Can we do Marketo Account Based Marketing without using the ABM module

[Preeti_Kapasi1]

Can we do Marketo Account Based Marketing without using  the ABM module

[Amy_Goldfine]

Sure, there are lots of ways to market in an account-based way. Having a technology such as Marketo ABM is not going to automatically make your marketing account-based, you need to think strategically about your ideal customer profile (both for individuals and companies) and how you want to marketo to them. You'll need Account fields to tag accounts as top targets, and possibly other Account fields if there are ways that you want to segment accounts that are not accounted for in your current data strategy. For example, we have a multi-select picklist field "Tag" on the Account object that use for several different categories. One category is "SaaS", because we have a particular solution/story for SaaS companies, but they are in various industries so Industry is not a good Account field to filter by. 

The biggest thing is that you are going to need some way to add Leads to accounts in your CRM (we use LeanData for this in SFDC). One thing to note is that Marketo can not "see" the Account info on a Marketo person who is a SFDC Lead the way it can in a SFDC Contact. We have lookup fields in SFDC on the Lead/Contact that pull down Account info such as "Top Target Account", "Tag", etc.

[Preeti_Kapasi1]

Amy Goldfine Connor‌ thank you for your response. Can you please let me know which could be the best software to use for account based marketing and what are some of the best practices?

[Amy_Goldfine]

It really depends on what you want to get out of it. Lots of companies say that they do "ABM," including Marketo with the ABM add-on, Engagio, LeanData, Terminus—but they all have very different features and functionalities.

If you haven't seen the presentation from Summit 2019 on "Building a Martech Stack" I highly recommend it. They give you a great framework to pick your software. The big picture is that you need to figure out what you want to do and then look for software with those features. 

[Preeti_Kapasi1]

Amy Goldfine Connor‌ this was really helpful. Thank you for all the information. I appreciate it. I wasnt in the Summit so yes I will read that presentation. 

[Grant_Booth]

There are a number of ways you can identify leads as part of an account list without using a product like Marketo ABM. For example, if you have a list of accounts for a certain industry, you could run a report in Salesforce to view those accounts and their website, Company Name, etc. You could take values from the account website field, change them to email domain format, and put them in the Email Address filter in Marketo. I.e. Email Address contains @company1.com,@company2.com,etc. 

It doesn't have the "fuzzy logic" advantage of a separate product, but it's better than nothing.

Also, don't forget that data enrichment products like DiscoverOrg or Dunn & Bradstreet already match leads to their own company records, which you can leverage to do some account matching.

Key thing to remember is: I recommend developing an ABM *strategy* before putting too much thought into buying ABM tools. That way, you can approach buying a tool based on what you've decided your strategy requirements are. Get aligned with Sales, figure out which accounts / types of accounts you want to target and why.