What is ABM and exactly why is it so important to B2B organizations? Now you can find answers to the most burning questions and get up to speed with this article, How Businesses Capture 200% More Revenue Fishing with a Spear Than a Net.

 

Account-based marketing (ABM) is not a new concept. Previously, it’s been called niche marketing, key account marketing and, regardless of what it’s been called, the idea behind it has been my choice of business strategy for all my clients in the past 3 decades of B2B marketing: identifying their target audiences and segmenting them, then developing programs and messaging that resonates with them.

The analogy often used with ABM is, it’s spear fishing as opposed to trawling with a large net.

Instead of marketing to the masses and hoping that something sticks, or targeting individuals based on a broad set of criteria, the ABM methodology helps you better identify which companies match your ideal customer profile and then you market directly to the key decision makers at those companies.

Despite the fact ABM is about being more selective, and some would think missed opportunities would impact organizations negatively, many companies are finding success. It’s the significant ROI of ABM programs plus evolving sales and marketing technology that’s causing the recent interest and use of this business strategy. 

So, let’s go deeper on how to make ABM work for your business.

 

What is an account-based marketing strategy?

“Account-based marketing is a focused approach to B2B marketing in which marketing and sales teams work together to target best-fit accounts and turn them into customers.”

–Marketo.

 

To reach their goals, many companies seeking high-value customers often find that the highly focused ABM strategy serves them better than casting a broad net.

The ABM strategy has sales, business development, operations and marketing teams collaborate to provide the ultimate buyer experience for a specific account list. When your teams align their efforts to personalize their content, leverage research, and delight their targeted account base, it produces a higher close rate and ROI.

With the approach of well-integrated, multi-disciplinary teams, ABM is more extensive than just “marketing.”

The ABM approach is known to boost revenue, optimize your efforts, and provide in-depth metrics that would be otherwise inaccessible

ABM has three essential elements that you can adopt to improve sales growth for your business:

Identify: your ideal customer.

Marketing: engage the ideal customer in high-value, active dialogue.

Measure: track effectiveness via in-depth metrics and KPIs for the different levels of your organization.

 

What problems does ABM solve?

The problems that a successful ABM initiative can solve include:

1.   Wasting time, and money.ABM allows sales and marketing to focus their resources more efficiently with programs that are specifically designed for targeted accounts with precision.
2.   Marketing and sales teams at odds. ABM aligns your company; business development, sales, marketing, operations, and IT. Company-wide objectives, ideal client selection, budgets, technology stacks are adopted by all stakeholders. The ‘conversation’ about MQLs and SQLs don’t happen as often because the qualified leads are pre-determined, and everyone is aligned with laser focus, working toward bringing the same prospects to the table to close the deal.
3.   Unsure about program effectiveness. The success of ABM initiatives is never in doubt. All campaigns are easily analyzed for effectiveness against KPIs as you’re measuring a fewer number of prospects across channels like social media, emails, ads, and possibly events. You’re tracking metrics that can be more detailed to deliver insights that are almost impossible to track with non-targeted prospects. With ABM you measure, learn, adjust, and improve campaigns and results in a continual loop.
4.   Weak or no engagement with marketing materials. As account-based marketing is so personalized and relevant to your ideal client, they are more likely to engage with your content. Developing content specific to personas/avatars, their business problem you solve and their stage in the customer value journey is a high-value way to ensure engagement. The ABM process gives you a better understanding of your customers and messaging is highly tailored to resonate. You can also better frame your solutions to alleviate the problems they face.
5.   Showing ROI on marketing initiatives. Account-based marketing prioritizes ROI and clearly shows results. In fact, compared to other marketing initiatives, the 2014 ITSMA Account-Based Marketing Survey found that “ABM delivers the highest return on investment of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic.”

Account-based marketing strengthens the relationship between sales and marketing, and between all stakeholders.

By working together, everyone recognizes and pursues target accounts throughout the entire sales cycle with the ultimate goal of landing and growing those accounts. Plus, the personalized interaction with customers builds trust, loyalty, and successful relationships.

How does ABM work?

 This example above of an ABM process is our very own 7 Step BetterProspecting™ process, which are:

1. Account selection: use market research and intelligence to identify ideal customer accounts.
2. Account Insight. Learn their business needs.
3. Identify Entry Point: know the key contacts and develop personas.
4. Personalized messaging. Create content based on insights for personalized and relevant messaging.
5. Focused outreach. Contact the decision-makers that matter and build relationships.
6. Sustained contact: implement a multi-channel marketing initiative as part of a customer value journey designed for the ideal client.
7. Measure progress. Evaluate metrics to improve and optimize efficacy of the program.

It’s important to note that several of these steps happen non-consecutively and that there is a continuous feedback loop for all stakeholders’ insights that affect optimization of the process.

Why is account-based marketing important?

Account-based marketing creates a win-win for both your company and your ideal customers. When you take an ABM approach to sales and marketing, you become more efficient, and stop wasting money, time, and resources on unqualified opportunities.

ABM is quickly becoming a “must have” with many organizations. This Google search trend diagram below shows how popular account-based marketing has become over the last 4-5 years.

The increased growth is because the benefits of ABM are myriad. ABM:

• Aligns sales and marketing
• Empowers businesses to hyper target accounts
• Expands those account relationships
• Creates maximum value in premium accounts
• Generates more qualified leads; both MQLs and SQLs
• Controls costs and resources
• Informs the personalized content strategy to deliver an ultimate customer experience
• Shortens sales-cycles
• Increases close rates and ROI

Here are just a few statistics to support the claims:

• Companies using ABM generate 200% more revenue for their marketing efforts. ~ FlipMyFunnel
• 85% of marketers who use ABM have higher returns than any other marketing approach they use, with 50% marketers reporting ‘significantly higher’ ROI. ~ ITSMA
• Companies with aligned sales and marketing teams on average generate 208% more revenue for their marketing efforts. ~ MarketingProfs
• Research also shows that companies are 67% better at closing deals when their sales and marketing teams are synced. ~ Salesforce/Marketo
• 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
• Over 96% of B2B marketers leveraging ABM report a positive impact on marketing’s success. ~ DEMANDBASE
• ABM reduces up to 50% of wasted sales time on unproductive leads. ~ Marketo
• More than 90 percent of B2B marketers acknowledge account-based marketing as either important or very important. ~ Sirius Decisions

These results are why ABM has many supporters, and even though there are promising signs for many companies, it’s still important to follow the correct steps, test and optimize your campaigns, and ensure all stakeholders are aligned and share a common goal.

“ABM works for your business, when your business consistently works ABM.”

Murray Vince, Ideovee

Who should use account-based marketing?

• You should consider ABM if:
• You are a business-to-business (B2B) sales organization.
• You are selling high-ticket products or services.
• You are selling to a high value, limited scale marketplace – fewer than 100 prospect accounts for example.
• Your sales team has a high value-per-deal ratio.

I also suggest considering ABM if you want the benefits listed in the previous section.

Who has been successful with ABM?

We get asked this question often, and rightly so, considering that implementing ABM requires a company-wide commitment to implement an effective program.

 Here are several companies that have successfully implemented ABM programs:

Thomason Reuters – Used 9 ABM tactics to achieve a 95% win.

PayScale – Increased target account traffic by 500% with ABM.

VersionOne — Driving 2x more sales opportunities with ABM (An early adopter of ABM)

DocuSign — Boosting sales pipeline by 22% with ABM.

You will find more examples here: https://bit.ly/3KYmAEX

 

I do hope you’ve found this article enlightening and that I’ve answered most of your burning questions about ABM. Or, at the very least, made you want to find your spear gun and snorkel!

Betty Ledgerwood is Principal of Light Switch Marketing Inc. offering marketing consulting, ABM services, fractional CMO services, and the PR Illuminator program.

Thank you to my sources: FlipMyFunnel, MarketingProfs, Salesforce, Sirius Decisions, Grow Digitally, Marketo, Demandbase, Alterra Group, The ABM Leadership Alliance, ITSMA, and @MurrayVince, Ideovee Business Solutions.