What is Account-based Marketing?
An implemented marketing approach targeting and engaging business key accounts to convert them into customers for the long term as it emphasizes the high-value leads that are more compatible to convert and utilize customize programs and content in order to keep them engaged. This basically navigates marketing and sales resources towards nurturing the specific sets of target audiences and engaging with the key decision-makers within those leads.
ABM helps to achieve faster sales cycles by removing bad leads, which saves marketing and sales teams time and effort. It can also give a higher ROI than your other marketing campaigns by focusing on select high-value targets.
With the advancement of marketing automation and AI, account-based marketing continues to evolve. This has allowed marketers to use ABM techniques at scale and gain a detailed understanding of their ideal customer profile. ABM has become more measurable and inexpensive for organizations as a result of technological advancements.
ABM vs. Inbound
Many B2B marketers are unsure whether they should focus their resources on account-based or inbound marketing. But, before we get into that, let’s look at the fundamental distinctions between these two approaches-
- Audience
Inbound marketing targets a large audience whereas Account-based marketing focuses on specific accounts.
- Success Measurement
The success analysis of both ABM and inbound marketing is done on a different basis where lead quality is what ABM looks for, Inbound marketing run after lead quantity.
- Involvement
Inbound marketing originated within the marketing department but ABM needs alignment across all the departments.
- Message
Inbound run-through content is specific but ABM assists with personalized messaging.
Some marketers assume that one method will work better for their business model than the other, but they can also operate together. You can improve the results of your campaigns by combining the two tactics. You can acquire new leads through inbound marketing and then identify new target accounts for ABM from the pool.
How to run B2B Account-based Marketing?
- Better Targetting
Your prospective market as a B2B company can include a wide range of sectors and business sizes. Even with the strongest segmentation tactics, determining the most promising prospects can be difficult. Account-based marketing eliminates a lot of the risk. You’re marketing to existing clients who trust your capacity to deliver value, and you can create offers that are actually relevant to them. Because the first phase is to identify clients with the greatest potential value, the process begins as soon as you decide to deploy account-based marketing. Perhaps they’ve already made a large buy. Maybe they’ve expressed an interest in forthcoming or new products. Perhaps they’re ardent supporters of your company.
- Greater Brand Consistency
When sales, marketing, and public relations divisions operate independently, the organization risks delivering contradictory signals to customers. Because each of these groups has its own set of objectives, it’s possible that they’ll develop communications to help them achieve their objectives while ignoring the objectives of other departments.
Everyone is working toward the same goal with account-based marketing, resulting in a more consistent brand position. Customers want firms that sell to them to provide a frictionless experience. This does not occur, for example, when a sales team promotes low pricing while a marketing team promotes extra value. Everyone is on the same page in an account-based marketing paradigm. They may approach the account with different offerings, but because they’re all part of a larger plan—and attempting to achieve the same goal—more there’s consistency than if the teams worked individually.
- Higher Return on Investment (ROI)
Your customer base may be smaller than a B2C company’s, but that just adds to the value of each customer to your bottom line. Nonetheless, some clients bring in more money than others. By using an account-based marketing strategy, you may focus more resources on the consumers who are most likely to buy, resulting in a higher return on investment.
For one thing, marketing to an existing customer is much less expensive than attracting and converting a new one. Every sale to an existing customer generates a higher profit margin. Furthermore, because the customers selected for an ABM model are already among your most profitable, each strategy is designed to upsell or cross-sell based on previous transactions. This isn’t to say that account-based marketing is inexpensive, but it does indicate that the potential return is greater.
- Greater Efficiency
Traditional marketing campaigns can take a lot of work for little reward, regardless of how much cash they create. Response rates might be persistently low, and salespeople spend a lot of time vetting leads or selling to one-time consumers. With account-based marketing, this isn’t the case. Even if every message doesn’t result in a sale, you can rest assured that your message is getting through and will pay off later. In an ABM strategy, every marketing tactic will produce superior outcomes. Because phone calls are sent to people with whom your organization already has a relationship, they are never cold calls. Emails and direct mail aren’t generic messages because they’re tailored to a small number of recipients and their specific demands. Account-based marketing requires less guesswork, which means less time and effort is spent.
- Competitive Advantage
Because account-based marketing necessitates thorough consumer research, teams arrive at every encounter well-versed in the industry. Customers want firms to approach them with increasingly tailored offers in today’s competitive market. This means that a company that uses account-based marketing will send out more relevant communications, giving them a competitive advantage. When you choose a company for your account-based marketing plan, you commit to communicating with them on a regular basis via the channels and methods they prefer. In essence, you’re committing to a relationship with the account, creating a degree of intimacy that traditional marketing can’t match. Your competition will struggle to grab your customers’ attention once you deploy an ABM strategy.
