Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B marketing strategy that aligns sales and marketing efforts to deliver targeted advertising, as well as personalized content and messaging, to high-value accounts. Rather than relying on blanket campaigns meant to appeal to an entire market, ABM treats individual accounts as markets in their own right. It uses personalized campaigns designed to engage each account, basing the marketing message on the specific attributes and needs of the account.
ABM isn’t a new marketing strategy, however, it has been used by B2B marketers for well over a decade. But rapid advances in the sophistication and accessibility of relevant data—and in technologies that enable ABM—are now fueling widespread interest and adoption of this approach.
Everything in an account-based marketing strategy depends on a deep and reliable understanding of the accounts and audiences you’re targeting. ABM requires marketing and sales teams to strategically select accounts to target and nurture through customized engagement and support.
To formalize the account selection process, marketing teams should design target company personas based on the high-value clients most likely to convert and/or grow. Evaluate what business objectives and values these target accounts tend to share and what major steps in their buying journey precede purchase.
Customer journey mapping is creating a visual representation of the various steps and interactions a customer goes through when interacting with a company or brand. It is a way to understand and optimize the customer experience. It is an essential aspect of marketing because it helps businesses identify and address customers’ pain points or frustrations during their journey. Customer journey mapping is a crucial element of any successful marketing strategy, but it becomes vital in the context of account-based marketing. This targeted approach to marketing focuses on individual accounts rather than a broader audience and requires a deep understanding of the customer’s journey to engage them effectively. Overall, the use of customer journey mapping in ABM can lead to improved customer relationships, increased loyalty, and greater business success.
Personalization in ABM means customizing your message to suit one particular prospect (or prospects) instead of using a one-size-fits-all message. For example, personalized ABM could include the following tactics:
Personalization is increasingly important in today’s marketing landscape. As personalized marketing becomes more common across B2B industries, more prospects will be waiting for customer offers that solve their specific challenges.
With ABM, your brand can directly personalize marketing touchpoints to key contacts in target accounts. Unsurprisingly, this approach makes prospects feel valued while enabling you to deliver content that is valuable to the specific person or team. Personalizing marketing with ABM helps you empathize with your prospects and shows them you understand their problems and can provide a solution. It’s a cycle—you can use then use those insights to continue creating content that is relevant to them.
ABM isn’t only for prospects—it’s also helpful to build and nurture ongoing customer relationships. Establishing a good relationship with contacts at key accounts builds trust and increases the likelihood that they will look to you as an expert on your markets. In addition, personalized marketing through ABM will give you better insights into the customer, their behavior, and their needs as time passes.
Most marketers use ROI (Return on Investment) as a key metric for measuring the success of their ABM strategies. In addition, about 97% of marketers say ABM yields higher returns than other marketing strategies. Understanding how your ABM strategies performed tells you whether your investment is worth the return. If your accounts don’t buy products from your brand, you’re wasting valuable time investing in relationship building.
Mapping their journey is one way to measure your success and see where you can improve. Your target account’s map shows what content or channels they engaged with, and which tactics yielded the best results. You can use that data to streamline your subsequent ABM campaigns. However, it can also tell you where target accounts abandoned their journey, which helps you identify potential issues in your processes.
Aligning ABM tactics with sales team initiatives can help accelerate the sales cycle and ensure consistent messaging and experiences across brand efforts. In addition, streamlining efforts will drive a lift in media performance to ultimately generate more significant revenue and return on investment for your business. This can be as simple as integrating CRM data into media reporting to understand how marketing efforts impact the sales process.
Content marketing is a way to take potential customers from “what is this?” to “I need that.” The goal here isn’t to flood the funnel with leads, but to create content that addresses your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) at every customer journey stage. Think of your content as a cohesive guide leading your target accounts to the sale.
ABM may not be part of your sales and marketing strategies right now, but you can see how it can be incredibly lucrative when it comes to building brand loyalty and seeing more sales conversions. Sales is all about effort; you can only get back what you put in. With a strong ABM strategy in place, you can focus your efforts and give your most valuable accounts the attention they deserve. And when sales and marketing are able to work in tandem to build and nurture strong customer relationships, you may be surprised at how great the results can be.
LaneTerralever is an ABM leader with the knowledge and resources to help you attract your target accounts at scale. If you need an ABM agency, you know where to find us.
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