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In demand generation, not all accounts should be given the same level of priority and following up every potential lead is a surefire way to waste time and money.
Instead, it’s important to prioritise the accounts that are most likely to generate high-value business and are most likely to be in-market for your solution.
A well-structured target account list (TAL) ensures your marketing efforts are directed at the most valuable prospects, improving the quality and effectiveness of your campaigns.
However, more than one in three (36%) marketers have confessed that account prioritisation is their main obstacle to demand generation, with 35% struggling to compile and engage targeted account lists.
If this sounds familiar, you’ve come to the right place. In this guide, we’ll share how to create focused and effective target account lists to instantly improve your campaigns and generate more leads.
1. Define your ideal customer profile (ICP)
In order to create an effective TAL, it's crucial that you clearly define your ideal customer profile (ICP). Trying to build a targeted list without an ICP is like trying to navigate without a map.
Recommended download: Creating your ideal customer profile [Workbook]
Companies that develop and utilise a detailed ICP have been known to experience a 68% higher win rate through their lead generation campaigns.
What’s more, they can identify the companies that are the best fit for their product or service and, therefore, are more likely to convert, retain and generate high lifetime value (LTV).
Key elements to consider in your ICP
Since your sales team can’t follow up on every lead, you should use your ICP to decide which leads are the right fit for your company.
In order to focus on these high-value accounts, your ICP must go beyond simply identifying which companies you want to target. It’s about understanding the characteristics that make these companies ideal for your product or service. With that in mind, here are five key elements to consider:
- Which industries and sectors will benefit most from your solution
- Company size and revenue, for example, are you targeting small businesses or large corporations?
- Location, region or global presence
- Technology stack, maturity and readiness
- The buying group composition - who are the key stakeholders, decision-makers and job titles you want to target?
Once you have your ICP drafted, you can validate and refine this using existing data and feedback. You should continue to perfect and improve your profile over the coming months based on performance data to ensure your ICP and, as a result, your target account list are as accurate and up-to-date as possible.
2. Understand the buying group
In sales and demand generation, too often the focus is put on the individual decision-maker, the one who will be making the final purchase. However, the buying process is typically much broader and can involve multiple stakeholders from different departments.
In fact, the average B2B buying group has over nine members and understanding the structure and dynamics of this group is crucial for an effective TAL. These groups can typically be made up of:
- Decision makers like C-level executives and heads of departments
- Influencers like individual specialists or project managers
- Gatekeepers like operations managers
- End users like the wider workforce. Though they may not have formal buying power, their input is often crucial
Broaden your net on job titles and consider including Manager+ within the criteria as C-level stakeholders don’t always have budget sign off and these stakeholders can be heavily involved in the buying process.
- Emma Tinker, Account Director
Building a deeper understanding of the buying group allows you to target the right individuals and drive demand. This will also inform your ICP and your ability to create tailored and targeted campaigns.
Where possible, it’s a good idea to map out the buying group for each account and identify the right personas to target.
This allows you to create multi-touch campaigns that speak directly to the pain points of various stakeholders or decision-makers, increasing your chances of engagement.
3. Data collection and segmentation
Once you've established your ICP and the buying group has been considered as part of this, the next step is to collect and segment data ready to build your TAL.
To identify the specific accounts that best fit your criteria, you need to gather data from a number of sources. These might include your:
- CRM and first-party data, such as historical purchase data
- Website and digital analytics like visitor behaviour, time spent on key pages and abandonment rates
- Paid media and ad insights, largely from social media and Google Analytics
- Social listening and surveys that reflect customer sentiment and direct feedback
You can use this data to refine your audience before moving on to the segmentation process.
Segmenting your accounts
Effective segmentation is crucial for ensuring that the target account list is focused and actionable. One approach is recency, frequency and monetary value (RFM) analysis, which involves ranking each account based on how recently they made a purchase, how often they buy from you, and how much they spend. This analysis can significantly enhance your marketing strategy.
Another effective technique for building your TAL is identifying high-value customers and using this list to find similar prospects, a method known as finding a lookalike audience.
However, perhaps the most effective way to segment accounts is through predictive scoring models. By utilising AI-based scoring, you can rank potential accounts based on their likelihood to convert, optimising your ABM campaigns for success.
4. Build and optimise your target account list
With your ICP defined, your buying group mapped out, and key accounts scored, you can now build your TAL.
Considering everything we’ve covered so far, you should start by generating a smaller, more manageable list of accounts. It’s best to focus on quality over quantity at this point, as you’ll get better results by focusing on the most promising target accounts.
Utilise predictive analytics and intent data
It’s important to use intent data to uncover valuable insights into which accounts are actively researching solutions in your industry. This should include intent signals that show who is actively looking for a product like yours and which stage in the buyer journey they are at.
Predictive analytics can then be applied to assess the likelihood of an account converting based on historical data, trends and machine learning models.
Predictive intent analysis can get you ahead of your competitors and put you front of mind.
- Emma Tinker, Account Director
You can also run A/B tests and collect campaign data on different account segments to determine which audiences convert best. Based on these performance metrics, you can adjust your audience targeting.
Utilising insights from your A/B testing and keeping track of key performance indicators (KPIs) for each TAL segment will enable you to refine your target accounts list.
Although you might be ready to breathe a sigh of relief once you reach the end of this process, it’s important to note that building the perfect target account list requires a continuous cycle of refinement and optimisation to keep your list as relevant and effective as possible.
Better lists = better results
Creating a focused and effective target account list for demand generation requires a strategic, data-driven approach.
Ensure you are constantly defining and refining your ICP and targeting criteria to get in front of the right people at the right time.
- Emma Tinker, Account Director
By clearly defining your ideal customer profile, considering the entire buying group, and leveraging intent data, you can create a powerful TAL.
Recommended reading: How to build an ideal customer profile for better lead generation results [+ free template]
You can then generate a multi-channel marketing campaign and tailor your outreach to these accounts using account-based marketing (ABM) strategies.
This will enable you to drive more qualified leads, better engagement, and ultimately higher revenue.
