AMA: Snowflake Head of Enterprise Marketing, India, Kanchan Belavadi on Account Based Marketing Strategy

The first KPI to monitor is leads generated from target accounts. The rest is all noise. If an organization has adopted an ABM centric approach, your sales reps are working on named accounts, so even if you engage with accounts outside that list and generate leads, you won’t find any takers. So, focus all efforts only towards those accounts. The other big shift is from pure lead generation to account engagement. How many CXOs have you engaged with? How many mid-level, senior stakeholders are eng ...Read More

Everything begins with “What are your business goals?” And I cannot emphasize this enough. If you have a marketing problem and don’t know where to start, ask yourself this question “What are the business objectives?” and go from there. You won’t go wrong.   Depending on whether the business wants to acquire new logos or expand into existing accounts, or focusing on competitive wins, you know where your ABM accounts are coming from.   Once the focus is clear, you can identify accounts based on si ...Read More

The way you approach the accounts is what is different.   For a net new account, you are in the blind and trying everything under the sun. While you have 3rd party data on the target prospects, you can only customize to a certain extent. So your messaging is either generic or industry focused. You also have more room for trial and error as you broad base your campaigns.   Targeting an existing account calls for more finesse, as you have access to information about the customer, their buying beha ...Read More

The biggest indicator for me is always “excel”. If we are tracking too many metrics across different excel sheets, it is a clear indicator that we need a solution to manage that piece better. Another leading indicator is when you are unable to track your customer/prospect journey across different campaigns. Especially when you focus on large enterprise accounts, you are engaging with the same set of stakeholders over months and years (sometimes). It becomes critical to be able to understand all ...Read More

This is not a one-size-fits-all solution. I have found that the content pieces through the funnel vary based on what are the current business objectives, challenges and gaps. If you are a new business and trying to generate mindshare and attract visitors to your website, you’d need more assets at the top of the funnel. If you are a known brand and the space is established (e.g. CRM), then you probably need to focus more on the lower part of the funnel. Your current account strategy is also a fac ...Read More