Are you investing in marketing and sales resources to sell a product to a customer who will leave within a short time? Concerned about how to find the right message across to the right personas? And how to find a better way to align marketing and sales goals? If any of these challenges sound similar to you, account-based marketing (ABM) is an effective way to overcome these challenges.
Getting as many insights about your customers, using this information to address their challenges and creating personalized content campaigns to manage their pain points are some simple strategies involved in an ABM programme.
Nowadays, ABM is rapidly being adopted by B2B businesses to step towards getting better ROI on their sales and marketing efforts. Around 84% of B2B marketers said that ABM helped them keep expanding their existing client relationships. According to an ABM benchmark study, a quarter of marketing budgets are dedicated to ABM programs.
After seeing the above stats, we can say that ABM works if done correctly. This article is all about this only. Here, we will show you how an ABM is an effective strategy for your B2B business.
What is Account-based marketing (ABM)?
Account-based marketing is a program where sales and marketing teams work together to target best fit accounts and turn them into customers. In the age of information abundance where every marketer is fighting for the attention of their potential customers, B2B companies have to focus on the highest possible ROI to place their attention on high-value accounts, keeping account penetration and marketing penetration.
To do this, they have to employ strategies that meld the expertise of marketing and sales teams in locating, engaging and closing deals with high-value accounts. However, nowadays, capturing buyers' needs looks far different than a few years ago. In this engagement era where everyone and everything is connected, B2B marketers are using evolving channels and strategies to communicate with their customers on a new level.
But this new era also comes with a host of challenges. In this case, many B2B companies seeking high-value customers find that an ABM program is an effective strategy rather than casting a broad net.
● According to a survey by ITSMA, 87% of B2B marketers said that account-based marketing delivers a higher return on investment than any other marketing tactics.
● About 91% of B2B companies implementing ABM saw an increase in their average deal size.
● According to the ABM leadership alliance, B2B companies experience a 171% average annual contract value increase.
● B2B companies deploying ABM and sales and marketing alignment are being 67% better at closing deals.
● When it comes to sales opportunities, 20% of accounts targeted through ABM programmes go on to be qualified as sales opportunities.
According to the stats, account-based marketing is an effective strategy that can help you improve marketing ROI, drive attributed revenue, generate more conversion and qualified leads.
Is ABM the right approach for your business?
Account-based marketing is one of the effective strategies for many B2B companies that are of a specific size for a particular lifetime value of products and services. Since the focus is entirely on high-value accounts, ABM is effective for every B2B company of any size.
An ABM program will not be your go-to strategy if you sell low-ticket products and services to a sizable market. You have to consider this strategy if you;
● Selling high-value solution products and services to a niche market
● Having a longer sales cycle
● Having a target list that you want to acquire
● Influence decision-makers in buying groups and buying committees.
Why is the ABM program an effective strategy for B2B businesses?
Let's address the question of why ABM is an effective strategy for B2B businesses.
1. Personalized communications
A personalized strategy seems to be an effective strategy to engage with prospects and customers. For example, while emailing, everyone preferred to be addressed by the name instead of a generic, like Dear potential customer.
An ABM program will help you make personalized communications by developing the content that decision-makers need to move them through the buyer's journey. This finely-tuned content required deep research and marketing and sales teams to collaborate to target those contacts in a meaningful way efficiently.
2. Efficient use of marketing resources
Implementing the ABM program will help you structure your marketing resources and efforts on your critical account to drive the most revenue. It will optimize your most valuable resources like staff time and money.
You can focus on your marketing team to work directly with sales to target and develop content for critical accounts by integrating your sales and marketing efforts. It will not only enhance the efficiency of your B2B marketing resources, but it will also help you build the communication channel with sales to have an aligned sales and marketing company.
3. Highest return on investment
Your marketing strategy must be measurable. It is critical to measure the ROI of any marketing initiative and can be done with many automation and software tools available. By implementing an ABM strategy to your business, you can see the higher return on investment for an ABM initiative and immediate areas for improvement depending on how contacts respond to your content.
4. Closer alignment of sales and marketing
Do your sales and marketing teams are working as individual silos? It must be essential if you want to implement an ABM strategy in your business. It involves your sales and marketing team working closely to identify target accounts, develop a communication strategy and outreach tactics.
According to the survey from Marekting Profs, B2B companies with aligned sales and marketing teams generate 208% more revenue for their marketing efforts. In this way, ABM serves in keeping these teams working together instead of working independently.
5. Enhanced tracking
It is also essential to report on the tactics that either contribute or do not contribute to the ROI. Whether it is an email campaign, special event or webinar, you have to review the effectiveness of each strategy.
You can build more effective campaigns moving forward by understanding the effectiveness of each component of your ABM strategy. Additionally, tracking is the most real-time approach to make changes to your campaign on an ongoing basis. Tracking these details will help you save your budget and time.
6. Increased revenue
According to a survey held by Sangram Vajre's Flip My Funnel movement, the B2B companies implementing ABM generate 200% more revenue than any other marketing strategy.
You have to consider your ideal target audience and allow your marketing and sales teams to be more effective and focused. When you know how to address their pain points, they see that you understand their needs resulting in an incredible conversion.
How to build an ABM strategy for your B2B company?
There are different ways to build out your ABM strategy. You can address your ABM strategy from a high-level perspective, like classifying companies you like to see to convert into customers or understanding the common attributes your customers share.
After the critical fundamentals of ABM strategy, getting started, making progress and measuring results become more accessible. Below, we will show you some simple steps to build an ABM strategy for your B2B business.
1. Identify
Identifying your target accounts is the first and foremost step for successfully executing an ABM strategy. It involves;
● Segmenting customers depends on the set of characteristics like annual revenue, company size and industry.
● Leveraging record of named accounts.
● Accessing their customer base.
In this case, you have to work with your sales team to identify and agree upon a list of key accounts.
2. Market
After identifying the list of target accounts, you have to build marketing programs that focus on accounts and lead them through the sales funnel. It involves;
● Focussing on your target accounts by running display ad campaigns and other tops of the funnel campaigns to the account on your list.
● Creating content that speaks to the companies on your list.
● Gaining relevant buying signals from your target accounts early in the buying process.
3. Personalize
Personalized marketing has become a significant player in the digital marketing game. Your ABM tactics must focus on delivering personalized marketing to target key accounts, and it is essential to explore new ways to communicate and engage with target accounts.
You have to treat every account individually by focussing on their needs, challenges, buying triggers and preferred communication channels.
4. Multi-channel approach
On average, around 72% of your prospects want to connect to your brand on multiple channels. Not only that, companies using a multi-channel campaign see a 37% increase in response.
Whether it is an email with a coupon offer or paid sponsorship on YouTube, your marketing efforts must be multi-channel in today's evolving B2B landscape. As people are increasingly engaged with numerous devices and media platforms, marketers must provide a seamless customer experience across these channels.
It becomes essential to understand your customers and how they interact across different platforms to effectively reach them with relevant ads and achieve a higher return on investment.
5. Measure
The final step is measuring your campaign. As you go through different stages in an ABM strategy, your data will impact your decisions like iterations and tweaks to outbound efforts and content.
Therefore, make sure that measurement is done at every stage of the funnel and metrics. It will help you understand that ABM is more than a best practice for your marketing team, and it will be an essential principle that should impact operations across your company.
How intent data will make your ABM strategy more effective
A B2B intent data simply highlights when a user is actively looking for or intending to purchase a particular solution. With the intent data incorporated in your ABM strategy, you can easily distinguish the exact stage of your target accounts in the buyer's journey and align the right content and information at the right time.
Here are some points to help you know how intent data will make your ABM strategy more effective.
1. Better targeted content
Intent data will enable clear insights into which accounts are experiencing challenges and which accounts are actively looking to adopt solutions. As a result, you can deliver better-targeted content and engage with your ideal customers at the right time.
2. Optimized sales and marketing resource
An ABM program requires substantial time and resource investment. In this case, the intent data will flip this problem by letting your sales and marketing teams focus on the more receptive clients. Moreover, it will also ensure you engage with them at the right time.
3. A Better understanding of your client pain points
With the Intent data incorporated in your account, you can see that potential customers are often looking at your blogs for solutions to phishing emails getting through their firewalls. You could make sure that your sales rep mentions it in any discovery calls by applying that knowledge.
Not only that, you could even make a broader inference on the pain points of the target industry with the help of intent data.
4. Understanding the demand for your services
If the data shows that your target client is not searching for the intent keywords you are monitoring around a particular service, it will be preferred to alter the services to match their needs better. It will create a streamlined approach to service provision.
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