Executing Stage Based Campaigns

Jason Plummer - 6sense

In the world of ABM, there are a variety of ways to ensure you engage accounts at the right time. What we'll discuss in this article is Stage Based Campaigns - this is one of my favorite topics to discuss with my customers as a CSM and is a strategy to ensure you maximize engagement in a repeatable way.

Stage Based Campaigns are geared towards, as you could have guessed, going after accounts based on where they are in buying stages - the goal is to ensure the messaging and CTAs are different by stage to ultimately drive them further down the funnel. Now even with this philosophy, your organization could have different tiers of campaigns that go after different segments of your audiences for different reasons. With a longer term plan in place, your campaigns could be broken out into the below tiers:

With each Tier, the messaging and imagery changes and drives a very specific outcome. But, all of these can still include buying stages to better align messaging to level of intent.

Let's discuss how we prepare for a tier 3 campaign, focusing on providing an "always on" experience for those who are researching your priority keywords.

Campaign Conception and Execution
There are naturally a few steps before your organization can start doing this, so let's talk about where to start.

1. Keywords - If you've been using 6sense, you know what keywords are. But, they truly can be one of the most important aspects to what you do with 6sense. For this exercise, you HAVE to be specific. Something as general as "Analytics" tells you nothing and is hard to market off of. But, something like "Predictive Analytics" or "Predictive Analytics for ABM" tells you a lot more.
2. Segments - Once your organization has identified or updated specific keywords, select one or two that mean the most to your organization. From there, you'll create 4 segments that track the keyword + stage. Your segment may look like this:
3. Ad imagery - Now here comes the part where most organizations see a delay and that is in getting ad imagery created with the specific keyword. When you are able to use the phrase that is being researched, it connects the dots so much better for your prospect. Identifying what keywords will be most important for you earlier allows you to have the imagery created sooner.
4. Picking CTAs - Remember, the buying stages are aligned to level of intent and knowledge about you. Someone who is in Awareness will want to learn more about you while someone who is in Purchase may be ready to schedule a demo. Align your messaging and CTAs to that philosophy. Below is an example of how 6sense does this: For someone in awareness, we focus on introducing them to predictive analytics. For Consideration, we lean into a thought leadership/proof point article. This makes sense for TOFU stages, let them learn! For Decision and Purchase, we hone in on driving a conversion with an enticing offer of a free report or a demo - these prospects are at the bottom of the funnel, so we want a more direct CTA!
5. Campaign Set-Up Tips - There are a variety of tips to consider when actually setting up the campaign and launching it. Below are some of the recommendations I make with my customers:

• CPM at a minimum of $10
• Persona targeting in use for any campaign that is going to touch the US/CAN market
• Frequency cap is set to 6
• No Day-Parting

I hope this helps you to start thinking about your next campaign and how to execute effectively using buying stages!

Rachel Zerilla

@Jessica-Rose Douglas This would be a great post to send to your customer! Such good info here!

Kelsey Gast

Hello! I have follow-up questions. At the most basic level, are you running these stage-based campaigns through Advertising 6sense? I am just getting started and looking for the first steps to take.

Also, in your Tier 3 image above, what do you mean by "3-5 at any given time." Does that mean we chose 3-5 keyword strategies and create 4 segments and ad campaigns for each of those strategies? @Jason Plummer - 6sense

Jason Plummer - 6sense

@Kelsey Gast Yes! Running these through 6sense Advertising is the way to go! Makes it easy to create your segments and get them running into a campaign quickly and effectively (Ensure you use persona targeting!)

Secondary to that, you are correct in your assumption that the "3-5 at any time" is referencing the number of campaigns you could be running that fit the Tier 3 definition.


Being that my example and leans into keyword specificity, my recommendation if you're just getting into this would be to pick 1 keyword, develop your 4 segments and associated imagery and copy, and test run 4 campaigns for the different segments. If budget is a concern, you could group Awareness/Consideration and Decision/Purchase together and run 2 campaigns addressing those stages but ensure you still leverage the keyword!

Kelsey Gast

@Jason Plummer - 6sense thank you very much for the help! Do you have a post for advice on where to start for a Tier 2 campaign? Our ad and operations team is small, so I am looking for initial steps or best practices that are manageable when starting from scratch.