ABM ads reaching people who can’t buy? Target buying group roles

Why do ABM ads reach people who can’t buy?

Account-based marketing (ABM) ads reach people who can’t buy when the audience starts from a keyword or a job function. The people who match it are the ones who feel the problem every day. A title search for “warehouse” or “operations” at your target accounts finds the team that runs the work. It rarely finds the person who signs, the controller who checks the business case or the security lead who can stop the contract.

The buying group is much wider than a single function. Forrester puts a typical buying decision at 13 internal stakeholders and 9 external influencers.^↗ In 6sense’s research, about 40% of buyers said they joined the buying group from outside the end-user department.^↗ Bain and LinkedIn found that hidden buyers, such as the people in procurement, finance and IT, hold half of the influence over the purchase.^↗ An audience drawn from the end-user department’s titles can’t reach that half.

The ad setup makes it worse in 2 ways. The first is size. LinkedIn won’t run a campaign whose audience has fewer than 300 matched members.^↗ On a list of 40 accounts, a single decision role can be smaller than that, as the worked example below shows. So the quick fixes all widen the audience: a lower seniority level, a broader title list or LinkedIn’s audience expansion setting. Each fix adds people outside the roles you need.

The second is the report. A report built on impressions, click-through rate and cost per lead counts a supervisor’s click and a CFO’s click the same. It can look healthy while nobody who signs has seen an ad.

How do you build ABM audiences from buying group roles?

Build them from the roles a deal needs at each account tier, and aim only at the roles still empty at each target account. Job titles still do the targeting on LinkedIn. What changes is the starting point: each account’s missing roles, instead of a keyword that matches whoever does the work.

Begin with a short target account list, tiered by fit and deal size. Intent data and other buying signals can decide which accounts to warm first; the role map decides who at each account sees the ads. Then list the roles each tier needs to close. For any deal above €25k, name at least 4: the budget owner who signs, finance, IT security and the operational lead who owns the problem. The largest tier adds the IT or ERP owner and procurement, which Forrester finds is a decision-maker in 53% of buying cycles.^↗

Map every target account against those roles. For each role, ask 2 questions. Do we have a named contact? Has that person had a two-way exchange with us in the last 90 days? A role without that exchange is empty, whatever the ad report says.

Build the audiences from the empty roles only. Start from a company list of the accounts where a role is empty. Filter it to the job functions and seniority that role sits in, and write down the titles you exclude. Leave out accounts where someone in that role is already talking to your reps. Named contacts in empty roles go to the reps as well.

Check each audience before launch. If a role’s audience falls under LinkedIn’s 300-member floor, put the decision roles in a single campaign instead of widening the titles.^↗ If it is still too small, add the next tier’s accounts or leave that role to the reps.

Then write for the group. Gartner found that buyers who experienced relevance to the whole buying group were 3× more likely to report a high-quality deal, while relevance aimed at individuals had a 59% negative impact on consensus.^↗ Give each role its own opening question, and point every ad to the same shared case: the cost, the risk and the date the group must agree on.

Last, connect the ads to the reps. A click or a form from an empty role is a buying signal. Route it to the account’s owner as a task the same day, with the play for that role. The role counts as engaged when the person replies.

How does buying group targeting work for supply chain software?

For supply chain software sold to shippers and 3PLs, put paid reach on the roles that can veto and leave the operational lead to your reps. By Panelhop’s estimate, a typical logistics buying group has 6–13 people, and 5 of its 8 roles can veto the deal.^↗ The same research puts the problem plainly: “The transport, warehouse or customs manager replies first but cannot sign.”^↗ That is the person a title-keyword audience finds.

Who signs depends on the account. At a shipper, the VP of logistics, the COO or the owner signs a TMS or WMS deal, while IT and finance decide whether the incumbent goes.^↗ At a 3PL, the managing director or COO usually signs, with finance, IT and the warehouse or operations lead in the room.^↗ Panelhop estimates sales cycles of about 5 months at mid-market shippers, about 6 months at 3PLs and about 12 months for an enterprise TMS or WMS replacement.^↗ A 90-day count of engaged roles fits inside all 3.

Here are those roles as Panelhop’s research sets them out, with the question each one asks.^↗

Now the worked example, an illustration with fictional accounts. A vendor has 40 target accounts: 10 enterprise shippers and 3PLs in tier 1 and 30 mid-market ones in tier 2. Tier 2 needs the 4 core roles and tier 1 adds 2 more, so the list needs 180 roles (10 × 6 + 30 × 4).

The baseline is 20 engaged roles out of 180, or 11%. Of those 20, 15 are operational leads. So 38% of that role is engaged, against 4% of the other 5 roles (5 of 140). That is what “our ads reach DC supervisors” looks like in a CRM.

Then size the audiences. Assume about 3 people per account in each decision role. The budget owners at the 37 accounts where that role is empty come to about 111 people (37 × 3), under LinkedIn’s floor. The 135 empty decision roles together come to about 405 (135 × 3). That clears 300 before LinkedIn’s privacy filter trims it, so check the forecast.^↗ The 25 empty operational-lead roles go to the reps instead of the ads, since that role replies first.

How do you measure ABM engagement across the buying group?

Count, for each target account, how many required roles have had a two-way exchange with you in the last 90 days. Then compare it with the baseline you took before the targeting changed. A two-way exchange is a reply to a question you asked, a call or a meeting the person attended. Impressions, clicks, opens, video views, follows and anonymous site visits are reach. They show the ads ran. They don’t show who is talking to you.

Reach still needs a check, by role. LinkedIn’s campaign demographics show the job functions, seniorities and companies of the members an ad reached. Compare them with the role map each month: if most of the reach sits in the operational function, the audience has drifted.

Engaged roles are what move a deal. Across 1.8M deals, Gong found multi-threading lifted win rates by 130% on average in deals over $50k.^↗ Ebsta and Pavilion found win rates 55% higher when decision-makers were involved in the first 2 stages of the sale.^↗ Neither effect shows up in a click-through rate.

Report 3 numbers a month, by tier, against the baseline:

• roles engaged out of roles needed (20 of 180 in the example)
• decision roles engaged (5 of 140)
• accounts where the budget owner is engaged (3 of 40)

Ad metrics still matter for running the campaigns. They belong in the agency’s working sheet, under these 3.

A short target account list beats a broad job-title audience

We think a short, well-fit target account list with every role mapped produces more pipeline than a broad title audience across a long list. We have 3 reasons.

First, rep attention is limited. A rep can research and multi-thread only so many accounts, and a padded list spreads that effort thin. Second, multi-threading happens only when the plan names who talks to whom and by when. That plan needs a list short enough to map role by role. Third, a short list makes an honest baseline possible. With 40 accounts you can count the empty roles before a campaign starts; without that count, almost any after-number can be framed as a win.

We don’t give a right list size, because it depends on your reps and your deal size. We don’t say every role needs equal attention either. The budget owner and the roles that can veto come first.

What should a good ABM agency do differently?

A good ABM agency shows you the role map before it buys media, builds each audience from the empty roles, hands every response to a rep and reports engaged roles per account against a baseline. Ask for proof of each before you renew.

Market knowledge helps with the message, but it doesn’t fix the audience. A supply chain specialist that buys a title audience across a long list will reach the same DC supervisors as a generalist. If you want an agency that can reach supply chain directors at shippers and 3PLs, ask it to map 3 of your accounts before it quotes: who signs, which of the 5 roles that can veto are still empty and who your reps already talk to.^↗ An agency that can produce that map, and report against it every month, is doing account-based marketing.