What is account based marketing(ABM)?
A business marketing method known as account based marketing, or ABM, focuses a company’s marketing efforts and resources on a specific group of target accounts within a market.
It does this by employing tailored marketing campaigns meant to engage each account by tailoring the marketing message to each account’s particular characteristics and requirements.
In addition to focusing on the production of leads, ABM considers marketing from a more comprehensive perspective.
One of the keys to extracting the maximum value from your largest accounts is to market to your existing client accounts to stimulate upselling and cross-selling of products and services.
The advantages of marketing based on specific accounts
Using account-based marketing as a strategy by B2B enterprises whose customers are larger businesses is becoming increasingly common.
ABM offers many benefits over other marketing tactics for businesses attempting to sell into huge accounts with extended sales cycles and large deal sizes. These benefits include the following.
Personalized marketing:
Instead of a generic approach, marketers generate individualized messaging for the accounts they target. Using the information they have gathered about their client, they adjust the creative assets of their campaign to the specific characteristics and requirements.
Sales & marketing alignment
Account-based marketing is a strategy that encourages marketing teams and sales organizations to collaborate on several fronts, including the identification of target accounts, the creation of tailored marketing campaigns for those accounts, and the coordination of efforts to align and advance individual accounts through the sales pipeline, both before and after the lead conversion.
Shorter sales cycles
When it comes to major purchases, there are always numerous parties involved.
Because of this, the regular pace of the sales process is slowed down because it begins at a lower level within the business and gradually makes its way towards the principal decision-maker.
Because all prospects will be nurtured simultaneously in account-based marketing, the length of the marketing cycle can be cut significantly.
Better return on investments (ROI)
Because it is targeted and measurable, account-based marketing yields the highest return on investment (ROI) of all the B2B marketing strategies.
Account-based marketing is regarded as providing more significant returns than any other marketing method, according to the opinions of 85 per cent of marketers who measure ROI.
Less squandered or wasted resources
Time and resources are concentrated on a minimal number of accounts with the most significant potential to result in closed deals.
Because of this, resources that would have been wasted in the past are made available.
Examples of account-based marketing include:
Account-based marketing starts with creating relevant segments, followed by identifying marketing programs that can be customized for those segments on channels that are most impactful to those segments (events, website, email).
The strategy of every organization will utilize its unique combination of several techniques.
Your strategy for targeting a given account will be determined by the specific characteristics of that account, the meaningful segments that may be applied to that account, and the marketing channels pertinent to that account.
The target segments of your organization’s customers that you decide to Centre ABM programs on will be the ones with the most significant potential to increase the value of your business.
The following are some examples taken from real-world situations that can be used by B2B marketers when developing account-based marketing programs:
Events
The opportunity for sales teams to convince decision-makers in person has historically been among the most fruitful possibilities.
When it comes to events, an ABM strategy may involve personalized invites sent to key prospects from target accounts, exclusive VIP dinners, personalized gifts and swag for target accounts, and personalized follow-up after the event.
Webinars
Webinars, just like events, can be tailored to the needs of a particular target account to make them more timely and relevant.
Both the events themselves and the follow-up that comes after them may be customized for each business, and one-of-a-kind content can be developed for webinars by keeping the audience in mind.
Direct mail
Direct mail is becoming an increasingly common means of reaching prospects within an organization at a time when virtually everyone is inundated with an excessive amount of email.
Because ABM is more targeted, gifts and direct mail marketing might have a higher value due to the significantly increased income potential.
Email campaigns
Email is still a valuable marketing medium for account-based marketing (ABM), despite the growing popularity of direct mail.
On the other hand, account-based marketing requires creating personalized email messages for each client, firm and individual, in contrast to volume-based marketing, which may use pre-made templates and marketing automation.
Paid advertisements
PPC and paid advertisements on social media platforms are widespread methods used on the web to communicate with specific users or accounts.
You can target specific companies and personas on social platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Furthermore, with the help of technology such as IP targeting and retargeting, your display campaigns can be tailored to focus on a handful of targeted accounts rather than casting a wide net to catch as many potential customers as possible.
Web personalization
Driving visitors to a website with targeted search engine optimization and inbound marketing campaigns is just the beginning of account-based marketing efforts on the web.
Once visitors reach the website, website personalization technology can be utilized to produce an experience that is more personalized and account-specific for target prospects than the experience provided by the general website.
Account-based marketing: how to put it into practice
The following is an account-based marketing setup tutorial broken down into easy-to-follow steps.
- Step 1: Identifying your high-value target accounts is the first step. These essential accounts can contribute the most to your company’s revenue. Therefore it’s crucial to maintain good relationships with them.
- Step 2: Carry out research investigations into such accounts. Obtain a good overview of their customer’s needs and problem issues, as well as the stage in their customer journey they are now at.
- Step 3: Construct Individualized Public Relations Campaigns. Create creative assets that will resonate with the target account by using the knowledge you gained during the research process to drive your strategy for approaching the account.
- Step 4: Carry out the individualized advertising campaigns you’ve created. Start sending your campaigns to the account you’ve chosen to focus on.
- Step 5: Measure each of your tailored marketing initiatives. Analyze the data to see how successful your campaigns are.
Personalization and marketing based on individual accounts
Personalizing your website allows you to adapt the content, including the creative and the messaging, to each of your target accounts, making it an essential component of an ABM strategy.
Customization of the experience that site visitors receive once they have arrived at your website is possible thanks to website personalization. This is analogous to how off-site marketing activities are customized to each account.
Web personalization for ABM is accomplished by identifying anonymous site users through firmographic data, which often originates from a reverse IP lookup, and through first-party or third-party data. These three sources of data are used.
After the visitor’s firm has been recognized, it can be cross-referenced against your target account list to deliver a more tailored and individualized experience on your website.
Various aspects of a website, such as messaging, pictures, calls-to-action, and social proof, may be customized using account-based personalization.
