Account-based marketing case study: How Wood Mackenzie achieved success

With Laura McFadyen, ABM manager at Wood Mackenzie

The sales floor: That area of the office you only venture into at your peril. But for Laura, this is the perilous corner of the office that’s actually a treasure trove of insights and feedback.

Over four years, Wood Mac’s ABM programme has seen extensive success from their one-to-one and cluster approach to oil and gas clients.

“I would say, looking at the B2B Marketing Maturity Model*, we display a lot of the elements of stage 4 (adept ABM), but for some parts I’d say we’re still stage 3 (early-stage ABM),” Laura says, affirming their progression.

Differentiating between one-to-one and cluster accounts

Wood Mac didn’t have enough resources to implement a one-to-one marketing strategy to every prospect, but the company knew about the benefits account-based marketing could bring.

The focus was on retaining customers. So, with insight and strict criteria, sales and marketing began to work together to identify which accounts would be most receptive to one-to-one ABM.

The teams were impressed with the results, and decided to scale their activities through a cluster programme, targeting a small group of accounts that didn’t make the one-to-one criteria but shared similar goals and pain points.

Although Laura admits one-to-one is always the best form, she argues adopting the core principles of ABM at any scale is imperative.

“I don’t think anything gives the same return as truly one-to-one ABM, but it’s not feasible to deal with every client like that so there needs to be a way of engaging with those clients where we keep the principles of ABM by clustering.

We need to be doing this across the board, and also manage expectations that return isn’t going to be the same as strategic one-to-one.”

5 essential questions for choosing the right accounts

1. What’s the potential value of the account?
2. Is there a competitive threat?
3. How engaged have they been in previous activities?
4. What revenue opportunities are in the pipeline?
5. Is the sales account manager open to ABM and working with marketing?

Sales alignment

The sales team were initially very territorial when it came to their accounts, admits Laura, but once Wood Mac’s ABM approach commenced, it was critical marketing shared ownership.

Laura says her team started with a small number of accounts to prove value before they gained enough trust to roll out the ABM programme entirely.

“You get some sales managers that are sceptical of marketing,” Laura explains.

“To overcome that, you rely on internal advocates to shout and make a fuss about the value they’ve seen from ABM. When you do a bit of engagement for the sales team to demonstrate the value, they tend to become a bit more open to the idea.”

A tighter alignment with sales, which many argue is the core element of ABM, will ultimately bring the marketing team closer to the client.

“Compared to traditional marketing, we need to have a real understanding of the client, which allows us to have a seat at the table with sales,” adds Laura.

Such a level of personal communication like this requires consistent relaying of information and results to sales, which, in turn, preserves marketing’s credibility as a game player and keeps the ABM programme moving.

But communication is a two-way street: marketing rely heavily on insights and feedback provided by sales to ensure the company corresponds with clients in a cohesive manner.

“We get that insight from the account managers and we build it into a plan,” says Laura. “If we identify gaps, then we can commission deep-dive research from external vendors.”

The reporting challenge

Laura confesses researching and reporting on accounts can be difficult. “Reporting continues to be an issue due to the fact we have to gather data from multiple places,” she explains.

“For example, quantitative data from CRM and automation systems and qualitative feedback from sales partners and stakeholders, and then we try to weave that into a story.”

However, a joint weekly meeting between sales and marketing stabilises the issue; the meeting is an opportunity to break down any silos, discuss priorities for the forthcoming week and ensure both teams are on the same page when it comes to individual accounts.

Engagement tactics

Targeting individual accounts has required Laura and her ABM peers to sharpen their dialogue by using insights from sales.

“Instead of leading with ‘We’re Wood Mac and this is our product’, we now open with ‘we know your pain points, we have the solution, and this is why you should read on to see how we can support your business needs,’” explains Laura.

Knowing the business you’re engaging with is imperative to identify a contact method that is both personal and parallel to user activity. It sounds simple, but Laura warns it can be tricky to gauge.

“Sometimes you get two companies that look exactly the same, they’re the same profile, and you’d expect the same results. But when it comes down to it, one is really engaged with a specific tactic and the other is completely unengaged.”

It’s a challenge that spans two stages. Firstly, find the content that tackles the personal pain points of an account, and secondly, decipher the best method to gain that account’s attention.

Laura admits this process often requires a trial and error approach to identify the engagement tactics that clients are most receptive to. “Analysing the results is imperative, it allows me to understand what tactics and content resonate best in each account and I can ramp up on what’s working.”

7 most effective personalisation channels for engaging with clients:

1. Social media
2. Email
3. Webinars
4. Videos
5. Sales enablement material
6. Direct mail
7. Advertising
8. Benefits

ABM has been heralded for its ability to yield long-term rewards and Wood Mac has certainly benefited. Laura believes success can largely be attributed to company-wide strategic buy-in.

Although slight upheaval in order to realign sales and marketing threw up an initial stumbling block, it’s this cross-collaboration that’s propelled the programme.

“ABM has the potential to add value to any sector where revenue comes from managed accounts like ours, but it’s important to have a clear strategy in place before adoption,” Laura cautions.

Laura outlines the benefits her team have experienced so far from their one-to-one and cluster ABM programmes:

• Increased ROI through higher response rates and engagement.
• Increased revenue through bespoke and highly targeted cross-sell campaigns.
• Economies at scale concentrated by ABM can now be leveraged by the business.
• Greater alignment with sales.
• Sales, marketing and client services all have a seat at the table.
• Enabled a relationship between sales and account C-suite decision-makers.
• Increased tactical agility that can be easily adjusted based on results.
• Increased customer retention.