Account-based marketing: A unicorn marketing approach for the Automobile & Real estate Industry during COVID-19

You pick the right clients. Serve them with the right message. Engage them. Convert them.

Do you often wake up to this dream?

This is Account Based Marketing. This is the first of a two-part series of my article where I explain how various industries can benefit from this kind of marketing. In this article, apart from the basics, I will focus on how these two industries can use account-based marketing to their advantage -

-      Automobile Industry

-      Real estate Industry

What is Account-based marketing? 

In simple words, account-based marketing or ABM is a marketing strategy where you direct all your marketing resources for engaging a specific set of target accounts and their decision makers. This means, you start marketing AFTER you have chosen your targeted group and shortlisted specific people to target. You don’t go by the ‘trial and error’ approach in ABM, you go hard and focused from your first day.

ABM is very different from a more popular approach of inbound marketing. However, the latter can become a part of the former when strategically planned well. But what’s the difference between the two?

Inbound marketing, as the name hints, is a strategy of creating great and relevant content that attracts relevant buyers - individually. ATTRACT. ENGAGE. SELL.

Account-based marketing is a focused marketing strategy that treats a focused group of buyers as one account and then serves them with relevant content. SELECT. ENGAGE. SELL.

In a pandemic-stricken world where B2B marketers are struggling to find the right pitch for inbound marketing, it is more logical to use ABM. I have a few good reasons to believe why

# 1 - When you shortlist who are your ‘definite’ customers, your content becomes more focused and cutting edge.

# 2 - You save a lot of time in creating content/ads that may or may not be relevant to the end buyers. As a result, your account - a group of buyers - gets a more personalized content.

# 3 - It shortens sales cycles, increases ROI and sells your products/services to a highly valuable customer base that is more likely to stick with you.

How’s account-based marketing relevant for the automobile and real estate Industry?

How unthinkable or unimaginable it is that the two sectors with large advertising spends - real estate and automobile - should consider ABM? In the wake of a changed world today, it should be highly likely.

Automobile

A major change that has happened in the automobile industry is the way buyers are informed today. They have all the features of vehicles quite literally at their fingertips. With the talk of self-driven cars, electric cars and the reality of a pandemic-hit world - these buyers are going to be as choosy as ever. Companies will be bound to cut advertising spends and marketing budgets. Account-based marketing today is far more relevant to this industry now because you don’t advertise to a large mass anymore but only to a selected few who are MOST likely to buy. Now you are thinking programmatic ads - the content that’s already cut and tailored to appeal to the final decision makers.

Example - 

Real estate

You will agree that real estate, just like the automobiles, cannot operate like FMCG products with a shelf-life. It’s a long-term investment. Converting buyers to spend in real estate is difficult. It’s an industry that’s already segregated in terms of buyers - you have the broader accounts such as residential and commercial property buyers, then you have further segments such as buyers of apartments, farm houses, independent houses, penthouses and so on. Each of this is a market account on its own. 

Example - 

ABM is truly a unicorn among marketing strategies in the wake of a pandemic-stricken world. When you engage in account-based marketing for each of these industries, you are already able to think long-term when it comes to ‘after services’ such as repair and maintenance. You are able to market these services right from the start now because you know who your accounts are.

More on this in the next article. Let’s discuss ABM in the context of IT and SAAS industries. Meanwhile, I would love to get your thoughts on this. Feel free to share here.