Linkedin Account-Based Marketing: How to create a target account list for ABM

“LinkedIn Account-Based Marketing” is a Win At LinkedIn series for B2B marketers, entrepreneurs and freelancers that want to use Linkedin to sell high-value products or services to large enterprises.

I teach individuals how to use Linkedin to generate leads, nurture prospects and close deals – if you want to be coached and build on the learnings below, book a 1-2-1 coaching session over Skype with me HERE.

Linkedin for Account-Based Marketing: A recap

In Part 1, we looked at the question “What is Account-Based Marketing?” and why Linkedin is the best platform for ABM.

A reminder:

Account-based marketing is an increasingly popular strategy used by B2B organisations and individuals to focus their efforts on selling to a predetermined list of companies.

With account-based marketing, you choose the individual companies (accounts) you want to focus on first and then you target those individual companies – and key individuals at the companies – with your marketing efforts.

I explained that LinkedIn is the best platform for account-based marketing because it is a B2B platform which you can use to identify the best companies for your product and service AND directly contact the best people at those companies. With a database of over 500 million professionals, Linkedin is where you need to be.

[ACTION POINT] Watch I how used LinkedIn to do account-based marketing and grow a technology business to over £1m ARR:

Today, I am going to show how you can use LinkedIn for the first step of account-based marketing: creating a list of the companies (accounts) you want to target.

How to create a target account list with Linkedin

The first step in account-based marketing is to create a list of the companies you want to target. The amount of accounts that you want to target varies depending on your available resources, time and strategy.

• If you are an individual or a small business looking to win six-figure contracts from large enterprises then it would be wise to create a list of no more than 100 companies to focus on selling to in one year.
• If you are part of a large enterprise with both an inside sales and field sales teams then you can create a target account list that is much larger. Most sales enterprise sales reps have up to 200 accounts each to focus on selling to in one year. 

So, regardless of the final number of target accounts, how can you decide the best (i.e. easiest to sell to) companies to put in your target account list?

Deciding which accounts you should target

If you’ve been in business for a while, you should have a clear picture of what your ideal client company looks like. Work out what the commonalities are amongst your client companies to understand what the key ideal profile is and find more of those.

However, if you are starting afresh, simply ask yourself:

• What industry or vertical is this company in?
• What product or service do they offer?
• How many employees do they have?
• What’s this company’s yearly revenue?
• What’s their valuation or venture funding?
• What tools or platforms do they use?
• Has this company recently made a strategic hire?

At the end of the exercise, you will have an idea of your ideal client company.

For example, you may find it easiest to sell to a:

• [Financial Services] company
• [Selling insurance] to [drivers]
• In [London]
• With [50-100 employees]
• And a revenue of [£1,000,000+]
• They must use [Salesforce software]

OR a

• [B2B Media] company
• Selling research reports to [Healthcare professionals]
• In [US]
• With [500-5,000 employees]
• And revenue of [$10,000,000+]
• They must use [Marketo marketing automation]

Now you need to go out and find the companies (target accounts) that most closely match that specific criteria.

Find your ideal target accounts with Linkedin

The Linkedin search filter will help you find every company you need for your target account list. To locate a company, simply type the company name into the  Search bar at the top of your LinkedIn homepage and click on their name in the dropdown that appears. When you follow a company on LinkedIn, you can view their updates directly on your feed. A great way to get info on what’s happening at that account!

As you start to build a list of companies that look promising, LinkedIn can help you both fill in details on the companies already on your list and expand the list with similar businesses. A simple search on LinkedIn will bring you to a page that includes information about the target account (example above: Microsoft), including:

• Number of employees (a general range)
• Location of the headquarters
• General industry
• More specific specialties within that industry
• Website URL
• Job openings, which gives you a glimpse into how the company is doing and the areas in which they’re expanding
• Updates on the platform, which can provide some information into what they do and how they market their work

TIP:  The above is what you can do with LinkedIn’s free service. If you invest in LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator product, you’ll get more tools for searching for companies based on factors like industry, size and geography, and get recommendations from the tool based on the accounts you save. In addition, LinkedIn provides a list of similar companies, so you can research and confirm whether you should add them to the list.

Look at all those filters you can use to find the perfect companies for your target account list!

By doing my initial exercise of understanding the revenue, geography, headcount, industry, Linkedin technology used etc of your ideal account, you can then input these into Linkedin which will created target account lists for you to use – in seconds.

By having a structured list of target accounts, you will know which companies to focus your time, energy, and resources for account-based marketing.

In Part 3 of this “Linkedin for Account-Based Marketing” series, I’ll show you how to find the right people (key decision makers/economic buyers) at target accounts

Want private coaching to achieve Account-Based Marketing success?

My name is Jonny Rose and I’m the founder of Win At LinkedIn, a LinkedIn coaching service that trains professionals, entrepreneurs & freelancers to find leads, nurture prospects and close deals in a GDPR compliant way.

Let’s turn you into a Sales MACHINE, go here.