Over the last few years, Account-Based Marketing or ABM has become the central piece of Microsoft’s marketing strategy for its enterprise services. The Redmond-based tech giant has an entire gamut of products for digital transformation--customer relationship management (CRM) tools, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions, cloud platform Azure, and LinkedIn--all of which it leverages to drive ABM.  This creates deeper engagement with select clients, boosting its revenues from them. In an interview with Digital CMO, Samik Roy, Country Head (Dynamics) at Microsoft India, spoke about how Microsoft uses ABM and why it has become such a critical component for success.

Interviewed by Moulishree Srivastava

/ / How has the ABM function evolved in your company over the past few years?

ABM has been there as a concept since the last couple of years, but it has just evolved into reality. This is because of multiple trends which are happening in the industry. If I look at it from the customer side, the importance of account-based marketing is that with ABM the person from the customer end finds the discussion to be relevant, well-timed and applicable. Rather than being broad-based and trying to understand what the solution is and how it will be applicable, ABM enables a more pinpointed, focused discussion with the client, which is of great value to them. Now let's come to the solution provider's side, which is our side. Over a period of time, we have noticed that the return on investment of ABM is far more than a generic broad-based marketing approach. It allows us to be more targeted and to build deeper relationships. It allows us to get the right resources at the right time with the right knowledge in front of the customers.

/ / How do you select your ABM accounts?

There are aspects to it. The first is history. Let us say we have our top 20 customers who have been giving us a lot of business in the last five years, and the business has consistently been growing with them. They would obviously be in our ABM program because we need to go deeper into each with our set of products.

Then we look at industry trends. There is also the intelligence of our account managers and partners which tells us which companies to target.

Then we have our own tools. We have LinkedIn, CRM, our own AI and ML tools. They help us identify accounts with a propensity to buy a particular solution using algorithms, past trends and market-backed analytics.

/ / How has your company benefited from ABM?

We have seen higher rates of returns, deeper engagement with our ABM customers and more revenue from them. We have seen increased usage of our solutions by these customers as well. It has helped us in making people realize what digital transformation can do for them, and how the product set and solutions of Microsoft can help. In the process, we also learn what the emerging trends in the industry are, and how our customers are deploying our tools and technologies to change the way the industry is working.

/ / What are the tools you use in ABM?

We have our own tools. We have CRM, LinkedIn, ML, AI and Azure. All the algorithms, probabilistic techniques and tools that we use are from within Microsoft itself. We have people out there in social media looking at our customers and following what they are trying to do. LinkedIn, being an acquired product of Microsoft, integrates tightly with our CRM, so we can now share information with our account management team which gives them a lot more insights than what used to be previously available. All this helps us in having a guided and meaningful conversation with our customers.

/ / Do you map the customer journey of all your ABM accounts? Have you created individual personas of people within each of the accounts?

Absolutely yes. We follow the entire customer journey. Our customer success manager's job is to ensure that whatever solutions we sell actually gets deployed because only when people adopt our solutions will they see benefits from them.  

We also do persona mapping. In any organization, there are many people involved in a decision.  For example, if it is about security, we speak to the chief security officer, the IT person and the legal department, so we map all of them.

/ / Have you invested in advanced analytics?

Surely. Analytics is a part of our offering, so we have tools like Power BI. We also have analytical tools within Azure. 

/ / What are the challenges you have faced in implementing ABM?

The primary challenge is the time that it takes to implement ABM because it is a deep and well-thought engagement. Only at the end of the cycle do people see value and ROI. So it is a question of being patient. Organizations may lose out if they are not patient, and instead, keep switching between ABM and a broad-based marketing approach.

/ / How is AI changing the ABM function?  

Machine learning, AI and cognitive intelligence are all part of our Azure stack, which is our cloud platform. These algorithms call for a lot of data. They enable us to quickly pull out not only industry trends but also behavioural trends of organizations. When we combine this with social intelligence as well as other publicly available data, we get to know which organization has what requirement, how our products fit in, and who the people are that we should be talking to within each account. It makes life that much easier for us.

/ / What are the trends and technologies that you think will drive ABM in the future?

I think ML and AI will play a critical role. Digital marketing and digital transformation will get fuelled by better information and data. And when data from machine learning gets actionable, that is when you’ll start seeing things getting productive. The ability to have collaborative tools between the customer and you will be the other driver. We have Kaizala, Teams and Yammer that help us collaborate more closely with our customers. We have come from phone calls to emails to collaborative tools like Kaizala to bots where the machine can interface with many people at the same time bringing in a lot more productivity. And these tools and technologies will continue to evolve.