You might have seen the abbreviation ABM and wondered what it stands for. ABM, or Account Based Marketing, is one of the most frequently mentioned terms in the B2B marketing space. If you’re interested in finding out why you need it and how to get started, keep reading!
What is Account Based Marketing?
Account Based Marketing (sometimes known as ABM marketing) is a form of marketing that uses highly targeted, personalised campaigns to win over particular accounts. Instead of using blanket campaigns to appeal to an entire market, ABM targets specific accounts, treating them as markets in their own right.
As ABM is a B2B marketing strategy, sales and marketing work closely together to target, reach and close deals with high-fit accounts. Rather than focusing on the number of accounts, they prioritise the quality so that their efforts are focused on providing relevant content and personalised messaging to build strong relationships that will have a higher chance of converting into closed deals for your business.
There are many benefits of ABM marketing:
- Keeping Marketing and Sales aligned
- Maximise your business’s relevance among high-value accounts
- Win business with your wish-list customers
- Streamline sales efforts focus on accounts you know fit your ideal criteria
ABM starts by selecting accounts most likely to convert into paying customers before nurturing them. These accounts are selected by performing market research to find the ideal customer before directly reaching out. The benefits of Account Based Marketing strategies include:
Increased personalisation
ABM targets a select few accounts using personalised marketing campaigns to tailor specific content to their needs.
Aligns marketing and sales
To create an effective B2B strategy, marketing and sales teams must work together to align marketing and sales efforts.
Increased conversion rates
Conversion rates can be increased by personalisation and targeting by building customer relationships and promoting loyalty.
Effective sales efforts
Using an ABM marketing strategy can ensure your time and resource invested into sales is spent effectively as you are only targeting the accounts you have pre-qualified as likely to need your offering, and are in the correct market, i.e. those that may be most likely to convert. It helps to reduce time spent through lead generation efforts sifting through those who may not need your offering/product, and instead focuses on engaging prospects who will come into market at some point.
Account based marketing and inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is used to attract loyal customers to your business by aligning with the needs of your target audience. The strategy can be applied in 3 ways:
- Attract: Drawing in the right people with valuable content and conversations that set you up as a trusted advisor.
- Engage: Presenting insights and solutions that align with their pain points and goals so they are more likely to buy from you.
- Delight: Offering help and support to empower your customers to find success with your product.
Instead of interrupting your target audience and customers, inbound marketing allows you to give your audience the information they want when they want it. It is a more organic way of drawing in customers by promoting brand awareness and using strategic content to encourage them to engage with your business.
Account Based Marketing strategy and tactics
To get the most out of an Account Based Marketing approach, deploying considered strategies and tactics is required. Account Based Marketing tactics are essential to your strategy, customised to each account they’re targeting. Having a tailored approach and value proposition that focuses on the specific needs, pain points and goals of an individual customer or account helps to avoid general marketing messages through the traditional sales approach.
There isn’t one single ABM marketing strategy template as this will depend on the prospective customer and the sales cycle. However, using these Account Based Marketing tactics you can create your own ABM strategy:
Identify your ideal customer profile
Conduct market research to determine which types of customers your product would be a best fit for. Once the ideal customer has been identified, user personas can be created using the information you’ve found!
Choose your target accounts
After developing customer personas, high-value target accounts can be identified. ABM strategies that can be used to do this are; one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many.
One-to-one and one-to-few ABM strategies allow you to focus on creating custom campaigns for a small number of key accounts. Whereas the one-to-many strategy allows you to target hundreds of accounts.
Conduct research
Customer research needs to be conducted to help you choose target accounts and learn about each potential prospect. This could be based on what job title roles are best to approach, or simply understanding what goals or challenges may be topical in your target’s industry.
Develop an account plan
If you want to target as many businesses as you can to help you sell more, a one-to-few strategy is a good option as it allows you to segment your target accounts based on similar characteristics.
Create personalised content
Every Account Based Marketing strategy requires personalised content including emails, blogs and website pages which will help to address common customer pain points and highlight the value of your products.
Use different marketing channels
A multichannel approach is required in an ABM strategy to create consistent sales interactions at each customer touchpoint. All prospects will find products and services differently so using multiple marketing channels can help to attract and convert more prospects that are a good fit.
How can Fast Track Solutions help your business?
At Fast Track solutions, we offer Account Based Marketing services to help you engage and win your ‘wish list’ customers. Our streamlined outbound prospecting seamlessly guides ABM from conception to success, ensuring optimal message delivery and tangible results in the form of sales appointments for your team.
If you’re searching for an account based marketing agency that arms you with the market intelligence and qualified sales opportunities you need to grow sales revenue, get in touch today to see how we can help!
