What Is Account-Based Marketing?

ABM or Account-Based Marketing is one of the many marketing strategies in a business where marketing resources are focused directly on accounts. It seems a little bit vague, but Account-based marketing, or what most marketers have shortened to ABM, makes use of a unique strategy of concentrating the whole marketing procedures towards individual accounts. The most popular form of marketing treats the accounts or customers as a whole. It means treating each account as critical as the whole collective accounts, only that here each account is targeted specifically.

While most of the other marketing strategies are focused on brand awareness or account awareness in this case and lead generation, Account-Based Marketing encompasses all. It boasts of a more holistic approach. Here campaigns are personalized down to the details of each account.

A more practical way of explaining Account-Based Marketing is looking at it like fishing. Rather than targeting every type of fish in the pond, ABM concentrates on a specific breed of fish in the pond. ABM goes down into every detail, the species of fish, the gender, the age, the color, and every other detail.

The pond here is the market, while the fishes are the different people conducting business in that market. The strategy of ABM marketing is to target the individual people in the market.

The best (B2B) business-to-business marketing strategy is ABM Marketing; it is the ideal strategy for businesses trying to attract other accounts or clients. It is also useful for (B2C) business-to-customer marketing but requires more attention than B2B marketing. How then does ABM Marketing?

How Account-Based Marketing Works

The strategies in account-based marketing involve three different steps

1)      Identifying A Target

2)      Marketing To The Target

3)      Evaluating Your Success

1)     Identifying A Target

This is the first step involved in Account-Based Marketing, and it deals with identifying the target, the accounts, or companies that best suit the niche you want to get involved in. It starts with creating a character description, a buyer persona that would show characteristics of the clients you wish to have. The age, business, class, location, and other essential description. Here’s a detailed guide to creating the best buyer persona. 

There’s a way you can accomplish this, which is by taking note of the clients you’ve worked with before, including their characteristics. You have to consider your competitors as well. Take time to identify the hierarchy in the companies to know how they approach stuff; this would help to understand the companies better.

2)     Marketing To The Target

After identifying the account and the big guns in management, the next step is developing a marketing strategy for the target or account. This process can be achieved by creating campaigns that are specialized in this particular account. The following steps can be used in creating specialized campaigns;

•                     Create specialized websites that are well organized
•                     Make sure the fonts are well placed and clearly stated
•                     Trim your words down to what catches the fancy of the client. You would be able to know this when you do your research properly.
•                     Pictures communicate well and can grab the attention of whoever is looking at them.

3)     Evaluating Your Success

This comes as the last stage because this is where you test the marketing you have done. Here you measure how well your strategy has worked. Traditional marketing would require tools such as the impressions of your posts, the number of clicks, and page views. But all of these do not accurately show you the results of your account-based marketing. 

Evaluating and measuring your results would require you to take a closer look at the number of customers you have gained. With account-based marketing, you look at the companies and clients you are working with and have worked with; do they include those you targeted? If your answer is positive, then you have achieved your goals. 

Carefully and strategically implementing these steps would ensure you can enjoy the benefits that come with using the ABM strategy.

Benefits of Account-Based Marketing

Using Account-Based Marketing gives you an edge over the traditional marketing method because of the specialized marketing options it offers. Below are the benefits of using Account-Based Marketing.

1. Keeps Sales and Marketing Strategy Aligned

Account-Based Marketing as a marketing strategy creates an atmosphere where all the departments of the business are actively participating and working together to achieve a goal. One of its strong points is that it ensures that the sales and marketing teams are in order in their strategy; this ensures that there’s perfect sync with both teams, and typically when there’s excellent sync in an organization, such a place thrives.

         2. Increased Success Rate

With the traditional marketing method where ad content is cast like fishing nets, there is a high chance that fish would be reeled in with the net. But this doesn’t address the fact that some fishes might not be the best or might not be edible; some might fall back out. While traditional marketing cares about the majority, ABM targets the specific in the majority.

Making use of ABM increases your chances of getting a targeted account or client because you have directed all your resources at making sure you get them. Marketing is more like fishing, therefore to catch a big fish, you need a big bait, a lot of information, and patience; this is what ABM brings and thereby increases success. Seeing that you are interested in them alone would convince them that they don’t have to compete for your time.

         3. Establishing Yourself As An Authority

Because ABM increases your chances of success, you can hit over seventy percent of your target. Reaching your objectives through account-based marketing helps to establish your firm or organization as marketers. Unlike throwing out the nets with bait and waiting for fishes to come, you are going after your target, and with the high rate of success, you get to make your business a household name. With ABM, you can establish your authority and build a reputation.

4. Increased Return On Investment

Successful account-based marketing has been proven to give a large return on investment. And yes, it can be explained without any heat map or stuff. Traditional marketing methods throw out the net and wait for clients to come. Clients that might later decline to work with you. It is successful to some extent, but when it is compared to ABM, it is relatively lower because, with ABM, you get the account you want. Working with an account, you have researched is more beneficial because you know its financial strengths and weaknesses.

With ABM, you work with a certainty of what to expect, while traditional marketing strategy is filled with uncertainty. You can also measure your return on investment (ROI) on the accounts you have invested in. This will help you to verify if the account you have invested in your time and resources is the best for you. It helps to map the success of your ABM strategies, which would later help you target accounts or clients that are similar to the successful ones.

         5. Give excellent customer experience

Account-Based Marketing takes a very long time to plan and execute. Most of the time, it takes more than six months to make sure the plan is right before execution. The time, effort, and extensive research put into making it a success, coupled with the smooth collaboration between the staff and department, will ensure your product meets your customers’ needs. However, the length of time required also ensures the staff is on their toes in delivering good service because the ultimate goal is satisfaction.

Account-Based Marketing ensures that you achieve your goals and objectives when you focus on just the specific out of the majority.