Tips and tools to help you execute on account-based marketing

Robin Tooms hosts Shavonnah Schreiber, director of global campaigns and events at IHS, Inc. to talk more about account-based marketing and how to execute on this approach.

Robin: Hello and welcome to this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. I am Robin Tooms, VP of Strategy at Savage Brands and my guest today again is Shavonnah Schreiber, Director of Global Campaign and Events at IHS. So Shavonnah I’m so glad that you’re back on Brandonomics, it’s been wonderful talking with you.

Shavonnah: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it as well, thank you.

Robin: I’ve completely appreciated you sharing all of your knowledge with us and we talked some about account-based marketing, which is really fascinating, and I want to learn more about how you’re applying some of these principles. When we talked before – it’s a really highly targeted and focused approach to marketing – how at IHS are you putting this into practice?

Shavonnah: One example of how we’ve been able to successfully put account-based marketing into practice is at CERAweek for example. So CERAweek is one of our flagship events, the premier energy event in the world we like to say, and so it attracts a very senior audience; so C suite and maybe one or two levels down. So one of the ways that we got a chance to do some account-based marketing that was actually really successful at CERAweek is we had a sales executive who was working on an account and through research – because that’s what account-based marketing is all about, that front end research – is we were able to connect the dots and realize that historically a pretty senior executive from that company attended. So we started watching the registration list to see if someone else was going to register and low and behold they did.

It turns out it was one of the key people that in our business value framework that account executive needed to connect with and they were going to be at CERAweek. So with that information – with what we already knew from the account-based marketing effort what was happening in that organization and what we knew was going to be on the CERAweek agenda – we were able to curate for that particular account; we see you’re coming to CERAweek – and as a matter of fact the CEO of that particular company was also going to be speaking – just so happens your CEO is also speaking, based on what we know about your company and some of the challenges that you’ve had we recommend you attend these sessions here at CERAweek and if your schedule permits or if your CEO schedule permits we would love the opportunity to sit with you to learn what you think about the session and learn more about some of the challenges you have and discuss how perhaps I just can help.

It was tremendously successful and ended up resulting in a pretty significant sales opportunity that came out of it. And that’s account-based marketing. Again, it’s that going very deep on the front end and being able to step back and see the bigger picture to connect the dots for a larger impact.

Robin: Sure, and you mentioned the business value framework as a piece of the tool. Is there a key element of that that you can share that played a part in this?

Shavonnah: Yeah, so with the business value framework we’ve probably in the last 2 years or so really started to use this, so when we have an account strictly for account-based marketing we build out basically a blueprint of the company and the issues that we know based on our research that we believe we that have solutions to. So it’s the key players, the business lines affected and then the third level would be those issues around those business lines that we believe that we can solve for. And then we get very specific about which ones we’re going to go for first because the idea is to get in and then expand, right? So “land and expand” is often a tactic that goes hand in hand with account-based marketing as well.

Robin: I’m going to remember that, “land and expand.”

Shavonnah: “Land and expand,” that’s the key.

Robin: All right, thank you so much.

Shavonnah: Absolutely.

Robin: This has been another edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies.