ABM: An Introduction To Account-Based Marketing

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Is ABM Right For You?

As companies and brands rely more heavily on technology to deliver value, the need for personalization has become imperative to building and growing customer relationships. To stay competitive in the B2B landscape, organizations must shift from a lead-centric mentality to an account-centric mentality. Enter Account-Based Marketing (ABM).

ABM is an increasingly popular strategic marketing approach. It goes beyond lead generation and allows digital marketers to effectively personalize messages and maximize customer lifetime value. Developing a successful ABM approach requires a close working partnership between sales and marketing. This ultimately leads to faster closings and higher ROI.

ABM concentrates on engaging specific buying groups to generate more revenue faster and easier. Rather than a broad-brush approach over many potential buyers, ABM orchestrates coordinated, personalized, account-based experiences for stakeholders within each account.

ABM technology is now in the mainstream, and analytics capabilities are greatly improved. Recent research confirms that 97% of marketers achieved a higher ROI by incorporating ABM than any other marketing initiative (Alterra Group, 2018). ABM is no longer cost prohibitive, but rather competitively necessary in order to develop positive, long-term relationships with current and potential customers.

While powerful, ABM is not the right approach for everyone. Is it the right approach for you?

Championing a Successful ABM Strategy

Now is the time to identify your goals for adding new business or growing existing accounts. Specific goals allow for easier buy-in across the organization. They also give you better opportunities to meet buyers at every step of the life cycle. As you set marketing and revenue goals, it is imperative to align sales and marketing more closely. Setting shared goals and metrics will help keep teams accountable. Further, it will allow them to understand their individual roles in reaching the customer with personalized value.

Determine your Total Addressable Market (TAM) and the personas and buying groups you will target. While the TAM will dictate the number of accounts in your market, identifying and choosing those key individuals who participate in the buying decisions is a critical component of ABM. Who is purchasing your product ? For instance, is it sales, research, marketing, or IT? Focusing on the needs of the individual will allow you to create direct messaging on various platforms that directly links the value of your product to their needs.

Rethink your approach to customer engagement. Simultaneous work by sales and marketing can bring powerful results, but only when each team has fully researched and prepared for the task. Both teams need to leverage data to make informed targeting decisions and account selection. The more research that goes into identifying needs, the more effectively a personalized connection can be achieved throughout the process. ABM has the ability to scale across many accounts, but it also can be employed as an exceptionally target approach that hones in on a select few accounts that have shared pain points or other similarities. 

Final Thoughts

In short, ABM is a scalable, achievable strategy that can work in organizations of all sizes, giving marketers a powerful opportunity to deliver value and exceed customer expectations.

At DemandZEN, we focus on integrating your sales and marketing teams. We aim to create one unified approach to accelerate qualified leads into your sales pipeline. Let us help your organization harness the power of ABM. Get a free lead generation assessment.

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DemandZEN specializes in Account-Based Demand Generation and solving the challenges around finding, engaging and converting target accounts into real opportunities for B2B Technology and Services companies.

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