Account-based marketing: a strategic approach that coordinates personalized marketing and sales efforts to open doors and deepen engagement at specific accounts.”

– Jon Miller, at DemandBase (formerly Engagio).

Back in the ‘60s, there was no sophistication as everything was done by feel, without any guarantee that accounts would stay loyal to their agencies. Most often at the agency’s expense, accounts would be taken out for dinner/drinks and nudging contacts to introduce their colleagues.

Fortunately, a lot has changed in account-based marketing today.

With the introduction of marketing automation and digital demand channels like paid search, social media, small businesses can leverage the benefits of ABM- marketing as a service is being automated at scale such that marketers can do more with less.

The new account-based marketing for small businesses aided by technology offers things like,

• Powerful predictive analytics for ideal customer profiles,
• Updated and fresh contact data,
• Targeted advertising through LinkedIn,
• Website personalization, and
• Management and tracking tools (some are mentioned in this blog).

How to Get Started with ABM?

ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING TACTICS

Some ABM Software Tools To Your Rescue – Grow with Digital Marketing

Neil Patel, a popular brand marketer notes that most companies outside of tech aren’t ready for marketing automation yet. Some marketers complain about getting 10,000 leads per month because only 10% align with their target account list. Here is where adopting ABM becomes crucial for these companies to save on valuable resources.

LeanData: This company offers two ABM products: Sales Accelerator & Demand Management. While Sales Accelerator focuses on lead management, including automated lead conversions and contact owner assignments, Demand Management focuses on account-based reporting and nurturing, ensuring proper data to adjust campaigns and target leads.

DemandBase: It offers a full suite of solutions that include advertising, personalized site experiences, and account-based measurements.

Supermetrics: It is an amazing marketing analytics tool that collects all your data and displays it on platforms such as Excel, Google Sheets, and Google Data Studio. Supermetrics has connectors with Google Analytics, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Facebook Ads, and HubSpot.

Org Chart Hub: With Org Chart Hub you can use relationship mapping and customised sales personas on your target accounts helping you to close more deals.

Company Surge: It measures the content consumption of millions of B2B organisations and let you know when target organisations are looking for the products and services that you offer. This will help you proactively combine sales and marketing activities around your target organisations.

New ABM is NOT just B2B Marketing

Look at the image below.

Image Source: celsiusinternational.com

The analogy of fishing with nets with traditional B2B marketing and fishing with spears with a refined approach of Account-Based Marketing is quite popular. While both forms of marketing undergo similar stages, companies practicing ABM nurture and focus on a narrow list of prospects which gives them more chance to interact with their prospects and convert them.

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BENEFITS OF ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING

• Achieve that long-term goal to synergize Marketing and Sales.
• Anticipate and deliver consistent customer experiences through personalized content, targeted campaigns, pricing and product information, and more.
• ABM streamlines your sales cycle by focussing by focusing your efforts on specific high-value target accounts.
• Convenient measure for your return on investment.
• “Quality over quantity”: expand business through account relationships.

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Hold on.

It is also to be noted that just because a method is primitive in approach, it cannot be discarded completely. After all, a specialized approach like ABM may not suit all organizations. Companies can look to adopt ABM,

• if their product/service offerings are expensive or they have curated a nice niche,
• If they find customer acquisition and customer retention challenges,
• mass marketing campaigns are resource-consuming,
• looking to find a better way to align sales and marketing goals.

Wrapping Up

Let’s quickly review the traditional classifications:

• Inbound marketing, like blog posts and social media updates, is meant for public consumption. It is aided by technical SEO, freemium trials, and other interactive tools.
• Outbound marketing, also known as disruptive marketing for a reason that it directly involves marketing put in front of leads. PPC campaigns, Email marketing, Cold calls are part of this strategy.
• Content marketing is a part of inbound marketing and focuses on information dissemination to generate as many leads as possible.
  Then there’s account-based marketing (ABM), the subject of this blog post.

ABM uses a mix of inbound & outbound tactics to target a very specific set of targeted accounts, using personalized campaigns tailored to each account. With the use of software solutions, companies with less technical know-how and inadequate infrastructure can practice ABM to focus on specific accounts.

Finally, we leave with a well-compiled blog post on the top account-based marketing campaign strategy for you to get inspired.

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