Account-based Marketing (ABM) is about defining a specific growth strategy.
In ABM, Marketing and Sales team collaborate to create personalised buying experiences for a mutually-identified set of highly targeted accounts.
The ABM Best Practices includes channelizing sales and marketing activities and resources to engage a specific target account group. ABM doesn’t just call for collaboration between sales and marketing teams – it emphasises them to align together. Personalisation matters, hence personalisation at the account level requires sales and marketing to coordinate on account-specific messaging.
The goal behind this is to generate higher ROI in a limited period.
B2B marketers following ABM strategies work closely with the sales team to identify key prospect accounts and then articulate programs and messages to the buying team within target accounts.
In short, using ABM strategy sales and marketing team can focus on potential leads rather than losing time on bad leads.
Some of the benefits of ABM are as follows:
- When it comes to traditional B2B marketing, multiple stakeholders are involved; this can slow down the typical process of sales and marketing. ABM process ensures that marketing efforts are invested only on the potential quality leads rather than bad, low potential leads. It saves time and sales & marketing teams’ efforts by aligning themselves to concentrate solely on the accounts that matter.
- ABM process, when implemented appropriately, can undoubtedly boost ROI. Personalised ABM strategies help yield more ROI for B2Bs than any other marketing strategies.
- ABM process ensures a short sales cycle.
- ABM process ensures synchronisation between sales and marketing teams activities.
- Better reporting is achieved through ABM implementation. It also helps in setting goals and analysing reports quickly.
Background and differences difference between ABM and traditional marketing
In the marketing of complex business proposals, account-based marketing plays an important role in expanding the business to an existing customer account (for example, broad industry marketing may not be sufficiently targeted to appeal to existing customers). In a situation where initial sales have taken several months, it is said that account-based marketing increases the long-term value of the customer. ABM can also be applied to the main potential account in support of the first sale.
Research shows that buyers are looking for their existing suppliers to keep up to date with relevant proposals, but are often frustrated. In UK research, existing supplier IT buyers have come to the top of all the different information channels they use to find new solutions – but more than 50% of people feel that marketing from their suppliers is lacking.
Account-based marketing services companies like Zelite Solutions can help you build your target account list with key contacts. Read our Account-Based Marketing Case Study for more information.
