There have been several changes in the B2B marketing environment in recent years. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has become one of the most widely researched concepts, with widespread adoption in B2B Businesses with over 80% of all B2B marketers adopting it one form or another.
ABM is one of the best marketing methodologies when it comes to B2B enterprises. It has been used by everyone from SAAS businesses to hospitality companies to target and convert their target companies.
ABM though is not something that all businesses should spend their resources on. ABM works best when targeting high value i.e. high revenue customers specifically in the enterprise segment. Think <$60,000 in ARR,anything less than that the ROI usually doesn’t make sense.
ABM is, in some respects, a somewhat more advanced version of direct marketing. The key distinction between ABM and traditional marketing strategies is that ABM treats each customer or account as a market of one and targets them accordingly.
As such you can get the most out of it when targeting large customers which usually boils down to enterprise companies or B2B.
Officially,
ABM is sometimes known as key account marketing or focused marketing in general. It is coordination between a business's sales and marketing to discover, evaluate, and analyse high-value clients in order to establish a personalised interaction with them by sending tailored content, messages, and deals.
It implies that you're just providing content and offerings to prospects that are focused for a specific ICP, usually a specific person in a specific account.
ABM's basic concepts are as follows:
According to B2B marketers, the main goal of implementing such a strategy is about "revenue generation." Pipeline acceleration, lead acquisition, and marketing and sales coordination are some of the other critical objectives in account-based marketing.
If you're seeking a competitive advantage for your company, consider the following:
Determine which accounts you are targeting for your ABM campaigns and your expected ROI. There is no point running ABM on customers with a LTV of $5000 on the other hand if the target customers are people who would get you $60000 or above in ARR then it makes sense to spend that $6000 on targeting and acquiring them through ABM.
Resources include both people and money. ABM is complex and requires multiple teams to work together to target individual accounts. These teams include content, events, paid marketing, pre-sales, and sales. This means you would have people working on this full time. If ABM is something you want to do, then you should have either a team that can run these campaigns or a budget to hire an external ABM team to run them for you.
Like any marketing strategy, ABM takes time in addition to the time it usually takes to convert an enterprise client. If the goal is to achieve something within the quarter, ABM needs to be running from the previous quarter. It won't give you immediate results, but pre-planning and time are both important.
In theory, a company's sales and marketing divisions should consistently collaborate. Even if the advantages of collaboration are unparalleled, the marketing and sales departments in a business are not always coordinated. ABM is the most straightforward technique to align them. It is so significant because ABM is more than simply a marketing activity; it is a coordination between sales and marketing.
Businesses benefit from ABM when their marketers collaborate with sales to make informed decisions about which accounts to target, then learn what those accounts and the personnel who work there value, and use that information to connect in an appropriate, relevant manner.
The budget allocation for ABM will be significantly more than your usual marketing costs. However, you should consider it an investment instead of an expense since the return is far greater. As per 89% of marketers, ABM helped in boosting ROI compared to traditional marketing strategies. More focused campaigns imply fewer wasted resources and much less of a systems-oriented approach. ABM entails concentrating on high-value possibilities and wasting less time and resources on ineffective initiatives. The sales and marketing teams engage in this promotional strategy with the goal of recouping their investment and generating a large amount of revenue.
ABM is more complex than standard demand generation techniques as it focuses on accounts rather than prospects. As this strategy differs from traditional demand generation techniques, it must also reflect on how you assess the results and make reports. The foremost step towards effective reporting would be laying the foundation for your accounts with targeted goals and KPIs. Better tracking in ABM helps businesses to close more deals in less time than other marketing techniques.
ABM is not for everyone. Hope this article helped you understand the things you should consider before you decide to invest resources in account-basedmarketing.
