Everything You Need To Know About Account-based Marketing
and why you should implement it.
What is ABM?
ABM stands for Account-Based Marketing. It’s a B2B marketing strategy that focuses only on the activation of high-value customers and requires strong collaboration among the marketing and sales departments.
In ABM, the priority isn’t to generate a number of leads, but to identify those accounts who not only meet the demographic criteria for prospecting but also meet your “Ideal Customer Profile”.
At its heart, ABM is about delivering highly personalised content at the right time to your key accounts to position your business as the best solution in the market.
While this requires sales alignment and the time, energy, and resources needed for in-depth research, it does yield terrific results. LinkedIn conducted a survey and found that 87% of marketers see higher ROI with ABM than any other type of marketing investment. What’s more, 91% of respondents reported that their ABM accounts have a bigger deal size.
ABM Strategies
Traditionally ABM, as described in this Forbes article, was a strategy used only by large companies to manage engagement, up-selling, and cross-selling activities in large accounts. Sales departments were in the driving seats of these initiatives. This approach did require huge investments in terms of account profiling and engagement time. With the arrival of Marketing Technology, the strategy was adapted and moved to include engagements also with mid-market accounts.
Today the strategy is applied across all market segments (SMB, Mid-Market, and Large Enterprises ) and can be used by all size companies. It is called: One-to-One, One-to-Few, and One-to-Many ABM.
One-to-One ABM
Also known as Strategic ABM, traditionally this approach involves targeting only a small number of strategic accounts, often in specific industry sectors.
These accounts are typically identified by the sales department and You must have deep and relevant insights into each account—their strategic objectives, pain points and decision-makers. This information is vital to informing outreach and delivering deeply meaningful account engagement that demonstrates an understanding of their business.
For this reason, 1-to-1 ABM requires a great amount of investment however, it also offers great ROI, since each account comes with high-value contracts.
One-to-Few
Also known as ABM Lite, this approach involves targeting small groups of accounts typically divided by sector, a common size or location, or similar pain points and needs.
In 1-to-Few ABM each group of accounts is treated separately. So, for example, if a group of accounts belongs to a specific sector (such as Financial Services), then you can create sector- or sub-sector specific content which touches upon trends and challenges (such as embedded innovation or protecting banking financial strength) and resonates with accounts in that group.
One-to-Many
Also known as Programmatic ABM, this is a scalable approach to sales and marketing efforts which involves targeting “many” accounts—the number is up to you and can go into the hundreds or even the thousands depending on the value of the accounts and the resources available to your business.
1-to-Many ABM targets accounts that share a common factor within segments—horizontal or vertical. While this approach might appear to be less targeted than the other two, it’s still possible for marketing teams to accomplish personalised outreach through the use of sophisticated technologies and martech.
What are the Benefits of Account-based Marketing?
ABM is strategically important, it is the key to reaching new target accounts, but it can also be a critical piece in engaging current customers. Your ABM strategy should include upselling, cross-selling, and retention activities that are essential to any business.
Account-based marketing is both a B2B sales and marketing strategy. It requires both teams to collectively engage the accounts that are considered a top priority for the company.
With the right ABM strategy, you will shorten your customer lifecycles and accelerate sales cycles, increasing ROI.
See how ABM can boost your company's growth with Jabmo ABM platform.
Book a demo today.
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