Recent studies reveal that 62% of marketers affirm that ABM (Account-based marketing) has notably improved their marketing initiatives, highlighting its ability to drive personalised engagement and cultivate stronger client connections that lead to higher revenue. For executives navigating the dynamic realms of sales and marketing, comprehending the transformative impact of ABM is not merely advisable but crucial for achieving continuous growth and enhancing client satisfaction.
What is Account-Based Marketing, and how is it different from Account-Based Sales?
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Account-Based Sales (ABS) are critical for engaging high-value accounts. ABM emphasises tailored campaigns that resonate deeply with the specific needs and challenges of targeted accounts, aligning marketing efforts closely with key decision-makers priorities to build personalised relationships that go beyond traditional B2B interactions.
Conversely, Account-Based Sales (ABS) complements ABM by translating personalised marketing insights into targeted sales strategies. ABS involves meticulous research to understand the nuances of each prospective account, enabling sales teams to deliver customised pitches that directly address the unique pain points and objectives of key stakeholders.
By building strong connections through empathetic engagement, ABS strives to turn specific accounts into long-lasting partnerships based on mutual benefit and strategic alignment.
So, while ABM concentrates on aligning strategic marketing with targeted accounts, ABS utilizes personalised sales strategies to increase conversions and promote ongoing growth. These combined methods enable executives to navigate competitive environments with precision, ensuring long-term success.
Origin of Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing began in the late 1990s when both B2C and B2B companies realized a more personalised approach to their messages was more effective. However, the term was coined in 2004 by ITSMA, an American company that has been using ABM techniques for years.
Yet, it was not until 2013 that the term generated enough traffic to appear on Google Trends, coinciding with the rise of the inbound movement.
When is it advisable and practical to implement Account-Based Marketing?
ABM is recommended for companies that find themselves in one of the following two situations:
Companies with few potential clients
A company with a small number of potential clients, such as a business with about 200 clients in Spain, could successfully base its strategy on ABM.
Typically, these companies realize that traditional marketing techniques are not helpful because they impact a large audience, a type of user who will never acquire their product or service. When discussing conventional marketing techniques, we refer to campaigns on Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, attraction marketing, mass advertising, etc.
These companies address this shortfall with commercial work. With the methods at their disposal, they have commercial teams that try to reach those accounts and target profiles through intensive, long-term commercial work. These methods are usually formulas we all know, such as cold calling, networking, or trade fairs.
Companies with few target clients need a more surgical marketing approach to achieve satisfactory results. They must be capable of identifying the profiles they should impact and only marketing to them. Account-based marketing can help achieve this.
ABM adds a marketing layer to that traditional commercial action, a marketing layer that involves semi-automatically identifying those accounts and then having strategies that increase the efficiency of the commercial team. Thus, the time invested in identifying the interested audience is minimized, focusing only on those who show interest.
Companies with high Customer Core Value
Account-based marketing is a profitable strategy for companies with high-value clients (Customer Lifetime Value). These clients, who are profitable to acquire, easy to retain, and capable of making recommendations, can significantly boost a business’s revenue. Implementing ABM ensures effectiveness and profitability in client acquisition.
The reason is apparent: if the client has a high value, conducting ABM campaigns means that client management costs are low compared to the client’s value, thus enabling these actions to be implemented with much more notable results in the short term. This occurs because ABM allows for quickly identifying and engaging with the interested potential contact.
Formulas to Launch an ABM Campaign
There are two different formulas to base an Account-Based Marketing campaign: ABM by account or ABM by industry.
ABM by Account
The concept of ABM by account is precisely where its name comes from, a type of marketing based on contacting accounts interested in specific services or products. To carry out an ABM by account strategy, we must ensure that we meet several requirements:
Have a team to approach those accounts or contacts.
Have the technology to provide the necessary tools to segment or contact the target accounts.
Be able to create personalized content to impact the company we want to contact
When we talk about creating highly personalized content, we mean exclusive content to them. We could conduct market studies solely for them so that this hyper-personalized content is received by people in the company who are not yet clients and are surprised to see such personalized content reaching them without even working with them. For example, we could create an ebook discussing the specific company and analyzing its market situation. Still, at a personalized level, we even use the company’s name, image, and logo in a carefully designed and detailed format.
Although this is the most traditional and effective ABM formula, it is also the most expensive.
ABM by Industry
We can opt for industry-based ABM if we prefer a nearly equally effective, slightly more massive, but less costly version of Account-Based Marketing. Instead of personalizing all the content for the specific client we want to reach, we do so in a particular industry or sector.
By personalizing the content for the specific industry, when we approach the client, the perception of that content is less exact and seen as less personalized but still highly relevant because it relates to their sector.
Phases of ABM: How to Design a Campaign?
Understanding the Phases of ABM is Crucial for Designing a Successful Campaign. These Phases Include Choosing the Accounts, Discovering Decision-Making Profiles, Creating Personalized Content, and Implementing the Campaign. Account-based marketing aims to maximize the number of leads and improve conversions at each stage of the sales process. To achieve these objectives, it is essential to study and analyze each phase in depth to design a successful ABM campaign.
1.Choosing the Accounts
Not all companies know which accounts to target. It is most common not to know. Therefore, the first phase of designing an ABM campaign is choosing which accounts to target. We need a list of the companies that interest us to which we will direct our campaigns.
In this first step, it is essential to have a technological tool that allows proper segmentation of that type of company. Various tools in the market can do this, but the most common and widely used is LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. This practical tool allows excellent market segmentation based on different criteria.
This step is crucial as it will help us determine whether to approach by account or industry.
2. Discovering Decision-Making Profiles
In this second phase, a decision tree for the account must be created. Since the idea of ABM is to do personalized branding work for a single company, making a decision tree allows valuable information to be delivered to the entire tree simultaneously or staggered.
The strategy involves sending hyper-personalized content to all decision-makers in the target company, ensuring that the entire company talks about us. This creates a brand perception of our company.
3. Designing the Contact Strategy
The third phase is based on designing the contact strategy. At this point, we must analyze that depending on the industry, some media will be helpful and others not. The typical contact strategy uses LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator to reach decision-making profiles. Thus, we will need to subscribe to an InMails plan through this tool or PRO accounts: with them, you can send emails and contact them, for example, offering some downloadable content requiring contact information before download, possibly through a previously created landing page.
However, there are other ways to do it. Creativity is the best tool in this phase, extending to growth hacking. We can find ABM strategies based on attending fairs and gathering information there, building relationships through LinkedIn groups, or using highly sophisticated databases, as commonly done in the United States, to approach those profiles without going through LinkedIn. Whatever the designed strategy, it is essential to note that an initial part of this phase will be manual for the first interaction, and then tasks can be automated.
4. First Engagement
The first engagement does not imply significant novelties: a landing page is created with a form where the buyer persona leaves their data, and from there, the educational process begins. Unlike inbound (where the process is very automatic and massive), account-based marketing allows for profile-by-profile tracing. In ABM, we can know precisely which user has opened or not opened the content, which we can insist more on, etc.
ABM is closely related to inbound sales, mainly because the integration of tools to interact with these specific profiles and then maintain contact can be worked through a combination of tools: first, for segmentation and access (like Sales Navigator) and then through semi-automated and highly tracked commercial work.
It is important to mention that specific ABM tools like Drift exist, although many more are available on the market: more companies are enabling the automation of certain ABM steps.
5. Educational Process
The final phase of the Account-Based Marketing campaign involves sending the personalized content we have previously developed through lead nurturing to educate the profile gradually and, through this profile, who may be someone other than the decision-maker, reach the one who is.
Relationship between Account-Based Marketing and Inbound Marketing
Relationship with Inbound Marketing
Account-based marketing and Inbound Marketing share certain aspects, primarily the technological base and personalized content. On one side, we have the idea of clearly defining the buyer persona, who to contact, and how to describe them… All this is done through technological tools, often overlapping with inbound tools like HubSpot.
On the other hand, there is the content design for the buyer persona. An inbound marketing team accustomed to designing content for an inbound marketing project is also prepared to create the necessary content for an account-based marketing project. This is why some agencies offering inbound services also offer ABM services since the project’s operational part, the most complex, is resolved within inbound agencies and thus can be applied to ABM as well.
Relationship with Lead Acquisition Marketing Automation
ABM and lead acquisition marketing automation are related by creating automated sequences where we activate different actions based on user behaviour.
In lead acquisition marketing automation, which is part of inbound marketing, everything is done on a massive scale because of the high volume of contacts. However, in account-based marketing, the number of contacts is smaller, making the work more artisanal or using more economical automation tools. Nevertheless, the philosophy behind user treatment, scoring, and sending is the same in both strategies.
Relationship with Inbound Sales
The relationship between account-based marketing and inbound sales lies in that many ABM actions can be carried out using automation tools specific to inbound sales. There are more free tools in this field to set up automatic sequences to track user behaviour. This article details how to manage these automatic sequences in HubSpot.
Conclusions about Account-Based Marketing
Even though Account-Based Marketing is a methodology that straddles marketing and commercial action, it is essential to note that it is closely related to the techniques, technologies, and processes of inbound marketing. Therefore, inbound agencies are often capable of offering ABM services efficiently and effectively.
On the other hand, ABM is a methodology that resolves the marketing layer for companies that have traditionally had issues activating marketing campaigns. These are companies oriented towards demand generation through the commercial team. In this case, we can begin activating actions before commercial activity, allowing us to access contacts in a more mature phase of their purchase process.
Finally, like other marketing methodologies, ABM has its technologies. However, while lead acquisition or retention marketing automation requires highly adapted technologies, ABM allows various technologies created for different purposes and applied to multiple tasks to monitor or automate, making the tools more economical.
We trust that our insights have deepened your understanding of ABM. If you’re eager to explore the nuances of Account-Based Selling further, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team of expert coaches and embark on your learning journey today!
