Nearly every B2B company has a Target Account List (TAL). And focusing your marketing and sales efforts on a specific set of accounts seems like a reasonable way to ensure that you aren’t wasting time or money.

Problems with the TAL

Unfortunately, in practice, there are 4 key problems with the traditional approach to creating and pursuing these target accounts:

  1. No method| Most companies develop their TAL based on the firmographic characteristics – company size, industry, geography, etc. – of companies they would like to have as customers. Because the criteria for account selection are static, it means the list remains static. Also, these criteria say nothing about whether or not a particular company is in market for a solution like yours.
  2. No testing | Companies A/B test creative, copy, and campaigns, but don’t A/B test TALs. Indeed, few companies have any method for tracking the performance of their chosen TAL. Nor can they compare its performance against some kind of control list, because they don’t have one.
  3. No process | Most companies do not have a defined process to update TALs. Forget about testing. What happens if there is consolidation through mergers and acquisitions? What about emerging entrants worth pursuing? Since the TAL isn’t treated as a living, breathing thing, there is no way to reflect market changes in it.
  4. No intent | In-market companies should be your primary targets. A focus on firmographic criteria, however, tells you nothing about in-market behavior. In the absence of buyer intent data, or any kind of buyer journey data, your TAL doesn’t really provide targets at all. It’s just a list of companies.

As a result, companies incur costs both in terms of wasted time and money, as well as in terms of missed opportunities:

  1. Wasted time and money | Marketing and sales efforts focused on companies that have no intent to buy what you’re selling are effectively wasted;
  2. Opportunity cost | Creating a TAL without recourse to intent data means two things: you might miss in-market companies that actually made it onto the list; and you might miss in-market accounts you weren’t considering in the first place.

Target Market Definition vs Target Account List

Thinking of account targeting as a dynamic activity based on continuous monitoring of the market provides a better approach.

First, use firmographic and technographic data to create a broad Target Market Definition (TMD) that includes all companies of interest. Then, base the decision to pursue any particular subset of accounts on intent data.  Doing this allows you to direct all sales and marketing efforts towards accounts that not only fit the desired characteristics, but, more importantly, are actively demonstrating behavior that indicates intent to purchase.

When buyer behavior guides your account targeting, you essentially map your efforts to the dynamics of the market and thus greatly improve your chances of closing business (which was supposed to the be the point of creating a TAL in the first place).

Taking Action

These three steps will get you started on the path to dynamic account targeting:

  1. Create a Target Market Definition (TMD) based on firmographic and technographic data
  2. Use intent data to identify actively researching accounts within your TMD
  3. Measure the performance improvement of a dynamic approach versus a static approach

A whole blog post could be written on each one of these steps. For the time being, I’ll leave you with these tips.

Since you probably already have a TAL, you should consider a target account audit. This will very quickly reveal gaps in your current approach.

It’s important to remember that intent data can inform your target market definition. For example, by monitoring broadly for intent, you can discover overlooked industries where interest in solutions like yours is increasing.

Finally, track the performance of your dynamic account list. Since this list will always be a subset of the TMD, you will always have a control group against which to gauge performance.