(Advertising) Marketing and sales are critical to achieving sustainable growth and success rates for your business. But traditional B2B marketing and sales channels seem inadequate in today's market.
With so much competition, the B2B landscape requires a deeper level of marketing to identify and target accounts that have the potential to generate a higher return on investment or ROI for your business. These valuable accounts can help take your business to the next level, but getting there requires a skilled account-based marketing strategy.
What is Account Based Marketing?
While traditional B2B marketing targets multiple customers, account-based marketing (ABM) targets corporate decision makers through the coordinated efforts of a B2B company's marketing and sales teams. This strategy allows for a more personalized and personalized approach with prospects or accounts, whether they're already in your portfolio or just a customer you're looking to land.
With account-based marketing, it's important to connect with your targets at every stage of the customer lifecycle, from the very beginning and after they acquire you as a customer.
There are three types of account-based marketing: This includes:
- A one-time transaction includes an account.
- 5-15 accounts targeting multiple marketing campaigns , often in similar industries with similar problems.
- One-to-one marketing works with customers who prioritize according to your strategy.
Operationally, most marketers use an account-based marketing platform to scale their ABM marketing programs. Examples of such platforms include 6sense, Demandbase One, Terminus Engagement Hub and ML Platform.
How ABM works with inbound marketing/content marketing
Marketing and sales teams are tightly focused internally. But consider the opportunity for a collaborative and coordinated effort across each channel to increase conversions while increasing ROI.
First, your sales and marketing teams work together to define your company's ideal buyer persona and decide which accounts to target. This includes current customers and potential account purchases.
Your marketing team creates targeted content marketing campaigns to increase engagement with these 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 takes content personalization a step further to target accounts.
Your team will analyze how well the marketing campaign is working. If the target is small, high-value accounts, it will be easier to measure performance.
Why combine ABM and inbound marketing?
Source: Science
Inbound marketing and ABM used together can help you effectively reach the valuable accounts you want to do business with. Combining these strategies will help you more effectively allocate resources to target these accounts.
If your sales and marketing teams are on different pages, they're focusing on different strategies. They don't see their customers the same way.
But aligning your approaches gives your team a common goal, and you can work together to attract the best accounts that contribute to the ROI of your business.
When you personalize and target the B2B leads that work best for your organization, they're more likely to engage with inbound marketing and start more conversations. Once that happens, your sales team can close the deal with marketing-related offers and messages.
AB advantages
We have covered some of the benefits of ABM. it can help you create a more strategic organization that has a better chance of reaching your priority customers. But there are other advantages to consider.
ABM helps you create and nurture relationships that help you understand your customers.
Understanding your customers will help you optimize your B2B marketing campaigns and help your organization grow. With ABM, you establish and maintain relationships with key customers by building meaningful relationships that make your customers feel valued. You'll learn more about your customers and build credibility as an expert resource who can provide solutions to their problems. This helps you create personalized ABM campaigns while gathering valuable insights for current and prospective customers.
ABM helps differentiate you from your competition.
We live in an age of mass production where new AI tools make content creation easier. At the heart of ABM are personalized and targeted campaigns to show targets that help you understand their specific weaknesses. This makes it easy to believe that your product or service adds value and can serve your organization well in the long run. Happy customers are more likely to tell others about your company, which helps your company grow.
ABM works faster than any other marketing method.
Traditional B2B marketing methods can take a long time to convert customers because you are reaching many companies with a common message. ABM speeds up the decision-making process as you focus on building trust with key contacts early in the sales funnel. Shorten the buyer's journey by delivering account-based marketing content at the right time. Shorter sales funnels save you time and money on resources that add more value to your business.
ABM is a proven marketing strategy with the highest ROI of all B2B marketing strategies.
According to ITSMA Momentum, ABM offers the highest ROI of any B2B marketing solution. And let's face it. Income is the main measure of success. But so is customer satisfaction. The great thing about ABM is that you can target whoever you want by giving them what they want.
ABM facilitates performance evaluation.
When it comes to an ABM strategy, there are some steps to follow. Because you narrow your target down to accounts that are easy to track. You can find out how many accounts are targeted for ABM and determine which tactics work for each customer and what the ROI is.
How to implement an ABM strategy?
Account-based marketing is more complex than traditional marketing strategies. But it is entirely possible. Below are some key ABM strategies that are essential to a successful ABM marketing plan.
Bring your sales and marketing teams together to create an ABM bridge.
For ABM to be effective, your marketing and sales departments need to be on the same page. Have your marketing team introduce sales leads to the latest marketing trends and share the benefits of ABM. Conduct sessions to brainstorm and collaborate on strategies that integrate target marketing strategy with sales activities. And make sure you share some performance goals (the only real accountability). The more aligned your team is, the more successful your ABM strategy will be in helping you achieve your ABM goals.
Source: Business Wire
Decide what your goal is.
Create a framework to help you target the right audience and use the best B2B marketing strategies to reach them. You want to include targeted and relevant messages that add value to those goals.
Develop a holistic approach that empowers your marketing and sales teams.
Ultimately, you want your ABM tactics to pay off at every level. Let your team create feedback that includes reports that highlight account activity and summaries of current and past accounts. This facilitates an integrated view of target accounts and develops more accurate marketing, messaging and execution strategies to track results and optimize sustainable marketing decisions.
You can also categorize these targets by specifying who they are. For example, is it a Fortune 1000 company, a Fortune 500 company, or something else? What is their company size and annual revenue? What products or services have you purchased? Which options are closed and which are open?
This exercise will help you better define your audience and the messages that will resonate with them. Next, get the marketing and sales teams together to come up with a plan.
Facilitate review sessions between executives and sales leadership.
Aim for weekly, bi-weekly or monthly meetings where data and insights will be leveraged and your team will coordinate future initiatives. With powerful feedback, account-specific marketing strategies can accelerate improvements in marketing strategies. Regular meetings between decision makers can help you find better solutions for sustainable results that will have a significant impact on your bottom line.
Top 3 Examples of Account Based Marketing
Below are some great examples of successful account-based marketing.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator uses Genesys
Genesys is a customer development company struggling to acquire new customers due to a mismatch between sales and marketing. They started using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to build a network of prospects, and the results were amazing. Their new customer orders increased by 30%, their cost per customer decreased by 30%. In addition, Sales Navigator was partially responsible for 64% of Genesys' closed 2019 revenue.
A new history of Gumbum creation
GumGum is an AI-powered contextual advertising company using the power of ABM to beat T-Mobile. Using ABM, GumGum began researching its targets to find creative ways to engage its leadership team. They discovered that the CEO of T-Mobile was a Batman fan, 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 capture the attention of the C-Suite and start conversations, ultimately helping them land better customers.
The sauce
Salsify uses an ABM approach that involves a coordinated effort between sales and marketing teams. They have opened a road show in New York with big brands like Johnson & Johnson and Google. Meanwhile, their marketing team reaches their target through various channels and social networks. Then they send emails and ads. After that, the sales team took over. Within two hours, their combined efforts paid off and they closed dozens of accounts and exceeded their conversion goal by 22%.
Account Based Marketing
- ABM starts with identifying valuable targets, understanding their concerns, and focusing your B2B marketing efforts on what matters to them.
- Coordination and collaboration between the marketing and sales teams in your B2B organization is critical to success in account-based marketing.
- ABM achieves the highest ROI of any current marketing strategy.
- ABM requires a more sophisticated approach than other marketing approaches. Some B2B businesses need a professional B2B marketing agency to launch their ABM marketing campaigns.
How the Hearst Bay area can help.
The Hearst Bay area is a leading marketing and advertising company with integrated data-driven marketing solutions. We leverage B2B marketing trends to deliver the results our clients expect and deserve.
Contact our ABM marketing experts to discuss implementing top-notch campaigns to drive growth and increase ROI for your business.