Account based marketing has become one of the most common and often misused buzzwords over the last couple years.
In short, account based marketing is a business strategy where companies communicate with customers and customer accounts as markets of one. For more information about ABM, feel free to check outBetter Marketing Hub.
This approach to business can be used regardless of the company size and industry you work in. In fact, smaller organizations with fewer marketing dollars to spend should consider account-based marketing strategies to reduce wasted dollars on organizations and buying influencers that are not your ideal target.
In this article, we will take a look at this strategy, how it affects your marketing resources, and why you need to implement it as soon as possible if you want to accelerate profitable revenue growth.
What Is ABM?
Account-based marketing (ABM) is often defined as a focused growth strategy that is highly dependent upon tight integration between marketing and sales.
The whole purpose is to identify ideal customers and deliver highly personalized content that would “speak” to the unique needs of your target organization and the individual buyer personas involved across the entire buying process.
Unlike traditional marketing, where a marketing team will try to generate as many leads as possible, ABM represents a shift to lead quality over quantity, pays close attention to customer experience, and invests in the accounts with the best fit and buying intent.
According to traditional marketing theory, a sales rep should try to close as many customers as they can. In the age of a multichannel approach, however, your marketing message might reach a lot of people who are not supposed to see it.
Instead of focusing on optimal channels and best-fit types of accounts, traditional marketers will try to put everyone into a sales funnel. This will result in a major waste of resources. This is where AMB shines as it’s able to provide much better marketing return on investment.
What Are the Advantages of ABM?
ABM marketing strategies can help you reach revenue goals by maximizing the potential of current customers while avoiding spending money on generating leads that are less likely to result in sales.
This is one of the best marketing strategies for B2B organizations experiencing a complex sale where multiple buying influences participate in the buying of a solution for the business’ challenges.
In addition to ensuring precious marketing dollars are spent only on the prospects likely to buy, AMB method also helps ensure marketing dollars are aligned with those most critical stages of the buying journey – as leads progress towards a purchasing decision.
Unlike traditional marketing strategies focused on filling the top of the funnel and then relying on sales to convert leads to opportunities and sales, the method tries to optimize the customer lifecycle and get the most out of it.
When performing account-based marketing, marketers leverage technology to discover and identify accounts that are showing buying intent, then deliver highly personalized messages and offers to engage different buying influencers in the account to enable the account to advance in the buying journey.
Leveraging account-based marketing will also yield valuable insights that can be provided to sales so that they can close more deals faster.
While the AMB approach to marketing can work for everyone, it’s especially great for brands that are targeting larger companies. Hiring an account-based marketing agency provides a lot of perks if you’re trying to connect and maintain big customers with long sales cycles. Some other key benefits include:
High Degree of Personalization
The most important thing about this method is that it allows you to create a personalized message that will lure a target audience into your sales funnel. Every potential customer will feel valuable, which is why they are more likely to give you their business.
Customization is not only important for the message but the offer, as well. Some of these larger accounts want special deals or features that will make them feel appreciated.
Shorten the Sales Cycle
Given that this marketing approach focuses on nurturing a small number of leads, your sales cycles will be much shorter.
First off, the personalized approach will make the decision process much quicker and usually in your favor. As you are more likely to work with the same account over and over again, there will be no need for continuous selling and reselling.
Alignment Between Marketing and Sales
A very important, but often misunderstood, benefit comes in the form of marketing and sales alignment. Too often, marketing sales teams waste a lot of time and resources trying to pitch numerous customers. Due to the sheer volume of accounts, they’re usually not on the same page.
By reducing leads and current customers, there will be fewer company projects leading to better alignment. Your teams will be able to work together by identifying ideal customers, creating customized marketing campaigns, and leading them through the pipeline.
Better Understanding of Return on Investment and Future Revenues
Since all of your operational processes will be simplified, your accounting team will have less work to do.
Not only will you be able to achieve higher profits, but it will be much easier to predict them. Account-based marketing focuses on creating a more volatile, less frantic business atmosphere. Although losing a customer can completely disrupt this predictability, ABM is still much easier to quantify and predict.
Fewer Wasted Resources
Profitability often goes hand-in-hand with resource utilization. Companies that are more profitable use fewer resources and vice versa.
Anyway, in the case of the AMB approach, you will be able to save a lot of time and money by optimizing your processes. In the end, retaining the customer is always cheaper than getting a new one.
All these resources that you would otherwise use for acquiring new customers can now be utilized in a more productive way.
What Are the Disadvantages of ABM?
While this is one of the best approaches to B2B marketing, it does come with a set of risks:
- Having a small number of B2B buyers is not always ideal. Each one of these accounts has a major impact on your revenue so, if you lose one of them, it will be hard to replace them in the coming weeks and perhaps months.
- Given the importance of every customer, every small mistake will be paid for dearly. Being late for the initial meeting will prevent you from closing a customer that you’ve been warming up for a while.
- Combining your sales and marketing team also comes with its own set of problems. First, each of the teams will be equally responsible for success. This might give some members an impression that they can slack off or that they can rely on the other side to make an impact. Segmentation stimulates healthy competition between teams which, in turn, can provide better overall results.
- Teams might also start bumping heads. First of all, you will need a new manager who can lead the whole project. This, in itself, can lead to animosity. Given that every team is used to a specific working method, it might be hard to adapt to new circumstances (at least initially). Hiring an outside account-based marketing agency can provide the solution, but then, you won’t do things in-house.
- There are also risks involved when hiring ABM agencies. You simply never know what you’re going to get. Oftentimes, hiring an outsider can be much more expensive, and it might be better to simply start a process within your own company.
When Shouldn’t You Adopt ABM Strategies?
This approach is ideal for B2B audiences but there are also a lot of cases where it will be redundant. Here are some of the situations where ABM might not work for your organization:
You’re Unable to Create Appropriate Content
In order to attract high-quality leads, you need to exude confidence and authority. Big companies are sometimes unwilling to cooperate with organizations who aren’t on the same level or who cannot manage the size of their business.
If you’re unable to create content that showcases your expertise and makes you look reputable, you might not be able to close that customer. Besides content, this can refer to all other tools that the company uses. For example, if you’re unable to invest in a high quality booth during trade shows, prospects think that you lack money.
Basically, all your external processes should be done on a much higher level from this point onwards. Although many experts emphasize that ABM can save you resources, you will have to make a hefty initial investment that would further improve your public image.
Low Customer Lifetime Value
Customer lifetime value refers to the total worth that a customer brings to a business over the course of their relationship. That being said, it’s best to avoid low customer lifetime value.
You don’t necessarily need to rely on big companies to give you good customer lifetime value. Sometimes it might be better to establish longer, more trusting relationships with smaller companies rather than short relationships with bigger companies.
Issues with Timing and Finances
Perhaps it’s simply not the right time to implement ABM. In theory, this process should become the backbone of your business, making all other marketing and sales approaches obsolete.
Because of that, you would either need to merge your departments and change the marketing and sales processes or fire everyone and hire a specialized ABM company. Such changes can put a major strain on the company, potentially even fragmenting the staff.
You also need to make the right calculations. Sometimes, account-based marketing might look great on paper, but in reality, it can lead to increased costs and loss of other resources.
What Are the Success Factors for ABM?
There are several factors that can affect how successful your ABM is. We’ve elaborated on some of them below!
Collaboration Between Marketing and Sales Teams
Often, companies are not even aware how important this collaboration is. We like to segment processes and give free reign to every department. This makes it easier to measure the success of every team. But it comes with drawbacks.
The most crucial part of ABM is marketing and sales alignment. These two departments should start working together on all future and current projects.
According to experts, this is how account-based marketing should look in a nutshell:
- Identifying an ideal customer
- Creating proper marketing channels and starting communication
- Establishing a business relationship
So, the first task will be for the sales team, the second for marketing, and the third for the sales team again. The processes will be intertwined, which is why one team needs to understand what the other is doing.
Once you establish the best type of customer, you should be trying to identify the exact people and accounts who fit this mold. To do this, use technology to find accounts that are putting out the right algorithms, signals, and intent closest to your ideal match.
The first task of the marketing team is to take this list and analyze it. Based on the data provided, they can create an optimal strategy that would encompass most of these leads. In most cases, they will create a marketing mix with several options.
Of course, it’s more effective to focus on just one channel, but in reality, one size rarely fits all (even though leads were previously segmented). So, you should have a bit of flexibility when establishing the initial connection. The job of the marketing team is done once they establish the contact. After that, the lead is passed back to the sales team.
Collaboration is important because it allows you to track communication. Oftentimes, there is a disconnect within a sales funnel where prospects feel like they’re talking with several different people. The point of ABM is to reduce that feeling and to create an impression in leads that this is one and the same pitch.
Customized Experience
We should never neglect personalization. While collaboration between teams is important, the customized processes are what holds everything together.
Creating a customized experience is both an advantage and liability. In other words, if you did everything right so far, your target audience will expect that you continue in the same manner. They will expect a personalized experience.
For example, after telling a person that you’ve specifically targeted them, and that you would like to have their business, you cannot proceed by using a template. This is counterintuitive and will only alienate the lead who was previously warmed up.
A high degree of personalization allows you to skip a few steps. Instead of going back and forth, you can directly address the target’s business issues, and offer a solution as to how to solve them. As you will quickly get to the pitch and skip the unnecessary steps, it will increase the likelihood of conversion.
What Are the Best Examples of ABM?
First, you need to start your account-based marketing journey by segmenting the market. After that, you can create specific programs that you will, later on, be able to customize. In most cases, a company will utilize a mix of tools and marketing channels to make an impact on customers.
When targeting a certain account, you will need to focus on lead’s specifics. That is, you need to identify the best marketing segments and channels that would allow you to properly attract, engage, convert and grow the targeted customer.
A company adopting ABM strategies can utilize various channels, whether they’re traditional or digital. While you can combine a few of them, you shouldn’t overdo it. Sometimes, using too many channels at once can dilute the message and make you look desperate.
Here are some of the best approaches that you can utilize for larger accounts:
Live events
Simply put, there’s nothing better than live events as a way of introducing yourself and the brand.
Oftentimes, our message is lost in the ether. Sometimes, leads will ask questions that we can’t answer through blog posts or a video. We should never neglect the persuasiveness of a good sales rep.
During live events, you can create customized invitations for your key prospects. Among others, you can take them to a VIP dinner or present them with a nice gift. When the event is over, sending a follow-up email will feel much more natural.
Direct Mail and Email
In this time of digital advertising, traditional channels are often neglected. However, some of them are still very much viable. Direct mail is definitely a good example of that.
The great thing about direct mail nowadays is that it’s so rare that it’s become special. Business people no longer expect to get delivery or a postcard from other brands. Of course, direct mail allows you to send a more personalized, heart-warming message.
While not as effective as direct mail, email can still prove to be useful for this approach. It won’t be as personalized as direct mail, but it’s much more efficient.
Emails allow you to interact with a potential customer quickly after important events. For example, you can use it to congratulate them on a big merger or to praise their business success. Given that email arrives quickly, while the prospect is still elated, the message will be more powerful.
Webinars
In this time of the pandemic,webinarsand other web events have become the best way of directly connecting to leads.
What’s awesome about webinars is that you don’t have to play according to other people’s rules. Unlike live events, you can create customized experiences that will be optimal for a specific lead. On top of that, you can talk about a certain topic that is more likely to resonate with the prospect.
Social Media
Most companies will not think of social media when talking about closing big customers. But we need to accept that the world has changed and even the biggest entrepreneurs now use these platforms on a daily basis.
While some people might recommend LinkedIn as a way of connecting with a large account, you don’t have to follow this suggestion. The way we do business has changed in the last few decades, becoming much less formal. You can try Instagram, Facebook, or some other social network.
The most important thing is not to be intrusive. Although this approach works really well, it’s much better as a second step. In other words, you should meet the prospect before pitching them on social media. Also, make sure to use the network that the prospects themselves are using as this is where they will feel the most comfortable.
How to Get Started with ABM?
Account-based marketing framework consists of various activities, and it can be very complex. However, its initial implementation is straightforward.
Here are some of the main steps you need to perform to start doing ABM for your brand:
- Start by identifying the best prospects. This is the crucial part of the whole marketing method that you cannot go without. Make sure to focus on their current potential as a customer, as well as long-term viability.
- Perform thorough research. Nowadays, we are all interconnected and it’s relatively easy to analyze big companies and entrepreneurs. There’s a lot of business analysis software that can help you out with this step. Among others, make sure to identify the target account’s pain points.
- The whole method doesn’t work if you’re unable to produce customized campaigns. During this step, you need to utilize all the knowledge you’ve gained during research. This information will help you choose the right channel, but also the message you wish to convey.
- Once you create a campaign and valuable content that will resonate with your key account, you can pitch them. Ideally, you should have the ability to connect directly with them or to talk face-to-face.
- In order to determine how successful your marketing organization was, you will have to analyze the data. Make sure to monitor the process during every step of the way, and create periodic reports that will provide better insights in your marketing effort.
Closing Thoughts
There are so many things you need to consider before creating an account based marketing framework. The very implementation of the process might take some time and money. If you wish to do it in-house, you will need to change a lot of things and shuffle your team. Alternatively, you have to depend on the outside company for your sales.
Nevertheless, this marketing tactic has enormous potential. In fact, it might be the only way of converting certain customers. In order to introduce ABM processes, you might also have to tweak your branding and positioning. If you were previously focusing on mass sales and pitching to numerous small customers, the public perception of your company might have to change. If it’s worth the risk, go for it.