In this episode of the WeMarketers Podcast, Andrew Demianenko sits down with Michelle Wols, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Beyond Product, to break down what Account-Based Marketing actually looks like in practice.
Michelle runs B2B marketing campaigns for IT and cybersecurity. Markets where the target audience is small, sales cycles are long, and a generic LinkedIn campaign is the fastest way to burn budget. She has built ABM playbooks from scratch for multiple clients and learned the hard way which parts of the process get skipped.
Most ABM advice is generic. This episode is the opposite. Michelle walks through the mechanics: how to build the account list, how to test messaging with paid prospect interviews, when to run a one-on-one campaign for a single company, and where the handoff to sales tends to fall apart.
One key takeaway: ABM is not a marketing tactic. It is a coordination problem between marketing, sales, and the events you show up at. Run it alone and even the best campaign will stall.
⏱️ Chapters
01:19 Michelle's background: from history to cybersecurity marketing
04:40 What ABM really means in practice
07:00 Where to start with an ABM campaign
09:17 How to prioritize accounts on the spreadsheet
11:08 Why Michelle skips account tiers
13:24 The €180 one-on-one campaign for a single government organization
16:50 Choosing which people inside the account to target
17:35 Channels beyond LinkedIn: Meta, Reddit, and the K12 Sysadmin community
19:51 The most intimidating part of ABM: the sales handoff
23:48 Measuring success of ABM campaigns
24:57 Paying prospects €100 for messaging interviews
27:20 The mistake: a cease-and-desist letter for using a target's logo
29:58 Two failure modes: wrong messaging vs. wrong channel
32:24 Michelle's one piece of advice for marketers starting with ABM
____________
Connect with Michelle Wols: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-michelle-wols-457a256b/
Connect with Andrew Demianenko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-demian
WeMarketers Podcast Website: wemarketerspodcast.com
____________
WeMarketers RSS feed: https://media.rss.com/wemarketers/feed.xml
____________
Would you like to become the next guest? Do you know someone who could be a great fit? Drop me a line at info@wemarketerspodcast.com
