Enterprise Marketing: Cognism’s ABM Strategy

At the start of 2024, Cognism made the decision to start moving upmarket, targeting enterprise-sized organisations.

After reviewing historic deal data, we could see that the enterprise-level companies that we were able to secure deals with were generally larger deal sizes than that of SMBs and were generally more sticky.

More enterprise deals = more stable revenue. It was an easy decision!

But what is less easy is actually targeting them… Enterprise companies have 1.8x more companies targeting them, so capturing their attention in a meaningful way is tricky.

But in a short space of time, we have created a functional and effective enterprise marketing strategy and enterprise marketing campaigns - and we thought we’d share them with you.

What does Account Based Marketing mean to us?

Everyone seems to have a different definition for what ABM is and how to do it. So here’s a quick rundown on what doing ABM means to us:

1:Many ABM

Starting from the broadest of the campaign types, 1:many ABM is a mix of territory campaigns and vertical campaigns.

Territory campaigns will target a specific target account list sales are prioritising while vertical campaigns will target a vertical we notoriously see the most success in (e.g SaaS is where we naturally have best product fit, higher ARR and faster deal cycles).

So essentially 1:many is broad targeting but really focused on a specific list of accounts where we can deliver specific messaging.

These campaigns have a much broader reach than 1:few or 1:1 and will contain limited personalisation, talking about specific industry pain points or trends versus calling out any specific company names.

For example a campaign targeting companies in supply chain and logistics.

Our aim for these kinds of ABM campaigns is to create a multi-channel marketing strategy that focuses on reach. This strategy will inform which accounts to funnel into our 1:few and 1:1 campaigns later on.

1:few ABM

These campaigns are in the middle in terms of both reach and personalisation.

In other words, they will have a broader reach than 1:1 but will have targeted messaging and low-touch personalisation where possible.

For example, our LeanData customer campaigns. Again, a small list of accounts that align to our sweet spot where we can show how our solution complements LeanData customers.

These campaigns can be very specific whilst having a number of different accounts be served the marketing content.

1:1 ABM

1:1 is the highest level of our ABM campaigns in terms of touch, personalisation and targeting.

We work closely with sales to ensure we can generate awareness within large enterprise accounts and engage as many members of the buying committee as possible. Campaigns will be served to net new and open opportunities.

Essentially, in any of the three types of ABM, we have taken our demand gen principles and applied them on a more personalised and targeted scale as we narrow in on who we want to engage.

For those of you not familiar with Cognism’s marketing approach, we are a demand gen-led organisation.

We run zero-gated eBook content download plays and instead focus on producing value-led content to introduce our ICP to Cognism, build trust and keep them in our orbit until they’re ready to buy.

Then allowing our target audiences to come inbound to us when they have a business need for a product like ours.

Listen to how enterprise marketing differs from marketing to SMBs 👇

How we target enterprise accounts with ABM: 6 steps

Now we’re all clear on how we define the different types of ABM, here’s our step-by-step on enterprise marketing strategy and how to implementing it in practice.

1. Identify your ICP

The first stage of any enterprise marketing plan is to have an ICP.

We did a revenue analysis to determine the industries from which we generate the most revenue (where we have the best product-market fit) and the company segments with which we have the most success.

With this criteria, we then combine with the target account list.

The target account list contains thousands of companies, so the revenue analysis and segment breakdown allow us to build an even more honed-in account list, which then runs throughout our whole ABM programme.

Then the goal is to move these great-fit accounts from 1:many all through to the 1:one programme.

2. Identify hot accounts

The biggest unlock to our success in ABM has been our focus on the ‘who’ we are targeting.

So what have we done?

Alice de Courcy, Cognism’s Chief Marketing Officer said:

“Instead of sales dictating which accounts they want marketing to go after and target, we work together with sales and make our recommendations which are then validated by sales.”

When we first started out, we did this process the other way around - but we found that this was too ad hoc and lacking any real strategic process.

Now, we come up with recommendations based on using Qualified to track target accounts, measure their level of engagement and identify which companies are engaging with our ads and high-intent pages on our website.

This allows us to be hyper-focused and select the most active accounts.

Tim Hughes, Cognism’s Demand Generation Lead says:

“We look at which accounts in this category are surging—that is, which accounts were visiting our website the most and engaged with our content, pricing pages, etc. This allows us to focus very tightly on a narrow range of accounts.”

We then meet with the sales team to align and confirm whether these accounts are a good fit and create a joint account plan with weekly check-ins with the relevant account executives.

3. Create account plans

When building account plans, there are some key things to keep in mind:

• Have we spoken with the account before? If they were previously closed-lost, then why?
• What does current activity look like on the company level? What web pages are being visited?
• Can we use qualified to identify any user activity so we can then tailor the content strategy per persona. E.g UK Sales Director has visited a blueprint on commission plans.
• What ads are being engaged with?
• What personas are most active?

That’s where the demand generation lens comes in.

Because of our approach, we know what content these target accounts are looking at, and we can tailor our outreach based on what that company is doing and what they are engaging with, including what specific web pages the account is visiting.

We want our ABM to feel thoughtful, ensuring that the accounts we are targeting have shown intent and we understand what content they’re looking at.

This also means we get more buy-in from our sales team. Because marketing now approaches sales with a list of high-intent accounts and is seeing results at an accelerated rate, the sales team automatically wants to get involved and do more activity.

4. Map out marketing touchpoints

This step can be broken down into a further three steps.

4.1. Content mapping

Start by looking at most engaged assets and map to relevant events and series that we can engage the relevant persona with.

At this stage, demand gen managers should work closely with the demand generation content team to understand if we should create any bespoke content.

In other words, do we need any new hyper-personalised messaging and content for unique users we’ve identified?

4.2. Activity and marketing channel mapping

What are the best B2B marketing channels to reach these target audiences on? And how do we maximise existing channels and explore new ones?

For example, could we:

• Ask any subject matter experts to connect with relevant contacts on LinkedIn.
• Use mutiny for personalisation.
• Utilise subject matter expert offering, such as offer 1:1 training with an expert.
• Send a Reachdesk gift.
• Create bespoke email marketing sequences.
• Create and capture demand paid ads.
• Use display ads.

4.3. Activation plan

We then map out all activity via Asana (our chosen project management tool - use whatever you already have!) complete with deadlines.

At this stage you should also be 100% clear on your goals and how you are going to track results.

Campaigns should be checked and optimised weekly and the monthly report should look at all activities and results per channel and how this is impacting marketing goals.

In addition, regular check-ins with sales should now be scheduled.

This is because there needs to be a feedback loop between sales and marketing.

Any information that has been uncovered from initial conversations can be shared and then used in messaging.

5. Map out assets and requests for sales

This step involves providing the sales team with personalised sequences and content marketing. The goal is to align marketing touchpoints and content so that sales can convey a consistent message when speaking with prospects.

At the same time, working out what the marketing team might need from sales, such as demo videos of the product.

Here are a few examples of things that our marketing team would provide our sales team:

• A sales enablement briefing document which includes account research, personalised sequences, relevant messaging and proposed campaign plan.
• Content for digital sales room.

And here are a few examples of things that our sales team would provide our marketing team:

• Ask them to record personalised demo videos.
• We can also look to loop in CSMs at this point and brief them a use case to walk through.

This whole process would look a little like this:

6. Go live and reporting

This is a new process for us at Cognism, so our reporting will be an iterative and developing process.

Ultimately we want 1:one accounts moving into the funnel as quickly as possible but with enterprise that isn't always the case. So we use different leading and lagging indicators:

Leading indicators

• Engagement intent via qualified (have they moved from warm to hot/surging?).
• How many touchpoints are we getting within a specific time frame.
• Have the number of BOFU website visits increased since campaign went live?
• % of the account we have penetrated.
  

Lagging indicators

• MQLs.
• SQO.
• Pipeline.
• Revenue ARR.

Of course, with any ABM campaign - you want a certain number of these target accounts closing, as then you know you have your account selection process down. And that you’re reaching them in a way that resonates.

If this is missing, it suggests there’s a need to go back to the drawing board to reassess your process. The closer you can be to the marketing data, the easier it is to make those data-driven decisions.

For us at Cognism, this reporting responsibility falls to both our demand generation managers and our paid team.

Cognism’s 1:one ABM strategy deep dive

1:one is really the core of what ABM is. The 1:few and 1:many are still important steps… but 1:one is where you can really get into the nuts and bolts of personalisation and targeting.

We use a number of different tactics as part of our 1:one program (and let’s be real, that's the juicy bit everyone want’s to know anyways, right?!) So let's jump in.

1:one ABM: Creating microsites

Once we have a target account within our sights, we get to work building them a custom microsite.

These microsites call out the target company name on the web page in the heading, alongside specific pain points that we believe they’re having.

The next line on the web page explains how we can help them to solve these pain points. For example:

'We built you this microsite to show how Cognism can help [insert company name here] generate more pipeline and deliver new revenue, faster!'

Beneath the personalised heading, there’s a custom demo video which has been filmed to specifically discuss and show how the Cognism product would work for their needs.

To reinforce this, under the video we call out their pain points again. Saying ‘companies like yours are tackling problems like…’. And follow this up with social proof to solidify that we can do what we say we can.

And these microsites get really strong engagement from these target accounts. Here are the results we had from one of our recent personalised microsites:

• 5.6 minutes time on page.
• Over 70 website visits since August.
• 150+ views of the interactive demo.

Which tells us that there is some interest in how we could help them!

1:one ABM: Email nurtures

We send our target decision-makers within accounts these microsites via email nurtures. The aim is to build a relationship with their sales rep, by providing the sales rep with email templates and messaging they can use to provide potential customers with value.

We're seeing higher open rates with these emails then the standard emails the reps are normally sending.

Here’s an example:

1:one Targeted paid ads

Our ABM ads are an accumulation of all the intelligence gathered from the research phase, supplemented this with our product strengths to show the account where their gaps are.

When you listen to Gong calls from previous discussions it's quite easy to understand their pain points. We then relay that message through our ads.

Here are a few tactics we use in our ABM 1:one ads:

• Adding relevant social proof to emails, containing the same use cases and pain points as the target account to reinforce our message.
• Adding an image of the account rep. For accounts that have been in opportunity before they will likely recognise the account rep which may remind them to reach back out. Especially if timing is better. This also helps us to put a face to the brand.
• Creating ads that appeal to all teams. In other words, creating ads for each of the possible departments you could help. When an account has previously closed lost due to a lack of sales department need, we have been able to re-engage with them but through their marketing department need.

And we know our ads work!

We track our ads dwell time (the average time viewers spend on your ad before scrolling or clicking).

For our 1:one ABM ads the average dwell time is 5.2 seconds whereas dwell time on our normal always-on ads is 3.7 seconds.

Click through rate is also much higher on 1:one ABM ads (1.45%) versus always-on ads (0.82%).

This shows our ad engagement is much better when we run highly personalised ads.

Listen to how we create enterprise demand with 1:one ads 👇

1:one ABM: Using bespoke, exclusive dinners

Once we had a good idea of the accounts we were targeting with our ABM, we could then shape our in-person events strategy. More specifically, our bespoke in person dinner strategy.

Some initial context first. We don’t attend a lot of events. We’re very selective about the ones we do attend as it's an expensive investment for an unguaranteed and very spiky return.

However, in-person events are a time when many decision-makers are in one place. And that presents an opportunity.

We can invite decision-makers from target accounts to join us in person for dinner with other decision-makers from enterprise companies. It’s a chance to network and socialise outside of the event schedule — and who doesn’t like a free dinner?

At the Forrester event, we hosted an exclusive, invite-only dinner with LeanData and invited a number of accounts we are targeting.

After the event had passed, we then sent them our CMO Alice de Courcy’s ‘Diary of a First Time CMO’ as a follow-up. Began our one-on-one personalised LinkedIn campaign, and increased our account penetration activities.

This resulted in a $75,000 opportunity.

This dinner helped move conversations into opportunities and opened up conversations with net new accounts and customers.

Similarly, at SaaStr, we also hosted a dinner with Gong, which resulted in 6 net new conversations initiated with senior decision-makers at enterprise businesses.

How we use Cognism for ABM

Now we couldn’t realistically do a blog post all about our ABM strategy and not mention the Cognism product.

Don’t worry, we’re not here to sell you on it! But it is a crucial part of the process for us.

There are a number of steps in the process where Cognism Prospector comes into play. Here are some examples:

1. Tactical email nurture programs

Cognism = data. Data = power!

We use Cognism’s B2B data to create target lists to fuel our tactical email nurture campaigns and programs.

Tactical email nurtures are sent early on in the 1:1 program to see if we can capture low hanging fruit, sending only 2-3 emails using all the assets that we have created.

This just gives us another touchpoint in tandem with our LinkedIn paid activity.

We send them to 6-7 main decision-makers at that account, for example, SDR Directors, mainly in the EMEA region because that's where the use case is the best.

2. Audience filtering

Cognism Prospector allows you to build custom lists which you can then use on other platforms to better target specific audiences.

We use the data from Cognism to then upload to LinkedIn as an audience. Meaning we use Prospector to find the specific job titles and emails for those people that we want to target with LinkedIn ads.

The more data you have on the prospect, such as email, phone number, Linkedin URL, it means you will get a higher match rate on LinkedIn. Because of the data we can pull we have a 90%+ match rate!

Tim Hughes said:

“It means we get a better match rate in the audience and ensures we’re serving the ads to the most relevant people.”

3. Job job triggers

Job join triggers are notifications when a person starts a new role at a target account or joins the target company.

You can upload a target account list as a CSV into Cognism, use the job join filter to find all the people who have either been promoted into a new role or joined the company, and then layer that list into your targeting.

Tim says:

“I use the job join triggers to identify if any new joiners have joined the company, which I then include in the enablement doc we pass to sales so they can reach out to them as low-hanging fruit.”

4. Intent topics

We also use intent topics to see if any warm accounts are searching for topics relating to our solution.

This helps us to validate whether we should be going after that account with personalised activity and can help us shape the messaging.

Our ABM results so far

There for you have it, our enterprise marketing strategy. But how do we know that this approach is working?

Here are some of the results we have had so far.

Penetration rate

Here we are looking to validate our approach by measuring the penetration rate of accounts from a defined target account list which we are serving specific ads to.

Penetration rate is calculated on the number of marketing touch points it takes to move an account into opportunity.

As you can see from the graph, we launched the campaign in August and are seeing an incremental increase in penetration rate month on month.

As we want to build awareness and brand recognition at the 1:many stage this is a good way to show our impact.

Account engagement and intent signals

We look at the engagement intent of an account over time and how this is impacting accounts as they move through the funnel.

As you can see from the engagement graph, we saw one specific target account with a lot of touchpoints.

We could deduce by their engagement levels that this translated as signals of high intent and in June, it quickly became an opportunity and progressed to the validation stage.

And then you can see in early July, the intent and touchpoints increased again and the opportunity moved into the negotiation stage straight after.

This shows that ABM isn’t just there to bring an account into the sales funnel, its there to move deals in opportunity through each stage faster.

BOFU web visits

To supplement this we then look at the increase in BOFU web visits. For example, we had no demo or pricing visits from a target account this year until the campaign went live in June.

Then we had 2 demo and pricing visits in June and 10 demo and pricing visits in July.

With this data and then the intent signals we can show marketing activity impact on bringing the account in funnel and helping move that through the funnel.

The last word

So there you have it, Cognism’s effective enterprise marketing campaigns, strategies and tactics.

Our ABM marketing efforts have had a positive impact on our win rates. We have seen increased engagement, shorter sales cycles, and bigger deal sizes with significantly more potential customers involved in each deal through our strategies.

Marketing for enterprise companies isn't an easy task - but by following the data, it's much easier to narrow down your search to find the right accounts to focus your marketing efforts on.