ABM foundations: 7 Steps to craft a winning ABM value proposition
How can you uncover that rich account understanding? It starts with a sound, insight-driven strategy. And it culminates in a creative account experience that resonates deeply with the target audience.
An ABM value proposition (VP) bridges those two elements.
Done right, an ABM VP is your program's North Star, It distills your account context, aligns the ABM strategy with the creative, and informs consistently relevant campaign messaging and creative.
In short, an ABM VP is a simple statement that summarizes why your specific account (or cluster) would choose your product or service, communicating the clearest benefit that customers receive.*
Here’s how to do it right...
*Remember, an ABM Value Proposition should not aim to replace any overarching brand proposition. Rather, it sits alongside it, and is used as an account-specific lens for your ABM program, to unlock the potential of your most valuable accounts.
Your first step? Align with strategy. Don't write a word until you understand the campaign objectives, the accounts you're targeting, and the market context and trends that impact them.
The specific customer pain points and market conditions in the strategy will inform your VP, and help you create meaningful context through laser-focused copy that ‘speaks the audience’s language.’
The ABM strategy also gives a steer as to what type of VP you’re writing – is it:
One-to-many (semi-customized to address shared pain points)
One-to-few (highly personalized to cater to the unique challenges or opportunities of +/- 15 targeted accounts)
or One-to-one (highly personalized, entirely customized to unique needs and challenges)?
Understand the strategy?
Great, but it’s still not time to start writing! First, you need to digest all the data and account insights at your disposal.
Insight reports, product demos, ideal customer profile workshops, value proposition workshops, empathy mapping – take it all in and incubate the details.
It can feel like an overload sometimes, but read everything; subconsciously, your intuition will be working hard, tracking patterns and enabling the important words to rise to the surface.
It takes time to comb through the research and find those ‘VP gold nuggets’ – but they’re key to layer in empathy and context that will resonate with your accounts.
Remember, you’re looking for the sweet spot between ‘account need’ and ‘client value.’
Articulating the VP comes down to feeling it.
Use all the insights and knowledge you’ve digested, and really feel your client’s customers’ pain points.
Channel that feeling to craft a compelling VP with hooks that resonate with their problem.
Put your client’s customer at the heart of the story, and echo their specific pain points and challenges.
Then, follow up with the value the solution delivers, and how it can enable them to achieve their aspirations. This is how you start to build trust.
Keep it concise and remind other stakeholders that the ABM value proposition is campaign-specific and only effective when laser-focused. (It’s not a place to overpopulate with every benefit in the offering.)
Ideally, keep the main value proposition statement to two to three lines, and remember the first rule of writing is to rewrite, so keep improving until it’s in a good place.
Don’t rush it – the VP will be the compass for the campaign’s direction. Spend time on your ABM value proposition and elevate the conversation beyond sales towards value.
Example: Here's our own Creative & Content team VP!
Overarching statement: Punchy line with stand-out quality that expresses unique value
First line: Customer-led benefit that solves the identified key account’s priority
Second line: Position the solution proposition, backed by a reason to believe
Drafted a VP, or a few variations? Good going! But, your work’s not done.
It’s time to create an overarching narrative that sets the overall scene, or ‘story’ of your target account and their context.
Opening with a catchy (and highly relevant) first line, you then set up the market conditions over a couple of paragraphs, followed by pertinent industry challenges, before introducing the client’s offering that solves these specific challenges, and provides unique value.
Remember, we still want to keep our VP narrative overview at a more ‘top-level.’
The VP isn’t the place to get deep into the weeds of any particular technology or challenge, but it will inform the content later in your ABM campaign – where you CAN get deep!
Type your content here…
VP statement statement? Check! Overarching narrative? Check!
Now, it’s time to validate your statement – and give it a strong foundation by crafting your ‘messaging pillars’. These are typically three core themes that support and substantiate everything you’ve written.
Usually, messaging pillars list three campaign-specific, priority areas of the offering’s value and also provide a space to unpack a little detail, which for brevity reasons didn’t make it into the VP statement.
This elaboration can help anyone working on your ABM campaign, down the line, to make sense of the value proposition statement.
This is also the place to include proof points in the form of compelling stats that can help provide context and impact.
You’ve set the scene. You’ve summarized your account need, challenge and context through a precise ABM lens. You’ve substantiated your statement with clear messaging foundations.
Now, it’s time to bring in even more account context, at the ‘job title’ or specific stakeholder level (program dependent).
Because ABM enables us to create highly personalized content, we can drill down into the ICP (ideal customer profile) and identify different personas within the DMUs (decision-making units).
Armed with what keeps each persona up at night, we can prioritize the value (in terms of the different message pillars you wrote earlier) that would resonate best with them.
Prioritizing the pillars into imperatives enables anyone who’s working on campaign content to tailor messaging that appeals directly to each persona, raising the relevance and impact of the content in your program.
ABM enables us to create highly personalized content, we can drill down into the ICP (ideal customer profile) and identify different personas within the DMUs (decision-making units).
Example: Audience imperatives for a VP built around digital verification.
The signed-off VP is an internal-facing document. It provides everyone with an overview and acts as the guiding light for the campaign’s creative concept and content creation.
It’s the bedrock of how the client communicates to customers and secures consistency across the account experience. Most importantly it anchors the creative to the strategy and ensures the objective of the campaign is being met.
A good value proposition reaches into the depths of the strategy, plucks out the gems and crafts them into a foundation that will enable the ABM account experience to sparkle, catch the eye of the target audience, and create long-term engagement.
