How to Deliver a Successful ABM Strategy in the Pharmaceutical Industry
If you’re in pharmaceutical marketing and you’re thinking of adopting ABM, here is a post on all you need to know.
Digital marketing in our space is evolving and is unrecognisable from where it was a decade ago. The history of digital marketing is a fascinating timeline to study. When I started in this industry, we would get excited about buying spaces on websites (banners/buttons) for periods of time (tenancy).
This slowly evolved into purchasing these spaces by impressions rather than tenancy. The beast kept morphing and wouldn’t stop: Banners and buttons gave way to EDM and email marketing campaigns. Boy was the inbox our friend for a while!
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Then this gave way to more specific lead generation campaigns. Social media and influencer marketing came along and changed everything. But it didn’t stop there (and probably never will). Digital marketing just kept evolving, EDM gave way to search and this, in turn, gave way to pay-per-lead strategies, then along came inbound and didn’t that knock us all sideways for a while until we caught up. ABM (account-based marketing) is the latest incarnation of the evolving beast. So, what is it and how can we use ABM in the pharmaceutical industry? This blog will unravel some of the mysteries and guide you along the ABM path.
WHAT IS ABM?
Put simply, ABM is a strategic approach to business marketing based on account awareness. You compile your target list of companies that you want to work with and develop campaigns that specifically, and only, target these companies (and individuals within these companies). Another way of looking at it is where an organisation considers and communicates with individual prospects or customers accounts as a single “market.”
If you have never seen or worked on an ABM strategy, it’s well worth reading upon. You’ll certainly be one of the pioneers if you adopt it effectively across the pharmaceutical space. Here at Orientation Marketing, we are working with a small number of clients who, in the words of one client, have packed their bags and are, “ready to start this journey.”
A word of warning though, a successful ABM campaign can only work if sales are very much involved. Your sales teams input will need to be deeply woven into the project. If they aren’t, ABM simply won’t work. The sales team are critical in the steps that I go into below. If you are an organisation where sales and marketing are “never the twain shall meet”, well ABM won’t work. However, if your marketing and sales work closely in a ‘closed loop’ way, then this will work.
TWO STAGES…
ABM really has two main components, the first is targeting and the second is messaging, you will need to put some serious thought into both stages.
1. TARGETING (THE WHO)
The targeting stage needs some serious thought, and this is where the sales team have to sit down with marketing and (realistically) look at who you want to target. Get really specific. Who, why and on what molecule/project? Don’t just write GSK (or whoever) down on a piece of paper, nearly everyone wants to work with them.
Who is it you want to work with there, in what molecule project? In which location? Your sales reps should have this level of info, good salespeople do. If they don’t, ask them to come back when they have; it’s this info that will make the project really fire.
Make sure you try and identify the key personnel. Sales should know the names of your target prospects in those accounts. If not, get stuck into LinkedIn and the company website. Who are the individuals you want to be in front of? Get this information down.
Whilst you do this, make sure you work on account tiering. Account tiering put simply is segmenting your target account list based on priority and revenue opportunity. It’s an important exercise to do. Put them into buckets: Tier A accounts and Tier B accounts by industry, company size, high intent, high engagement etc.
You can also use the following headings: Industry/vertical, annual revenue, budget, geography, the technology they use, molecule, size of their customer base, level of organisational or technological maturity. Two key concepts to bring in here are intent data and relationship data. The reason for bringing these in now is that it would be a solid plan to segment and target your accounts by buyer intent.
INTENT DATA
Intent data shows you what companies and organisations are researching on third-party sites, not your sites. Intent signals help your sales team determine what an account is interested in before they come to your website, giving them the visibility they need to tailor their strategies and further personalise their outreach.
RELATIONSHIP DATA
This is an important concept and is one often overlooked. Look, you’re a team, there is more than one of you. You have the sales team, the marketing team, you have the customer retention people, the board. Use them all. Relationship data is the means of identifying and quantifying the entire network of relationships that your employees have within an account.
Your sales team might not have any ‘in’ with the head of R&D at PharmaCo Ltd, but guess what, the CEO plays golf with him. Use that leverage. Find out who knows who from all points in the business and use it well. Whilst doing this, don’t be afraid to dig out your buyer persona documents that you made all those years ago. These will be really useful to dust off and go through them here. Do they match any real-world target company and person?
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2. MESSAGING (THE WHAT)
So, the lists are drawn up, the next thing to work on is the messaging. You have worked out who you want to be in front of, now you need to scratch out what you want to say to them.
Develop several messaging objectives, for instance:
“To convey that we are leaders in the field of cell and gene therapy”
“To expose the idea that we are an end-to-end partner for….”
“To position ourselves as best in class for…”
Having several of these prepared will help you understand ‘the what’ you are saying to ‘the who’. Remember the elevator pitch concept? (Your ideal customer walks into an elevator with you, you have the time it takes to go from the ground floor to the 10th floor to tell them what you do and why they should buy you). Well, this would work perfectly here. Align each person a quick sharp message. Create everything from banners, email signatures to bespoke landing pages, print ads, PPC ads… everything. Each one should have a specific message (from the ones you have created in the step earlier).
THE “WHERE”
OK, we know who we want to get in front of, we know what we want to say to them, now let’s look at where we are going to put the message so that our targets see it.
So decide on the channels that you want to use. Look at everything from display ads, LinkedIn Ads, Web Personalisation, Chatbots, retargeting, AdRoll, Direct Mail, EDM. programmatic video ads, email signature ads, other sponsored content. There are just some ideas there. It’s here that you will start on the creative. You’ll need a set of ads that are eye-catching, engaging, and represent your brand well.
WHAT MEDIA TO USE
An important element you may want to consider is to select media partners and vendors who have the capabilities to target specific programmes to specific people (and companies) within their databases and subscriber lists.
A recent audit undertaken by Orientation Marketing found that out of the large numbers of publishers and media providers across the B2B pharmaceutical industry, only a handful are really geared up for ABM programmes. We have seen that COVID-19 has really has shaken out the serious media owners who understand the importance of investing in the ability to serve specific ads to specific people.
When you are selecting the media ask them if they can do ABM? Some questions to ask: Do you have any ad retargeting programmes that can be IP specific? Can you run targeted IP campaigns for Lead Gen? How can target specific companies in your readership? Can you serve specific creative to individuals from companies on our list? If they can do these, consider running paid campaigns with them to target the companies on your list.
If there are any media owners reading this, my advice is, for what it’s worth, you really have to investigate how you can start supporting ABM for clients. I can see the smart money going here more and more over the next few years. Publishers - imagine your reps being able to sit in a sales meeting and say this to a Head of Marketing:
“We have the ability to serve individually customised adverts and highly tailored messages, across our portfolio, not only to the companies of your choice, but we can also display personalised messages to the exact person within that company.”
Now that will have some very important eyebrows raised!
THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY
You will, however, need to invest in some supporting software to really get the most out of ABM. Look into cookie targeting software. Cookie-based targeting allows you to serve personalized ads to different personas (think job title or department) within a target account by serving ads based on cookie data. Also, look at information providers that give you data over and above what Analytics gives you. Some good ones to consider are Ruler Analytics, or Leadinfo. Leadinfo for instance tells you what companies have been on your site and we have that software running on this very website.
How important is this info? You have spent time and effort drawing up a specific hit list, at the very least you need to know if people from that company have been on your website. If not, why not? Understanding this engagement data is critical - engagement is any interaction that a person – known or unknown – has with your company, online or offline).
Ask yourself has anyone from the top ten companies you want to work with been on our site in the last three months. If not, there’s a real problem, your website (or more so ABM strategy) is just not working for you, time to change strategy. But if they have, brilliant, which offices in which locations have been on your website? What pages did they visit? All this is business cortical info to know to analyse the campaigns. Be prepared to spend to get this software.
RESULTS
So, we have done the who, the what, and the where. Now you need to measure, measure and measure again. Take the following metrics on the day of the kick-off, the three-month mark, the six months, the nine-month and the twelve-month mark. How many of your top 50 targets have been on your website? Pipeline – number of companies and values? How many opportunities are we generating per month? And then look at your revenue increase (%).
ABM isn’t a quick win and you won’t see the needle on the gauges of these metrics shifting overnight, but they will. Do not lose sight of the results. If nothing else, read a little more on this subject of B2B account-based marketing or better still, reach out to a friendly agency that knows this space well… it will improve your marketing focus.
For more on strategic marketing approaches in the pharmaceutical sectors, and how we can help you, visit our section on strategy.