New trends and hot buzz words reveal themselves every year in the digital marketing world, and this year is no different. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a hot topic in the B2B world.
Why Account-Based Marketing is Essential for your Business
All you have to do is look at the Google search trend to see how popular account-based marketing has become over the last 4-5 years.
Let’s start by defining account-based marketing. ABM is a strategy in which sales and marketing collaborate to provide the ultimate buyer experience for a specific account list. When sales and marketing align their efforts to personalize their content, leverage research, and delight their targeted account base, it produces a higher ROI.
ABM has been around for a long time; however, only very large companies tend to use it. In a nutshell, you are personalizing your efforts to suit your accounts’ needs by creating an integrated marketing approach. You are utilizing online and offline efforts as well as inbound and outbound marketing to create the ultimate buyer journey.
B2B buyers are not just made up of one or two decision-makers. There are multiple teams and departments involved when making a purchase as a company. ABM allows you to concentrate on the team of decision-makers as a whole and create an amazing buyer experience. The result is more qualified leads and opportunities for your business.
When you combine your inbound marketing and ABM, you can lure a larger group of prospects and capture opportunities other tactics might have missed. It also allows repurposing content, gaining a two-for-one value like sharing a case study you might have created for a client on your social or website.
Benefits of ABM
- Align Sales and Marketing
- Gather data to implement for hyper-targeting
- Expand account relationships
- Create maximum value in premium accounts
- Generate Qualified Leads; Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
- Personalize content strategy for an ultimate customer experience
Account-Based Marketing is quickly becoming a “Must Have” with many organizations. When you take an ABM approach to marketing, you become more efficient, allowing businesses to quit wasting money, time, and resources on unqualified opportunities.
Some Quick Account-Based Marketing Stats:
- 92% of B2B marketers cite ABM as extremely important to their overall marketing efforts. ~ Sirius Decisions
- 97% of marketers achieved a higher ROI by incorporating ABM than with any other marketing initiative. ~ Alterra Group
- 171% increase in average annual contract value in B2B companies after implementing an ABM strategy ~ ABM Leadership Alliance
When organizations redirect their efforts to target accounts with extreme precision, it allows buyers to receive relevant, specific, and personalized content to their business at each stage in the buyer journey. Potential buyers are much more likely to engage with businesses when they receive content specific to their needs.
Account-based marketing strengthens the relationship between sales and marketing. By working together, sales and marketing can recognize and pursue target accounts throughout the entire sales cycle with the ultimate goal of landing and growing those accounts. This interaction with customers builds trust, loyalty, and successful relationships with all parties.
How does ABM work?
- Goals: What are your goals for adding new business and expanding existing business?
- Insight: Utilize market research and intelligence to gain knowledge of existing successful and profitable accounts to identify an ideal target account list.
- Target: Identify potential contacts within target accounts and connect and start building relationships.
- Align: Sync up sales and marketing by sharing the goals, insights, and target accounts and start setting metrics to hold each department accountable.
- Create: Generate content that is relevant, timely, and valuable to each individual identified within the target accounts.
- Evaluate: Measure, analyze, and optimize your ABM strategy.
By changing the organization’s mindset to use ABM rather than lead generation, you focus on utilizing multiple tactics to proactively engage with specific individuals and groups. Account-based marketing allows you to use technology, automation, and collaboration to create a winning game plan for both your company and your customers.
In conclusion, demand generation, brand awareness, and funnel-based marketing are still essential in every B2B business. However, digital marketing has allowed for effective analytics and capabilities in target marketing. The goal is not to do away with lead generation tactics but to implement additional methods that best fit your organization and maximize profits, opportunities, and results.
If you would like to learn more about how ABM can improve your bottom line, we offer training and strategy on how to implement account-based marketing into your business. Sign up for a complimentary initial consultation/discovery meeting.
