Account based marketing or ABM is a B2B marketing strategy where sales and marketing work together to target specific contacts, leads or customers known by the business.
ABM uses customised marketing campaigns that are designed based on the specific attributes and needs of the target accounts.
Now that we know what ABM is, let’s look at the benefits of using account based marketing as a B2B company.
ABM requires marketing and sales teams to work together throughout the entire process of identifying and creating campaigns for target accounts.
This collaboration can be very beneficial for companies.
According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, companies with strong alignment between sales and marketing teams grow their revenues up to 20% annually.
According to another research by the Aberdeen Group, 75% of consumers prefer personalised campaigns to generic offers.
Because ABM campaigns are targeted at a specific group of consumers, they are more personal and hence consumers are more likely to resonate with them.
ABM marketing has proven to be the best B2B marketing strategy according to different surveys.
According to the 2014 ITSMA Account Based Marketing Survey, 89% of B2B marketers recorded a higher ROI from ABM than traditional marketing.
This clearly proves the benefit of ABM marketing.
Because ABM targets a clearly defined group of consumers, marketing resources can be better allocated.
This effectively removes the cost of targeting generic leads which would have otherwise been the case.
With ABM, you can easily set clear goals and track them efficiently.
Because you’re targeting a smaller number of accounts comparably, it is easier to draw clear conclusions out of your analytics data.
Here are 6 steps on how to develop an ABM strategy for your company:
Identify the ideal consumers that have the potential to spend the most with your company.
Find out as much as you can about these potential customers - their pain points, decision-making factors etc.
With the information you’ve gathered, create personalised marketing campaigns that are likely to resonate with your target customers.
Figure out the most effective channels to run your marketing campaigns.
Once you’ve decided on where to run your campaigns, the next step is to go live with your campaigns.
Analyse the results of your marketing campaigns to figure out how you can improve.
Apollo provides tools that help B2B companies find best-fit prospects, carry out personalised campaigns, and convert them into clients. The software offers over 200 data points to create an ideal buyer profile.
Once you’ve nailed down a profile, you can access verified emails and phone numbers of LinkedIn accounts that fit your criteria, along with a sales automation feature to kickstart your email and call campaign.
Apollo also provides account-based automation, data-backed analytics, A/B testing, and a recommendation engine that highlights prospects you need to prioritise.
Leadfeeder is primarily a visitor tracking software, but it provides a solution for account based marketing. By analysing your website traffic, the tool identifies accounts that are interested in your company and the services you provide.
With data from Leadfeeder, you can compile a list of target accounts and get instant notifications when they visit your site.
Users can also build a list of high-intent prospects and segment them based on industry, location, online activity, number of employees, and other custom properties.
HubSpot’s account based marketing software enhances collaboration between marketing and sales teams, helping them target and sell to high-value accounts.
Workflow templates are provided to help companies create ideal customer profiles and find target accounts that fit.
Users also get AI-powered recommendations on which accounts to target, with a single dashboard to enable all team members to work together on converting prospects to customers.
The ABM solution provides tools to create personalised content to attract and engage account stakeholders, and it integrates with Slack, LinkedIn, and the HubSpot CRM.
Other tools include: Zymplify, Active Demand, etc.
Do you need extra help setting up an account based marketing strategy? We can help you with that - give us a call and take advantage of a free strategy session with someone in our team.
If you then need help implementing it then we have a matching service where we could pair you with a team to help you reach your goals.
In the meantime, why not take a look at our training courses for all things marketing that will assist you in getting ahead of your competition!