows you to create clarity around what the personas in the account might be looking for: 

• Products and services – keyword intent indicating the person is looking for a specific product or service to solve a problem; a search for a product or service is a straightforward signal that they are looking for something specific that they may potentially buy. Sometimes the product or service the account is searching for is different from your product or service but your business can solve the same problem better.

• Use cases – a step back from a specific product or service, use cases keyword search can lead to content educating the person on how your business can benefit the account within a particular use case.

• Problems – these are problem or challenge statements and keywords that create the opportunity to guide the person to content that educates them on how your product or service can solve the problem.

• Competitors – if a person is searching for a competitive product or service, they could use yours instead; this one is straightforward.

However, third-party intent is a complete blind spot without tooling, and getting third-party data gives your marketing and sales teams the chance to engage ICP targets sooner, increasing the chances the account will become pipeline. You don’t have to wait for the account to reach out to you, leaving it to chance, rather nudging them to engage with your website and sales team.  

Get proper tooling to get a full picture of ICP accounts’ buying journeys

Yes, you can do ABM without an ABM platform – it’s not impossible. However, ABM platforms feed your marketing and sales team information that guide them in the right direction, being more effective and efficient with marketing dollars and their time. ABM platforms are not a silver bullet, but the data they provide are directional and help go-to-market teams focus on accounts more likely to convert into sales qualified pipeline and help them understand what could be done with accounts that are not yet in-market.

Once properly set up in alignment with your business and pulling data from your CRM and other martech tools, ABM platforms pull the cover off the blind spots with intent.

A platform like Demandbase pulls third-party intent and first-party intent information into one view, allowing marketing and account teams to pull together personalized campaigns that deliver the right message, to the right people at ICP accounts at the right time. You can leverage the keywords from third-party intent to craft everything from advertising to landing pages, and even emails and phone calls so the communication to the account resonates with what they are looking for, being a problem, a use case, or a product.  

In addition, the platform supercharges the collaboration between marketing and sales, allowing for if-then tactics based on the activity of the account. The teams can even build automation into the campaign, changing advertising, email marketing, and even trigger an action by a salesperson depending on the activity of the account.

Two-pronged ABM strategy

As not every ICP account will be in-market at the same time, a business can deploy a two-pronged strategy, with in-market accounts being the priority, but not ignoring the rest of the accounts that are priorities for the sales team. To understand what that could look like, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or yuriy@ymiconsulting.com.