Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy that offers much promise to businesses. Instead of funneling leads into the sales pipeline, ABM employs one-to-one marketing to target high-value accounts. These days, many companies develop their ABM teams, including members from both marketing and sales, to determine what constitutes a high-value client and how to target and convert it.
To ensure that B2B ABM works for you, your sales and marketing teams must be on the same page. You’ll also need to spend time and money with your ABM providers to thoroughly plan and strategize your approach, which includes developing materials that adapt to what your target clients want to see.
An ABM marketing plan must change over time. If you keep utilizing the same strategies repeatedly, you’ll eventually start noticing diminishing returns. Simply said, when you—and even your competitors—continue to employ the same system, clients become tired of it and respond less effectively.
Another advantage is that ABM allows for a more creative marketing approach. Digital marketing, in addition to email or phone-based marketing, may reach potential leads in different accounts and link them.
Why is ABM the best modern marketing strategy?
Personalized communications
ABM tailors all communications to the specific needs of high-value target accounts. Each client appreciates how thoroughly your company investigated their requirements and positioned itself to offer answers to their challenges.
The use of marketing resources is done systematically.
Instead of casting a wide net to capture as many leads as possible, ABM allows you to adopt a more systematic marketing approach. Your marketing team may devote more time and money to generating high-value account profiles and thinking about tailoring the marketing campaign. Because your marketing and sales teams will be working together on each account, the resources will be better integrated and tracked.
ROI is calculated.
Instead of a generic Return on Investment (ROI) at the end of the marketing funnel, ABM measures it by the value of each account transaction.
Excellent follow-up is ensured.
ABM focuses marketing and sales efforts on specific accounts. Each account is followed from one step to the next, from strategy through conversion, so you can know precisely where it is and how much ROI it has. Because each account approach is unique, building solid connections with each account is essential. This is a more effective tracking method than simply verifying who falls out along the route. You can see how one account provides far more than the other.
It allows you to develop effective sales and marketing strategies.
With ABM, you can easily see the efficacy of your sales and marketing initiatives, and you can see what works and what doesn’t. You can see what works at every level since your sales and marketing are connected to each account.
ABM strategies that work
Here are ten of the most effective ABM strategies we’ve seen in operation over the last few years. We’ve included a bunch of them so you may mix and match them to construct a dynamic B2B ABM plan for your sales efforts.
Create a strong target account list.
ABM has a more significant ROI than other marketing strategies that require a target account list to focus your efforts on. To begin with, the benefit of ABM is that it allows you to focus on clients that are a perfect fit for your goods and solutions. You may create a B2B target account list based on businesses with whom you’ve done business or who are clearly in need of what you’re offering.
It’s a good idea to get assistance from a reputable B2B data service supplier. They may supply look-alike lists that match the qualities of your desired audience, in addition to fleshing out critical facts on your target list.
When it comes to successfully exploiting account lists to boost sales efforts, accuracy is critical since mistakes may be costly in terms of time and money. After all, you want to be talking to the appropriate decision-makers in the companies you’re reaching out to.
Warm-up leads with content syndication.
Many individuals begin ABM initiatives assuming that they must start from scratch. While this is a viable alternative, the outcomes are likely mixed. One thing you can do is use content syndication to warm up your prospects before your sales staff engages them. The goal is to put your most valuable and relevant information in front of your ideal prospects.
This material may be distributed in various ways, including through a dedicated platform, email, phone calls, and even social media.
Find in-market buyers using intent data.
Only a tiny percentage of B2B companies now use compelling event signals to filter their lead list to those most likely to buy. At its most basic level, these trigger signals are the signs and behaviors that indicate a person’s interest in a particular product. The amount of information collected influences how near (or distant) that individual is to complete a purchase. Whatever degree of intent data you have, compelling event signals will help you filter down a list of leads to those who can be successfully targeted with ABM.
Quality trigger signals may be found in a variety of places. Your website traffic is the most easily accessible. The number of times a visitor visits your site, the pages they look at, and how long they remain are all solid indications of interest that you can use. Additional sources include search engine terms, content interaction, and even a person’s digital footprints across several websites.
Intent-based advertising should be used.
One of the best things about trigger signals is that it allows you to adapt your advertising to fit your ABM needs. For one thing, you can target the proper individuals using built-in technologies like Google’s own Custom Intent Audiences. For another, and this is crucial, you can tailor the content of your ads to effectively respond to the pain points that drove your target audience to seek solutions in the first place.
Conclusion
If you’ve heard about ABM for a while, it might be time to take advantage of it. You may start with a single account and examine how it works compared to the marketing funnel and numerous lead-generating options. How do you think an ABM approach might affect your marketing and sales teams? What do you believe would need to alter the most in your company to switch to ABM?
ABM does not need to be complicated. By integrating the strategies above and technologies for your marketing and sales teams to utilize simultaneously, you’ll be able to find essential accounts more quickly, minimize friction in your flywheel, and expand more effectively.