What is account-based marketing?
Account-based marketing is a powerful B2B marketing strategy for high-value customer accounts. The idea behind ABM is to focus on each account as a “market of one.” This means that the marketing approach is individualized.
Rather than marketing to a broad number of people or organizations, ABM targets a few high-value accounts—and their decision-makers—with a personalized approach to exactly fit their needs and requirements.
This highly targeted strategy requires collaboration and alignment of efforts between the sales and marketing teams. The motivation? High revenues in a short time frame.
There are three types of ABM initiatives
Strategic ABM
Strategic account-based marketing is executed one-to-one, typically for highly strategic accounts. It relies heavily on customized efforts that demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the target account.
Lite ABM
Lite account-based marketing draws inspiration from the strategic approach and adapts it for larger target audiences made up of groups of accounts. It typically brings together groups of 5-15 accounts with similar business issues.
Programmatic ABM
Programmatic account-based marketing is a one-to-many approach that emphasizes personalization at scale. Usually, it goes hand in hand with horizontal or vertical segment of several hundred (or more) curated accounts. Technology needs to be part of the equation to achieve this level of scale.
How to create an effective ABM strategy
Regardless of the type of ABM approach you choose, you must first align your sales and marketing team efforts to co-develop your strategy. By collaborating, both teams will be able to engage with prospects more effectively and deliver better results.
1. Identify
As account-based marketing focuses on the accounts that will generate the most returns, you need to start by identifying exactly which accounts to target and why. You must also identify the decision-makers, map their customer journey, and gain an in-depth understanding of their needs, wants and pains. The more intel you have, the more effective your strategy will be.
2. Structure
Define your goals. Determine the best channels to communicate with your targets. Outline what you want to communicate, to whom, how and when. From this, develop your strategy, build your tactical plan and create your different campaigns.
Captivate
Kick off your ABM campaigns with a bang. Make sure your first interaction captures your target’s attention and hits the right nerve. Align all your actions, messages and content around it.
Influence
Create valuable content that hits that same nerve. The more personal, the better. Ideally, you want to create once-off content aligned with your target’s needs, wants, or pains. Drive continuous interest through personalized messages and advertising.
Convert
Inspire trust. Build tailored sales tools that demonstrate your understanding of their reality and how you can concretely meet their needs. Personalize your proposals to highlight your uniqueness and value proposition.
Inspire
Stay in the game. Identify unmet needs and personalize your interactions around them. Be relevant. Position your company as a trusted advisor and partner providing useful information and guidance.
3. Execute
It’s one thing to create an ABM strategy, but it’s entirely another thing to execute that strategy. To work, sales and marketing need to collaborate. Put together a playbook that defines the roles and responsibilities of each team member and organize weekly meetings to instil individual accountability.
What makes account-based marketing so compelling?
Here are the key reasons why account-based marketing is so effective. It:
- Aligns marketing and sales
One of the biggest benefits of ABM is that it aligns your marketing and sales efforts. By making these teams collaborate, you maximize the efficiency of your resources.
- Streamlines sales cycles
ABM enables you to target high-potential accounts even before they engage with sales. By influencing decision-makers early, ABM can shorten your sales cycles and improve conversions.
- Generates a higher ROI
ABM provides the highest ROI among B2B marketing strategies. You can accelerate your growth by targeting accounts with the greatest potential for high-value conversions.
What are the common barriers to account-based marketing success?
While it takes a concerted effort and up-front work to launch an ABM strategy, success is within reach for every B2B organization. So why do some companies struggle?
Failure to identify the right accounts
It’s a given that if your marketing and sales don’t agree on the target accounts, your strategy will fail. The success of any ABM strategy relies on the combined efforts of sales and marketing.
Lack of meaningful data
If your sales and marketing teams cannot identify your targets’ needs, wants, and pains, there is no point in launching an ABM strategy.
Unrealistic expectations
If you hope your ABM strategy will transform your buying cycle and boost your revenues overnight, you’ll be disappointed. Set realistic goals.
ABM in action!
These are perfect examples of ABM strategies and campaigns.
The cake campaign
Challenges
Difficulty in securing meetings with senior executives of software companies.
Concept
Deliver a cake with a missing slice to the senior executives to highlight what the competition was offering. Fifteen minutes later, deliver a second complete cake to communicate our competitive advantage.
Results
Seven out of eight callbacks, securing a meeting on the same day as the campaign kicked off.
Cement-free blocs
Challenges
Encourage engineers and architects to specify products made with CarbiCrete’s technology.
Objective
Book lunch and learns.
Concept
Send a personalized promotional package by courier to a targeted list of engineers and architects, driving them to a landing page where they were invited to book a discovery lunch and learn. The strategy also included the delivery of a real cement-free CMU and unique sales tools communicating the detrimental environmental consequences of cement.
Results
Over 20 % of the promotional package sent converted into lunch and learns.
Unlock your competitive edge
Traditionally, marketing focuses on inbound strategies, casting a wide net and hoping that people respond. With account-based marketing, the key is to captivate, influence, convert, and inspire specific high-value accounts to generate a higher return on investment (ROI).
At eau3, we can help you build an ABM strategy and create campaigns that drive results. Whether you are just starting out or are an established company, the power of ABM can help you stand out and drive growth for years to come.
