If you’re a B2B marketer, you must be aware of the hype surrounding Account-Based Marketing. The industry thought leaders are touting ABM as the next big thing. SiriusDecisions recently released its State of Account-Based Marketing survey, which stated that 92% of respondents said that account-based marketing is “extremely” or “very” important to their overall marketing efforts.
How ABM works?
The ultimate goal of every B2B marketer is to drive quality leads into their CRM, for which they use different types of lead nurturing programs. This technique works if you are nurturing a single person who is the decision maker, influencer, and/or user. This type of scenario can be found in SMBs but as you move to bigger companies it becomes difficult to approach someone via email or phone. That is where ABM comes in picture. It allows you to target your marketing on account rather than on individual level. This gives you an opportunity to reach other decision makers and influencers within an account. This is important at larger organizations where a decision maker can involve multiple key stakeholders.
There’s no shortage of reasons why ABM is attractive to companies. Some of the benefits of Account-Based Marketing include:
Key steps for implementing Account Based Marketing
Whether you’ve got 100, 1000 or 10,000 target accounts, ABM helps your marketing campaigns perform effectively and boosts your bottom line in the long run.
How ABM works?
The ultimate goal of every B2B marketer is to drive quality leads into their CRM, for which they use different types of lead nurturing programs. This technique works if you are nurturing a single person who is the decision maker, influencer, and/or user. This type of scenario can be found in SMBs but as you move to bigger companies it becomes difficult to approach someone via email or phone. That is where ABM comes in picture. It allows you to target your marketing on account rather than on individual level. This gives you an opportunity to reach other decision makers and influencers within an account. This is important at larger organizations where a decision maker can involve multiple key stakeholders.
There’s no shortage of reasons why ABM is attractive to companies. Some of the benefits of Account-Based Marketing include:
- Better Sales & Marketing Alignment: This is due to the fact that an ABM marketer thinks and works similar to sales – in terms of identifying accounts, driving them into the funnel, and generating revenue from them.
- Easier measurement & tracking of goals: With ABM, you zoom in and see a smaller set of targeted accounts instead of a larger set of metrics that span across your database.
- Increased personalization: It allows you to create integrated campaigns personalized to a few key accounts that have similar needs and characteristics or buyer personas.
- Better ROI: Effective ABM drives better business results. 2014 ITSMA Account-Based Marketing Survey found that “ABM delivers the highest Return on Investment of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic.”
Key steps for implementing Account Based Marketing
- Identify your target accounts: Make use of business intelligence to find out your high-value accounts. Prioritize your accounts on the basis of account size, influence in the market, chances of upsell, etc.
- Identify the critical players in the account: Now when you have prioritized the accounts, it is important to understand its structure and the players within the organization.
- Personalize content: ABM is not a web banner personalized with the prospect’s business name, it is in fact, an effective strategy that delivers personalized content addressing specific business challenges of the target audience.
- Execute targeted campaigns: Once you have the content and messaging ready, you need to make sure that it reaches your target accounts. This can be done manually but marketing automation platforms like Marketo, Pardot, and more, enable marketers to execute ABM campaigns more efficiently and at much greater scale.
- Measure: It is critical to measure and optimize your marketing campaigns to ensure they are effective, and improving results over time.
Whether you’ve got 100, 1000 or 10,000 target accounts, ABM helps your marketing campaigns perform effectively and boosts your bottom line in the long run.
