How is Account Based Marketing different for landing vs expanding/ cross-sell/ upsell?

I don't think ABM at its core is all that different from landing net new vs cross/upsell/expansion. If you boil it down, you are taking a set of channels and tactics and deploying campaigns to get your prospects or customers to take a desired action or behavior. I will argue that you have more room for error when going into new prospects or markets where you might not have as much data or evidence to support your messaging, positioning and campaign strategy.  When marketing to current customers, ...Read More

I would recommend building target account lists based on where that account is in their customer journey. Channels are usually pretty constant. Your targeting ability, level of intent, tactics/offers, messages, and the budget you're willing to spend on them will change. It will cost significantly more budget & time to acquire a new customer, so focus on where you see the biggest potential impact first. Within a tiered 1:1, 1:few, 1:many structure: what is the potential ARR of an account with ...Read More

When it comes to net-new logos and expanding within current customers, the key differences are within two areas - brand awareness and a key point-of-contact (POC). When expanding within current customers, the brand awareness is there whereas it is not for net-new logos. Net-new logo target accounts required greater brand awareness efforts compared to expansion plays. With expansion, rather than needing to educate the audience on your brand, you may be able to start further funnel with generating ...Read More

At a foundational level, it’s relatively the same, prioritizing the right accounts based on intent and lifetime value. Where it can change is the messaging, tactics and channels. Let’s start with messaging: Mapping your messaging to the customer journey is critical. ToFu content begins by educating your audience on your category which will anchor thought-leadership messaging and content that validates why the category exists. MoFu, the middle of funnel content, provides your pre-customers inform ...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

ABM for new customer acquisition is focused on identifying, engaging, and converting high-value accounts (your ICP). The goal is to acquire and build relationships with key decision-makers at your top accounts and demonstrate the value of your solution via marketing campaigns. ABM for expanding / cross-sell / upsell is focused on deepening relationships with existing customers. Your account list is smaller and more defined. The goal is to understand data and signals that will help your team iden ...Read More

It starts with understanding that there's a huge difference between expanding, which is about finding additional use cases or teams within an organization, and landing, which is about identifying the right starting point for a user. First, in many organizations, I've found that some products do NOT work for landing new customers. They don’t stand alone well against competitive products, and instead, they serve better as add-ons for existing customers, where "good enough" is sufficient when layer ...Read More