SELL MORE with Account Based Marketing (ABM)!

Just imagine! A world where you could sell directly to your best-fit, highest-value accounts, without wasting time talking to unqualified leads... Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

Well, it can become reality! With account-based marketing (ABM), all of this is made possible: you could move straight into the phases of engaging and delighting your target accounts.

The process allows you to align your marketing and sales teams from the beginning in order to promote long-term business growth, delight customers, and increase revenue.

It’s worth a try for sure!

But before jumping right into the deep of account-based marketing strategies, let us share a few thoughts on what it’s all about!

What is account-based marketing?

The process:

We are sorry to inform you but the traditional B2B sales and marketing funnel is broken.

Why do we say that?! Because B2B marketing, in its current form, takes a wide approach to lead generation with the goal of capturing as many leads as possible.

The problem with that? The funnel gets smaller towards the bottom, so the vast majority of B2B leads — over 99%, according to Forrester Research — never become customers.

Can you afford such waste in your system?

Account-based marketing flips the B2B sales and marketing funnel on its head, challenging the traditional lead-based, inbound-only approach to marketing.

ABM begins with identifying and targeting best-fit accounts that have the biggest revenue potential for your business, instead of starting with marketing channels in an attempt to generate leads. Account-based marketing is a strategic approach to opening doors and deepening engagement at specific accounts by coordinating personalized marketing and sales efforts.

ABM enables your company to work and communicate with high-value accounts as if they were separate markets. This, combined with personalizing the buyer's journey and tailoring all communications, content, and campaigns to those specific accounts, will result in higher ROI and increased customer loyalty.

But before examining the additional benefits of account-based marketing and the specific tactics, let’s review its relationship with another important strategy: inbound marketing.

The Fundamental Difference of Account-Based Marketing

The easiest way to grasp the characteristics of the strategic framework is to compare it to an inbound strategy.

To conclude, account-based marketing is grounded on the exclusive selection of a useful customer target audience while offering organizations a significant return on investment (ROI) as they are faced with the need to acquire, keep, and grow high-value accounts.

In contrast, inbound marketing is more fundamental — the methodology and growth strategy allows you to attract customers through the creation of valuable content, SEO, and a delightful customer experience. Inbound marketing lays the groundwork for a strong ABM strategy.

Close alignment between an organization's sales, marketing, and customer success teams is required for effective account-based marketing.

The specialty of this approach is that it also aims to create a zero-waste marketing system by focusing on quality over quantity thus creating a pipeline filled with high-quality account leads.

They will be the so-called accounts, which we manage completely individually during the sale.

ABM is a win-win-win for sales, marketing, and customers- so don’t wait too much to apply this strategy!

What does a fisherman have to do with account-based marketing?

Inbound marketing is still not dead, for sure. But account-based marketing had to come into the picture because it has an unfortunate feature: lead waste. The technique is mostly fueled by its ability to address a large and even rapidly updating audience, which it prepares step by step and narrows to an increasingly relevant lead base. At each stage of the process, we retain only those interested parties who we consider mature to move on to the next stage and discard the rest.

Let us use the example of a fisherman to demonstrate the difference between the two!

Imagine a fishing boat that specializes in mass-catching carp! They throw out their net, which catches a lot of fish: there will be smaller and larger carp, as well as a variety of other species.

Fishermen select large carp at a high energy cost, discard other fish species back into the water, and set aside smaller carp to raise them to the right size.

On the other hand, there is a fisherman who does not search for carp with a net, but carefully assesses the water and then, where he finds the largest carp, drops them with a spear.

In the example, the first technique is equivalent to inbound marketing, while the second is equivalent to account-based marketing.

It’s clear that while inbound marketing is sacrificing time to filter out a lot of unqualified leads, on the other hand, the ABM strategy invests energy in initial mapping and focuses only on the “fish” that is right for it. In account-based marketing, we select the right ones from a smaller available audience, with less waste and a more accurate procedure.

Why would you want to practice ABM?

Promises

That thoughtful approach is important at a time when buyers are increasingly insistent on outreach tailored to their business and even their interests within the business. ABM requires that marketing and sales engage each member of the team in a personalized way. When it comes to targeting marketing and sales efforts at a few select, high-value accounts, a tailored approach is critical.

Buyers will be more open to your outreach if you personalize it well, and they will be less likely to ignore your content and communications!

Is it going to be effective?

We’re glad you asked!

We collected some benefits of ABM for you to see why you should try it today.

1. Reduces inefficiency

Just think about it: how often do people request an e-book or attend a webinar, even though they are ever going to buy the product or service? It happens all the time. Account-based marketing is effective because it allows you to promote to specific companies rather than wasting time and money on unqualified or undesirable prospects.

2. Guarantees message relevancy

And maybe this is the most important because relevancy always wins. The more specific and resonant your marketing, the more successful it will be.

If you use account-based marketing, you can not only reach all of the relevant people in whatever division you're targeting, but you can also customize all of your outreach messages, cold emails, ads, social ads, landing pages, and everything else to address the specific pain points of the targeted company.

This is what the best salespeople do when they are on the phone and preparing proposals. ABM enables marketers to behave more like great salespeople, increasing conversion rates and reducing waste.

3. Shorter Sales Cycle

When it comes to getting internal buy-in from prospective customers, the sales process is notorious for hitting a speed bump. Account-based marketing addresses this issue by delivering the right messaging in front of key decision-makers at target accounts, thereby shortening the sales cycle.

A successful ABM initiative can increase revenue, optimize your efforts, and provide detailed metrics that would otherwise be unavailable.

4. Better customer experience

Above all, account-based marketing is about the customer. They prefer to explore solutions on their own terms and receive vendor communications only when they are meaningful and relevant.

Account-based marketing involves personalizing everything for each account in which you invest your resources. Your relevance among these accounts is increased as a result of this personalization and customization.

That’s because your content and interactions are tailored in a way to show them how your specific products, services, offerings, and team are what they need to solve their challenges and to grow better.

Common problems that ABM can solve

You might wonder: OK, but how does it serve my goals in real-life situations?

We gathered some problems our customers might -unknowingly- have.

#1. Problem: You are not able to show a clear ROI. One of the primary goals of account-based marketing is to prioritize ROI, resulting in measurable business outcomes. The 2014 ITSMA Account-Based Marketing Survey discovered that “ABM delivers the highest return on investment of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic” when compared to other marketing initiatives.

#2. Problem: You are wasting a lot of time, staff, and budget resources. Account-based marketing allows marketers to focus their resources more efficiently and run marketing programs that are specifically optimized for target accounts, because it is focused on investing time in promising, high-value accounts.

#3. Problem: You are not seeing engagement with your audience anymore. Since ABM is geared specifically to them, their business, and their specific stage in the customer journey, buyers are more likely to interact.

#4. Problem: Your marketing and sales teams are not aligned. If your sales and marketing teams aren’t communicating effectively, ABM is one of the most appropriate ways to get them on the same page. Account-based marketing runs similarly to sales, putting marketing and sales teams in the same mindset so they are thinking both in terms of accounts and how to target them, bring them to the table, and close the deal.

How to implement ABM strategy?

We tend to distinguish 4 main steps in account-based marketing.

These are as follows:

1. Accurate identification of the target audience.

Once we have found the group of companies that we consider to be the most potential, it is time to identify the members within the company who can be the decision-makers when it comes to purchasing our product. The list created in this way can be useful, as we can get to know the company's thinking, position, desires and possibly its problems well.

2. New potential customers based on the characteristics of the customer audience

As we previously mapped, we can examine the connection networks. For example, our potential customers may be suppliers or other partners, companies with similar numbers and revenues operating in the same industry, and even indirectly related to them. The point is to keep the principle of accurate targeting method when broadening!

3. Channel selection and content production tailored to the audience

Let’s produce more useful content, create accurate PPC ads, and use our expertise in content marketing to get the company’s attention!

4. Evaluation of results, feedback, optimization

ABM strategy analysis is clearer, more transparent, and well optimized. We expect higher click-through and conversion rates, which is conducive to PPC advertising investments to sell. Our excellence in our values may indicate that our target audience mapping, and content marketing worked well.

Are you still hesitating?

ABM could be your competitive advantage!

I'm sure at the end of the article, you're starting to dig that with ABM you can reach more with less...

With account based marketing implemented right, you can get more and better clients, with less effort and resources! You can reach unbelievably high ROIs!

Therefore ABM should be a must for EVERY B2B company... but it's NOT at all. As with almost all of the innovative ideas and strategies, only a fraction of the B2B companies have implemented this strategy YET... probably because it's not easy, it differs from the status quo and takes time, work, resources and involving an expert to do it with success.

On the other hand, this means you're just in time to make your move...

At BLACKHOLE we've been innovating, and following the newest trends in the B2B marketing, lead generation and sales game for years now... and you have to know that ABM is the next big thing.

As a B2B marketing and growth agency with 100s of outstanding B2B clients behind our back, running campaigns ALL OVER THE WORLD, we can help you in implementing the ABM approach to your company successfully and boost your ROI.

Let me know if you have any questions about account-based marketing or would like to know more about the process.

Flip the chart and catch the big fish with ABM!