What is Account Based Marketing?

What is account-based marketing (ABM)?

Account based marketing (ABM) is a marketing strategy executed digitally or as a combination of BTL(Below the Line) Marketing and digital. It focuses resources on a set of predetermined target accounts within an addressable market.

Very often, ABM campaign utilize a personalized approach designed to engage each account, dynamically adapting the marketing message on the specific attributes and needs of the account as well as the exposure or recorded touchpoints of each account. ABM incorporates an integrated approach to marketing. It goes beyond just lead generation. Marketing intelligently to existing customer accounts to encourage upselling and cross-selling is one of the keys to getting the most value from your larger accounts.

The benefits of account-based marketing

Account-based marketing has grown in popularity especially for B2B companies that target larger accounts. For longer sales cycles, account-based provides a number of benefits and advantages that other marketing approaches lack.

Personalized marketing or Hyper-Personalization

Instead of a generic approach, marketers create personalized messaging for target accounts, taking what they know about their customer and tailor the creative assets of their campaign to the customer’s specific attributes and needs.

This personalization can extend to advertising campaigns where prospects or accounts can be addressed directly by their first or last name, company name and also are dynamically shown content that is relevant to their job title and how it could benefit them personally in their career progression as well as how it could help their company progress.

Sales & marketing alignment

Account-based marketing is the great uniter of sales and marketing teams. It allows both teams to understand and agree on the same metrics for success. Sales cares less about the quality of the leads as every account in the campaign has been predetermined and approved. Marketing then simply need to pull the trigger on campaigns that prime the lead for that initial outreach from an SDR. Shorter sales cycles Major purchase decisions involve multiple stakeholders. This typically slows down the sales process, because it starts at a influencer level or shadow persona in the organization and moves slowly towards the primary decision maker from what was initially a lower-level employee with limited capacity to make a buying decision. In account-based marketing, the length of the cycle is shortened as all prospects are nurtured simultaneously and primarily the highest level decision makers are targeted.

Clearer ROI

Account-based marketing is precise and measurable, providing the highest ROI of all B2B marketing tactics. 85% of marketers who measure ROI describe account-based marketing as delivering higher returns than any other marketing approach.

Optimized Resources

Fewer wasted resources both in terms of time, content and adspend as there is a strong focus on a specific set of account and their strategic nurturing with a sales-aligned goal of winning the client. This frees up resources that would previously have been wasted on less-than-capable decision makers, unnecessary testing of content and adspend.

Account-based marketing examples:

Account based-marketing begins with creating meaningful segments and then identifying marketing programs that can be personalized to those segments on the channels that are most impactful to them (events, website, email). Each company’s strategy will employ its own particular mix of tactics. Your approach to targeting a specific account will depend on the particular attributes of that account, meaningful segments for that account and its relevant marketing channels. The target segments you choose to ABM programs around will be the ones that can add the most value to your organization. Below are some real-world examples of how B2B marketers can use to develop account-based marketing programs:

Events In-person events have always been one of the most successful opportunities for sales teams to persuade decision makers. An ABM approach to events can include personalized invitations to key prospects from target accounts, special VIP dinners, personalized gifts and swag for target accounts, and personalized follow-up after the event. A digital overlay with a highly impactful and valuable drip campaign or email sequence will act as an anti-follow up mechanism to keep your product or service top of mind as they move from the consideration phase to the decision phase of the sales process.

Webinars

Similar to events, webinars can be customized to be relevant and timely for a specific target account. Webinar events and follow-up can be tailored for specific companies, and unique webinar content can be created with the target audience in mind.

Direct mail

In an age where everyone is overloaded with email, direct mail has increasingly become a popular method of reaching prospects within a company. Since ABM is more targeted, gifts and marketing sent through direct mail can be higher value since the revenue potential is much higher.

Email campaigns

Even with the popularity of direct mail, email is still a valuable marketing channel for ABM. Whereas a volume-based marketing approach might use templates and marketing automation, account based marketing involves crafting tailored email messages for each company and individual.

Paid advertising

PPC and paid social media ads are a common way of reaching out to target accounts on the web. Social platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to target specific companies and personas, and using technology such as IP targeting and retargeting, your display campaigns can be tailored to focus on a handful of target accounts rather than casting a wide net.

Web personalization

ABM campaigns on the web don't end with driving traffic through personalized SEM and inbound marketing campaigns. Once visitors reach the website, website personalization technology can be used to create a tailored, account-specific experience for target prospects vs the generic website experience. ** Data Feeds**

Likely the most important aspect of Account-based marketing is the target account data. Once an ICP(Ideal customer profile) is accurately defined, a Sales Intelligence tool like Apollo can be utilized to source all the necessary data of the target audience including LinkedIn Profiles.

How to implement account-based marketing

Below is a step-by-step guide to setting up account-based marketing.

Step 1: Identify your high-value target accounts These are the key accounts that have the potential to contribute the most to the revenue of your company.

Step 2: Conduct research on those accounts Get a good snapshot of their customer needs and pain points, as well as where they are in their customer journey.

Step 3: Develop customized marketing campaigns Using information you learned in the research phase to inform your strategy, develop creative assets that will resonate with the target account.

Step 4: Run your customized marketing campaigns Launch your campaigns to the target account.

Step 5: Measure your customized marketing campaigns Analyze the data to see how your campaigns are performing.

Account-based marketing and personalization Website personalization is an important part of ABM strategy, as it allows you to tailor the creative and messaging on a website to each of your target accounts. In the same way that offsite marketing efforts are personalized for each account, the experience that visitors have once they land on your site can be tailored through website personalization. Web personalization for ABM is done by using firmographic data that typically comes through reverse IP lookup or through first-party or third-party data to identify anonymous visitors that come to your site. Once the company of the visitor has been identified, they can be matched against your target account list to provide a personalized web experience.

There are many components of a website that can be tailored through account-based personalization, including messaging, images, calls-to-action and social proof. An ABM Strategy is one of the most effective weapons in your B2B arsenal