10 Takeaways from Our First ABM Meetup

Learn about Bizzabo’s first account-based marketing meet-up, see insights from marketers at WalkMe and Sisense, and discover what pancakes have to do with it.

This week, we hosted our first demand gen-focused marketing meetup at Bizzabo Tel Aviv. We discussed account-based marketing (ABM) and the future of the field. We also ate pancakes.

Correction: We ate *many* pancakes.

The event was part of a series of meetups we are organizing on different professional topics like product, design, software development, etc. Personally, I believe that learning best practices and new tactics from colleagues is one of the best ways to master one’s craft.

That’s why I invited Galia Nedvedovich, the Director of Demand Generation at Sisense, and Ilya Glezer, the Head of Acquisition at WalkMe, to share their perspectives on moving towards an account-based marketing strategy.

Now presenting: Our marketing speakers.

For my presentation, I told the story of how and why Bizzabo changed its business strategy in late 2018. We decided as a company to shift all our efforts into going upmarket. Galia presented second and shared how Sisense compares inbound to Outbound marketing. Ilya, our third speaker, shared how WalkMe planned and tested its outbound process as a new marketing strategy for the company.

Here are my top 10 ABM takeaways from the event:

1. The ABM Dream – When tackling ABM, you should expect higher ACVs and revenue stream. This comes from further aligning your company and your go-to-market strategy with your ideal customer profile (ICP).
2. Farming, Not Hunting – Another advantage of aligning with your ICP customers is that they stay longer and get more value from your product. By building a product based on your ICP’s needs your solidify your solution as a “must-have” rather than a “nice-to-have” product.
3. Narrowing Your Message – When you serve ICP customers you position yourself as the best solution for a specific segment instead of trying to please every possible customer. As a result, you can become the “go-to” product in your professional sphere.
4. Focusing Together – With a properly executed ABM strategy in place, your teams are working together to achieve the same goals instead of chasing separate metrics. This means less waste and a more cost-effective go-to-market operation.
5. Terminology – There’s a lot of jargon in marketing. ABM opens up a door to a whole new vocabulary tree. Having the same terminology across the organization is something you must develop. Your team should be able to reflect all ABM processes in the same way, no matter if they are marketers, salespeople, or from any other department.
6. The One-size-fits-all ABM Process – It doesn’t exist. There are only ABM processes that are good for your organization. It’s your task to find what works for you.
7. Measure Something – Yes, it’s harder to measure ABM marketing in comparison to traditional inbound marketing. This is mainly because there are many offline activities that are contributing to the success of the strategy. With that being said, you should determine some system for tracking and evaluate marketing performance so that your organization can move quickly and understand what’s working and what’s not.
8. Iterative Testing – Just as product teams launch iterative sprints, so can go-to-market teams. Start with manual processes, recognize what’s working and then automate the processes.
9. The Virtue of Patience – ABM takes more time than inbound marketing. You should shift your state of mind and understand that results will take time but would be much more rewarding for your company.
10. There’s No Right Answer – ABM works differently for different organizations. It’s important to compare yourself to industry benchmarks and get feedback, but every organization should develop its own ABM approach that fits its culture, product, and industry.

Interested in learning more about ABM? We wrote a comprehensive guide to ABM and events. Although I wasn’t involved in writing this one, it’s become a staple for how I think about our ABM strategy.