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As the drivers of b-to-b decisionmaking continue to evolve, finding new ways for marketing to add value for sales and the broader organization is a key challenge facing marketing leaders. This is particularly true for organizations that are shifting from a traditional broad marketing approach to an account-based strategy. In this Select Practice, we describe how Medidata Solutions aligned marketing to the organization’s sales model by designing and implementing a strategic marketing approach focused on its most important industry accounts.

Client ProfileJohn Seaner is the vice president of global marketing and demand generation at Medidata Solutions.

The Challenge: Redefining Marketing’s ContributionAs Seaner and his team looked to reinvent marketing at Medidata and deliver more value to the business by implementing an account-based marketing (ABM) approach, they faced several challenges. First, they needed to identify the top-tier pharmaceutical accounts that would be the best fit for Medidata’s new ABM program. Another challenge was that the organization had not been able to systematically establish, build and maintain effective executive-level relationships within these industry accounts. This was an especially important issue, as these relationships help reveal customers’ critical business needs and how they can be addressed.

Similar to other companies focused on a small set of key accounts, much of Medidata’s success is predicated on its ability to find, aggregate and share account insights that drive the right sales and marketing activities. However, Medidata’s marketing organization was not structured to provide these insights back to the wider organization.

Additionally, Medidata had traditionally relied on successfully selling a few key products. This meant that it lacked effective go-to-market strategies and processes for existing accounts to help them effectively manage the full clinical development lifecycle platform.

Medidata Solutions: Leveraging Data Science to Drive Industry Account-Based Marketing

Company: Medidata Solutions provides a cloud-based platform of applications, data analytics and platform services designed to make the clinical trial process run more effectively and efficiently for all members of a clinical trial team, including managers, researchers, physicians and patients.

Challenge: Transform marketing to make more strategic contributions to sales and the wider organization.

Solution: An industry account-based marketing approach focused on growing key accounts.

Results: Seven-fold increase in engagement with key accounts, resulting in increased marketing contributions to pipeline and closed deals.

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The Solution: An Industry ABM Approach Fueled by Deep Account InsightsSeaner realized one of the primary hurdles was that marketing was not at par with the sales organization, remarking that “It was marketing with a small ‘m’ and sales with a capital ‘S.’” While the rest of the organization viewed marketing as effective producers of content, events and other traditional activities, Seaner wanted to elevate marketing to a more strategic plane and demonstrate more tangible business results. To accomplish this goal, Seaner and his team designed an ABM strategy for Medidata’s top industry accounts. This approach required account profiles with a high degree of accuracy and depth to allow marketers to better understand the unique needs of decisionmakers within each account. Key program elements included:

• Data science. The Medidata marketing team used a data science approach to gain account insights, leveraging machine learning and internal analytic capabilities to better identify relevant patterns and the best courses of action. The resulting insights supplied the team with deep knowledge about key industry accounts, leading to more relevant marketing activities.

• Marketing strategy. Next, the team focused on the creation of a tradecraft approach to ABM that featured integrated decision assistance packages based on key buyer considerations – including insights about buyer decision criteria, defining a solution, typical decision paths, buyers’ preferred tactics and at what point they wish to consume them, and personal/behavioral factors. The team then used a combination of data analytics and insights gathered from customer interviews to refine what activities were best suited to the specific needs of the target audience.

• New team structures. To better understand buyers and act according to their preferences, Medidata created new cross-functional internal teams to meet the needs of the ABM program. Medidata had these new teams, which included members from various internal functions (e.g. sales, customer care, data science, finance, product groups) focus on customer experience, business value and account governance.

• New technology stack. Technology is playing an increasingly essential role in supporting all types of ABM. Categories of technology commonly leveraged for ABM include predictive analytics, account-based advertising/retargeting and Web analytics, along with technologies designed to provide insight and feedback on customer adoption and engagement. For Medidata, technology support included an integrated approach to incorporating customer insights and digital behavior. This support also helped the team identify and track customer movement triggers to better understand buying signals and buying stage progression. The team had previously conducted comprehensive persona research on key buyers, but it was now able to leverage technology

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to help it track and validate what it had learned about buyers. Technology also enabled Medidata to monitor commercial education topics in order to fuel content development ideas.

• Education and buy-in. It can be challenging to get internal audiences to accept transformational changes like the implementation of an ABM strategy. Executives and sales leaders at Medidata initially had questions about the new approach: Which accounts is marketing selecting for ABM treatment? How much information does marketing have about these accounts? To gain broad acceptance of the strategy, Seaner and his team provided internal education about the new ABM processes and set functional expectations for sales and other internal teams.

The Results: Increased Engagement, Demand Creation and InvestmentThe key metrics for Medidata’s industry ABM program include opportunities created, closed business, marketing sourced and influenced rates, pipeline velocity, stage acceleration and account relationship quality. An especially important measure for Medidata is its ability to reach influential decisionmakers within key accounts, and the new strategy has enabled it to increase senior executive engagement within these accounts

by 714 percent. In addition, the number of inquiries from these accounts has increased by 210 percent, and marketing sourced demand has increased by 159 percent.

A final indicator of Medidata’s ABM success is its level of investment. Initially, the program received 15 percent of the marketing program budget, but the forecast for this year suggests ABM will be allocated upwards of 75 percent of the marketing program budget – a powerful sign that the organization is recognizing the strategic contributions that its industry ABM strategy is providing.

The Sirius DecisionOne of the most important benefits of an ABM approach is how it provides the roadmap for marketing to make more strategic contributions to the business. This doesn’t mean the organization should leave all of its traditional marketing activities behind. Rather, it should ensure that what marketing develops and delivers is mapped to needs defined by sales. This explains why sales has become increasingly enthusiastic about ABM – this approach delivers the highest impact to the most important accounts. While this may seem self-evident, making the transition to an ABM approach requires patience, vision and communication between sales, marketing and the rest of the organization.

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