In this day and age, it’s no longer suggested to market smarter – it’s demanded. Knowing your audience like the back of your hand and targeting them with a perfectly tailored message at the right time is a requirement. Account-based marketing (ABM), also known as key-account targeting, is a clear example of the values of modern marketing, and it stands to reason that this technique can be a game-changer for B2B marketers, big and small.
Although it’s not an entirely new concept, it has become much more prevalent in recent years as organizations attempt to foster growth and awareness for high-value accounts. But what exactly is ABM?
Spearfishing for Conversions
ABM is a strategy-centric approach to marketing that treats an account as a single market. In other words, an ABM strategy is focused on marketing to a single, specific target as opposed to marketing to the masses. As a real-world example, think of ABM as a way to leverage an existing relationship your company may have with a large corporation such as GE. While your company may currently work with the GE Lighting division there is still opportunity to with other GE Lighting locations or extend your knowledge to other divisions, such as Aviation, Healthcare and Power. ABM allows you to target those additional divisions with a targeted, insightful message to grow your book of business through any number of marketing tactics.
With this strategy, ABM is a personalized system that melds insight-driven marketing with sales to more efficiently meet the marketing goals of high-value accounts. While demand generation marketing focuses on specific personas, ABM is focused solely on a single specific account. By starting the conversion process with one account as opposed to the traditional database used by traditional lead generation strategies, ABM is likened to spearfishing, while demand generation marketing is comparable to using a net.
The Right Fit
While ABM is an extremely efficient strategy for many B2B firms, it’s not a perfect fit for everyone. Firms that lean toward high volume deals tend to stick to the more traditional inbound marketing approach. But firms that maintain long, complex sales cycles tend to favor ABM marketing for its hyper-focused sales efforts.
Why should you think about using ABM?
Increased Efficiency
Much like a missile, ABM campaigns hone in on your target accounts. This allows you to allocate all available resources to that target in an efficient manner.
Less Waiting
With traditional inbound marketing, you must wait for targets to visit a website or fill out a form to be entered into your lead nurturing database. With ABM, you pursue the target directly and eliminate the waiting game.
It’s Personalized
ABM is conducive to tailoring communications and messaging to specific accounts. As the message will likely be relevant to the targeted stage in the buyer’s journey, campaigns will resonate on a much higher level. This will greatly improve the chances for engagement.
Simplified Sales Alignment
ABM campaigns operate under a unique mindset. The marketer thinks in terms of efficiently targeting accounts, converting them and generating revenue from them similar to a salesperson.
Simplified Tracking and Measurement
In contrast to the daunting array of metrics and data gleaned from database-driven marketing, ABM campaigns allow you to draw clear conclusions from emails, advertisements, website metrics and events due to the smaller set of target accounts.
