You may have heard about account-based marketing, all of the technology associated with it, all of the planning that goes into it, and then the cross-departmental collaboration, and thought, “That would be nice, but we are not quite there yet.” An ABM Expert, formerly the Director of #FlipMyFunnel, and Americas Account-Based Marketing Manager at Autodesk, Nikki Nixon, encourages marketers with a practical ABM approach that they can implement in their everyday marketing. If you have been trying to revamp your ABM approach or just need a nudge to get started, then this episode is for you!   Takeaways: The first step towards a basic account-based approach is to understand your ideal customer profile (ICP). Who are your best customers, which accounts are most likely to buy from you, and what are the characteristics of those accounts that you can look for in future prospects? After a business defines their ICP, the team needs to then identify the personas that they are trying to reach at those accounts. Once the personas are understood, the next step is to design an engagement strategy to reach those personas. If you are selling to IT professionals, the best way to reach them is through their peers. How can you market to their surrounding influencers and community? If you do not know your ICP, talk to sales and ask who is their best fit customer? Do not define your ICP in a silo. Be sure to collaborate with sales throughout the ABM process. Once you have run the data and worked with sales on defining your ICP, take the leap and go out and test it. You will find out more information from marketing tests to an ideal customer profile, than you would from trying to dig for more data. A great test to run to confirm an ICP, or a persona, is account-based advertising. Look to see if your hypothesized targeted accounts are clicking on your ads. Who from the account is engaging with your content? This information can help you prioritize and confirm your ICP. The more time someone spends with you, the more likely they are to buy from you. At the end of the day, you are trying to get that account to “vote for you”.  Career advice from Nikki Nixon - Believe in yourself more! Have confidence and conviction in what you are doing. Do not tie your identity to your career.   Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkinixon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/techmarketeratl Faith’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/faiththemissionarydog/   Busted Myths: ABM is only for large enterprise companies. - ABM is NOT just for the large enterprises, but it is for every company that wants to apply focus to their marketing efforts. It is letting go of marketing to everyone, because there are a portion of accounts that are wasting your time and not gaining you any revenue.   Ways to Tune In: iTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hard-corps-marketing-show/id1338838763 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1vVLpNI1LssMTiL6Kdsamn Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-hard-corps-marketing-show YouTube - Full video - https://youtu.be/QWQVVlsQVc4