Account-Based Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing: The New Approach to Integrated Marketing

In the past, B2B marketers have used separate inbound and outbound marketing strategies to reach different audiences and achieve goals through specific tactics. Today’s robust suite of tech tools and platforms, such as LinkedIn and programmatic advertising, has allowed marketers to evolve traditional outbound marketing methods, such as cold calling, into carefully curated account-based approaches.

As we routinely step back to reassess our marketing and sales processes to improve opportunities, we find that inbound marketing and account-based marketing offer incredible potential as complementary tactics that work towards a common goal. These traditional strategies are two of the trending tactics that B2B marketers are currently using and combining them can result in even more impactful marketing.

• What is Inbound Marketing?
• What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
• What’s the Difference Between ABM and Inbound Marketing?
• Can Inbound Marketing and ABM be Used Together?
• Develop, Launch, and Manage Your Hybrid ABM and Inbound Marketing Strategy
• Determining Which Marketing Approach is Right For You

Discover the differences between inbound and account-based marketing and how to combine them for superior results.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing takes a broad approach to generate leads and sales, attracting as many customers as possible through high-quality content and experiences that are intuitive, valuable, and tailored to the user’s needs. Inbound marketing content revolves around the buyer’s journey. It answers peoples’ questions at every stage, including awareness, consideration, and decision, making your company their trusted source for information, and, hopefully, their chosen partner.

Examples of Inbound Marketing

This content includes blogs, articles, eBooks, webinars, podcasts, infographics, and videos that establish thought leadership in your industry and ultimately convert prospects into customers.

What is Account-Based Marketing?

Account-based marketing (ABM) has a much tighter focus than inbound. ABM campaigns are carefully targeted and thoroughly planned growth strategies where marketing and sales teams work together to develop customized, streamlined experiences for individual accounts. With this strategy, marketing and sales have a plan that describes the entire journey, from prospect to purchase, for a specific type of buyer.

The main benefit is that you do all the work sorting out the most valuable accounts upfront, allowing marketing and sales to create highly optimized and streamlined processes that speed up the buyer’s journey for those accounts. The success of an ABM campaign is highly dependent on the markets and audiences in question and is especially effective in high-value B2B sales journeys.

Examples of Account-Based Marketing

There are several tactics marketers use when it comes to ABM campaigns. These highly-focused strategies need to emphasize personalized content sent to specific high-value groups or individuals. Here are a few of the most common and effective ABM approaches:

Personalized Email Campaigns

Targeted emails are often highly effective but require a certain finesse, requiring personalization without coming off as intrusive and keeping things conversational, relevant, and to the point.

Social Media Ads

Targeted ads on platforms like LinkedIn can deliver advertising tailored to a specific audience, increasing the likelihood of interaction and raising awareness with a potential high-value prospect.

Personalized Content and Landing Pages

Creating content and landing pages designed specifically to resonate with high-value audiences increases the appeal and helps boost engagement.

What’s the Difference Between ABM and Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing relies on a broad approach, typically higher quality leads, whereas account-based marketing is more focused on ideal target personas, targeting a limited audience through personalization. Subsequently, the interactions between sales and marketing and the metrics you’ll use to determine success will be different with ABM.

Audience and Approach

Inbound marketing strategies are geared toward a broad target audience, grabbing as many prospects as possible by casting a wide net with exciting and informative content. ABM focuses on specific high-value audiences, delivering personalized messages and content your ideal customer finds most interesting.

Synergy Between Marketing and Sales

Inbound marketing requires a general understanding of your audience and provides sales teams with potential leads without requiring much input from them. On the other hand, ABM relies on data acquired by sales teams to identify high-value audiences and tailor content to their interests, requiring more collaboration between sales and marketing.

Metrics

While inbound marketing metrics focus on conversions, leads, and revenue, the individualized approach to ABM requires looking at engagement, clickthrough, and open rates to measure campaign success.

Read on to learn if inbound marketing and ABM can be used together.