Account-based marketing (ABM), also known as key account marketing, is a strategic approach to business marketing based on account awareness in which an organization considers and communicates with individual prospect or customer accounts as markets of one. Account-based marketing is typically employed in enterprise-level sales organizations.

ABM is now anticipated to be a major part of many companies’ marketing strategies. It is one of the most talked-about trends in the B2B marketing space. ABM in recent years has made a massive impact and has changed the way B2B marketers build their strategies. In fact, ABM has become a priority for many B2B organizations since 2018.

Whether online or offline, the customer always comes first, and one approach that puts people front and center is Account-Based Marketing (ABM). This approach is more focused on specific customers, or accounts. Organizations which are seeing the greatest current benefit from account-based marketing are IT, Services and Consulting companies.

However, successful execution of ABM is not an easy task. It involves building personalized outreach strategies for each of these accounts. ABM deployments require the sales, marketing, and customer relationship teams within an organization to converge in order to target specific prospective customers.

70% of ABM-enabled teams find that defining and planning an ABM program is easier than executing them within an economy.

Let’s take a glance at the most important factors that drive account-based marketing success:

1. Alignment of Marketing & Sales

Alignment between sales and marketing is beneficial for any organization, but if you want to get the most out of ABM, it’s a must. On the one hand, marketing is responsible for all the activities needed to persuade target customers and on the other hand, sales have the responsibility of building personal connections and physically closing deals.

Neither marketing nor sales team can alone acquire customers for any business. It requires thoughtful cross-functional planning that incorporates contributions from multiple roles in sales and marketing. To ensure successful alignment between sales and marketing, it is important to clearly define the responsibilities of each team. Not only does this provide a platform for holding one another accountable, but it also makes it easy to identify the gaps or potholes in the customer acquisition process.

Alignment also helps smaller companies prevent or streamline multiple types of sales, marketing or follow up conversations from happening with the same target account.

2. Identifying Target Accounts

Simply put, target accounts are companies that you want to turn into customers. Identifying your target accounts is a little like looking for a needle in sand.

The whole point of account-based selling is to focus your efforts on a smaller and more narrowly defined number of high-value accounts that have the greatest potential impact on your bottom line. That’s why the most important piece of the account-based sales model is to select and target account.

In the B2B context, targeting and segmentation have an added complexity in that you not only have to identify accounts to target but also have to understand all the decision-makers and influencers within that account. Because most B2B buying decisions are now made by groups of people and not individuals, B2B marketers require a deep understanding of company hierarchies and roles and responsibilities, in addition to account-level information.

To get a strong handle on target audiences, make sure that the data you’re planning to use for creating your list of target accounts for ABM is clean, accurate and shared between sales and marketing. Because you need good data to help you determine which are the right accounts, connect contacts with those accounts, and give sales and marketing the insights they need to engage.

3. Budget

A well-defined marketing budget helps you measure and manage what you invest in acquiring new customers and reconnecting with existing ones. It can also help you identify opportunities to optimize the tactics that result in the most bang for your marketing buck.

If you’re planning your ABM campaign, it’s obvious one of your toughest decisions will center around your budget and spending strategy. But, the problem here is: there are no set metrics or formulas that can give you a precise value that you should spend per account. It’s impossible for a formula to capture all the unique factors that influence the marketing and sales success of your particular product or solution. The number of variables that can affect the success (and therefore budget) mean each campaign needs to be looked at and judged on its own merits.

4. People/Resources

Planning people/resources management helps in the growth and diversification of business. Through manpower planning, human resources can be readily available and they can be utilized in the best manner. It helps the organization to realize the importance of manpower management which ultimately helps in the stability of a concern.

As ABM is such a targeted marketing tool, it allows a marketer to focus their resources in an efficient manner and run promotional campaigns that are optimized for specifically targeted accounts. Focusing on internal talents, technologies, social platforms, analytics, and content creation mediums, among other resources, in the right areas are sure to produce positive results for your ABM campaign.

5. Right Content at Right Time

Content helps in building certain characteristics of a client-vendor relationship even before making a purchase and engaging with the salesperson. It further helps in upselling and cross-selling. B2B marketers have to deal with different groups of people and not a single person while influencing a purchase decision.

Content helps to improve conversions because it allows you to connect with and educate your leads and customers. Not only are you working to build trust and relationships, but you are also encouraging conversions by giving consumers the information they need to make an educated purchasing decision.

CMO Council states that 90 percent of B2B buyers find online content influences moderately to majorly their purchasing decisions.

Elements of this content flow could be further expanded or eliminated based on your specific needs. It is noted that 89% of B2B researchers use the internet during the B2B research process. That speaks about where exactly you need to push your content — online. There are a few factors that will help in creating a better buyer journey.

6. Choose relevant channels

To make sure your target accounts are genuinely engaging with your core messaging, it’s important to utilize and leverage channels including mobile, social networks, and online mediums, among others. Many different industries and roles within those industries use specific channels to suit their needs, so making sure you’re branching out to your targets on the right platform is essential to the success of your ABM initiative.

7. Ability to Measure Success

Once you’ve successfully identified the target accounts and started the hunt for customer acquisition now it’s time to measure the success of all the efforts. One of the main benefits of measuring your success is to learn where you are struggling and to see what are your strengths.

It’s rightly said that in ABM the goal is not to generate as many leads as possible but to build and enhance the relationship you have with an existing group of selected accounts. n ABM you should focus on bringing in an account and engage multiple stakeholders within that account.

You might find your projections were too optimistic or that your performance isn’t living up to its potential. This might help you identify that you are overspending, using marketing tools that aren’t generating adequate sales, taking on too much debt or managing cash flow improperly, leading to more debt service.

Conclusion…

While technology is changing, the way marketers market is also changing, and this change has also transformed the way B2B buyers are buying. More information means the typical B2B buying cycle takes longer to complete.

Hence, Account-based marketing is a great investment, especially for companies with smaller or medium marketing budgets. With ABM, you have an opportunity to show leads how valuable your company can be for them, and you can also convert more leads to customers than with any other approach.

Do not count the companies you reach, Reach the companies that count.

At Apprise Marketing Services, we guarantee our ABM based battles are examined in an able way, to infer most extreme information. Since this procedure is more customized than others are, it encourages the customer to quantify objectives and track the level of client reach. We additionally guarantee that each level of Account-Based Marketing is altogether checked to get the most exact information and yield promising outcomes.

If you’re looking to implement ABM strategy for your business, we can assist you in deploying your content to the right target audience and generate leads for your business in a very cost-effective manner.

So start your ABM campaign today and reap the rewards tomorrow. It’s really that simple. Feel free to reach us with your questions at info@ams-in.com or visit us at www.ams-in.com.

Thank you.