(Advertising) Marketing and sales are critical to the sustainable growth and success of your business. But traditional B2B marketing and sales channels alone may not be enough in today's market.
In such a competitive B2B landscape, it requires in-depth marketing coverage that identifies and targets accounts that provide the highest return on investment, or ROI, for your business. These high-quality accounts can help take your business to the next level, but getting there requires a smart account-based marketing strategy.
What is account-based marketing?
While traditional B2B marketing targets multiple customers, account-based marketing (ABM) targets the company's decision makers through a coordinated effort between a B2B company's marketing and sales teams. This strategy allows for a more personal and personal approach with prospects or customers, whether they are in your portfolio or those you see as customers you are trying to attract.
With account-based marketing, connecting with your goals is just as important at any stage of the customer lifecycle as it is when you first acquire a lead.
There are three types of account based marketing. with others.
- Includes a one-to-one transaction account.
- One-to-one marketing targets 5-15 customers, often in similar industries with similar problems.
- One-to-one marketing works with priority customers based on your strategy.
In practice, most marketers use an account-based marketing platform to help scale ABM marketing programs. Examples of these platforms include 6sense, Demandbase One, Terminus Engagement Hub and ML Platform.
How ABM works with inbound marketing/content marketing
Marketing and sales teams are often narrow-minded in their circles. But imagine the potential for more conversions through coordinated and holistic efforts in each channel, while simultaneously increasing ROI.
First, your sales and marketing teams work together to identify your company's ideal buyer persona and target accounts. This includes current customers and potential account purchases.
Your marketing team creates targeted content marketing campaigns to increase engagement with those accounts. Account-based marketing content can be shared and published across multiple channels, including your website, virtual events, email marketing campaigns, YouTube, video ads, white papers, social media, webinars, and more.
ABM goes a step further to personalize content for the accounts you've identified to target.
Next, your teams will analyze the marketing campaign's performance. When you target a small number of high-value accounts, it's easier to measure performance.
Why combine ABM and inbound marketing?
Source: Science
When combined, inbound marketing and ABM help you more effectively reach the high-value customers you need to do business with. By combining these strategies, you can effectively allocate your resources to target these accounts.
When your sales and marketing teams are on different pages, they focus on different strategies. They don't see their customers the same way.
But by combining approaches, your team can align with the same goals and work together to find better customers who prioritize ROI for your business.
When you personalize and target B2B customers who are the best fit for your business, you're more likely to engage with inbound marketing and start conversations. Once done, your sales team can close the deal with offers and messages related to the transaction on the table first.
Advantages of ABM
We've already touched on some of the benefits of ABM: It helps you create a more strategically aligned organization to reach the most important customers. But here are some other benefits to consider:
ABM helps you build and maintain relationships that help you understand your customers.
When you understand your customers, you can improve your B2B marketing campaigns and generate business growth. With ABM, you build and maintain relationships with customers by building meaningful relationships that make your customers feel valued. You learn more about your customers and build trust by turning them into a source of knowledge that can provide solutions to their problems. This helps you create more personalized ABM campaigns for your current and future customers, while gathering valuable information and valuable insights about them.
ABM helps you differentiate yourself from your competitors.
We live in an era of mass production where new AI tools make content creation simple yet efficient. At the heart of ABM are personalized and targeted campaigns that can show potential targets that understand their specific pain points. This makes it easier to convince them that your product or service can add value and serve your business in the long run. Happy customers are more likely to tell others about your business, which leads to growth.
ABM works faster than other marketing strategies.
Traditional B2B marketing methods can take longer to secure customer conversions because you're targeting businesses with a broader overall message. ABM accelerates the decision-making process by focusing on building trust with key contacts earlier in the sales funnel. Shorten the buyer's journey as you deliver account-based marketing content at the right time. A shorter sales pipeline means saving time and money-consuming resources, which adds value to your business.
ABM is a proven marketing strategy with the highest ROI of all B2B marketing strategies.
According to Momentum ITSMA, ABM offers the highest return on investment of any B2B marketing solution. And let's face it; Income is the most important measure of success. But also customer satisfaction. The advantage of ABM is that it targets the people who want it while providing them with exactly what they need.
ABM makes it easy to measure performance.
When it comes to ABM strategies, there are a few metrics to track. That's because you pay more attention to accounts that are easy to track. You can decide how many accounts to target with ABM, then determine which methods worked for each client and what the return on investment was.
How to implement an ABM strategy
Account-based marketing is more sophisticated than traditional marketing strategies. But it is completely doable. Here are the basic ABM strategies that are essential to any successful ABM marketing plan.
Integrate your sales and marketing teams to form an ABM bridge.
For ABM to be effective, your marketing and sales teams need to be aligned. Have your marketing team guide sales managers on the latest marketing trends and share the benefits of ABM. Brainstorm and collaborate on strategies that align targeted marketing strategies with sales activity. And make sure you share some performance targets (the only real accountability). The more coordinated your team is, the more successful your ABM strategies will be in helping you achieve your ABM goals.
Source: Business Wire
Decide what your goals are.
Have a framework to help you target the right audiences and use the best B2B marketing strategies to reach them. You want to include targeted and relevant messages that add value to those goals.
Implement a holistic approach that empowers your marketing and sales teams.
Most importantly, you want your ABM methods to deliver results at every level. Enable your teams to create a feedback loop that shares reports highlighting account activity and summaries of current and past accounts. This encourages an integrated approach to targeting customers and enables better optimization of better defined marketing, messaging and fulfillment strategies to track results and more sustainable marketing solutions.
You can also qualify these goals by clearly defining who they are. For example, is it a Fortune 1000 company, a Fortune 500 company, or something else? How big is your business and what is your annual profit? What products or services have you purchased before? Which options are closed and which are open?
This exercise will help you clearly define your audience and the messages that resonate with them. Next, get the marketing and sales teams together to come up with a plan.
Encourage review sessions between executives and sales leadership.
Aim for weekly, bi-weekly or monthly meetings and coordinate future initiatives for your teams that will use the data and information collected. Because of the strong feedback loop, account-based marketing methods can accelerate improvements in your marketing strategies. Regular follow-up sessions between decision makers will help you find the best solutions for your sustainable results, which will have a significant impact on your bottom line.
3 best examples of account-based marketing
Here are some great examples of math-based marketing that have worked.
Genesys uses LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Genesys is a customer experience solutions company struggling to win new customers due to poor sales and marketing. They started using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to build a lead pipeline and the results were amazing. New customer registrations increased by 30% and cost per customer decreased by 30%. Additionally, Sales Navigator was responsible for at least 64% of Genesis' closed sales in 2019.
The origin story of Gummy
Google is an ABM powerhouse taking on T-Mobile, an ABM-based contextual advertising company. With the help of ABM, Gumgum began exploring its goals to find creative ways to engage its leadership team. They discovered that the CEO of T-Mobile was a fan of Batman, so they created a comic called T-Man and the Gums. By distributing 100 copies of the book to T-Mobile agencies, they were able to get the attention of the C-Suite and start the conversations that ultimately helped them land their best customers.
Salsaif
Salsify used an ABM approach that involved coordinated efforts between sales and marketing teams. They toured New York with big brands like Johnson & Johnson and Google. Meanwhile, the marketing team communicated with its targets through multiple channels and social media. This was followed by emails and advertisements. Then their sales team took over. Their combined efforts paid off as they closed dozens of accounts within two hours and exceeded their conversion goal by 22%.
Account Based Marketing: The Keys
- ABM starts with identifying high-value targets, understanding their pain points, and aligning your B2B marketing efforts with them.
- Cooperation and collaboration between the marketing and sales teams in your B2B organization is critical to the success of account-based marketing.
- ABM has the highest returns of any marketing strategy today.
- ABM requires a more sophisticated approach than other marketing approaches. Some B2B companies require the skills of a professional B2B marketing agency to help them launch their ABM marketing campaign.
How the Hearst Bay Region can help.
Hearst is the Bay Area's leading full-service marketing and advertising company with integrated, data-driven marketing solutions. We use innovative B2B marketing trends to deliver the results our clients expect and deserve.
Contact our ABM marketing experts to discuss implementing a world-class campaign to drive your business growth and increase ROI.
