Creating an ABX strategy and plan for your organization.

In creating an ABX strategy, the first step is to do an assessment of all the different processes, techniques, and technologies that must come together to make up a well-orchestrated ABX program (Figure 2). Getting started on the path to ABX will involve an assessment of each of these key areas. From there, your company will have a clearer idea of where you can implement ABX today, versus ABM or ABT.

In creating a roadmap, it’s important to remember that ABX, ABM, and ABT won’t work in silos. Each has a role to play, as they will work together in an overarching marketing program, based on the types of targeting you are doing – for example, whether you are reaching B2B audiences with brand advertising or focusing on demand generation.

Figure 2 – ABX Environment

Mapping ABX, ABM, and ABT across the buyer journey

ABX, ABM, and ABT come into play at different stages of the buying journey. Each of these stages – from awareness to purchase – can be thought of as a unique marketing ecosystem (Figure 3).

There are many interconnected parts that make up an ABX ecosystem. The good news is that you don’t have to take on a full ABX strategy on day one. You just need to plan for it. You can create the roadmap for the ABX vision for your company and then execute one section at a time. To simplify the discussion, let’s break ABX down into its component parts. An ABX program has three ecosystems that need to be built:

• One-to-many: These are larger audience segments with hundreds (maybe thousands) of accounts where marketing is customized at the level of industry relevance.

• One-to-few: This may include a list of accounts, in the dozens or more. At this level, marketing and sales may be customized at the account level and not the individual buyer/executive level.

• One-to-one: These are a handful of strategic accounts to which significant sales resources are dedicated to optimizing the account experience and relationships with key decision makers.

An ecosystem approach allows your marketing organization to implement ABX strategically, one step at a time. Because most organizations are already focused on “one-to-few” types of efforts, this can be a good place to start. Figure 4 shows an illustrative example of how these different ecosystems could work together in a comprehensive ABX program. Currently, most companies are just focused on ABM efforts in the “one-to-few account nurturing ecosystem.” However, in an integrated ABX program, each of these campaign types (ABT one-to-one, ABM one-to-few, and ABX one-to-one) represent different ecosystems that, when coordinated correctly, feed into and strengthen one another, driving engagement from brand awareness through to sales handoff (Figure 5).

Figure 3 – ABX Ecosystem

Figure 4 – Evolution of an ABX Program

Figure 5 – Build your ABX ecosystem one section at a time

Figure 6 – The Ignition Process

How to ignite ABX at your organization

Every company will have a unique approach to ABX based on their needs and goals. But at a strategic level, there are proven processes to follow when building an impactful ABX ecosystem – from crafting the initial ABX strategy to orchestrating customer experiences to optimizing the campaign results. As seen in Figure 6, each stage of execution is accompanied by key deliverables to guide strategy and deliver on tangible results. This broader strategic framework will include tactical implementations and recommendations across campaigns and ecosystems to orchestrate efforts across brand, lead generation, and sales activities.

There are many interconnected parts that make up an ABX ecosystem. The good news is that you don’t have to take on a full ABX strategy on day one. You just need to plan for it.

Start your ABX program by picking the low-hanging fruit.

When looking holistically across organizational (sales and marketing) goals, you begin to see areas where industries and buyers overlap and where programs could benefit greatly from ABX efforts.

The easiest way to build more sophisticated ABX programs is to design your ABX platform one ecosystem at a time. Within each ecosystem, there are a few key elements you’ll need to develop to ignite your ABX program.

Technology: The complexity of data and technology integration can often feel overwhelming. A robust customer experience depends on the usefulness of a company’s data and its tech stack. Connecting all these parts puts a heavy burden on marketing, tech, and data teams. Some areas where tech, and data come into play include identity strategy, audience segmentation, personalization strategy, data source optimization, and martech integration.

Content: At the campaign level, one of the easiest ways that a company can start segmenting and customizing its B2B marketing approach by ecosystem is through content and creative. After determining where ABX will be applied and which programs will get the focus, reviewing existing content and defining new content become more straightforward.

Communications and channels: Once an organization has sales alignment and account selection within each ecosystem, it can start thinking about creating the right communication strategy and channel selection to build that ecosystem.

Roles and responsibilities: ABX transformation often involves a change in the way an organization’s departments work together. And that means breaking down traditional department silos. Marketing, sales, brand, and creative teams need to be communicating with one another and working in sync to build ABX ecosystems and orchestrate the effort (Figure 7).

The easiest way to build more sophisticated ABX programs is to design your ABX platform one ecosystem at a time.

Figure 7 – ABX takes a village to drive success.

ABX in action: Technology company coordinates marketing efforts with a data life cycle process to deliver media personalization at scale

A large, multinational technology company activated multiple year-long campaigns, targeting similar, niche audiences identified by job titles and company sizes. This created opportunities for self-sabotage in terms of increasing costs to reach an audience, due to more bids in the market or message overload and confusion for the selected audience. The organization struggled to avoid creating internal competition and driving up costs by running multiple campaigns targeting the same audiences at the same time.

To avoid this, the team collaborated with Merkle B2B to develop a new, go-to-market framework for streamlining audience planning and prioritization across similar data sources, platforms, and campaigns. The company developed a process using first-, second-, and third-party data to govern the audiences and increase performance yield and efficiencies across all campaigns.

As a result of this new process, the brand:

• Reduced audience overlap by 70%-97% between campaigns

• Increased CTR performance by 200% for some audiences

• Activated two priority first-party audiences with less than 3% overlap

• Identified that first-party audiences are 2x more likely to engage on average than second- or third-party targets