In the business marketing landscape, strategies are constantly evolving, and one such rising star is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
ABM is a strategic approach that focuses on targeted accounts within a market, deploying personalized campaigns to engage each account based on their specific attributes and needs. ABM transcends mere lead generation, taking a more comprehensive view of marketing, which includes marketing to existing customer accounts to encourage upselling and cross-selling. Mature ABM programs have reported driving more ROI than any other marketing tactic.
Why Choose Account-Based Marketing?
ABM is gaining popularity among B2B companies that target large accounts, such as enterprises or governments. For companies that aim to sell into large accounts with long sales cycles and large deal sizes, ABM offers numerous advantages over other marketing approaches. These benefits include a personalized marketing approach, alignment of sales and marketing, shorter sales cycles, clearer ROI, and fewer wasted resources.
Personalized Marketing Approach
ABM addresses the need for personalized interactions. Instead of casting a wider net, marketers create personalized messaging for target accounts, using knowledge about the individual customer and the buyer from that customer to tailor the creative assets and campaign information to the customer’s specific attributes and needs.
Sales and Marketing Alignment
ABM encourages marketing teams and sales organizations to work together across the buyer journey. This cooperation reigns in resources and reduces friction, making it easier to tie marketing’s impact directly to winning high-value accounts.
Shorter Sales Cycles
Account-based marketing shortens the length of the sales cycle as all prospects are nurtured simultaneously. Companies have reported a 30% reduction in ‘time to opportunity’ after implementing ABM strategies, along with a correlated 8-10% increase in revenue.
Clearer ROI
ABM, due to its targeted approach, is precise and measurable, providing the highest ROI of all B2B marketing tactics.
Fewer Wasted Resources
Time and resources are narrowly focused on a small number of accounts that are most likely to close sales. This, in turn, saves resources and increases efficiency.
The Tactics of Account-Based Marketing
Account based-marketing begins with building an ideal customer profile and then creating meaningful segments to identify marketing programs that can be personalized to those segments on the channels that are most impactful to them. According to Engagio, the top five ABM tactics in use were sales development rep outreach, digital advertising, direct mail, marketing email, and events.
Implementing an ABM Strategy
To get started with account-based marketing, you need to identify your high-value target accounts, research those accounts, segment and prioritize your target account list, develop customized marketing campaigns, and measure your customized marketing campaigns.
Personalization: The Heart of Account-Based Marketing
Website personalization is at the center of your ABM strategy, as it allows you to tailor the creative messaging on a website to each of your target accounts. Personalization requires the right data strategy and tech stack. This necessitates having a tool for intent data and a tool to help you scale your personalization by building the right resources.
In conclusion, Account-Based Marketing is a powerful strategy that can yield high returns for companies. However, it requires careful planning, alignment across teams, and a focus on personalization to be successful. To learn more about ABM and other marketing trends, visit martechtrend.com.