What Is Account Based Marketing (ABM)?

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ABM stands for Account-Based Marketing. ABM is a business strategy that involves unified coordination between the marketing team and the sales team to collaborate and appeal towards a specific set of target accounts that fit the organization’s ICP (Ideal Client Profile). This form of customized marketing solution is an improved alternative to traditional ways of reaching and engaging with the most profitable accounts in a given industry.

Rather than trying to attract anyone regardless if they are a good fit or not by simply placing a message out there, ABM allows you to tailor each and every message for specific target accounts. This creates much higher relevance and overall better relationships between you and your prospects. For B2B companies with high-ticket deals, ABM is an essential strategy.

Instead of generalizing marketing campaigns, businesses are “flipping” the traditional funnel and shifting towards an ABM strategy that not only provides a better return on investment but yields a much higher success rate.

The TEAM Framework

Account-based marketing (ABM) is structured in a way that is known as “flipping the funnel”, as in flipping the traditional marketing funnel that so many are used to.

It can be structured into 4 steps, known as the “TEAM framework”, developed by Terminus, an account-based marketing automation platform.

TEAM is an acronym that stands for Target, Engage, Activate, Measure.

What are the perks of Account-Based Marketing?

1. Return on Investment

According to the research of Alterra group, ABM strategy has performed extremely well in attracting new, high-paying customers. Using a personalized and precise tactic of marketing has yielded great benefits with a clear way of measuring Return on Investment.

Metrics used to measure ABM success is different than with traditional funnel marketing. Since companies are strategically chosen based on important ICP criteria, they are already pre-qualified.

2. Utilizing Marketing Budget

Most businesses follow a lead-based strategy. Instead of trying to find out which accounts are appropriate for your services, an ABM strategy allows you to spend money only on accounts that are relevant to your business. That way you not only save money on marketing but also save your valuable time and energy.

Using the traditional lead marketing strategy actually puts most of your marketing budget in the trash. Account-based marketing helps you get the best bang for your financial investments. As a result, you will be spending less time on marketing campaigns that don’t yield any profit or leads.

3. Shortens Sales Cycle

ABM helps to shorten the sales cycle that a marketer otherwise would have to go through. By targeting the decision-makers of important accounts through relevant content, account-based marketing acts as a catalyst that shortens the cycle of sales. Again, this helps businesses reach their target sooner without any waste of time or useless guesses.

4. Improved Customer Experience

How often have you been attacked by emails about products or services that you did not need? Or those generalized marketing emails made you unsubscribe them? Most B2B marketers fail to understand the importance of good customer experience. And that only can be achieved through customized products and services. With ABM, emails are tailored to your customer’s needs and may only be applicable for them, which increases customer experience and the chances of a potential deal increase significantly.

5. Sales and Marketing Teams Collaborate

At the foundation of account-based marketing is complete transparency and alignment between sales and marketing. Most sales and marketing teams are siloed and lack communication. An ABM strategy requires your sales team and marketing teams to collaborate and work towards the same set of target accounts, with the same goals and evaluated using the same metrics. With ABM, you win and lose as a team.

Both teams identify potential client accounts, prepares personalized marketing campaigns for those accounts and progresses towards achieving a closed-won. Working on the same goals not only yields better results but also improves the revenue for the business

Examples of Account Based Marketing Tactics

1. Direct Mail: Everyone opens their mail. Chances are, no matter what it is, if it’s in an envelope they will read it. So if most of your emails remain unnoticed by potential clients, sending them a letter in the mail might be your best chance at grabbing their attention. However we recommend you do this to warmer prospects, not as cold outreach. Account based marketing is all about engaging with the right accounts, at the right time. Too early or too late and you might blow your chances.

2. Personalized Email: To be able to see great results in your account-based marketing strategy, you must to tailor and customize messages specific for that person within the account. You can do this by following them on social media, looking into the account’s recent activity on sales navigator, and approach the conversation as a friend, not a salesman.

3. Paid Advertising: Advertising is a great way to build brand awareness or to stay in the back of your prospects mind while you’re not in direct contact with them. But this approach must be strategic. As with other tactics, even paid advertising must tailored to the account’s specific needs/problems.

To build brand awareness, using intent data is great way to decide who you should be displaying ads to. Being specific with copy, images and channel choice is important if you want to stand out form the noise online. Platforms like Terminus and AdRoll allow you to easily filter your advertising to make them more target account specific.

4. Webinars: Web-based seminars are growing in popularity as it allows an expert to organize workshop, seminar, or presentation through web conferencing. In an account-based strategy, webinars can be created specifically for a target account. Though others may show up, presenting a message directed towards that account can help a message resonate deeply and have them saying “YES! That’s what we need!!”

5. Web Personalization: We all know how important the user experience is for website conversions. When your target accounts are drawn to your website, you want them to have an out of this world experience and you can do this by personalizing a web experience.

When someone goes on a website, they often read the headline and subheading to decide whether it’s worth their time to read the rest of it. You want to make sure these headlines catch their attention by making the headings and subheading specific to their company name, industry, and relevant problems.

6. Personalized Video: Videos are fun, engaging and easily digestible. Video allows marketers and salespeople to create series of personalized videos for the most ideal prospects. Whether this be customized for your website visitors, or show up for your email subscribers, or simply to relay a thank-you message a video generated at a one-on-one conversation is always a good go-to.

In Few Words

Compared to traditional funnel based marketing, Account-Based Marketing offers much more benefits in terms of appealing to larger accounts, that have a longer sales cycle, and have a high life-time value (LTV). ABM provides a personalized marketing strategy that your clients prefer — Real and meaningful conversations with other real humans who genuinely care about their problems. Marketers are moving away from generic marketing techniques and switching to account-based marketing that yields greater results. We understand that implementing an account-based strategy for your organization can be a tedious task. It requires that everyone in the organization be familiar with new terms, approaches, and metrics of measuring success. If your team is looking to kickstart ABM and close more enterprise deals, Vertex Marketing Agency can help you! We help B2B SaaS companies using traditional funnel based marketing switch to an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy. As a consultant agency, we aid in, and teach you how to create your ideal customer profile, find your most valuable accounts, engage sales and marketing simultaneously and how to measure ABM effort.