Account-Based Marketing: What is ABM?

On the digital era which we live in today, in which information abounds and there are new communication channels every day, marketing professionals struggle for their (potential) customers attention.

On B2B market’s specific case, so that companies can get higher return on investments of their marketing efforts (ROI), they need to focus on high value accounts.

It’s for contexts like this that you should apply account-based marketing. The concept of account-based marketing isn't exactly new however, it developed a bigger attention by marketing professionals in the last years, mostly because of all technological advances and a constant change environment, which has been enhancing ABM importance in the business world.

What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

O account-based marketing (ABM) is a company growth strategy based on a clear alignment between sales and marketing teams aiming to create highly personalized purchase experiences to a pre-identified set of high value accounts.

It's a B2B marketing approach whom the main goal is to create value to potential customers, previously identified as "a good fit" (the so-called target accounts) and made them effectively customers.

The ABM process involves communicating with each account (each potential customer, each company) like it's the only one in the market. This requires specific campaigns for each of them, creation of segmented and account-aligned content for each account and personalized communications in marketing and sales.

Will ABM be a good strategy for your company?

If you never heard of account-based marketing, most likely you are wondering if this will be a good match for you company. We have a little exercise that will help eliminate those doubts: In case you identify yourself in any of the next 5 statements, that means that ABM may help improve your company's marketing activities ROI and contribute to your business goals.

• My target is made by a small number of companies: If your product or service is meant to a market mostly populated by a small number of players, most likely is that a more global digital marketing strategy won't be efficient. With ABM, you'll start to communicate in a more direct way with each company that's a right fit to your company.

• There is not only one person with a decision-making role to buy my products: in B2B markets it is very common to exist more than one stakeholder that can influence the decision-making process of your products. An ABM strategy ensure content and resources creation for campaigns focus on each buying role needs.

• I struggle to clearly show ROI: If this is a reality for your company, then ABM will certainly help you show results in a more clear way. Besides that, a study from ITSMA shown that ABM leads to a higher return on investment than any other B2B marketing strategy (Marketo).

• I'm spending too much time, money and resources: unlike other tactics that may have you spend resources without any desire results, ABM allows that marketing professionals use resources in a more efficient way, since they are focused on specific and high value accounts. 

• I have low engagement with my audience: the fact that your engagement levels with your audience are low, may be something account-based marketing may help, being a highly personalized approach, usually gets a higher engagement level.

• I have doubts about which metrics should be following: follow your marketing actions performance it's crucial to optimize and keep getting better results. Once ABM it's focused on restrict number of target accounts, it becomes easier to report on your campaigns performance and measure results for each email, ad, page or content.

• Our marketing and sales teams are not synced: a perfect sync between marketing and sales  (Smarketing) is crucial, so your company keep work for a common goal. If that ain't happening now,  ABM may be useful to invert the situation, since they state the importance of both teams on potential customers attraction and each deal business generation.

Are you curious about account-based marketing? Would you like to test implement an ABM strategy on your company? We can help you!