Katie Donegan: sales departments have encountered major
challenges in the past few years due to social and economic
events that have disrupted the demand for products and
services. Companies now require a strategically targeted,
personalized, Account Based Marketing approach to strengthen
customer relationships and maximize profits. Account Based
Marketing, or ABM is a strategy and program that identifies high
value accounts and engages their buying teams with marketing
content and personal communications tailored to their
needs. The goal is to quickly and efficiently increase sales
revenue and ROI. ABM stands in contrast to demand generation
although they work synergistically. Demand
Generation is an older approach that's geared towards collecting
and qualifying sales leads using broad advertising and marketing
methods to foster interest in products and services. Those
leads are then analyzed using an ABM approach. To find and
nurture high value accounts. ABM is inherently a much slower and
more expensive process compared to demand generation, which
casts a wider net to find leads quickly. Fundamentally, ABM
brings marketing methods and personnel into the sales
process. It requires marketing and sales teams to collaborate
on identifying key accounts, understanding their needs and
challenges, and building closer relationships through customized
content and more personal interaction. We will examine the
basics of ABM tools and technologies, as well as the
benefits challenges and strategies that businesses need
to know for a deeper dive. Explore our complete collection
on all things ABM by clicking the link above or in the
description below. Salespeople had been selling into large
accounts for decades before ABM came along in the early 2000s,
and gave them a methodology and the digital marketing tools to
target those accounts more directly and efficiently. That
was a time when most marketers were focused on exploiting the
newly popular internet to reach as many people as possible. ABM
was initially used by IT services firms like Accenture,
IBM and Xerox that had large portfolios of offerings they
could tailor for big clients. Over the years, ABM grew as more
companies encountered the limitations of a demand
generation approach. And analysts at research firm
Gartner likened the targeted approach of ABM to fishing with
spears versus fishing with nets. Demand for ABM today appears
strong, even if the execution is often flawed. ABM ranked as the
number one priority among b2b marketers, and accounted for an
average of 20% of marketing budgets. According to a
benchmark survey by momentum it SMA and the ABM Leadership
Alliance. In addition, more than three fourths of respondents
reported revenue growth from using ABM methods, along with
plans to increase their ABM spending. And yet most companies
said they were just in the early stages of ABM adoption. ABM
experts and software vendors generally agree on a five
pronged approach to Account Based Marketing. Collaborate as
a team, include representatives from marketing and sales, plan a
strategy and maintain collaboration throughout the
sales cycle. Identify prospects, find people who match the ideal
customer profile and are researching products. Consider
using purchase intent data, ABM software, and account mapping to
automate this process and create custom content. Use analytics
and AI to understand the needs of prospects and develop
relevant custom content about your company's technology
products and services. Make sure the customer's buying team has a
positive account based experience and engage with
buyers deliver custom content and other types of messaging and
initiate personal contacts in sync with the buyers customer
journey and optimize the ABM process, improve management of
accounts and the overall ABM process by examining ABM metrics
and key performance indicators. measure things like the amount
of revenue a customer generates over the course of the
relationship, and the customers website visits, event attendance
and other interactions. The three main types of ABM are one
to one, one to few, and one to many, one to one, ABM is
sometimes called strategic ABM, and addresses the needs of
individual accounts through highly customized methods. Once
a few ABM is also known as ABM, light, and typically targets
fewer than a dozen accounts that have similar needs and only
require like customization. One to many ABM is also called
programmatic ABM, it takes greater advantage of marketing
automation technology to scale up efforts to dozens or even
hundreds of prospects, and typically segments them into
categories. This approach may seem a lot like demand
generation, but it's still considered ABM because it
targets specific accounts, though it's more likely to use
repurpose content than the other types are segmenting accounts,
say by region and ranking I'm in tiers according to their revenue
potential can help decide how many resources to devote to
them. For example, the lowest level accounts may get websites
and emails customized to their industry. The next level up
might get dedicated microsites, and the next highest level might
receive executive meetings and custom models that demonstrate
potential value and the top level accounts. Well, they might
get the royal treatment with on site visits from marketing and
sales staff, plus millions of dollars worth of content and
other assets. The primary goal of ABM is to increase sales
revenue. A secondary benefit is to economize on sales and
marketing resources. Together, they boost profits and ROI.
There are other benefits to ABM, of course, including increased
customer engagement, greater customer loyalty, better process
automation, accelerated sales cycles, and more upselling and
cross selling opportunities. According to a Gartner survey.
ABM programs work most effectively when marketing and
sales meet on a weekly basis and collaborate, but easier said
than done. Attempts to implement ABM have been known to fail when
strategies are heavily slanted towards marketing to the
detriment of sales. Part of the collaboration problem has been
lack of integration between the software used by departments.
marketing systems were designed to automate marketing
operations, tasks, processes and workflows. While the CRM system
was designed to support sales specific processes. No single
system could share marketing and sales information. The data
schemes of the two disciplines didn't line up either requiring
data integration and mapping between systems. Lately,
integration has improved partly due to the work of vendors that
sell both types of systems. ABM practitioners must also
familiarize themselves with the sales cycle of each client,
which can be long and continuous. Training marketing
people to understand sales and accounts is another hurdle, as
is educating sales teams. Another key challenge is
tracking, measuring and analyzing the results of say a
targeted marketing campaign. The number of website visits by high
value clients, or contact center upsell revenue in a given
period. When building an ABM strategy, most of the effort
goes into aligning marketing and sales. Using a combination of
management techniques, and technical support. All
stakeholders need to have a clear understanding of their
roles and responsibilities. The key is getting different points
of contact to work as a single brand in front of the customer
without collaboration across departments. Sales, for example,
might unknowingly pitch a new product to a customer whose
billing department is angry about a possible overcharge from
a previous purchase. an ABM strategy needs to be championed
by a sales leader and sales operations team sales operations
teams typically are involved because of data integration,
mapping and schema issues, as well as process triggers between
the systems and analytics. They typically work with a dedicated
marketing team that might include an industry specialist.
In addition to tackling the organizational and data
management requirements. specialized technologies are
necessary when implementing an ABM strategy. Most companies
probably have a CRM system for managing customer contacts and
histories along with a marketing automation platform for sending
emails. If they use those platforms to target certain
companies and personalized emails. They've achieved symbol
ABM, the rise of niche ABM platforms to deliver relevant
display advertising and create brand awareness with high value
customers came in response to the demand for digital marketing
that went beyond simply using email. There are also systems
that collect purchase intent data, and track the online
activity of accounts to determine customer interest in
researching a purchase. Most companies aren't getting the
full use out of their sales automation, CRM and marketing
automation software, and they lack a unified view of their
data. Successful ABM programs depend on having a sound process
in place and the people who have the sales, marketing and
customer service skills, plus the technical savvy to get the
most out of ABM tools and technologies