However, many companies only use traditional tactics, like retargeted ads and email nurtures, to engage ideal prospects.<\/p>\n
But these techniques won\u2019t help you build authentic relationships with your most desired prospects. Buyers today are bombarded with sales messages, and they don\u2019t trust what you have to say about yourself.<\/p>\n
So, what do they trust? Recommendations from their peers.<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s why incorporating your customer advocates into your ABM campaigns is crucial for success.<\/p>\n Your advocates are willing to put their reputations on the line to recommend you to their network.<\/p>\n Their positive word-of-mouth can impact every stage of your sales funnel. So, incorporating their voice into the campaigns going to your most desired accounts only makes sense.<\/p>\n According to research from Forrester<\/a>, advocate marketing will figure prominently in 1\/3 of ABM programs launched in 2017.<\/p>\n In this blog, I\u2019ll outline how Influitive involved our advocates in six of our ABM campaigns to help us influence $2.3 million in potential business and close nearly $300,000 in new deals. (If you want to learn how we chose our target accounts, read this blog<\/a>.)<\/p>\n P.S. If you\u2019re wondering how we get our advocates to help with our marketing, you can read this primer about running a customer advocacy program<\/a>, or download the Advocate Marketing Playbook<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n One of the biggest marketing challenges is getting people to notice you. If you approach cold prospects on your own, they\u2019ll likely ignore your message.<\/p>\n Potential buyers\u00a0are more likely to speak with you if share a mutual connection. Your advocates can help you get on your potential buyers\u2019 radars.<\/p>\n Last year, we identified prospects we wanted to connect with on LinkedIn. Then, we looked at their connections to see if they knew any of our advocates.<\/p>\n We then reached out to advocates who knew the prospect, and asked them for an introduction via LinkedIn. This way, the initial message would come from a peer instead of a sales rep they may not know.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a screenshot of how we approached them:<\/p>\n To make it easy for our advocates to help, we sent them the LinkedIn profile of the person we wanted to meet.<\/p>\n As a thank you, we offered them points in\u00a0Influitive VIP, our advocate marketing program<\/a>, which they could redeem for a reward.<\/p>\n If you read\u00a0our last ABM post<\/a>, you know we mailed some key prospects special packages, which included a review from one of their customers. We then added a note from a rep, asking if they wanted to discuss what they could do to get more customer reviews.<\/p>\n To encourage a response, we asked our advocates to help us engage them on social media.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what the challenges in our advocate marketing program looked like:<\/p>\n Soon, we had a swarm of advocates engaging with our prospects and encouraging them to reply to our note.<\/p>\n In one of our ABM campaigns, we created custom videos for ten prospects whose product was ranked in Gartner\u2019s Magic Quadrant.<\/a><\/p>\n We congratulated them on their standing on social media, and talked about how their advocates could help them move to the top rankings in the quadrant.<\/p>\n Then, we asked our advocates to encourage these prospects to respond to our message on social media.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s one of our tweets with our advocates\u2019 retweets at the bottom:<\/p>\n @VicLLund<\/a>, Kudos on @Teradata<\/a> being named Niche for a 2nd year! Want to move up to the right for 2017? pic.twitter.com\/H7ocHrCgaK<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Influitive (@influitive) July 29, 2016<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n By sharing the videos we had posted, our advocates validated our message and provided social proof to encourage prospects to respond.<\/p>\n Reference calls are great, but we wanted to make them more scalable while still feeling personalized.<\/p>\n So, we invited several prospects to join live video chats with an advocate in the same industry as them. We market this live Q&A as \u201cCoffee Time\u201d, and provide the advocate as well as the prospects with a Starbucks gift card.<\/p>\n These chats are well received and work much better than a standard reference call. The video format allows participants to see each other\u2019s reactions when they ask and answer questions, and advocates get the chance to highlight their knowledge.<\/p>\n For example, prospects can see when the advocate is excited about something. Meanwhile, the advocate can tell how well they were answering prospects\u2019 questions.<\/p>\n As an added bonus, prospects don\u2019t have to come in with a lot of questions to get value, since other prospects also help guide the conversation.<\/p>\n For this ABM campaign, we asked advocates to share their success stories with five specific, highly relevant prospects. We like to call it a \u201cproactive case study\u201d.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an image of the challenge advocates received in our advocate marketing program:<\/p>\n To make it easy for the advocates who opted in, we shared a customizable framework they could use to tell their story. We provided prospects\u2019 emails, and advocates sent them the details about their advocate marketing programs\u2019 successes.<\/p>\n Most were happy to take the time to do this because it lets them brag about their success, network and raise their profile within our program.<\/p>\n In addition to helping with specific ABM campaigns, our advocates also act as a year-round extension of our marketing team.<\/p>\n For example, when people ask about Influitive in forums and on social media, we invite our advocates to jump into the conversation. Then, prospects get insights from our advocates to help with their decision making fast.<\/p>\n You can see below how our advocates recommended us to one Twitter user:<\/p>\n Our advocates\u2019 replies have helped us spark conversations and gain momentum with prospects at every stage of the buying cycle.<\/p>\nAdvocates: your account-based marketing secret weapon<\/h2>\n
1. Campaign name: Targeted Intro<\/h2>\n
Target audience: Top of funnel prospects<\/h2>\n
![\"howard-challenge\"](\"https:\/\/influitive.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/2017\/03\/howard-challenge.png\")
<\/p>\nResults:<\/h3>\n
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2. Campaign name: ABM Most Wanted<\/h2>\n
Target audience: Middle of funnel prospects<\/h2>\n
![\"image00\"](\"https:\/\/influitive.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/2017\/03\/image00.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"screen-shot-2017-03-07-at-11-13-40-am\"](\"https:\/\/influitive.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-07-at-11.13.40-AM.png\")
<\/p>\nResults:<\/h3>\n
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3. Campaign name: Social Pressure<\/h2>\n
Target audience: Middle of the funnel prospects<\/h2>\n
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Results:<\/h3>\n
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4. Campaign name:\u00a0Coffee Time<\/h2>\n
Target audience: Bottom of the funnel prospects<\/h2>\n
![\"video-chat\"](\"https:\/\/influitive.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/2017\/03\/video-chat.png\")
<\/p>\nResults:<\/h3>\n
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5. Campaign name: Brag Sheet<\/h2>\n
Target audience: Bottom of the funnel prospects<\/h2>\n
![\"image03\"](\"https:\/\/influitive.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/2017\/03\/image03.png\")
<\/p>\nResults:<\/h3>\n
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6. Campaign name: Keeping Our Advocates On Call<\/h2>\n
Target audience: All prospects<\/h2>\n
![\"screen-shot-2017-03-07-at-10-33-02-am\"](\"https:\/\/influitive.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-07-at-10.33.02-AM.png\")
![\"screen-shot-2017-03-07-at-10-33-57-am\"](\"https:\/\/influitive.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-07-at-10.33.57-AM.png\")
<\/p>\n