When you are operating your business on a B2B model, the consumer journey and how you target your prospects are quite different from a B2C model. However, the traditional lead generation model you might be using for your B2B platform may not be giving you deeper insights into your customer’s journey. Moreover, to generate leads, an organisation often tends to waste its resources attracting a broader audience rather than attracting niche leads that have a better chance of converting.
This is where account-based marketing or ABM comes to play. It is a marketing strategy that helps the organisation focus its resources on specific accounts that are more suited to the organisation and more likely to convert.
Herein, the campaign is highly modified for each account, and every communication with the prospects is tailored to cater to that specific account. You employ a high niche marketing strategy rather than focusing on a broader marketing strategy.
Not only does this strategy play a beneficial role in onboarding new accounts, but it also helps you nurture, upsell and cross-sell to your existing accounts.
What are the benefits of an account-based marketing approach?
This strategy is ideal as it helps companies make more deals with more significant accounts and ticket sizes. But, when you are hoping to close extensive deals, the time to revenue also increases, wherein account-based marketing plays a vital role.
Here are some of the benefits of implementing an account-based marketing strategy.
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1. More Personalised
You tend to market your services or products to a whole pool of prospective customers in normal marketing. On the other hand, only high-value prospects are identified and targeted under the ABM strategy. The messaging, communication, and marketing are personalised for the specific account.
Think of account-based marketing as a tailored suit – it is not for everyone, and is only meant for the individual for whom it was made in the first place.
In comparison, traditional marketing strategies are like off-the-rack suits and shirts – they can suit any person, not just one.
2. Aligns the Sales and Marketing Teams
Usually, the functions of the marketing and sales team do not overlap. But since account-based marketing takes a more holistic approach, both departments work together to identify the prospects.
After identifying the niche prospects, the teams work together to craft communication strategies and work towards ushing the prospects through the pipeline quickly to decrease the time spent on a lead.
3. Better Sales Cycles
When you are involved in a B2B business or a deal, there is a lot of red tape as multiple people or stakeholders are involved in a deal from your organisation and theirs.
Once you involve many people in a deal, the decision-making time slows down, and the value might take longer to prove fruitful. The decision-making and approval process start from the lower level, and by the time it reaches the top-level management, a lot of time goes by.
But while using account-based marketing, you try and engage more prospects than one, which improves your sales cycle as you will not be putting all your eggs in one basket.
4. Clear ROI
An account-based marketing platform uses AI integration to generate accurate reports and analytics for the organisation. An ABM revenue attribution platform helps connect all the marketing functions and other departments with the revenue generated from accounts. This allows you to look at the whole process from a revenue standpoint.
It will also help the organisation to calculate the average time to revenue for each lead. This shifts the focus towards more ROI-focused marketing.
5. Less Wastage of Resources
Once you start reaping the benefits of account-based marketing, you will not want to go back to your traditional methods. You will realise that the technique also helps reduce wastage of resources as most of the energy will be spent on attracting, converting, and nurturing niche and key accounts.
Since you only put the resources where the chances of returns are higher, the organisation inevitably reduces wastage.
Examples of Account-Based Marketing Approach
To implement a successful account-based marketing model, you first have to segment your prospects and figure out the marketing strategies that are best suited to those segments.
Here are some actual examples of an account-based marketing approach
1. Events
Events are a great way to generate buzz about your business. Implementing an account-based approach here means sending out personalised invites to the prospects, catering a segment of the event to the prospects, and special dinners.
2. Direct Mail
Since ABM is solely about giving each high-value customer a personalised experience, it would emphasise sending personalised, direct letters and emails to customers, instead of sending junk marketing emails.
3. PPC
Social media platforms such as Meta (Facebook) and LinkedIn enable you to run paid campaigns to target specific personas. So, it allows you to target specific accounts of your interest.
